I am conducting this blog from the beach in San Diego. It is my last day, thus the one day I would mention I am gone (so none of y’all rob me!) and by the time this gets online I will be back. I love writing on the beach more than I thought was possible. I love the idea of being able to get all of the sensory input that keeps me focused and calm yet feel the sun at my back and smell the cool clean air of the ocean. I prefer to live this way. I would prefer to have a home here, footsteps away from the water where I can visit and thrive two or three months out of the year in a space where my responsibilities are tied only to the online world and the whims of my fancy. That is, of course, fantasy. I don’t have a budget for such things. Nevertheless I am driven to remember how fortunate I am to have what I have now and to be able to spend these last few days here with the woman I love and the job I most cherish—the words.
More and more my partner and I discuss the idea of the life we want to live and the way it contrasts with the life we live. I believe there is a way to combine these things that leans more towards the wants and desires than it does the daily reality. I am working on that. I am moving towards a deeper realization of how to make that happen. Trips like these help me understand, but they also are a part of that reality I seek to hold on to.
The beach reminds me that I love people watching and love absorbing the aura of the ocean and the energy of the people there. It reminds me how to be active when I spend my days in a state that, for this stage of the year, is too hot to want to be active outdoors or even in. The beach is a reset or a recharge permitting me to go back to the doldrums and face the day to day.
The beach makes me want to change that day to day to something else entirely that feels less like tolerance and more like waking up to a life that I look forward to and activities that remind me that I am in charge of my own (brief) reality. The universe has been around for billions of years. I’m here for what, 80? As I feel the way life has weathered my body and spirit I find that more and more I am looking to heal and to guide my life towards personal fulfilment and enjoyment less I waste what little time I have left in this mortal coil.