Joy and Sadness for the Peripatetic Voyager

When I’m on the road, I fluctuate between giddy delight and morose depression.

“Best day of my life.”

“I’m so homesick.”

One day will be the sweet spot in time* when it all comes together: the right people, places, climate, food, feng shui…Another day I don’t know where I’m going to stay, where I’ll eat, what I’ll do. The volatility of it all.

Yesterday was a good one. I came back to Kapaa from the south, went to a yoga class that was perfect for this body, which has had long and hard usage, then hung out with some wonderful people in the afternoon. Swimming at Anini Beach, beautiful sandy bay inside a reef, got $95 hotel room at the Kauai Shores, which I really like, then good dinner (camorones mojo de ago) at Mariachi’s (there’s a real chef at work here), watched the sun rise from the beach this morning, now having fine latte, warm cinnamon roll and savvy wi-fi at Java Kai…

During the down periods I try to let serendipity take over. Valleys often followed by peaks. The best is often unplanned. The grand sequenter…

*The Sweet Spot in Time, by John Jerome is about that moment in sports when everything comes together. The 85-yard punt return, surfing on a day when the water’s warm, the waves perfect…I read it years ago and thought it applied to life in general.

About Lloyd Kahn

Lloyd Kahn started building his own home in the early '60s and went on to publish books showing homeowners how they could build their own homes with their own hands. He got his start in publishing by working as the shelter editor of the Whole Earth Catalog with Stewart Brand in the late '60s. He has since authored six highly-graphic books on homemade building, all of which are interrelated. The books, "The Shelter Library Of Building Books," include Shelter, Shelter II (1978), Home Work (2004), Builders of the Pacific Coast (2008), Tiny Homes (2012), and Tiny Homes on the Move (2014). Lloyd operates from Northern California studio built of recycled lumber, set in the midst of a vegetable garden, and hooked into the world via five Mac computers. You can check out videos (one with over 450,000 views) on Lloyd by doing a search on YouTube:

4 Responses to Joy and Sadness for the Peripatetic Voyager

  1. "When I'm on the road, I fluctuate between giddy delight and morose depression"

    But when not on the road, you do not? Genuinely curious…
    As I grow older I am seem to be more able to embrace the fluctuations rather than resist.

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