This possibly may not get posted until tomorrow because I have very little to no service here, but here goes anyway.
Today was a little rough emotionally. It was really introspective and I'm not sure if I came to any definitive conclusions, but I thought a lot about who I am and what I want. All good stuff, some too personal to post here (this is a public blog after all). I made a couple decisions about some actions that I want to take that I'll talk about later though.
As I said yesterday, last night, I stayed in a little motel south of Redwood Forest. It was a cute little place and served my needs. I've been having some problems with the music on my iPhone recently. I use iTunes Match but sometimes when I go to play a song that it says I have on the iPhone, I get an error message stating something like "the requested URL could not be found on the server." And I haven't been able to fix it. So last night, because I had a good wireless connection, I spent some time resetting it. I turned off iTunes Match, deleted all of the music on the iPhone, synced it with the computer, turned iTunes Match back on, and downloaded a lot of music back onto the iPhone. And the ended up spending a couple of hours cleaning up and rating a good number of songs in my library. All this is to explain why I stayed up until 2:30.
So I got a bit of a late start this morning, leaving the motel at 9:30. I then went into town and ate breakfast at the Seascape Restaurant. It's a great little diner type restaurant right on the water of Trinidad Bay. From there, I headed up to Redwood Forest.
I had done a bunch of research regarding what to see in Redwood Forest previously (total shock, right?), but I stopped by the visitor center first in order to get exact directions. First stop was the Big Tree. Seriously, it's called the Big Tree. Now, this may seem a little...misleading? I mean, pretty much all of the redwoods are big, right? And the bases of them are huge, but most of the time, those huge bases are actually multiple trees all fused together. Redwoods can reproduce via seeds, like other trees, but the main way that they reproduce is via sprouts near their bases, where a new, separate tree grows out of the base of an existing tree (I'm sure I'm simplifying that). When this happens, the trees grow together at the base, but grow completely separate trunks and everything. So walking through the forests, you'll see these huge bases with 3 or 4 trunks growing out of them. But the Big Tree is a single tree that's something like 62 feet in circumference. It's pretty amazing. It's difficult to capture the scope of the trees and the forest through my little point-and-shoot camera; it's really something you need to see.
After the Big Tree, I drove up the scenic parkway and ended up at another short trail. Can't remember the name of it offhand - it was close to the north end of the scenic parkway. It actually used to be a short road used for forestry, but they took out the road about 17 years ago and it's now a trail showing how the forest is recovering. At the end is a bench looking out over a meadow, where I sat and contemplated for a while. I had been thinking about bringing my sketchbook out with me, but I feel like my drawing skills can't come close to capturing the beauty of it, so I didn't bring it. And this thought then brought me to the beginning of my contemplation. For the rest of the day, I thought about this feeling I have that there is a depth of creativity, even artistry, within me that really wants to come out, and I limit it because I don't think it's good enough. Like if I can't produce something incredible, it's not worth even trying to produce anything. And I don't like that. I want to have to confidence to try, even though it may not be perfect or up to the standards that I want. More on this later.
I then drove out to the costal drive (another drive that was a little rough on my car) and then up to crescent beach. Original plan was to walk out about a mile to the beach, but it was cold and windy, and I'm not a beach person anyways, and I really just wanted to drive and think, so I skipped it and started early on my 3 hour drive up the coast.
I left California (after 3 weeks, I was totally ready to get to a new state) and entered Oregon. The 101 was quite different in Oregon than it had been in California. For one, the speed limit was only 55 at the max the whole way, so it was a little slow going. The coast was also very rocky and the ocean was quite rough. At some point along the way, I turned off my audiobook (I'm about a quarter of the way through Harry potter book 5) and did some more thinking. Thinking about creativity, art, writing, all sorts of stuff. I was having this huge urge to write - some type of creative writing- a short story, or a play, or something. But for the life of me I couldn't come up with any ideas. I like to have constraints, guidelines to stay within, a puzzle, a specific challenge. And coming up with an open ended whatever? I was already feeling overwhelmed and ready to quit before I had even begun. And I thought, "well, maybe I could find something online - a list of creative writing assignments or something that would at least get me started. Good idea, right? But then I started thinking about Little Women and Jo and how that English teacher guy (you know, the one she marries at the end?) tells her to write what she knows. So I started thinking, "what do I know?" And I know me. I know my stories. Obviously, I'm writing this blog, so that's a part of it, but there are so many other stories that I have. Experiences I've had, ideas for businesses, thoughts about life all sorts of stuff. And I want to start writing that. Not here, maybe not ever for any type of public forum, but just to start writing. Just to write, to get it out onto "paper" (let's be honest, it'll be on the computer). And if it coalesces into something, ok, and if its just purely an exercise in writing, ok. But that's my thought for today.
There were other thoughts as well, about the expectations and disappointments of life, but I think those thoughts will be the beginnings of the private writings. Suffice it to say that I ended up turning on my "Audition songs" playlist and crying along with a number of the songs I have on there because they were so close to what I was feeling at that exact moment.
I went to dinner at a restaurant in North Bend and then made my way the rest of the way up to Reedsport. A hug thank you to my girlfriend Barbara, who hooked me up for an amazing mini suite in her brother-in-law's house for the night. It's absolutely beautiful, with a garden tub, an amazing view, and what makes me happiest of all today, a tv that will be broadcasting the Tony's (delayed 3 hours because of Pacific Time) in about half an hour. Super super excited for that. I was worried I wouldn't get to see them until I got to my parents' house in Philly at the end of July. And because I don't have Internet, there's not even a chance of seeing spoilers on Facebook during the live broadcast. Who knew that I would ever be grateful for not having Internet?
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