The Bloom — happiness

Goodbye to a real trash weekend here, two cloudy, rainy, chilly, please-pass-the-down-comforter days that turned Thai food take-out and Netflix into survival gear. Sunday afternoon I was so freaking bored I actually started cleaning out my closets. At first, not much fun and Kimmie Schmidt started calling my name, but buried under the contents of my next Craig’s List ad, I found a box I’d forgotten, and the weekend got epic real fast. It was all my old travel journals, one from every trip I took between the time we went to Utah when I was 13 and the summer...

I seek an orderly life. It’s A to B to C in order to get to D for me. That’s how I roll. But what happens when Z pops up uninvited along the way? The other day I had it all mapped out. There was a route. There were objectives. There was a schedule, a destination, and a list of things to get done. Then Z appeared. A flyer at the gym for a flea market, which normally I am a sucker for but not on a day when I’ve got a serious agenda. I dutifully ignore Z. Then again...

A few days ago, I was thinking out loud about setting a vision for my life and how the endpoint it starts with is the ultimate dream we have for ourselves. That dream is where I want to land. My vision is how I get there and what it looks like when I finally arrive. Simple enough, I guess. Except I’ve got dozens of dreams and not a single clue as to which one is the one. Is it my dream to be a writer? Or my dream to be a travel guru? My dream to open a vintage clothing...

Sit and watch a sunset long enough and you’re just asking for trouble. Which is every reason to catch as many as we can. For me, a good sunset frees my mind to wander where it will. It’s a place where the world’s distractions fade into the twilight, and that gives me room to reflect on things I didn’t even know I was thinking about. Without moments like that, there will always be secret dreams I’ll never find and plans I won’t know enough to make. Last night, I sat on the roof with my good friend Malbec and nothing...