I honestly believed that winter was being skirted. The temperatures had been unreasonably warm, and we were almost to the end of January, but almost isn’t there. So, as we start the last March towards February, the temperatures have dropped, the winds have picked up, and the layers have tripled.

I’ve been trying to move a little more because the lethargy from the cold can be brutal. It starts in the morning where crawling out from under the covers seems dangerous. You go from bear in hibernation to abandoned arctic explorer pretty quickly. So I pop up to turn the hot water heater on for a cup of tea or coffee and I turn the Aircon on and pull a sweater over as my mind starts Its role for the day.

It’s still the first month of the new year, but I find myself making rough outlines of what I should be doing for my return in July. I’ve looked up coaching courses, used cars, apartments. All practical aspects to return that speaks of stability. But then, of course, I have moments where I look up working visas in Australia, or imagine saying fuck it and trying to backpack through Italy or something.

There’s a balance of wanting to go back to things that you know are fulfilling and comfortable, and the juxtaposition to more ventures into the unknown.

I think time and time again people are endlessly capable of misconstruing what makes them feel fulfilled. Myself included. There’s this draw to excitement and mystery and a whole bevy of Hollywood emotions. This exists in the same way that you frontload happiness to the achievement of a goal. It’s always after you’ve done something and not in the process of— so I try to remind myself that the times in which I felt the greatest passion and fulfillment, and also anxiety and difficulty have been remarkably mundane by the measure of novelty, but immense in reward.

I know a great value of mine is being able to possess the freedom to decide. Whether that’s how I decide my time or how I spend my efforts or money or affection the fact that it’s mine is important. I’d argue that for most people, this is a huge importance.

So, in that regard, I think about how all the novel, awesome, cool things I’ve done, but I’ve done them alone, or for no real reason have paled in comparison to simple things like teaching someone how to shoot a basketball or change a car tire, or how to make a punnet square.

In the realm of the mundane, i’d count the writing projects I’ve done for the past couple years. There’s not a underlying goal behind any of them other than filling my own day with some creativity. I am not in the pursuit of an end goal, I’m practicing a way of life. I’d still like to accomplish something external be on my own website in terms of publication, but I know that’s not at the top of my to do list if I’m not actively working towards it. But I do try to remember that the writing and creative expression is not for nothing when you can track the expansion of thought and character in the mini journals and notes and various scribbles and voice messages I have created.

I even think about the amount of books that I buy and read in a year. Because it’s a lot. I read somewhere between 150 and 200 books a year. I fell asleep every night, reading my Kindle with its light turned low. I wake up every morning and I put that same candle in my school bag and know that I’ll read for at least 30 minutes to an hour at school. I know that I’ll go on Internet searches to find new series an authors to plunder. That now they’re sits somewhere around 500 books in the Kindle and a couple on my tiny little bookshelf here and many back in Portland.

I think about the importance of that amount of reading and exposure to other peoples efforts and creativity. I try to remind myself to not hold my own efforts in comparison, when I’m not doing the same things to present works as a finished product as the people I read do. And then I remind myself to do some thing I do even more rarely, which is actually read some of the stuff I’ve written. Believe it or not, but for someone who reads a fuck ton it is a bear for me to read my own work. Probably because if I’m reading it, I know I will end up revising it, and I have been notoriously adverse to revision because that’s where the actual work is done (outside of getting your ass in the chair).

But for now, on this cold and windy day on my purportedly sub-tropical island, I’m going to finish up a Tom Holt book and then cook some chicken and attend to matters of bureaucracy. How about that for exciting?