{"id":2449924,"date":"2019-10-16T05:00:00","date_gmt":"2019-10-16T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspentimes.com\/?p=314441"},"modified":"2019-10-16T05:00:00","modified_gmt":"2019-10-16T11:00:00","slug":"roger-marolt-taking-care-of-business-when-town-is-closed-for-the-season","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/local-news\/roger-marolt-taking-care-of-business-when-town-is-closed-for-the-season\/","title":{"rendered":"Roger Marolt: Taking care of business when town is closed for the season"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
Roger Marolt<\/strong>
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You have to admit there is a certain irony about a group of angry parents showing up to a school board meeting to complain about bullying on campus based on political beliefs by, in turn, adamantly labeling the administration and staff \u201csocialists\u201d and \u201chypocrites.\u201d<\/p>\n

But, who can blame them? There is nothing else to do these milquetoast months.<\/p>\n

I mean this most sincerely. Not the irony of a fall morning wasted on tracing circles of spurious argument on a flip chart of thin air, but the fact that anyone, much less a group, can so easily find the time to stage such an impotent coup. There really is nothing else to do.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a sweet spot in the year. Sure, I miss long, warm days full of all kinds of activities. Summer is great and we know it\u2019s great, requiring no other proof other than it goes by too fast. It\u2019s so great, in fact that it is easy to get to this late October period and feel kind of let down.<\/p>\n

Now is the season of bland brown for sure \u2014 except for the part about putting an extra layer of insulation on by, perhaps, filling the Halloween candy basket early and often \u2014 and nobody likes getting used to the cold again. But the wary don\u2019t waste time lamenting the pointless shift from daylight savings time. This time of year will be gone in a blink, too, and we will be sad about it.<\/p>\n

We don\u2019t have to go on hikes. We don\u2019t have to ride our bikes. We don\u2019t have to load up the car and head to the ski hills. This is our time not to shine. We can sit cozily at home and watch sports like the rest of the nation and feel patriotic over the symbolic connection.<\/p>\n

The things we do around here while everyone is watching are guilty pleasures to a large degree. It is not uncommon to feel guilty if we do not partake in them. \u201cWhat did you do this weekend?\u201d is the local Monday morning exhale that is more accusatory than curious. When confronted with this weekly inquisition, you better be prepared to answer with a list of laudable accomplishments or face the awful, unmistakable silence of derision for wasting precious time on things that don\u2019t lend themselves naturally to wearing Lycra, or other variations of moisture-wicking fabrics.<\/p>\n

There are more times in January than not when, before coffee, I groan at the thought of buckling up my ski boots. There are times in the summer as I momentarily relax on the couch when I feel sympathetic pains in my behind over the idea of jumping on my mountain bike and heading out on a single track trail of which my motivation to follow leads me right back to where I am ruminating in this moment of doubt. As with everything in life, there is an inertia that compounds itself each time you repeat an activity in approximately the same manner you have before. It doesn\u2019t decrease the pleasure you get out of the contemplated act, it just makes it harder to get started. It is the thing that history\u2019s young have never believed and its wise have never doubted. It is the explanation for foreplay, fat skis and e-bikes.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s no wonder that we relax into all that this season doesn\u2019t have to offer. Hand me a leaf blower and a set of earplugs that turn its whine into pleasant gray noise as I raise the golden blanket on my yard and watch it settle where I direct it. I can get outside for some fresh air and sunshine without worrying about the premature aging of my skin under blistering UVA rays or searing my lungs for 30 minutes to get to the crest of a trail under the pretense that I have to. Let me enjoy putting away the patio furniture to preserve it in good condition so that I can set it out again next summer and hardly use it again because I am so busy. The thought of it is enough to justify a hasty completion of the task followed by a quick retreat back to the tube and a baseball playoff game.<\/p>\n

Autumn is about staying busy by convincing yourself that you are not. Make no lists. Discuss no plans. Do what you have to do to get back to doing nothing as quickly as possible.<\/p>\n

The formula is simple. The execution is second nature. The fall is short. The landing is soft. Let the nightfall descending upon you two minutes earlier than the day before pull you into this dream all the more quickly.<\/p>\n

Roger Marolt knows that loving to work at nothing all day is taking care of business. Email him at roger@maroltllp.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n

via:: The Aspen Times<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Roger Marolt You have to admit there is a certain irony about a group of angry parents showing up to a school board meeting to complain about bullying on campus based on political beliefs by, in turn, adamantly labeling the administration and staff \u201csocialists\u201d and \u201chypocrites.\u201d But, who can blame them? There is nothing else […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2449924","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-local-news"],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-08-19 14:10:06","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSPN The Valley's Quality Rock","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2449924","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2449924"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2449924\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2449924"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2449924"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2449924"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}