[The Wisdom of a Distracted Mind] I'm Lucky... Sorta.

I can walk here everyday if I so choose. I can meander along these trails that are just a skip south of my house, and I can lose myself and my thoughts among the trees and weeds and sundry critters.

Even better: these hiking trails are right along the lakeshore, and I am hoping that, one of these days, when the morning fog rolls in off Lake Michigan, I can find myself once again on these trails with my camera rig so I can snap some awesome shots of the spooky wilderness. I was thinking of that as I was looking at these images I took earlier today. With just a little fog, I think I'd be smack dab in the center of a Harry Potter novel or somewhere just outside Middle Earth.

These trails are nothing more than a tangle of paths that have been mowed clear by some ambitious person. They run everywhere over the countryside where farms and farm houses once stood. Unfortunately, the abandoned houses have either been removed or they simply fell from the bluffs into Lake Michigan as the tide eroded the land beneath them in heaping, hungry bites.

It's good to have these places, I think --more so in this day and age of constant, brain-stretching input whenever we open our eyes and ears. Everyone needs to get away from time to time, and to me, that's what the world outside our doors is for. Find a place, escape, and just lose yourself with whatever thoughts tumble into your heads. It can be your own backyard, or someone else's. It can be a park or parking lot. It can be five feet of sidewalk or a ten muddy miles beneath your feet. It doesn't matter. Your inspiration and peace of mind is out there. Find it.

In other news, I've taken a bit of a blogging break (again). Strangely enough, I've just not had much to write about lately. That's not to say that there hasn't been stuff going on in my world. I've just hit a sort of wall with this whole thing, and a change of pace was clearly needed. So, I threw this grinding, lumbering wreck of a machine into neutral and just spent the week relaxing until the urge to write once again took root and began to grow. And, that's one of the tricks to life. When you do something because you want to, and not because you have to, the result doesn't matter. What matters is the act, and it can be pretty damn fun when you do things according to your terms. After all, who knows how to enjoy your life better than you?

Other than that, sorry for being so deep. I think I'm just in one of those moods as a result of helping a couple of friends negotiate their way through their respective funks by doing nothing more than what a friend should do.

Well, I'm off to crash. I hope everyone has had a wonderful week, and I hope your day, this day of a sad, never-ending remembrance, was a good one for you.

-DP

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Posted By Dan to The Wisdom of a Distracted Mind at 9/11/2008 11:03:00 PM