As you may have guessed from the extended silence for the past three weeks, I've finally decided that it's time to close up the Hyperliving shop completely and complete the relocation back to SlangEditorial.net.
I've been writing again almost every day on Slang for the past four months, and I am really just too busy now to maintain two blogs, let alone keeping up with all the specified activity required by Hyperliving. Basically, I have achieved every one of the goals I set for myself with Hyperliving back in January 2008, and now it is time to move on.
This is not, of course, to suggest that I think I finally have all of my shit figured out, because I absolutely do not; however, the primary task set forth in Hyperliving was to learn ways to re-equip myself with a better understanding of what I need to do to figure myself and my future out, and on that front I am absolutely on my way. In some ways, I feel more confused and uncertain than ever before, but now this is largely due to the burdens of promise rather than the terrifying blackness of empty unknowing silence.
I leave Hyperliving with one closing note: given that May in NYC is all about bicycling, this month was intended to be one dedicated to biking and physical activity, and while I've written nothing on the subject here (including even an opener), I'm proud to report some highly successful results.
One goal I set a few months ago was that when it finally got warm again, I would cease buying monthly Metro cards and make a full commitment to cycle transportation. Sure enough I have followed through and biked for transport almost every day since the last week of April, taking the subway only for a handful of 7 am work meetings and the occasional night out, outside of Williamsburg, where the imbibing of alcohol would make biking home unsafe. Other than that though, it's been nothing but bike, bike, bike in May. On May 17 I did the full Montauk Century, 118 miles of riding including biking to the Penn Station start and home again, and I am now up to 989 miles of biking since my first real 2009 ride on March 14. I am feeling about as good as this as I could imagine feeling, I think.
Beyond biking though, this May I finally also fulfilled a longtime goal by joining a basketball league through Greenpoint's Word Bookstore and, after a bit of a rough start, we finally won our first game yesterday after some thorough defeats in our first two games. Truly, I could care less about winning or losing, but the winning is only nice in seeing how the team is slowly beginning to learn how to play together and becoming a nice little family of friends.
And lastly on the physical activity front is rockclimbing, which I did last Tuesday for the first time since summer 1997. I climbed for a few years as a kid with my dad, an avid climber, until he broke his back that Summer '96 day. He went back to climbing again the next year (only to break his back climbing a second time two years later), but I never climbed again until Tuesday. Just climbing for two hours was enough to make me feel pretty dead, but it was so amazing and so absolutely worth it, and I very much look forward to folding this activity into my life over the coming months.
So, Hyperliving, I bid you adieu. I am a curiosity-filled, energetic, and excitable human, but also a very messy one, and I am sure I will need a re-focusing project again in the days ahead to help me figure my life out; however, when I am ready to zone in again I will need to look elsewhere. Hyperliving, you've been good to so very good to me, but now it's time for something else. Thanks for all the memories, thanks for helping to bring me back to what matters in life, and thanks for reminding me why I'm alive.
Love always,
Ben
Stumble It!