(written on the second 20th 🙃 and the 21st)
Wow. 😊
I spent much of the day immersed in gospel stuff, be it at church (I actually went today 🤯), on YouTube, on the Church’s Library app, or via in-depth query chains with Google’s Gemini AI.
And the day was so. much. brighter. 🌞
I actually even felt passion and excitement for future possibilities for the first time in… gosh, I don’t even know how long. Could it be years?
As a seeker of truth (and a habitual doubter of things I believe 😅), I ask myself… is it the turning to God that brought the light and hope because there is a God, and this is evidence that I’m aligning myself with the pathway encouraged by that all-loving God, and light, peace, passion, energy, and excitement are the natural consequences? Or is it simply the aligning of my actions with my own deepest-held beliefs, and I’m experiencing the natural consequences of being true to myself whether the God I’ve believed in actually exists or doesn’t?
Or maybe some of both?
I don’t know. 🤷
Anyway, I was up early, and I think I noticed that my jaw was clenched? Maybe that caused the tooth damage? Maybe in conjunction with misaligned teeth? And maybe in conjunction with everything else that I was worried I might have done to myself? 😅
Dentists always ask if I grind my teeth, and I’ve never once, that I can recall, ever caught myself doing that I’ve noticed a clenched jaw before, but that’s a rare thing, I think?
🤔
🤷
I spent the morning mostly stretching to try to do something to relieve and perhaps even get ahead of the pain and discomfort. As I stretched and did a very little bit of light exercise, I dove into gospel stuff, listening and watching as I enjoyed the morning sun in the park (though I stayed in the shade myself).
I spent a good long time going back and forth with Gemini on gospel stuff aaaaaaand other stuff I’m interested in!
Like my non-profit!
And my Modern American project!
😁
It was so incredible to feel energy and passion and excitement again! I still have the ever present dark cloud of my physical health, the pain and discomfort hanging over me, but each I could feel heaviness pushing on the latchless door, I wouldn’t let it get through.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s not banished. It’s right there, still trying to get in, but for the moment, I’m winning the battle.
May that success continue.
For the last I don’t even know how long, it’s been so easy just to let the darkness flood in… to sink in discouragement and despair and then bury myself in one escape or another.
But not today. 🙏
And AI was a godsend to feed my excited, hungry brain today. AI is a tool of seeming infinite potential.
Let’s hope we can manage not to destroy ourselves with it. 😅
And let’s hope we can have AIs that are maximally truth seeking, to steal a phrase, to combat AIs created for less… honorable intentions.
Anyway, it was a great morning. 😊
As I mentioned, I went to church (in Wellsford) today. 🥳 Turned out to be a branch conference today, the little congregation getting both a new branch presidency and the announcement of a new building (still very small but a definite upgrade from the current one they’ve been in for a long time).
After church, I headed back to the little Freedom-Camping spot at the Hatfield Beach Reserve. That’s been both a great place to stay the night (despite being right on a main road) and a place where I can dispose of both trash and recyclables.
And I was grateful to utilize it yet again today–trash gone. Recycling gone. My pile of water bottles emptied and recycled, save a few to keep for my last day in the country.
So crazy. How have six months gone by so quickly?!?!
I was at the reserve for a little less than an hour, but I made great progress in clearing trash and recyclables out, organizing a bit, and getting everything ready to start packing. 🙏
I had thought about staying the night there, but wanting to meet with my buyer in the morning as early as possible (just in case he flaked out 😅), I didn’t want to risk massive morning traffic trying to drive through the a huge portion of Auckland and its suburbs during rush hour.
Accordingly, I found a camping spot in the middle of suburbia that was decently close to the house where I needed to pick up the buyer in the morning. The plan was that I would pick him up, and we would drive to the airport, and then he would drive back home. That way, I would have my van until the very last second.
Of course, that means I’m trusting him to not renege on the deal… 😅
So I left the reserve and headed south, snapping this picture while driving toward the city.
Auckland is so similar to Seattle. It even has a little space needle-ish building, and when driving South on the motorway toward the city, going over Auckland Harbor Bridge feels almost identical to driving over the West Seattle Bridge.
I’m not a city person at all, so anytime I’m near a city, I generally just want to get away as quickly as possible, but it is fun to experience the similarities. City on the water. Bridges. Hills. Even the retaining walls and the vegetation on them feel like you’re driving along the roads of West Seattle and Seattle proper.
The only significant difference is that you’ll see palm trees here and there in Auckland.
Definitely don’t see palm trees in Seattle. 🙃
That’s because though they share very similar climates, Auckland doesn’t get as cold as Seattle does in the winter.
Either I took a wrong turn or Google took me to the wrong place on my first effort to find my camping area, and I ended up in an absolutely jam-packed parking lot next to an enormous green space.
A little confused, I looked around for camper vans and didn’t see any. Even though it was relatively early, I think maybe somewhere around 3:00 ish? I expected to see at least some, given that it was in suburbia, and other campers likely wanted to assure their spot and would come early.
Such did turn out to be the case, when I re-entered the coordinates, and Google routed me all the way to the opposite side of that huge green space (Barry Curtis Park, I believe).
Once in my little spot for the night, I went to town finishing my cleanup and organization job. Washing dishes and plastic wear, going through each little bit of the van to make sure I had gathered everything that I might want to take back with me.
I also spent a good little while chatting with my sister Heather on video call, telling her about the great news of the day, as well as chatting about other things. Good stuff.
I promised the buyer that I would reinstall my stereo, so after cleaning the van out, I reinstalled the stereo, which took a little while because I couldn’t find the pictures that I had taken of how everything was plugged in initially, so I had to figure it out with a little bit of trial and error.
Gratefully, I was able to figure it out without doing any damage. 🙏
It took a little while to get everything all packed up, but eventually, I felt like I had everything set.
Feels so weird to be packing up to leave. How on Earth is it already time to go home?
I set a countdown alarm to get me up, and I will definitely not have gotten enough sleep when the alarm goes off. 😅
Lift the world.
Bring it on.
~ stephen
Lift the World 