Are You Living It?

If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with success unexpected in common hours. –Thoreau

This kitchen is mostly windows.  I’m sitting here, a full story above most of the surrounding houses, and the fog is rolling around me like a tide.  Though it’s quite a lookout perch, I can only see about a quarter mile, the same visibility that’s been had the last three mornings since we moved in.  But the sun will shine through shortly.  Some trigger will trip in the next couple hours and the tissue paper will burn off and reveal this hilly city people have taken to calling America’s most European. 

Last night I launched into my theory of the fog’s seasonality as Laurel regarded me skeptically… it was something about dew-points and air / water temperature differential.  I gesticulated confidently and raised my eyebrows with insight, but it was to be short-lived.  Contradicting myself at least twice, I managed to weave a meteorological tangle in less than a minute, noticed Laurel smirking at me, and then resigned defeatedly.  “I don’t really know what I’m talking about,” I muttered, and we had a laugh.

San Francisco:  we’re in our first week, and it’s true, I don’t really know what I’m talking about. 

If it feels familiar it’s because I’ve been in this spot before.  The last big “life move”…  eight years ago when we arrived in Durango.  I remember that it was with a lot of “lessness” that we rolled into town, much more than is true now:  we were jobless, prospect-less, money-less, and, alas, clueless.

I know there’s a boring essay in here somewhere… a day-by-day account of how my life in Durango unfolded from the shadows of fearful disorientation into the light of artistic fulfillment, unexpected business success, and athletic discovery in the Rocky Mountains.  I could tell you about new friends, all the growing up I did, finally learning what I want, stuff like that.  There would be mountain biking tales, stories of me scared to death on the sharp end of the rope, “had to be there” pictures of drunk friends, and links to stuff you don’t care about.  It would be a very personal tale and it would be a surefire way to make you yawn and click away to your Facebook account.    One man’s epic novel is another’s white noise.  I’ll spare everyone.  Here’s a photo of me being thoughtful in Colorado instead:

But if there is just one point to offer, just one distilled fact that is true, it would be that, like this move to the Bay City, we went to Durango because we wanted to.  And we’re here because we want to be here.  There are goals and objectives and personal quests, some specific and sharp as pencil points, and others so general they’re no more than a feeling in the gut.  But the real point is that this is all pursuit, not floating.  It’s passion, not acceptance.  It’s, as Randy Steuve said to me a few weeks ago, living the life you’ve imagined.  I think that when you strive to live the life you’ve imagined, it’s only then that you can encounter the great things that have never even crossed your mind.  It’s a beautiful irony of life, and it’s what excites me now–all the great things I’ll see that have never even crossed my mind.

It’s time to wrap this up and get to work.  Out the kitchen windows the hue of the fog has steadily changed in this last half hour of writing.  It’s stretching on to mid-morning here and the sun is coming out.

by James Schaffer