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It seems more and more that the pursuit of is where the fulfillment comes from. I don’t even know if it’s the fulfillment, life comes from the pursuit of.

A few things sparked this particular lull I have been in. For one, the past week has been wrangling my lungs as I feel I’ve been hacking them up. Damn cough won’t go away, feel like a miner in a coal miner.

The past week or so has been a pure plateau. It sucks being sick. This is the longest I’ve been bed-ridden for so long. I swear I entered a coma with how long I was sleeping. Coughing fits and cold sweats, the whole nine yards.

I can tolerate the pain. That’s fine. We all go through it. But what particularly irked me this go ’round was my inability to progress.

Day in, day out I felt as though I was merely existing. Time off work feels nice for a few days, but it starts to drag on like a little kid and his blanket.

You get a break, but eventually the break becomes all consuming. You don’t progress. You don’t move forward. You languish. You falter.

You feel like you don’t know what you’re doing anymore. I lost a bit of the fire I had, some of the direction. After 4 days doing absolutely nothing with my life but lay on a pleather couch, the plateau starts to plague you more than the coughing fits.

I wanted to get up. I wanted to move, more ways than just physically. I don’t think we’re supposed to remain stagnant. I don’t think we’re suppose to drift aimlessly and sit on the beaches of Italy with Pina Coladas in our hand.

It sounds nice, but the boredom starts to bite you up alive. It feels like a mini-deja vu from the same ‘drifting’ sort of feeling I felt 2 years ago on my solo-trip to Europe.

I think our brains like learning. They like stepping in to the unknown and stepping forward.

The immobility hit especially hard because I just got off a 2-week vaycay to the Philippines. I explored and wandered for awhile before visiting my buddy D in Coron, Philippines a small island, a 12 hour ferry away from the Capital. I ate some bomb street food, saw the rice terraces, swam the gorgeous blue waters and booled out with my buddy.

Towards the end though, I started sensing that aimless feeling again. I wanted to tackle some problem or go for a run or do some hard shit. I was looking for a challenge again.

He’s been living there for a couple months now, wandering a bit aimlessly, and I could sense that he felt some of the same. He wanted something to test him. He wanted something crazy difficult to accomplish. He just wanted a goal.

A little nerdy sure, but this dude Nick Zei from Instagram put it quite nicely. He talks about life as a video game and we just need the skills to level up. He goes on to point out how ‘if we’re in the pursuit of some level, enjoying to process, we’ve in some way already beat the game’.

The times in my life where I’ve felt the best are when I’ve been chasing some goal. I’ve been on the hunt, gathering the info, solving the problems, and progressing towards something I believe in. It feels like years away that I get to the end state I want, but sometimes I wonder if that’s not the point.

Maybe the point is just the pursuit. I guess that’s why they call it pursuit of happiness, right?

I’ve got a cousin that comes to mind when I think about this topic. He’s smart, creative, and wants a little more out of life. But he’s not quite sure how to get there, probably because we’re not even sure where there is.

But the farther I go down this road, the more it seems like the ‘pursuit of’ is the end goal. It doesn’t quite matter what he’s chasing right in this very moment, it matters that he isn’t. That’s where the restlessness comes from.

I firmly believe that our goals and life’s mission fluctuate over time… dramatically at that. It’s not our job to know 100% where we’re going, but I think it is our job to pursue something we’re passionate in. It doesn’t all make sense right now, but maybe it doesn’t need to.

What fun would life be if we knew 100% of our next steps? Wouldn’t life just be a steady and mindless march to our graves? What kind of existence is that?

“And I don’t know where I’m goin’, but I’m learnin’ as I’m growin’. That’s the evolution”

Joyner Lucas

“If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours”

Henry David Thoreau

I’ve got not a clue where I’ll end up. But I know I feel best when I’m in the ‘pursuit of’. I feel best when I just keep confidently stumbling in to the future. The path seems to illuminate itself.

And as another of my good buddies often quotes the Menahan Street Band
“You make the road by walking”