A Minute of Mindfulness: Remembering Lake Fanny Hooe

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Published on Oct 04, 2023

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It was two or three days ago that I decided I was going to do another Minute of Mindfulness post today. Little did I know, I was the one that was going to need a bit of calm and relaxation this morning.

It all started with @mrsbozz's alarm going off at 4:15 AM this morning. That's actually the same time it goes off every weekday, so nothing unusual there. She decided that she wasn't going to get up and work out, and since I was still feeling a little sore from my workout on Monday and Tuesday, she didn't get much of an argument from me.

She snoozed it for another half hour and drifted off to sleep. Just about that time, our dog Jovi decided she need to go to the bathroom. All the way down the hall... It's not her fault, she is 14 years old and nerve damage in her back legs and rear make it so that she doesn't realize she has to go until it is actually coming out of her. Thankfully it is solid!

So I got up and cleaned up her mess, gave her the morning pill she gets, fed her, and put her out one more time. I crawled back into bed, but I was pretty much fully awake, so I just laid there thinking about what I had to get done today.

We eventually get up and start getting ready for work, and my wife mentions that she needs $5 for something. I tried to make a mental note of it and went on with getting dressed for work.

Fast forward a couple of minutes and we are in the kitchen getting our lunches and breakfast ready. I've never been properly diagnosed as ADHD, but my wife is a School Social Worker, so she has identified and worked with students who suffer from it for years. She has confirmed that I do indeed have some form of it.

I grab my wallet and put it in my pocket, then I start reaching for my keys. Only to remember that she needed $5. I pull my wallet out of my pocket, set the five dollars on the counter for her, put the wallet back in my pocket and start filling our water bottles.

Do you see where this is going?

@mrsbozz and I both work for the same school district, so we make the half hour ride to work together most days. We get to work and @mrsbozz says oh crap I forgot my key to get in the building. No problem, I have a key to every building in the district, so I reach into my pocket only to realize I also don't have my keys.

That break in my routine to give her the $5 totally messed me up and I never grabbed my office keys. She was able to get into her building, but I had to wait in the car for an hour for someone that had a key to get me into my office. There are only about five people in the district who have a key and none of them come in as early as me.

I finally found someone, I borrow their key, and then this happens:

I try to turn the key in the lock and instead of opening, the whole cylinder comes out in my hand. Luckily, my office has more than one door, so I was able to go to the other one and finally get in.

By now, I am a good hour behind on my regular morning Hive routine. I type up my 800 word post in 3Speak, hit the save button and wait for it to encode the video properly. Only to be given a message that the encoding failed and I can't find any way of republishing it. So here I am re-typing my 800 word post in what has been a very rough morning for me.

As I said, fitting that my post today is about mindfulness and taking a minute to find some inner peace.

The video above was taken on the shores of Lake Fanny Hooe in the Northernmost point of Michigan's Upper Peninsula. Even today, the area is a pretty vast wilderness. Back when Fort Wilkins was established on the shores of the lake, it was even more so.

The military presence was there to help ensure the safety of the mining and fur trading operations that were taking place in that area of the state. A handful of soldiers, miners, trappers, Native Americans, and maybe a few civilians were basically stuck in the middle of nowhere.

As harsh as I know the winters get in this part of the state, part of me wonders what it must have been like to have lived there during that time. Isolated from the world, with a view like that to wake up to every morning. It's almost a dream come true right?

If you have had a rough morning like me, or a rough week, month, year... I hope you can take a moment and watch this video and find a bit of inner peace. Do some belly breathing (follow @ericvancewalton's blog for more info on that), and maybe reset yourself.