San Francisco Spirit

Feeling Christmasy one night in December, I decided to stop and photograph the lit up houses on my way home from work.  I was impressed with how many houses were decorated and how much spirit San Franciscan’s seemed to have — or maybe I was just projecting.  I love Christmas and want everyone else to love it too.  

I took all of these photos with my phone, so they’re pretty grainy or fuzzy, but you get the idea.  It’s not as if you are going to mistake that nutcracker in the first photo for a cop or somethin.’  Merry Christmas a few weeks late, everyone!  And Happy New Year!  

Nature & Animals Win

I’m torn between making this blog a blog about family, relationships, love and those sorts of ruminations and making it a blog about gardening, snails and other cute animals. I’m not interested in having this blog be my diary, but I’m interested in doing some carefully crafted writing. However, as I’ve started writing, I’ve been getting more and more interested in what has come to the surface.

The list of categories at the bottom of my blog show topics that are very important to me, give or take a few items. That’s neat to see, because I didn’t really choose them. My writing sort of chose them for me. I assumed I’d be talking about family, love & friends … in that order … but, so far, that hasn’t really been the case. I’m not saying that family, love and friendship won’t pop in every now and then or that those topics won’t ever dominate … they likely will. But, for now, other random stuff that I love is coming to the surface … and that’s been a nice surprise.

“You Feel Life More…”

I was out in the backyard gardening (something I’m doing a lot more of these days) and ran into my neighbor (not a rare occurrence).  She is an avid gardener with a particular affinity toward succulents.  She asked me if I was taking the day off.  I was surprised that I had not yet told her about my departure from my job and all the wackiness that surrounded it.  I brought her up to date and she asked me how I was feeling about my new lifestyle.  I told her that I loved it.  She was right there with me in understanding how much I loved it.  She immediately said, “Yeah, you feel life more.”  I speechlessly nodded.  There is no better way to explain it.  I imagine it’s how retirement feels…but I’m 30 years early.

This feeling has got to be different from retirement, though, because sometimes I don’t feel entitled to this break — and that makes it all the more enjoyable. It’s like I’ve been skipping school for 2 months.  My dad helps keep this feeling alive simply with the tone of his voice.  He knows I’ll be fine, but he’s my dad.  But many times I do feel entitled to this break, however, and know that this lifestyle could actually be my reality.  I’m not talking about never working again, but working for myself.  I’ve scratched the surface by getting a few new clients but I still feel “unemployed” since I work so little and “feel life“ so darn much!

What Comes to the Surface

Being out of work and having lots and lots of time, desires/life-dreams seem to come up more frequently than they did when I was working FT (full-time). For instance, I’ve wanted to sing and pick up an instrument lately. I’ve had this desire many times before, but when I worked FT it bugged me about once a month. Now it’s once every 2 or 3 days. I guess it makes sense. I have more space and time to even consider doing things that I like to do. But I’m wondering how these desires initially got so far away from me in the first place. The answer is probably obvious, but I still think it’s important to consider.

Things are easier to see after you’ve sort of “broken-up” with your job. You realize why you left, you know why you’re better off now, you know what’s good and what’s bad. All this “sight” comes to the surface…all this visual acuity…inner-visual acuity. It’s what happens when you go on vacation…but I’m on a long one…with no warm beach or fresh fruit…and no nice hotel. Hey! This vacation sucks!

First Post

My internal dialog is filling up its internal home.  It needs a place to go.  Thanks to wordpress.