If you had asked me throughout much of my life if I would own a cowboy hat my answer would have been clear, definitive and negative. I am person who likes to think a lot and often about things that don’t really matter. I am in many ways cut out for my past profession – working at a university. People who hold Ph.D.s and work at universities are not always the most in touch and they often spend a lot of time working on things that are a bit removed from the day to day world. I was one of those people for a number of years. I still have such tendencies, for example, I devote much of my free time to thinking about abstract aspects of triathlon performance. Getting back to the point of this blog, my cowboy hat, I was drawn to one this past spring when visiting my family in New Mexico. As an over thinker, I contemplated the idea of the hat for several days before I finally took myself to the western wear store. There I tried on a variety of the hat types settling on a lovely black one. I’ve been a happy cowboy hat owner since then. I guess since I used the word "lovely" to describe my hat, I may be banned from the club yet.
My cowboy hat is more than just a hat to me. It not only represents my past, I grew up in the West, the hat represents a part of me that started this spring and summer. I gave up my ties to university employment and moved into a new role as the owner of a small business. My triathlon coaching business requires a whole different approach to the world than does working for a public institution such as a university. I am thrilled to be in that new role and I see my cowboy hat as a great connection to that switch. Whenever I get to viewing the world too abstractly, my cowboy hat reminds me of the importance of simplicity and things being straight forward. Most of the time, it is good to keep things simple.
As Lyle Lovett once said, “you can have my girl, but don’t touch my hat.”
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