Remember last week when I said that to live the life that you want for yourself, your mindset has to line up with where you are trying to go and how this week I’d talk a little about what I believe is the number one way to make sure that is the case?
Well, I couldn’t decide on just one, so I’m going with three instead. Here they are…
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When we were in Arizona last year, there was a salty old man who lived in our RV park. His ramshackle 1988 Fleetwood Southwind RV was decorated in the usual way- blue tarp, duct tape trim, and the ever-present pile of cracked cinderblocks and firewood with a few broken lawn ornaments mixed in.
This guy- let’s call him Gus (his name is definitely not Gus, but I like “Gus” so we’re going with it)- is unimpressed. With everything.
He is unimpressed with the famous Tucson sunsets (“I’ve lived here all my life- they’re the same as they’ve always been.”).
He is unimpressed with the way things bloom after a desert rain (“Yup. It’s what happens.”).
And he is super unimpressed with the entire concept of “tiny house living.”
“Tiny house? On wheels? Yeah. Some of us have been doing that for years- it’s called a trailer, dipshit. The same rich kids who look down their noses at a trailer park, build their trailer out of expensive wood and take away the TV, and they think they’ve fucking invented sliced bread. Smug assholes.”
It was a pretty hilarious conversation.
Also, he kinda has a point.
The thing is, so do those “rich kids” who build those tiny homes, who spend time and effort to craft something sustainable and special, with intention and purpose (and who, just because it really does bear repeating yet again, are definitely NOT all “rich”).
They are simply looking at the same concept from two very different perspectives….
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GUESSSSSS WHAAAAAATTTTT?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?
WE GOT A NEW DOOOOOOOOOG!!!!!!
Meet Chili Pepper.
Also known as Chili Dog, Chili Boy, Chill Pill (Justin keeps pushing for Chili Bob, but…ummm…no.).
He’s a red heeler rescue from Texas and he just arrived on Friday.
We are in love.
We are all still in the midst of getting to know one another and my full-time job at the moment is holding back the urge to snuggle my face into his neck and squeeze him until the big empty space in my chest that Tessie’s absence left starts to feel full again.
It’s a funny thing, isn’t it, the way we can feel so many things at once? In the midst of my over-the-moon excitement for Chili to be here, there are infinite tiny stabs of grief that Tess isn’t. His arrival is full of so much joy and welcome and love, and it also sort of feels like losing her all over again.
Change is like that, isn’t it?
It shines this big spotlight on all the ways things are different. We stand on this threshold, reluctant to let go of the way things were even while we are eager and excited (if also a little unsure and maybe even a bit nervous) for what’s next…
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I realized the other day that I haven’t posted to any social media platforms in almost 2 months.
This isn’t really a big deal, but it made me pause because I never made a conscious decision to go on any kind of hiatus. I didn’t go on any kind of intentional “digital fast” or suddenly boycott technology.
I just didn’t feel like posting. So I didn’t.
And then I sort of forgot about it.
We went to Vancouver for a long weekend so Justin could run a 50K trail race. I took some fun videos and photos with my phone intending to post them later, but ended up getting caught up reading a good book instead. Then I forgot about posting them.
We sat on the tailgate alongside the Skagit River in North Cascades National Park and ate lunch and made plans. But I was busy dreaming about our future and holding Justin’s hand, so I forgot to take photos and posting about it slipped my mind….
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A gorgeous spring day is coming to a close as I sit down to write this, and I’m trying to leave the window open as long as I can even though the temperature is dropping as quickly as the sun.
We’ve spent the day replacing the flooring in the new laundry room/ kitchenette in my Dad’s house and it’s nice to see a room actually coming together after a few months of doing the kind of renovation work that’s super important but not very visible (did I tell you that Justin and I replaced all the hot water galvanized plumbing in the entire house? Not glamorous at all, but I’m seriously proud of us for figuring it all out without flooding the house!).
The renovations overall are moving slowly but sometimes that’s the way of true progress: steady incremental improvement toward goals at a rate that is actually sustainable.
We head out tomorrow for a quick trip to see family in New Hampshire and then I have some photography work lined up in New Jersey that will keep me there for a couple of weeks. It’s been more than a year since we were last in New England and it will be really nice to have this time with friends and family. We have a more extended trip there planned for the summer, but this short one is what we can manage this time around and that’s okay too.
So much seems to be in process for us at the moment. Working on my Dad’s home one room at time. Slowly transitioning my business into two distinct(ish) entities. Making decisions about where our next move will be and when and whether that will be a more permanent move or whether we want to resume traveling in Kippee for a little while longer. We’ve adopted a new pup who will arrive here from a rescue in Texas at the end of May, so we’re excitedly preparing to welcome our newest family member while still being struck sideways sometimes by how much we miss Tessie…
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Justin and I were moving slowly south, reluctant to relinquish the quiet of our time in the Arctic. Between the late summer snowstorm spent holed up in our truck in the Brooks Range and several days spent wandering along the Middle Fork of the Koyukuk river laughing over driftwood campfires, we glimpsed only a small handful of people from a distance as they raced one direction or the other along the Dalton Highway.
We relished the solitude. We relished the simplicity of concerning ourselves solely with the basics of life: warmth and weather and nourishment. We fell into the rhythm of the place, listening to the chalky river push around the rocks lining its bottom and watching the shadows move across Sukakpak Mountain’s massive marble peak as the days passed.
The last of August’s summer warmth fled the moment September arrived and we welcomed the signs of fall that greeted us everywhere. The alders and aspens and birches tucked in among the spruce were suddenly all golds and yellows. The blueberry and lingonberry turned deep garnet, the mountainsides and valleys rolling seas of fiery reds. Tessie’s fur thickened in the chill, but even so, we pulled out her down jacket so she could sleep alongside the fire in the sort of comfort to which she’d grown accustomed…
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One of my very favorite (possibly true, possibly not) literary anecdotes of all time is when Henry David Thoreau exclaims, “Simplify! Simplify!” in Walden, and his friend and mentor, Ralph Waldo Emerson offers the feedback, “One simplify would have sufficed.”
Doh.
I think of this story often. It represents the bulk of what holds me back in life (and I’d venture to guess I’m not alone here):
I overcomplicate a whole lot of stuff that doesn’t need to be complicated.
I go on and on with two “simplifys” when one would have sufficed….
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I was running on the treadmill at the gym last Tuesday (not nearly as good for me as running on a trail, but sometimes done is better than perfect, you know?) and, as sometimes happens on the treadmill, I was really, really, really bored.
The music wasn’t helping. The weird tv screen six inches from my face that kept suddenly turning itself on (reminding me that at some point in the last year I’ve grown to need reading glasses) wasn’t helping. Making up hill workouts and speed workouts that would let me fiddle with the controls every tenth of a mile…you guessed it- not working…
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