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.