The Years Ahead…

“When I think of all the time I have spent in this finite life, sitting in meeting with academics, politicians, and other blowhards, listening to inflated egos pontificate at length about the grand value of nothing, I become overwhelmed with a mixture of ironic amusement and idiotic regret. After all, I could have been fishing.

~ Steve Ramirez, from Casting Onward

I’m so damn grateful for my current life. It’s so much more true to myself than the one behind me… although I guess I was always true to myself – it’s just that I most often did not fit in as part of the artificial, superficial, and all too often toxic worlds that I was forced to exist within.

I try to never look back – except to learn and grow. I learn, I adapt, I move on.

Now, I am living life on my terms.

I wake to coffee and songbirds and take walks in the canyon when it calls to me.

I cast my line in solitude or beside a dear soul with whom I feel fortunate to share the day with.

I have weekend dates with my wife of 40 years and daily e-conversations with my dearest friends. (How deeply I wish they could be in person…)

And that brings me to another point of clarity.

When I say that I’m so damn grateful for my current life – it’s not because everything is how I’d wish it to be.

It’s because I simply wish to be grateful for what is, and I take action to create what isn’t, and I make choices to exclude what should not be. Does that make sense to you? I hope so.

My house is not the house I’ve dreamed of and it’s not in the country side that I’ve envisioned ever since I was a boy. I don’t have the financial resources I’d chose to have it I could, and my health is not all that it could be. But life and the world is not what we want it to be... it is what it is, and all we can do is count our blessing and adapt to and overcome our burdens – or chose to pay them no mind.

So, things aren’t all that I wished they were – If I wasted any time wishing for something else. I don’t.

Some of those dreams can still come true. I will act to make them come true. And some, really don’t matter. I will let go of them.

Over the next year and a half I will be venturing forward as I write my fourth book in my Lyons Press Casting Forward Series. (I am a fortunate man, indeed.)

Some of you will adventure forward with me in person and some will do so vicariously as you read the book. Both are beautiful gifts.

Life is good and also – it is what we make of it.

Each morning, I choose to be grateful. That sets the tone of each day- even more than “Sunrise yoga.” (Yes, I do practice Yoga… Imperfectly.)

My writing is not just a collection of outdoor adventure stories... it is a conversation about Life and Living. We travel together.

Namaste’ Y’all…