Malaise

Nothing seems to be enough these days.  There's no impact, no "wow", no moment of enlightenment.

It's something I've been guilty of my entire life - waiting indefinitely for that "wow" moment.  I keep pushing myself into new pursuits, thinking that maybe at the end of a trail or the top of a mountain or the end of a book, I'll come to some great epiphany.  I get these small epiphanies, these little moments of the beginning of inertia or the blossoming of an idea; they all seem to die an unceremonious death once the moment passes.

Monday night I was on the porch late at night, well after 11.  Reading Alpinist, smoking a nice Montecristo that I'd swapped Mark an Oliva for, just enjoying the cool of the late spring evening and the smell of my front yards' orange blossoms.  Maxime Turgeon had scribed an article of self-discovery and stripped down exploration, about cycling and climbing in the Alps, from end to end.  I'd been wrestling with the idea of what to persue myself, what it was that I was going to lay out there to work toward.  I drifted into the idea of circumambulating the country by bike, of pedaling away from my front door some morning and just going.  Up the coast, along the highways of the western sierra, up through the cascades and the black expanses of the flood basalts of northeast California.  Up through that forgotten corner, stopping in Bend to visit my sister, then up and across the Cascades, along the Olympic coast.  Across the country, through that open country of Montana that I adored, where my heart felt at home.  Across, across, across, all the way to the Atlantic seaboard.  Down south, through slat marshes and sea grass, out along the flat expanse of Florida, out to the Keys, the warm flat waters of conch salad and bonefishing, of skiffs and faded blue fishing shirts.  Back west through the south in the winter, through Texas and New Mexico and Arizona.  The arizona that I've come to love more than home, the place where i let the ideas of my future wander to, of summers of dusty pine resin and thundering monsoons, winters of silent skiing and the smell if warm wood-fired stoves in pine cabins.  Back across the always surprisingly steep mojave desert, the desert full of hidden beauty, a place magical only to those who take the time and ambition to seek it out.  Back to the sea, back home.

Home.  Is this home?  Do I have a home, or rather, can I?  Does the concept ultimately fail me?  I look at those that have a "home", of those that want a home, a place to come back to and settle at, a place that they see as where they want to be, to spend their life.  I have too many places, want to do too many things...I'm not sure how I could do that.  Part of me wants that, desires that ability to settle down and be happy with one thing, one place.  I just don't understand it though, and can't seem to make myself come to terms with it. My countenance fights it, fights the idea thinking of all that I might not see, do, be part of.

Bah.

Frustration

I need to stop thinking, and start doing.

I guess there's no more succinct way to put it.  Life is, if it's going to have any thing that i would consider interesting or unique or worthwhile doing in the first place, going to have some things that require risk.

Sacrifice, failure, loss, disappointment.  All the things that seem to keep me from actually doing the things that I feel I need to be doing with my life.  I can deal with them as they come, along with achievement, pride, accomplishment, and satiation; else, they will catch up with me at some point, in the lamentations of looking back at what I should have done, or at the very least tried.

It sounds so vastly clichéd, to say that I have nothing to prove to anyone but myself.  It's just that I no longer care anymore if it's clichéd or not.

I've been stagnant far too much this spring.  I know that drives this, but I'm going to let it be the engine of this drive to change...something.