hey.
so, i love october.
i especially love the november weather  that october is bringing us. (november is my favorite)
it brings an especially sweet kind of feeling.

tonight i was driving and all i could think about again was how different i want my life to be.
am i so lame for always thinking about that?
i wanted to be sitting on the porch of my house. my thought was that if i had that porch we would read scriptures each night just as dusk hit. it's my favorite time of night and that seems like a really beautiful moment to have when we're home.

i want to freshen up our bikes and go on bike rides.
i want to have time for a much slower, more simple life.
clearly i need to work. and service is really important to me. working and serving take up most of my time.
which is good to have time taken since the boy is a teenager and he has his own agenda of sorts with school, sports, scouts, church, and a social life.
all these things make life so busy...you know this.  i don't even know why i'm explaining it...you do this too.

i just feel sometimes like i'm missing the point. the point of life is not this.
and then it's like i missed the actual thing i was supposed to be doing somewhere in the midst of choosing other things. only i still don't know what it is. maybe i'll never know. maybe i'll just fill up my life with all of these possibilities and live in a state of "not quite content" and that will be that.

life is tricky.
my job is tricky. the children (more their stories), coworkers, planning, stuffing a lot of good intentions into days where 1 of those intentions actually might occur, leaders, lack of leaders, turnovers, and caddy women...all tricky.
parenting is tricky.
co-not-parenting is tricky. we don't parent together, but we share a human, and that's tricky.
relationships are tricky.
families are tricky.
money is tricky. spending it, not spending it, earning it, all of it.
faith can be tricky. believing in something that you can't see. a story you only learn about through scripture and others. thankfully the holy ghost makes it a lot less tricky. but when those confusing parts slip in and faith is tested things seem a little out of sorts until the moment of clarity brings welcomed peace.

i want a house.
i want more space, less stuff, and a different place for us to us to call home.
i want more time. i feel like i'm losing my little boy.
in 3 years he'll be off to college. but this is when i need to tuck him under my wing and nurture him even more. when i need to help him understand himself and make sense of life so he is strong and healthy and good. i need to cram all those skills that help him to feel competent and knowledgeable and equipped. i need him to recognize and know love as beautiful, and not hurtful or confusing. i need him to know that fatherhood and family is also beautiful and he will get to make it his own. i need him to have a firm spiritual identity and know how to make that the foundation of everything else in his life.
i need to eat differently. my diet is similar to that of Buddy the Elf. and workout. and feel good.
and i want to travel.
i want to step outside of my little bubble and see the world. i need a shift in perspective.
and i want to rock babies.

so i think the moral of all my wants is to sell everything i own. buy a small, modest home.
travel the world with my boy and teach him decent things.
while we're away we'll visit orphanages and rock babies.
or i'll start volunteering at the children's shelter and rock those babies.
or i'll babysit.
we'll ride bikes and read scriptures at dusk.
and somewhere in that i'll start taking better care of myself with all that shift in perspective.
and perhaps there will be enough clarity in all that to know what it is i'm supposed to actually be doing. or maybe i'll finally realize i'm doing it.

for now, i'll go to bed and prepare for a 4am wakeup to start another day of the life i'm not really supposed to be living. on the upside, the weather will be lovely.