In an earlier essay, I wrote that my purpose is clarity. Allow me to clarify. This whole business of life gets tremendously muddled with time, and leading an intentional life is like leading a group of nervous, loud-mouth travelers through an empty desert to a remote oasis with an unreliable compass. Clarity makes the compass work properly. Clarity is seeing things as they are, rather than as you wish them to be, so that you can navigate your course avoiding the common traps: desert bandits, sandstorms, wild animals, foul water. I use writing to find clarity.
Once I write something, I can see if it is bullshit. I can pull it apart, rearrange it, massage it and consider it. I can mull over and digest the hard questions. Am I acting in a way that aligns with what I actually want? Is this what I want, or is it what someone else wants? Even if it is what I want, is it what I need? My experience thus far has been mostly trial and error. I like to take action, see how it works out, and adjust accordingly. This is a fair approach, but it is a suboptimal use of our most valuable resource: time.
When I decided to move to Alaska in 2023, I was not clear on what I wanted, nor what to expect. I created a whole story in my head about why I wanted to be there. I wanted to live somewhere spectacular with easy access to the mountains. Never mind that I was not sure I would love skiing or other winter sports, and I had never lived in a place with more than two seasons. Yes, there was work that I was interested in, but I also romanticized the entire adventure. I pictured a grand landscape of majestic mountains and wild forests. There I was skiing with my super-hip new Alaskan friends, who oddly looked a lot more Californian than Alaskan. Once I left my imagination behind and actually moved there, I found that I did not actually like skiing that much, nor the darkness and cold that came with the long winter. Now, had I actually considered these facts before leaving on a whim, I may have avoided this misunderstanding.
If I had taken the time to get clear on what I wanted and why, perhaps I could have saved myself three years of lived experience. All this stuff just gets so messy, and I’d like to make it less messy. I do that through writing.
<3 Colin