Some nights I can’t sleep.  Tonight is one of those nights.  I hear the hum of my computer and the rain on the windows and the metal roof.  It’s black out here at night being so far from any city lights and the cloud cover and rain make it even darker.  It’s incredibly peaceful, and still I cannot will myself to sleep.

My heart seems to have a cycle of wants.  Sometimes it wants to be a nomad, live free, no real belongings to speak of.  Just stories of travel and adventure.  Then it will shift and I want to pick one great adventure, Alaska….  I think sometimes that’s because my high school writing teacher told me to read the book Into the Wild, and I’ve never been able to sit well with it.  Almost like I want to finish his work.  And then it’ll shift again and I’ll want to do exactly what I’m doing, working on building a homestead.  Doing as much as I can on my own, building, hunting, farming, raising animals, learning to can peaches…  Then I will shift one more time in the circle, and I’ll want nothing more than to show horses, train horses and generally live my life for nothing but horses.

All seem like the perfect life for me.  I can see myself in each of them.  There is a little bit of each in me.  And I think on these sleepless nights it is my heart fighting over which one of the people I want to be.  Because for the life of me I cannot figure out a way to become ALL of these people.  And making myself choose is painful.  How to you choose just one life?  How do you choose all you want to be?

Right now, I’m the homesteader.  I love this farm and the possibilities here.  But it doesn’t change the fact that I want to see Alaska.  Or that I want to still show a mustang at the Worlds Greatest Horseman competition.  Or that I want to live out of the back of a truck and see the world.  How do you square with that?  These are the things that keep me up at night.