We Are All Pioneers
The other day I saw a video of someone's natural swimming pool. It was so beautiful, looking like a pond with lily pads and reeds growing on shallow edges and a deeper main area for swimming. There was a wood deck and a "dock" that looked like it was the diving board. It was so peaceful and I could practically feel the water after diving into it in my imagination. I'm one of those people who sees something and instinctively thinks, "I want to make/build/create/draw that!" But this time that thought was quickly followed by a less positive feeling of dread as I admitted to myself that I'm no spring chicken and a project like that is so far out of my scope financially and in terms of the energy it would require of me to manage such a project even if I could afford it.
"Maybe in my next life," I thought. Yikes. I had this feeling like when I'm on the flight home after a vacation and I'm remembering things I'd meant to do or see but forgot. Or the feeling of looking around a clean apartment after moving out and thinking I wish it'd looked like this when I was living here. But there will be more trips and I can get better at cleaning my home for me and not just for getting my security deposit back in full. However, there is only one life.
I suppose getting older means realizing you can't save things for later since there's not a whole lot of "later" left. I can't pine over "things I'll do when I grow up". I'm grown up now. I have to prioritize what's important and accept that not everything is something I should necessarily make/build/create/draw. Just because I can doesn't mean I should. So I'll add the swimming pool to the list of things that I've come to accept as just not for me after all. Right under "Hike Kalalau" which would require a whole lot of getting in shape and training and I don't really want to do it quite that much. There are other things I'd rather do.
"Every life is an unprecedented experiment. This life is mine alone. So I have stopped asking people for directions to places they've never been. There is no map. We are all pioneers." -Glennon Doyle
Realizations like this don't happen without the wisdom gained from years of experiences, mistakes, and mileage. It cracks me up to think I thought I knew it all when I was young. I thought I knew exactly how my life would look. Silly girl - you lived in a world without the internet! What the hell did you know?!? Even just thinking that my life would follow the same patterns and rhythms as my parents was naïve. Their path wasn't my path. It's called EVOLUTION. I didn't have their same struggles because they provided for me and now I am doing the same for my children. We always want our kids to have better and that furthers the species. It's just science.
Oh my goodness I think too much, I know. It's just so remarkable to look around and take in how far I've come. At 18 I didn't know there would be this device that I could draw on and create things with. I didn't know my hometown, that I wanted to get out of, would become such a cool town to live in. I didn't fathom that something called the world wide web would allow me to open an online store. Pretty cool when you think about it like that. It makes me wonder what's next. Where do I go from here?
Like maybe there's something to these surfboard designs I've been coming up with for wholesale. It's so much fun to get a request from a resort, put together a mood board from their website and Instagram, and then create designs that I hope will vibe with their brand. Is this something I could do more of? Maybe this is the next path on this winding journey.
I'm still trying to maintain balance and work on drawings for me in addition to fulfilling orders and shop work, but there's nothing really notable to share so I'm sharing these surfboard designs instead. This is me checking in. It's still my hope that if I keep doing this, I'll be able to study the work and see the progress - And that progress will light the way. Like opening a lab book to review the findings. All the pieces will add up to an extraordinary discovery. Why not? It's possible.