How a Footbath, Beach Cam, and Red Bull Changed My Life

Twisted times call for twisted inspiration, right?

I’m cleaning out my basement, and there it is, our family’s beloved footbath. It had been missing in action for years since my daughters and I would pass it around after long days hiking the Minnesota State Fair. Dusty. Lopsided. A little crusty. “Donate it,” was my first instinct. “No friggin’ way!” screamed a loud voice from within. So I brushed it off and saved it for a special occasion. Little did I know it’d save my life on a soul-sucking conference call for work.

Screw cute Zoom backgrounds: I prefer piping hot footbaths.

Guys wear their gitchies on conference calls. People have Zoom-background wars to survive long, boring meetings. So I figured, “Why not?” It was time to try a footbath. I filled the long-lost contraption with searing hot water and placed it under my desk just before logging on. Who’d know?

Oh man, I wished that conference call would have lasted forever. Long gone in a tranquil world of my own making within minutes, I sat there smugly, not hearing a damn word they were saying. Businessy bullshit dissolved as the bubbles gurgled through my toes. Work stress lifted as the soles of my feet plied into the soothing, knobby rollers. Petty office politics were no match for the giddy sloshing and swishing I was stirring up under my desk. Talk about a sneaky, fun way to unwind while on the clock. Hey, as I said, crazy times call for crazier releases. Corporate footbaths are where it’s at. Get one. They go from $9 to $129 on Amazon.

Land-locked in the Midwest? Maine beaches are a click away.

Why a beagle crapping on the beach brings tears to my eyes, I don’t know. I just love staring at real-life, real-time ocean scenes and the humans and the animals and the bugs crawling over them.

There are tons of awesome webcams you can tune into to enjoy your style of relaxing vistas. I’m a water guy, so I log onto beach cams from Tahiti, Hawaii, California Highway One. All stunning. My hands-down favorite, though, is one overlooking the Atlantic in Ogunquit, Maine. On my flatscreen behind my desk, it’s a portal to eastern ocean vistas as if my St. Paul basement window was feet from the surf. Whatever my mood, the sea is there for me.

I roll my beach cam footage all day long. Sorry, Michelle! (My wife complains I suck up too much of our wifi bandwidth.) She may be right. There’s no sound from my beach cam, so I overlay its video stream with audio of crashing waves from YouTube meditation videos. Other days I max the value of my Pandora subscription to pipe in my favorite pianists — Chopin, Schubert, Debussy’s “La Mer.” Are you kidding me? I can barely stay focused on work with all that magic happening behind me. Especially when I open my Inis Fragrance diffuser to let in the smells of the sea. Stop it! Ogunquit has a 10-foot tide that rolls in and out every six hours. On prime beach days, I track tide times via online tables, study depth charts, and well, don’t get much work done. Look! A seagull just shit on the beach cam. Awesome.

Chug a Red Bull and crack open The Red Bulletin.

Red Bull, we all know. And for me, it’s often a required, 3-pm-pick-me-up to power me through the rest of the workday. Then sometimes, at the end of the day, when I’ve put in 10 hours and feel like I’ve contributed nothing valuable to the world, I turn to their namesake magazine, The Red Bulletin. They always feature fascinating stories about ferocious people accomplishing extreme goals in the face of personal or physical adversity. Explodes my whining in a heartbeat.

They published this issue in June of 2020 that focused on 100 people sharing 100 kick-ass, can-do stories. Obviously, the Red Bull crowd lives on the edge which makes their stories so cool, like Ed Jackson’s on page 75. He’s a former pro-rugby player who became a quadriplegic. There he is lying paralyzed in his hospital bed from the neck down as one of his pals visits with a get-well gift: juggling balls. You read that right. Guy says since Ed’s going to be in the hospital for a bit, he may as well learn a new skill. Ed cries, laughs, and translates that twisted inspiration into not only walking again but climbing mountains for charity, including Mera Peak in Nepal. And I get pissy when I have to juggle too many work meetings.

What’s your release ritual?

Footbaths, beach cams, and Red Bull stories are working for me these days. I’m not sure any of them can totally “change” my life. But they’ve sure helped me change how I “think” about my life.

Even though I’m dry-docked in Minnesota, I can live the salty life, dammit. Staring across a virtual sea knocks me into a promising reality I know and have experienced before. It helps me believe I’ll get back out there again. When I close my eyes, plop my feet into my footbath listening to Rachmaninov while reflecting on amazing people pushing their limits each day, I get a taste of the possible again.

How about you? What quirky release rituals give you hope that you’ll get back to your big beautiful life again?

Let’s connect! I’d love to read your stories and share more of mine.

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