A new nest

So it's been a while since I've written. When I wrote last, I was feeling a bit overwhelmed. And in the weeks since that post I've unfortunately only made decisions that are going to add to that feeling.

I've bought a house.

Yeah, I'm freaking out a little bit but it was a great deal on a beautiful home in the neighborhood I wanted. With a deck and fireplace and a view of Pikes Peak. It's really adorable and I'm scared to death. I've been wanting my own place ever since I moved out here and I'm excited about decorating and landscaping and all those other fun-at-first-not-so-much-later aspects of home ownership.

I've been shopping for the new house. My basic list looks like this:

1. Dining room area rug
2. Living room area rug
3. Dining room table and chairs
4. Motion light for front porch
5. Plasma TV
6. TV Stand for Plasma TV because I'm so over big boxy entertainment centers now
7. Lawn mower
8. Fire pit for backyard
9. Shelf liner
10. Casters for furniture
11. Swifter (can you tell I have Pergo floors? Not looking forward to that)
12. Window alarms
13. Intercom system for front door

That's just off the top of my head. Oh, and as of last night, #5 has been completed. Yes, Jen, I took the plunge. Got a great deal. I am going to wait to bring it home until I move. 42 inches of Texas Aggie football. I can't wait. Unless they lose. It will only make it worse.

So, I've replaced my feelings of being overwhelmed with life and feeling sad with new feelings of being overwhelmed with life and being a bit more happy. At least this will take my mind off things for a while. But that's not necessarily a healthy way to deal with things. But whatever. We deal with things the only way we know how, right? Some people go to therapy. I buy a house and spend ridiculous amounts of time thinking about area rugs and shelf liner colors.

Oh, and get this: The house is on 24th street. I guess I'm destined to live on 24th street, which was my childhood home's address. I thought that was really cool.

Right State, Wrong State

This happens to me every time I return home from a week in the San Juan Mountains: I am suddenly horribly dissatisfied with my life. I cannot explain this, as many people are envious of my life and where I'm living it. I can only chalk it up to "the grass is always greener." It's not the state in which I'm living that's the problem, it's the state of mind. There is a mindset I easily and unconsciously slip into when I'm in Ouray and I can't seem to get that back when I return to Colorado Springs. The magpies flit from tree to tree here too, the streams bubble the same way, the aspens turn the same shades of gold and red. But something is missing here for me and I can only seem to find it in the San Juan Mountains.

I feel more like myself when I'm in Ouray. Here, I feel like I'm building a house in which I don't really want to live. I have a business that is flourishing and I'm bored with it. I might even dare to say I'm beginning to dread my work to-do list because I could not be less interested in it if I tried. I feel like I'm still trying to figure out what I want to be when I grow up and web design just doesn't really fit into the picture. Every couple of years I get like this it seems, so something must seriously be wrong with my chosen field. It would be foolish to pursue a new career; every time I try that I fail miserably and spend the next few years trying to get out of debt from that poor decision. Yet here I am, almost out of debt from my last escapade and I'm dreaming of yet another. I think something is seriously wired wrong in me.

I'm desperately trying to find that feeling I get only when I'm in the San Juan Mountains. Is it work-related or simply zip-code related? Could I find happiness there as a web designer or is it the web design part that's causing this issue? I have no idea; I just know I'm dissatisfied and not sure how to fix it. Part of it seems to be that I want to make more of a contribution to life in general than just being a web designer. But is it fair to judge my contribution to the world solely by what I do for a living? My work doesn't define me. But how I spend my days, how I fill my time can indeed define a person, right? And staring at a computer screen 10 hours a day and compiling a 148-page Spec Sheet on a client's database is beginning to define me in a way I loathe.

While I was in my favorite breakfast cafe in Ouray I was eavesdropping on the conversation of three local men at the table next to me. They were talking about solar power, wind power, and how it could benefit the town. Another table was talking about the weekend trail maintenance hike they went on to help reclamation efforts up in Yankee Boy Basin. These are topics I'm interested in discussing. No one was in there talking about web sites, investment banking or accounting. They were discussing things that were interesting to me; things that are important to me. These are things that were not terribly relevant in my life before I moved to Colorado, but since moving here, it seems that the land, the environment, and living in harmony with it has taken up a place in a very deep part of me and keeps poking me to pay attention to it.

Does that mean I want to quit web design and don a green uniform and go to work for the Forest Service? Not necessarily (although I thought about it). But it does mean SOMETHING -- I just haven't figured out what. I have found a few outlets that nurture that closeness to nature I crave: photographing it, writing about it, hiking in it...but it's not quite enough. Do I need a change in profession, a change in location or both? Or neither? Am I just destined to be constantly looking for the next thing? I don't know. I don't really have any more time to think about it because I have a 148-page Spec Sheet I need to work on. Sigh.