Taking on New Adventures

It’s done. The strangest Mardi Gras I’ve ever experienced is now over. So what’s next? Well, time will tell but here’s hoping the rest of 2020 offers a little better outcome than the Carnival season did!

I recently wrote about the death of a parade goer during my Krewe of Nyx ride. Unfortunately, a second death occurred on Saturday evening during the Endymion parade. A man lost his life after he was hit by a float, and while the details are still unclear as to why he was so close to the float, the death sparked an immediate reaction by the Mayor and the chief of police over the safety of the parades and specifically, the floats.

Chuck and I were at the Endymion Extravaganza on Saturday night and while people still had fun, there was definitely a change in the mood from previous years’ events. Only 13 floats rolled through the Convention Center and a majority of the riders walked in, carrying only the bags that were light enough for them to carry. Thousands of dollars of throws were left on the floats and the disappointment and shock on the faces of the riders was evident.

Over the course of the next few months, we’ll hear more about the changes that are sure to be enforced for future Mardi Gras parades. But for now, we leave the parade season with a lot of disappointment from the riders, sadness for those who knew the two who died and too many questions of what happened and why.

I don’t know why, but it seems like from January 1 through Mardi Gras, time stands still. Yes, work still goes on and life happens, but there is always a bit of excitement during that two month or so stretch.

But once Ash Wednesday hits, so does life.

And that brings me to my question: What’s next?

As I navigate the world of contract work, I know that it’s going to be slow at times and almost unmanageable at others. And I’m ok with that. But the anticipation of what is next in my work life also leads to what is next in life.

The obvious “What’s Next” in the city is festival season. With the Bourbon Festival, NOWFE, and Hogs for the Cause gearing up in March with the French Quarter Festival and JazzFest coming up in April, there is a lot coming up that I’m sure we’ll participate in and enjoy.

On a personal note, for the first time in years, Chuck and I don’t have a set date of travel for fun. Oh, we’ve talked about places we’d like to visit again and new ones we’d like to check out, but we have not made any solid plans. This is a little strange because we always look ahead and try to plan something to look forward to. But this year, we decided to kind of wait and see what opportunities for travel pop up for work and then plan around that.

That brings me to my goals. I don’t make New Year’s resolutions but often make internal post-Mardi Gras goals. I try to do something tangible, that I can check off when completed. So here goes:

• Travel somewhere new this year
• Travel somewhere we’ve been before
• Create a more solid daily routine that includes work hours, exercise and diet
• Lose that pesky 15 pounds!
• Find that joy in work that has been missing for a while

I have a lot of other goals but these are a great start and something I can try to achieve over the course of the year. I also think it’ll help strengthen my relationships all around and also open some doors for work that I may not be aware of or haven’t explored yet.

So for the rest of 2020, what’s next is still to be determined. But I have the start of a plan and look forward to seeing what else pops up that I didn’t know was an option.