In Search of the Very

Who knew that trying to create a simple, private blog would be so hard. I forget that whenever technology is involved I suck at it. I really do. It’s this maze that I don’t even remember entering. Try as I might, I bump up against wall after wall. So. For now it won’t be pretty. It will just be mine.

Why am I starting it again ? Because of a woman I found entirely by mistake. I wasn’t looking for blogs or stories or even soul-food. I was researching some Mt Rainier hikes I want to do and there she was: Gretchen. A link to her blog from a trip report has sent me on a path that I hadn’t even seen. Blinders. I think I spend a good deal of time with blinders on. I see what’s ahead. Not in a meaningful, visionary kind of way but rather I see only what I perceive to be in front of me. Gretchen helped me veer onto a different path and here I am. It is clearly a path I am meant to be on, perhaps even a path I have travelled before.

The restlessness I feel is familiar. Palatable. I think back to a quote by Mary Oliver :

“You must not ever stop being whimsical. And you must not, ever, give anyone else the responsibility for your life.”
― Mary Oliver, Wild Geese

Is that what I’ve been doing ? Giving away the responsibility for my life ? I move through the result of my bad choices as if it were someone elses fault. My days run together like Groundhog Day …  wake to an obnoxious alarm, have twenty serene minutes, get ready for work, sit in awful traffic, arrive at the P.O. (a place I’ve come to dread), prepare my route, have whatever joy there is to be found in the day, make an unbearably long drive home, feed everyone, tend to their little idiosyncrasies, sit down with my wife to watch a show or catch up on Facebook nonsense and then hit the sack with my swirling brain and do it all again the next day. And the day after that. And the day after that.

When I’m overcome by my own routine I blame others. Kelly, work, my pets and parents. Truth is, I really believe that change can only be achieved through a change in a daily routine. The cycle is mine to break. And yet here I am, Sittting on my hands. Waiting, it would seem, for some miracle. I am not good at restless. I’m also not good at change.

I will use this space to process what I have spinning around like tops in my head. I will make a point of learning this new technology so that it feels safe and private. Right now I am learning. Right now I am trying to break a daily routine.