True to Me

Sand Dunes National Park, Colorado. (credit?)

• Ever notice how stress can make you feel like you've just ridden 100 miles all up hill?

• I get Up and I get Down.

• Sometimes the people closet to you all of sudden seem like their from another planet and you have no idea what language they're speaking.

• At times I find myself in a disconnect, looking for solid ground.
  

• Nothing is ever Black or White for me, always different variations of gray. Blue gray, green gray, black gray..you get the idea.

• My friend Nicci is fighting the fight of her life with breast cancer and I'm truly inspired by her sense of grace, acceptance of things as they are now and her humor.
  

• I am blessed with life long friends, not many, but they love me even if I'm a little qooky.

• Making a living as an artist is challenging and difficult. Sometimes I wish I could just have enough money so I could buy a new bike or go play where ever I wanted to whenever I wanted to. But being an artist is something I collided with and it works for me so I make the best of that and do what I can when I can.

• I grow weary of the city a lot these days. I'm blessed to not live in it, I have refuge in the hills, there aren't many people around us, it's quiet and dark at night. We have a lot of mountain creatures to keep us entertained. If I could leave the Boulder area I would. I can see myself on a lot of land in the SW part of Colorado, living in a straw bale house, big garden, lots of room to move around, ride my bike, have big fires outside, watch the stars and planets skim through the sky at night.

• I've been riding by myself more lately. The trails behind my house, in BC and the stunts and drops on our property. And it's good, just riding, no drama.

• The woods and mountains are turning to fall, the smell of decaying leaves is hanging lightly in the air these days. As it should be, the passing of one season, one moment into another. Nothing stays the same, everything whether it feels good or bad passes, changes into something else.

• I read a lovely book recently called Saltwater Buddha by Jaimal Yogis and it made my 3 or 4 days that it took to read it. Some lines from the book that resonated with me.

"I usually surf alone..But that's fine, I'm not striving for the ideal surfer's paradise anymore, or the perfect life without obstacles. It doesn't exist. Not that I don't have preferences or dreams anymore. But it seems like the idea of paradise is just on the horizon, always, while life is here, under my feet, now."

"I am not what I think I am, I just am"

" I've learned I'm not the things I do or don't do..and yet all those things are and I am..and we have naturally run into each other like colliding molecules.."

• I'm working on (and failing most of the time) being with and grateful for now, as I am, as it comes, the joy and the angst, the moments that aren't my best or even someone else's best. It is what it is.

• The wisdom to just let it be, not let it go, but let it be.

• Oh, and all the stretching and strengthening I've been doing has helped my hips flexors, they don't bother me nearly as much. I actually really enjoy the stretching, it feels so good.