Why Myrtle Beach?

Why did we choose to winter in Myrtle Beach?

We wanted a longer tennis season and we wanted to do it cheaply (we are living on a pension). We wanted to be near the ocean and we wanted to be close enough to Raleigh to drive there a couple times a month to visit our two sons and granddaughter.

Ocean front Myrtle Beach resorts in the off-season (that’s October through February) are inexpensive. The pro at the tennis center told me on the phone that they play tennis year-round. It’s a three and a half hour drive to Raleigh.

Check, check and check. An easy decision, right?

Which brings me to the second half of this post … decisions.

I suppose I’m an Epicurean, a sort of tranquil Hedonist.

What I eat, how much I exercise, what I buy, how I use my time, the company I keep, what I wear, where I live ... I try to base all those decisions on whether the result will bring me pleasure (or help me avoid pain) AND what it will bring tomorrow.

We all do this all the time, mostly subconsciously.

You put your hand over a lit stove burner, feel the heat and pull your hand away. You wake up cold and tug on another blanket. Easy stuff, no thought necessary.

Or maybe you wake up with a hangover, puking, parched and enduring a pounding headache. You might decide to moderate your drinking. Or you might weigh the hangover discomfort against the pleasure from drinking. Maybe you don’t think about it and go through the same drinking/hangover pattern over and over again.

Or maybe you have a job you dislike, but you need the money. You look for another job, get training, make uncomfortable changes to find a better job or you weigh the value of your current job – pay, benefits, security, comfort – against the intensity of your dislike of it and you decide to live with it or you decide to find a way to live with less income.

It can get complicated, but it becomes impossible without some sort of scale (philosophy) on which to weigh the possibilities.