so i’m sitting in a little coffee shop off of lyndale in minneapolis, using my newly aquired wireless card to sap a free internet connection. in turn i’m using the free internet connection to surf out random bits and pieces of info on the web, email friends and family, and, perhaps narcisistically, bantering off here, to my website. sipping my chai lattÔø‡ i can lean back and sigh (as a bevy of indy-rock fills my headphone covered ears) fully content in the fact that i am yuppified.

oi!

and how truly easy it is to change and transfer lifestyles for the young and mobile these days. two months ago i could qualify as an adventuresome world traveller, two weeks ago a dutiful son, two days ago an unemployed twenty-something, tomorrow a design nerd, and two months from now a granola-eating ground-pounder (read: trail construction in sequoia national park). i’ve spanned a great many roles in the last year alone, and a great many more are to come.

as for the immediate future, i’ll be designing again as i wander back to aid and abet the happenings at those who helped launch me as the designer i am today - storeworks. in light of the fact that i’ll be returning to work (and building up to be a more current design Ôø‡ber nerd than i have been lately), some fun links:

first off, you can nail down that ever elusive color and astrology reading in an official manner thanks to pantone. my life can be handed down to a very specific shade of earthy-green: pms 18-0332. go figure that my cynical self is actually quite pleased with the color - kind of a favorite o’ mine. will the wonders never cease?

second, turn off the tube, and get the hell outside, into a book, into conversation, into anything other than the television set. this week is tv turn-off week. namely, it’s a week with a stated goal of getting people to spend that (very usable) 1-5 hours a day doing anything other than watching commercials. and yes, that includes movies too. do yourself a favor and grab onto the spring weather before it moves on - celebrate it regardless. rainy and cold? in august you’ll crave it, enjoy it now like you would then. dig into a book you’ve been aching to for years/months/days and hide with it in a corner until you’re done. grab a friend, grab some coffee/wine/beer/water/whatever and chat it up until dawn. engage in human contact, the simple miracle of life, good music, anything.

and, finally, a good way to feel slightly depressed, but greatly enlightened - take a tour of your daily ecological footprint on the planet at myfootprint.org. if everyone lived as i did (though i had to fudge some answers due to my ‘homeless’ status) we’d need 16 earths to support us all. give it a shot - the answers might surprise you.

Posted by noblehobo at 04:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

solitude and straight horizons lead to heavy thinking - the possibilities of solid realizations and the all-to-easy chance to hang too tightly to stressors. southern mn is acting upon me again, up to its old games, and i’m (happily?) playing along.

not that i’m advocating a region is responsible for my current state of mind, but it certainly sets a familiar scene. here, where the wind blows errant across miles, where the horizon stretches endlessly and storms move across a powerful sky, here i should be able to let life move through me a little better. here, however, is where i learned to gather worry and future in one place, to hold on to it. everywhere else i have been has been a struggle to unlearn that habit.

it’s a habit not taught by anyone specifically, but comes as an outpouring of our modern society. i banty endlessly about expectations, particularly about not having them, but in truth my speech is more to (falsely) reassure myself that i don’t carry them. nearly all of us build expectations and toss them out in front of us. sometimes life matches up to them, but usually we hit our expectations like a brick wall. seated there, rubbing our stunned head, we stare in disbelief at a life that didn’t work out the way we expected it to.

and that’s the kicker - here in southern mn i am stuck with the realization that i carry expectations wherever i go - i’m just more adept at hiding them from myself when i’m elsewhere. that is, of course, until i get here and my internal thought processes have the space and time necessary to really get kickin’.

lately i’ve been trying to figure out my future, trying to place where in the traveling world i’ll end up. without noticing, i let bits and pieces of plans, vague chunks of future ideas, morph into a more solid picture. so in the last couple of weeks, as new paths have shown up and other pieces of the picture have fallen flat, i’ve gotten bunched up. life, which should be flowing along the plains with the wind, has been gathered in my arms and held tight. as a result it has become heavy, as has my mood, as has my level of stress.

it’s a mantra - no expectations - but one i’m not yet very skilled in following.

i was reminded lately, by a very, very good friend, of a good way to exist:

simply.

and she’s right, quite right.

upcoming rants (as i try to reconnoiter my head in the next few days and think out loud):
-simplicity in spirituality
-simplicity in life
-simplicity in attitude and emotion
-on travel and the wanderlust involved

Posted by noblehobo at 10:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)