I made a book. It’s not perfect (I think the dimensions are too big), but I like it. It’s a collection of photos and writing I created between June 2010 and August 2011. It was a very tumultuous, beautiful, difficult, humbling and profoundly amazing time for me.

The book covers a very distinct chapter of my life. A period when every aspect of my life was up in the air. I accepted some of my weaknesses and made some significant changes to how I live these precious few moments of time I will be here.

Maybe that sounds a bit melancholy. But that is what motivates me. That is how I motivate myself. My time is precious because, by nature’s standards, it will be short. How short? I don’t know. I think 80-90 years sounds about right. But no one knows for sure. Everything is a river. Time is just flowing by. What am I doing to make the most of it? I don’t always know, but I’ve tried to stop letting fear or “the way you are supposed to do things” get in the way.

In the past year, I became a more solid person. Solidly grounded and focused on how I can surround myself with people I love and meaningful experiences. I’ve also become more at peace with the person I am: sometimes gregarious and silly and sometimes quiet and introspective. Making that peace was a journey that at times broke me into little pieces. I’ve collected some of those pieces as well as the mementos from that journey in this book.

Let me be clear: I didn’t solve any existentialist dilemmas in my little book of corny poems and sunset photos. I simply used a couple of different forms of art (writing and photography) to document the thought processes by which I learned a little bit more about myself.

Maybe there is something in this book you can relate to. That would be incredibly humbling and neat for me. If there isn’t? That’s ok too. Either way, thank you for taking a look.

You don’t have to buy it to see it. You can flip through it on Blurb.com

And then, say, I took every post-it note, napkin, PG&E bill, bank statement, cereal box, candy wrapper or piece of binder paper that I’ve ever written my thoughts on and stacked them on top of the previous stack.

After that, what if I took every single moment when I felt cared for and loved by all of the amazing people I have in my life and stacked them on top of each other, on top of the previous stack.

And then, what if I took all of the roads I’ve ever been lost on, sunsets I’ve ever seen, sunrises I’ve ever been awake for, ocean waves I’ve ever paddled into, tall trees I’ve ever silently stood beside, and full moons I’ve ever surfed under and stacked them all on top of the previous stack.

Now, suppose I took all of the hopes, dreams, blank canvases, open roads, cups of tea, bowls of veggies, climbable tree branches, late night conversations, epic surf sessions, family gatherings, multi-mile hikes, lost-in-the-middle-of-who-knows-where road trips, ripe mangoes, funny t-shirts, naps, breathless moments and ear-to-ear smiles that I have yet to experience; and stacked them on top of the previous stack.

What would I have?

I’d have something much, much bigger than me. I’d have the sum of many moments and not just the emotion of any single moment. I’d have a collection of magical moments that by shear weight alone smooshed the fear, uncertainty and doubt into a pancake at the bottom. Smoosh smoosh. Smoosh.

If I were to stare at this stack too closely, I might get lost in one piece of it and lose sight of what’s at the top; the stacked moments yet to come. They’re coming and they’re not concerned about the ones below them. **Whatever** they hold, I should look forward to them and not spend too much time dwelling on the moments stacked below. Like rings in a tree, they hold you up, but remain unchanged once they’ve happened.

Something bigger than me. Yeah. Much bigger.

This was all in a dream I had, so it might not make sense.