Home has become something rather mundane. I don’t want to be there. I want to experience what life has to offer and I’ve always felt like I’m meant for something bigger. I’ve had this thought for years, and I’m grateful that it’s started to fade as I think more about why I felt that way in the first place. I know I’m not alone in it either. When you spend nearly twenty years of your life going to school in the same place, working the same part-time job, hanging around the same people, and repeating the same routine every day, of course it becomes mundane.
So how do you make a change?
How do you put yourself in situations where you’re actually taking steps toward your goals?
There’s never a moment where everything suddenly makes sense. It usually takes years—thoughts, experiences, relationships, conversations, and whatever other shit life throws at you—just to get a small glimpse of a bigger answer.
Before I left for the Central Coast, I had spent my entire life in sunny San Diego. And yea, you might ask, who wouldn’t want to be there? But after being away for almost two years—on and off—I’ve finally found the good again. It circles back to this idea of the people, the cultures, the small moments that shaped my childhood and teenage years. When I really dug into what made San Diego SO good to begin with, I realized it was never the place. It was the people. It was the experiences.
When I was home for a weekend about a month ago, I spent a day shooting film around Seaport Village—somewhere I’ve explored before, but this time felt different. I went in with a fresh perspective. (If you haven’t read the 10 Days in Europepiece, you should—it touches on this shift.)
Being present felt exciting again. I sat on this little patch of grass by the basketball courts on the south side of the village. Kids were putting kites into the air, and suddenly everything felt so simple. Why?
Well, when you think about the “why”… there really isn’t one. It was always there.
We get so caught up in what will look good on our Instagram story, or what people will think when we tell them we spent a random afternoon wandering Seaport. But the real joy is in being there. Hearing birds. Watching strangers. Listening to some guy with a few quarters in his pocket playing jazz purely because he loves it.
That’s real freedom.
That’s real love for life.
Waking up every day and searching for a deeper meaning in a simple life is something I think we’re all doing, whether we admit it or not. It reminds me of the Fisherman and the Businessman story we shared—not about chasing more, but finding freedom and joy in the now.
None of this is a clean, step-by-step answer. There’s no checklist. And it won’t work for everyone in every moment of their life. But sometimes the first step is just thinking about it. Maybe it means calling an old friend and sharing a story from years ago. Maybe it’s drinking a coffee on the porch without your phone. Maybe it’s asking yourself, when’s the last time I slowed down and actually enjoyed life without all the extra bullshit?
If you’re still reading, I hope this got you thinking.
And sending love—because by taking a minute to read this, you actually gave yourself a small piece of that freedom already.
