Long Day Wrapped Up

Today was a pretty long day, but it ended in the same place that yesterday ended.

End of Day - Mobile, AL

It was a little earlier, a little more colorful, and compared to yesterday it was similar. That's life. Similar but never the same. Every moment is an act of creation, and realizing that through the last year of daily practice is one of the most mind opening experiences I've ever encountered.

I hope it doesn't take you six thousand miles out on the trail to come to this realization, but if that's what it takes it's worth it. 

Till tomorrow and the next fourteen hundred and forty minutes of creativity.

The Universe Meeting My Needs

Today, my current day job went a little long than I'd planned, and I found myself relatively late at night trying to find a stranger to make introductions to complete one aspect of the daily practice.  I'd gotten a reasonably good photo of Mobile, and I'd finished my calisthenics but I needed a stranger to complete the day.

Birthplace of Mardi Gras - Mobile, AL

When I find myself in this sort of situation, I usually take a little short cut and try to find some sort of retail establishment to make a trivial purchase and use that interaction to meet the store clerk or manager or on odd occasions a customer. Following that pattern, I headed out to a convenience store about a mile down the road.

As I was walking down the path, I began to get a little restless about the approach. It fit within the rules, but the financial transaction to smooth the road to the introduction always struck me as the lazy way out. Just as I was beginning to come to terms with my decision, I looked up and a man on a bike had pulled up. I walked alongside, and he asked me if I knew if the Gator Alley catwalk closed after dusk.  I introduced myself, and he returned the favor when he told me his name was Rick.

We talked a little, and he shared that he was camping just up the road and was likely heading out in the next couple of days after the presidential election was over. He was a good guy.

The real point in all this was that just at the moment I began to think I was cheating myself by contriving a way to meet someone new, the universe delivered.  Two months ago, I would have avoided Rick.  After a little over a month of practicing introductions, I welcomed the exchange with Rick.

I'm probably overthinking things, but there's a lesson in this experience somewhere. I'd walked almost every step to that convenience store I'd targeted a little over fifteen minutes before. Rick (and the Universe) didn't save me a whole lot of steps, but by doing the work he did save me a little money.

It's impossible to know what's around the next corner, but if you keep walking there's a good chance you'll find out. There's also a better than average chance that the unexpected result will be better (and certainly different) than what you'd imagined.

Last Night in Mobile

I dearly wish my last night in Mobile (Alabama) for an evening or two had a dwarf, a beautiful blue-eyed brunette with alabaster skin, and a Ducati racing machine. I didn't even see one of those things today, much less have a tale to tell of them.  This quick snapshot of the skyline presented itself to me about half way through the morning, but that's about as exciting as things got over the course of the workday.

Mobile, Alabama

The wind was clipping along out of the north, and it was blowing all the water right out of the mouth of the bay and raising small whitecaps on the river. The weather was the primary reason we stayed in off the Gulf of Mexico today, but I was grateful for a short day in the office and the chance to take a little pause in the torrent of activity we've been riding for the last couple of weeks.

Although my wanderings failed to produce a story worthy of weeks of fantasies, today was  a solid day. Stout like a thick wood table, I believe I'll look back on the day as the anchor point of the week. I'm also quite keen to experience tomorrow and the new adventure that will likely unfold.

Twilight

I'm pretty sure that I'm nearing the twilight time of my current position at work. I did not seek this position, and when it was presented to me as an excellent opportunity and a choice, I didn't really get the impression that I had much of a choice at all. It was presented as temporary. A position that would last for six months or so. That was eighteen months ago, and I've settled in and really grown to love the people that I get to work with on a day to day basis. The job, well, I could take it or leave it, but the people are fantastic.

I mentioned today at lunch that my departure this summer was a likely scenario. That announcement resulted in some conversations this afternoon where truths were told and appreciation for some great people were voiced.

Twilight Skyline and Austal Assembly Bay - Mobile, AL 

Those conversations were a bittersweet exchange. I feel simultaneously closer to people and the pull of the loss that I'll feel when the situation finally changes and we move off in different directions. It's a surprising development from a job position that I never sought to get and had no real expectation of keeping for any real length of time.

While the twilight has come to this time in my life, the sun has not completely set on this chapter, so as always, I'm looking forward to what tomorrow may hold. I wasn't expecting what happened today, but I'm glad that it happened and I'm grateful for the time that led up to this moment.