Hunger

Ever feel like a fish out of water?

I was sitting in one of our many office lounges at work the other day waiting for a meeting to start. I was a little early. I sat there looking around the room at all of the cheap suburban-style particle board furnishings and kitschy decor and wondered how I ever ended up here. This was not part of the plan.

Since my horseshoeing experience a few months back, I chilled out quite a lot in terms of my incessant obsessing about getting away from it all. I had a terrible hunger - indeed I was starving - for a taste of a more rugged, more deliberate life, and I was satiated by the experience. But lately I've started to feel those pangs of hunger again. My stomach is growling, and I'm starting to search for my next meal.

I hate this, actually. I feel like I'm on a rollercoaster. I go back and forth between intense desire to be packing in the mountains, and a sort of reluctant acceptance, tinged with guilt, for the cushy life I have now. I like the money. Sometimes I like that my job is cushy. But in the back of my mind, and often in the forefront of my mind, is a little voice saying, "Yeah, but you'd really rather be on a horse somewhere in the wilderness, where things like IKEA are just a bad dream."

One of these days I'm going to up and quit, ride off to Montana and never look back.