Mikes Thoughts

my days to play

I guess all my days are play days now. I don’t really have things I must do on any day. So enter play day every day. My wife will tell me my job is,

walking and drinking coffee every day

It used to be I took more photos of the going. I miss that. I enjoy the daily things here in the city and I get to see them doing both the job I have been given and desire highly. I also have enjoyed finding new places to have coffee but I’ve fallen down lately and I have places on google maps I want to try. I just don’t do them for some reason.

So today writing is about the things today I will do. Not much different than any other day. I just decided to bend my massive intellect and after a single coffee at home on just how life is here for retirement. When I left America way back when, I had decided I was done with questions like “what’s next”. It just seemed I did not need a next. I had this. Even in a year like 2019 when the entire year was spent going, I just went. By the end of that year, I left places I did not like and went to places I would rather be. Why should 2025 be any different?

So in the usual circuitous route, here you have me on 30 August 2025, playing.

Playing at writing

I like morning writing a lot. I slept on things often or woke up often while trying to sleep. Things percolate around and mornings seem a good time over coffee at the house to separate them, write them. Some rebound and come back for repeat visits and my journal kindly accepts all. It has no choice really. The writing gives me this mirror I guess. Sometimes badly fractured where the face I see seems splintered or with different shades of things. There’s no patching it up so I write it out.

I like starting some new blogpost nonsense in the mornings too. There is a sense of starting something I know I won’t finish until I go. I can get a thing down here at the house, find a new thought or some renegade that snuck in from the journal, write it. Let it sit and wait. I have no urgent drafts in the hopper. No compelling ideas to write against. So anything is fair game for me writing.

Somewhere between the coffee and the writing and perhaps my wife making pancakes this morning, there is the desire to see the next thing. The real “job” thing my wife tells me. If you are expecting big time blog things here, you should probably go there. This has always been this daily little thing for me to write, whine, cuss, discuss. No big ideas because I have none.

I can hear my wife talking to the neighbors. Talking here. I don’t know how they do it. Writing I get. Talking seems this skill I have lost. One person waits I guess for me to invite him for coffee. A barang person here. I have no desire for that either. So I won’t do the coffee thing with him until I feel ready to go do it. What I will do is fulfill my play.

the walk ensues and coffee too

There are these walks I just do. I know the turns. It’s an easy choice today after coffee to do the walk. I end up at the big market. Now though is my coffee out. This time between. Between two walks. Perhaps I’ve said before but walking can be challenging in many places in Asia. I loved Hanoi but going there required paying attention to all the people in different conveyances. Only when I reach the Old Quarter did I feel I could just get lost in the warren of small streets. Here in Cambodia most of the cities just not walkable. The worst has to be Phnom Penh. Siem Reap is the best but I enjoy walking in Battambang too. Just need more care.

My favorite cities had to be Tokyo and Taipei. It was so easy to just get lost. To take turns and find things. Get the moments going with the practice and not the caution. Other cities have parts I love to walk. Da Nang is particularly beautiful at sunset and there are so many bridges to walk.

In America it seemed like Seattle and Vancouver were best. But it’s been awhile. I enjoyed Chicago a lot. Was that really 4 years ago? On some second Amtrak dream trip? Yep. Finally the best in Mexico for me was Merida. It was the best at a lot of things and walking was just one.

And coffee. Yeah. Walking and coffee this morning. I feel best when I just get away and do both. I’ve realized lately this is it for me. This writing. Coffee. Walking. It’s all I could want. So I’ll get on with the coffee parts in a bit and write on writing. Please humor me since the blog has no focus and direction it just meanders along where I wish it to go. The writing is a find and release thing for me I think. I can find an idea in the wild. Grab it but it slyly morphs into another. So then I write it. Once I tried writing ideas. I’m no good at that. What I prefer is just going. Having no plan or idea ends up working exceedingly well these days for me.

I was reading this blog just today. The author talks about his writing method. I have tried using the Drafts app. I get no sense it works for me. It just adds more stops and starts to the writing. This writing about writing is exhausting.

Let’s talk coffee.

Finally coffee

Worked my way around this Saturday to what it is I am doing now. Sitting in a small coffee shop. Enjoying a chair. Having my iced americano and surreptitiously watching Cambodian people that are probably doing the same to me. I have these places I will just go. Some facilitate some vague idea about where I want to go afterwards. Others are just escapes from the house. I need both.

The morning thing though is a break. I get to simply move away. Find the place to stop and start. Coffee and writing. Things that make it into this post. There is no tomorrow post. Tomorrow simply never comes so why worry about a thing I won’t see. My wife tells me it’s all about Now. That’s with the big N. She means it thus. So I use up some Now for this. Sip the coffee. Feel its cold warmth bubble.

Perhaps I need to say hello and goodbye now. See you in another Now. Likely bounded by this one. Try writing with no purpose. Works for me. Have a coffee some place. See what happens.

Maybe you too can play.