#alltext

Specifically, did you know that Tumblr will still let you post a thing that is just a fat block of text-- and not even jokey text-- even though absolutely everyone else in the universe just uses the site to share weird pictures?

That seems... wrong somehow, and yet here we are.

This wasn’t a planned blog post or anything, so this is all going to seem pretty stream-of-consciousness. There was a time in my life where I idolized Jack Kerouac. “First thought, best thought.” So maybe the most generous reading is that this is me doing that now. Or-- no, Mike, don’t get distracted into writing about writing. That’s the thing that I default to when I start to get nervous, and want to avoid speaking plainly and proclaiming personal details.

So, personal detail: It’s 2019. That’s not... like... a personal detail I guess, but stick with me. I’m going somewhere. 

Personal detail: I haven’t posted a single damn thing here since 2017. In point of fact, I haven’t really spent much time writing, reading, or thinking about long-form text on the web since... 2012 or so.

7 years. Is a long time. I can say that with clarity, partly because 2011 stands in my past recollection like a tall, tall mountain peak over my shoulder. That was a very good year for me. A summer where I said “best summer ever” and meant it (and still do). 2011 was the last year where I lived in Bellingham, instead of just in the orbit of Bellingham. It was my last year as a professional miller, the year where I was just starting to get good at that, but then I left it, on a backpacking trip that summer in search of something different and... “better”?

Nah, “better” is too loaded a word. I wasn’t looking for “better”. That’s not how I’d frame it then or now. I was just on a certain track back then-- a track that led to a fun-but-samey unambitious life in an obscure NW Washington town, without ever getting a chance to break out of the average-Millenial loop of tenancy & debt I’d found myself it. So, all I was looking for was a different track. It didn’t have to be better, it just had to be a path that would eventually let me do some of the wilder things that I’ve aspired to do all my life. Like: thru-hiking the PCT.  Like: traveling the world. Like: owning a boat. Like: being in a position where I can actually help out my family financially. Like: getting to run a business, not just work for one. Like: buying property in Metamora, returning to my roots.

Q: What do all of those likes have in common? A: Turns out, it’s “Figuring out how to do capitalism in a way that doesn’t make me feel like garbage.”

It’s been a looooong road to figuring that out, though, friends. If 2011 was like being on top of a mountain, 2012 felt like starting out on a trail down into the next valley. 2013, still descending. 2014 was the cool stream at the bottom. 2015 was beginning the climb up. 2016... 17... 18. Still climbing. During those years, I was living in Portland, back in school at PSU learning how to do accounting, putting all of my effort into that.

It’s a weird thing when you’re in the wilderness, climbing up out of a valley. You might get to a spot where you’re objectively way, way higher than you were on the last peak, but you’re not on the top of anything yet so it doesn’t feel as satisfying.

2019 feels like that so far. I’m living in the Skagit Valley now, just south of the Chuckanut foothills where Bellingham resides. (See, it was like... a metaphor. Accidentally.) I graduated from my accounting program with a bachelor’s degree last summer, then got a full-time job at a small 20-person company in Anacortes-- on scenic Fidalgo Island, gateway to the San Juans-- doing capitalism and feeling good about it. 

I’m saving up cash to move from the valley to the islands in November. (Kind of a lateral move that doesn’t strictly make sense within the climbing metaphor I’m building here? Whatever. Like I said, I didn’t plan this post.) Emotionally, socially, and financially, it feels like I’m on a path that’s just about to reach a broad shoulder. A good place to look back, and look ahead, and maybe even relax a bit.