Submitted by Shawn Conn on Sat, 06/06/2015 - 01:38

I decided to put down some thoughts to the long-abandoned blog. Getting back to Who Is... was something on the agenda, but I just lost track of the time; between a career that has been sucking the life out of me, and trying to decide what to do with my life, the blog fell by the wayside, a victim of shifting priorities I suppose. 

I'm hoping to breath some new life into it, if for anything, just to chronicle adventures to come. The last post was a start off to chronicle the 2013 trip, but I only got as far as the opening story. 

The concluding lines were pretty fitting for where I'm now...

 ... It's an event to change up the narrative of your life. It's a chance to redefine what home means to you.

That was in reference to a 2-month, somewhat unintentional, walkabout across the west coast. Now, it refers to the move out there. 

2 years ago, something really awful happened to me. Actually, more than one thing awful happened to me. I'm not rehashing the memories, but I'll just state that it pushed me to the brink. After that, something in me just broke; it left an emotional crater that I've not wanted to return to. This is all to say that it was for the best; I'm a stronger person for it.

It's time to move on. I've had many great times here. I'm sad to leave friends & family, but frankly, it already feels like many have already left me; our priorities in life has changed and our shared experiences grow further apart as a result. Not that I'm hurt or upset (too much) by this, it's just a part of life. It doesn't mean we still aren't my friends; we just see the world differently these days. 

I think big; I see the world, the universe, and think about my place in it and how it relates to everything else. Contrary to that, it feels like I'm against the grain here. Perhaps it's something with settling down that makes your world-view insular. I think that's got to be it. Once you've decided "this is as good as it gets", there's some sort of mind-shift where you do everything to preserve that state as long as possible. You change from "think of the great possibilities!", to, "I'm against this idea until it convinces me that I'm for it." 

That feels like what is stacked against me here. I want to run like life is running in top gear, exploring possibilities and pitfalls, and possibly, potential new peaks. They're out there, you just got to find them, if you're willing to give it a shot. As a fellow barmate at Richo's & I concluded the other week, the failure isn't in trying and it not working as you hoped, the failure is in not trying at all.

I have a passion in life and it's just not being fulfilled here. I guess the typical auto-pilot life script says "do some school, do a job, get good enough at job, and checkout at the job because you have kids to raise, then die" Maybe I have too strong a passion in a field that is "just a job." Maybe I'm just overcompensating for a lack of love in my life. Maybe I just searching for novel thoughts and new stimulation when I'm trying to still live like a young adult in my mid-thirties. I leave it to the reader to decide.

But here's a little secret that helps to acknowledge everyday.

We're all making it up as we go along.

We're given a roadmap in life based on what our forefathers and foremothers did. It gives us a "good enough" life path and does a decent job at preparing us for what is to come. However, when you're actually experiencing it, you'll find that all the preparation in the world doesn't tell you everything. You'll be caught off guard, you'll forget key details, and most importantly, there will be things that are completely new

It's unavoidable. So there are 2 tacts in life here.

You minimize all potentials avenues of change to make it as much as a steady-state as possible, or, try to embrace change quickly to understand, adapt, and smooth out the bumps the best you can. 

The only constant in life is change. Embrace it.