There’s infinite beauty drawn from the well of ordinary life.

Ordinary life. Often painful.

The thoughts in our head,

the world that we face when we get out of bed.

A dark green pine candle burns and illuminates the bookshelf.

A vase filled a third with water contains six sunflowers leaning against the window of glass, asking to be seen by the rays of the sun. They’re beautiful to me. Drinking from the well. Honey yellow in the mauve of early morning.

I’m cozy in bed. Writing on a Saturday.

Been absorbing a lot from the modern philosopher Alain de Botton; his perspective, a reverence of the melancholic, blows me away.

I highly recommend his recent book A Therapeutic Journey, a book that tries not to tell us how to live, but rather, serves as a companion through our crestfallen days, giving insight into what it means to be human: sad, fragile, susceptible to endless torment; but resilient and truly loved, above all else. Its point is to make us feel less alone.

I couple nonfiction with fiction, fantasy. Books that make me happy.

Books make me happy, whether scribbling on their pages or admiring the shelf, how they lean on each other or they stand by themselves.

What more is there to aspire to?

I’m happiest in a simple space. What I’ve called my dojo. Again and again I’ve picked it up and moved, but the essence remains, my spirit subsumed by four new walls, a novel place to tell my story, what has always been home, the light of early morning.

To see every day anew.

Time goes quick.

Embrace the mundane in a culture that’s sick.

So much of life’s online. I’m no better.

But for now I’ll disappear like the sun in stormy weather.

Thanksgiving last week was so damn cool.

A wall had crumbled. I could go deeper. I could stand there and be, just happy to be.

No matter where I go, LA is my heart.

My family and friends and the sea, my history.

It can often feel like we have to understand. Like we have to make a change or find a sensible answer or have a five-year plan.

But if we could just sit with ourselves, just sit with other people, able to be there without needing to know where the exit is or when it’ll come — then we’re free.

It’s the expectations of what we’re supposed to be that have us feeling caged.

Over the last couple of years I’ve gone deeper within myself. Therapy and challenges have made me stronger. More comfortable as me.

I’ve felt in the past at family gatherings, it was almost like I wasn’t really there. Anxious. Uncomfortable. Thinking of answers before I was asked.

I felt separate.

But I’m learning.

That’s the progress I long for more than any other.

Not further in my career or further on a book,

but further along the path of showing up as me.

Been getting in the ocean the last few days.

How quickly life can change from an ocean dip.

It’s the greatest medicine there is.

Spending time with family, surfing with friends. Laughing through the challenges is all that matters in the end.

Let it in, the darkness. Let it wash through you like rain through the gutters. This is the balance I strive for. Surrender. Allow. Don’t fight the suffering of being human.

But just as important is to not get bogged down.

Tread lightly, laugh, embody the folly of existence.

What do I want in life? To have experiences, go out and travel, try things, strive. But then there are experiences that will happen naturally on their own. Getting older, feeling pain, death, uncertainty.

At Thanksgiving, my dad brought up in a speech all the people who have passed away over the years. It was sad in a way, an uncomfortable topic for some. But I thought it was awesome that he had the courage to do it. To honor something painful, speak truth into the night, and laugh with a knowing that they are right here with us in a way we can’t begin to comprehend.

I don’t want to fight it. I want to feel the full breadth of experience. Let it pour through me and just be there with it. Sit with it in the mud and in the light of the sun. I wanna feel it all.

Roots in the earth, the land beneath my feet, the language of the dirt; I hope that my dreams are like mountains toward the sky, a life of adventure, the stars never fading from the gaze of my eyes.

Because I do want to see how far I could go.

But I’m here now.

I know I’ll see the world, but I hope to see my own backyard with a new sensitivity.

The fire in the evening as a wondrous dancing flame. A song in the air. The music in my name.

A valley roars through each and every one of us. The winds and the trees and the rocks of our soul. That’s the place I want to see, the land I wish to know.

Because we’re all living ordinary lives, expecting them to be so much more, expecting so much more from ourselves.

And that really brings more pain, dashed expectations, when healing comes from cherishing what’s mundane.

It feels so good when it feels like we do, like having coffee with a friend you haven’t seen in ages, you’ve both had your struggles, but you’re both still right there, laughing, and the dots connect in heaven.

Finding my own pace. Confident yet humble. We’re all just human. Lovable idiots, really. We have desires, the things we fear, the things that make us weird. But man, if we just embrace all that shit it’ll bring us together,

the webs that form in the corners of my room,

connections, little creatures,

a spider was crawling on my arm this morning.

It freaked me out,

and with my book, I ushered it out the door into the pale pink and cold dawn.

Life is good.