Day 61: welcome to Vermont

Miles: 10
Water: 1l 1 Gatorade 1 dr pepper

I slept in a shelter last night, and it was only minorly wretched. I took a tylenol pm so that helped.  The upside is that when the other two guys got up in the morning it kind of forced me to get up earlier. Strangely I was the last one awake but the first to leave the shelter. I guess my time to trail has improved.

In my efforts to get to sleep I found a random indy radio station where a maudlin girl was playing weird music. I remember she played the horny goats? They had a sweet song about a bedroom death metal band. And stabbing people in the eye with a foreign object. She then played a band called the avalanche? Which in my half asleep sleeping pill addled mind came out all fractal and hip hop. I'd like to hear it awake.
Being the first one out the gate I was the spider plough. Overnight spiders spend hours laying tiny threads of icky across the trail, and the first person out is the lucky one that gets to clear them. Jamie was an excellent spider plough, his skills are missed.

I put up good times today, came down the mt fast, went to the grocery store for an hour or so and refilled my food bag, ate some really weird sourish low sugar yogurt and drank a dr pepper and was back on the trail after my one mile detour.

Today I left mass and crossed into Vermont. Also the first one hundred miles of the AT in VT are concurrent with another trail called the Vermont long trail. So it's like I'm hiking twice as far!

Tomorrow looks like it's either 7 or 13 miles, I'll make the call when I get to the first shelter tomorrow.

Jeff posted a C S Lewis quote in the comments, about not having your happiness being dependant on things that can be taken away. This got me thinking about creative endeavors and which ones I do for external validation vs the ones I do just to entertain myself. (I got there from the idea that any external validation is at risk of being removed)

This blog is probably my biggest project of late, and it is probably split 50/50 for myself vs being for you guys. I try to keep it entertaining, but sometimes I wander down these navel gazing topics too, which tends to be more for myself. But I probably wouldn't be writing these considerations down, if it wasn't for the blog. These thoughts would just evaporate and be forgotten like most thoughts.

The doodles I do in the trail logs are mostly for myself I think. Nobody on the trail cares about my skinny cow drawing, or Pac man not getting invited to the ghost party. I guess I hope they make someone smile.

This home brew rpg I'm simmering is by definition something that has to be done for an external audience. It needs other people to be experienced at all. (Hmm could you design a solo rpg game? Is that just a short story?)

I miss making music, that was more about working together. I'm not sure where it fell on the scale. I need to make a more serious effort to grind through the terrible early 500 hours of learning to play an instrument.

Making my clunky alcohol stove was internally validating. I like using it because I made it.

I'm betting that externally validating people are less successful than internally validating people. Now I'm just rambling.