Skip to main content

The Journey Continues

A year ago today I logged the last and longest day...


of my solo trek across northern Spain: 23+ miles, 3,400' elevation gain, 8.5 hours of movement — with every combination of weather (poncho to sunblock and back again), terrain (mud, rock, woodlands, sand, pavement), and views. It has been good to reflect.


I ended the day feeling peaceful. Grounded. Internally at rest. Like I'd completed what I needed to do.



And yet, the journey continues: through my slow, meandering way home (by train, air, and a transatlantic crossing), through a transition back to "normal life" that felt anything but, through the early attempt to put it all into words here — which stalled somewhere around day three, when the next chapter apparently had other plans — into massage school — an unplanned turn, though I'd considered it for years — and, just this week, to launching my own practice.



Walk and the way will appear is still holding true. Taking the next step, making the next right decision, keeps revealing the path — if only the next bit of it.



It's still wild to me that this way of being — living presently, moment by moment — has such a peace-inducing, grounding capacity. I have less certainty than ever about the future. But I'm here. Now.



And for me, that is enough.


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Life is found (or lost) in the details

Musings on the “secrets” to living a rich and happy life. The small stuff of life is underrated; the big stuff is sensationalized.  What actually makes up the fabric of our lives?  The “normal”, the everyday, the routine.  Do you want to have an amazing life?  Transform your ordinary into extraordinary!   We put emphasis on big goals and commitments.  But which is truly more difficult, signing up for that marathon, or getting up early every morning to train?  Or maybe we make a huge savings goal because we want to be able to buy a house or a car, but we keep up our habits of picking up a daily coffee or breakfast sandwich.  In both cases, the former is a one-time commitment, and the latter seems smaller and less significant, but is a commitment that has to be renewed every day (so it appears easy, but is much, much harder because it mandates consistency).   It feels natural to overlook the small details.  They’re small, so they...

COVID-19: a business owner's unfiltered experience

It has been a whirlwind.  I don’t know where to begin.   On the worst days, it felt like people expected the impossible: answers when there were none, energy when we had none, and then when we were at our very lowest, flawless grace in the face of criticism.  Things changed so incredibly rapidly that it felt like we were always trying to catch up: there was always more information to communicate, another video update to shoot, another long text to be sent to the team, another Zoom meeting that should happen.  We keenly felt our physical, mental, and emotional limitations (and our lack of years of leadership experience).  Trying to intentionally pick and choose to focus on certain aspects of the situation meant knowingly dropping other balls that seemed almost equally critical.  (The emotional weight of that alone was pretty taxing.)   And then there was the aftermath of not having had that conversation, writing that email, looping that person...

Camino Francés: Day 2 (Roncesvalles)

Roncesvalles, Spain, February 28 I’m scrunched in my lower bunk, #13 of a 24-bed dorm (this is one of the tiny ones here, some of the dorms have well over 100). By scrunched, I mean that I can’t sit upright because there’s not enough headspace. Were these not built for adults? I’m beginning to think that lower bunks are highly overrated. They’re always the first taken, though in this case, I had mine assigned by the stern lady at the desk who got me checked into this historic facility.  It is an iconic stop. A town with a resident population of about 30 humans, with this enormous, ancient monastery complex (complete with cloisters, chapel, hostel, museum, and more), which has been a place of hospitality for pilgrims of The Way for about 900 years, dating back to 1127. There’s an ancient feeling about the place, for sure, though I’ve been told there were some recent improvements, like the outlets by each bed and a reading light. For these modernizations, I am truly grateful. Only t...