Monday, October 6, 2008

Catching up

I do believe I missed September. The same sad post sitting at the top of the page for far too long. Let's fix that.

It's funny (or bizarre) how the universe takes so much time barely nudging you to do anything greater, become anything greater, and then SMACK out of the blue, in the least subtle way possible, it provides an obvious and clear path that moments before was completely shrouded. And my restless self jumps all over this exciting realization. Story of my life. Make a big change, adjust to said change, be comfortable and happy, become restless for next big change. Repeat as necessary.

I got a bit of my restlessness out a few weeks ago when I, along with my lovely parents, ventured to California, where I had never been before. I've got a lot of country to see in between here and there, but it was a good start to exploring this big ol' land. We went to San Francisco first.

We hiked through quiet redwoods as the morning fog lifted, saw and heard the loud sea lions at Pier 39 (the whole time I couldn't get Feist's "Sea Lion Woman" song out of my head), explored both the deep hills of the city and the calm Marin headlands, ate absolutely fantastic food, and generally enjoyed ourselves. We stayed at Old St. Mary's, California's first cathedral, where my mother's best friend is the pastor. The part of me that feels a bit bad about not attending Mass as regularly as I used to (damn Catholic guilt!) was concerned with this idea, but they have an entire hotel-like setup for guests, and were such funny, kind, witty men that I quite enjoyed it. And being so close to church bells, so close to a sacred space stirred up something that can wait until another post.

After a few days in the city, we rode to Napa to meet up with family for the wedding that occured that weekend. Wine tastings, beautiful weather, dancing, lovely new friends and spending time with family are five things very much my style. It was incredible. And very very easy to forget that a completely different, and much more responsible life awaited my return.

Traveling normally settles my restless feet for awhile, but now I find that I'm even more restless, or perhaps just ready. Ready for the next step. For so long my focus has been on the present, on being happy being exactly where I am, regardless of what will happen eventually. Now I'm beginning to feel the shift to what's coming next. No drastic moves in the immediate future, but still it seems the restlessness has settled in for good. At least until the next big change occurs.