Yesterday, Luna and I went for a ride. This wasn’t just any ride. It was, I’m pretty sure, the best ride we have ever had together.

It wasn’t a crazy gallop down the beach—hair blowing in the wind, chasing a feeling of freedom. We’ve had many of those. The ride yesterday, spent mostly at a walk, was even better.

But it didn’t start out that way.

The answer is within.

How many times have I heard it said? And completely ignored it.

Not intentionally, of course. Not insolently. More like the way someone ignores a tedious detail about the functions of a car’s engine—it might technically be true, but it doesn’t really feel relevant to the actual driving. Until it is.

The answer is within.

What does that even mean? Maybe the answer is within others, but I assumed I must have missed out on that specific feature.

For me, the answer has always been without.

My grandma moved to Baja to retire in the early 1960s. She was in her mid-fifties. If you look at the old family photos of her sitting on the patio with her friends, they were “old”—sure, they were in great shape and had a lot of fun —but they for sure looked like ‘old people’ in those classic, spacious “old lady” mumus.

Yesterday, I turned 55.

Boring is good.

Is it true?

Interestingly enough, the algo-rhythms have been serving me this message as of late—though, to be fair, I’m not sure they can actually control the actual hardback book by Amie McNee that I am reading, which had a chapter on that basic premise this morning:

“In a world where we are constantly stimulated and have ample distractions, we are no longer used to sitting in boredom… But over time I’ve come to learn that boredom, like inspiration, is an integral and holy part of my creative practice.”

Ironically, as I am sitting here, writing this, I am…well, a bit bored.

It is the late 1990s. My dad is sitting in the driver’s seat of my still fairly new SUV parked in the driveway. He has a big grin on his face—a grin of pure satisfaction, tinged with just a bit of mischief.

“What was it?” I ask, knowing by his expression that he has solved the mechanical problem I asked him to diagnose.

“I don’t know,” he says, barely able to get the words out he is so proud of his own ingenuity, “but I rebooted it and now it works like a charm!”

I am sitting here at my desk (which is really just the dining room table) strangely, again, a bit blank. Normally I have a queue of thoughts waiting, ready, wanting to be shared and known and heard. But as I sit down this morning, again, nothing.

Strange.

I love to sit down and write. I crave this time. I feel incomplete if I don’t have it.

But, here I sit. Blank. Wondering.

We often like to view ourselves as lone wolves. We make decisions, build lives, and navigate our careers thinking we are entirely self-reliant islands.

Turns out, I was never navigating these waters alone. I was stepping into a deep, established river of history, community, and reciprocal relationship.

Just this past week, I had my first heirloom tomato of the season. It’s June—and that’s late. Normally, I’m having my first homegrown, fresh-from-the-garden tomato sometime around March.

But not this year.

This is a poem by my friend and neighbor, Maria Rosales. We are using it this Sunday, June 14 as the theme for our monthly Take the Reins gathering. We come together online on the second Sunday of every month during this Year of the Horse to explore the intersection of “horse wisdom” with our own daily lives

The other day at the gym, I asked my gym buddy Meghan what I thought was a rather offhand question: “Can you do a pull-up?”

The reason I thought it was offhand is because I thought I already knew the answer.

“Yeah, I think I can only do about five.”

Five??? She can do five pull-ups? I can’t even do one! I was only asking the question to receive confirmation of my own inability.

The neighbor’s dogs were barking. Early. Incessantly. I’ve learned - they usually only bark when there is a problem.

I stepped outside with my binoculars - kept right by the door for just such an occasion - and took a look.

Sure enough, they were barking (I could hear that, I didn’t need to see it as well, but it did confirm). Then, I saw it.

Ruby. The young filly. Lying on the ground.

I’m riding my horse Alegria along the water’s edge at sunset. The waves are not so much breaking as unfolding, their glassiness still intact. Behind me, a group of friends are living their bucket list dreams, riding horses along the beach at sunset.

But I was miserable.

When I quit my very good corporate job at the ripe old age of 29 to pursue my dreams of going to seminary for graduate school, there was one thing that my coworkers said that surprised me more than anything: you are so brave.

Brave? I thought. I’m not brave. I’m just doing what I have to do.

Back then, it didn’t feel like there was any other option—I knew that my next steps were not in my corporate life. I knew that this was my "calling." I didn’t necessarily know the destination, but I knew that this was the path to take.

What does it mean to be a ‘successful’ writer?

We are often fed a very specific script: write a book, endure the excruciating silence of shopping it to agents, collect your hundred rejections, and wait in hope that the traditional publishing world will one day crown you as “validated.”

But what happens when you step off that treadmill?

My lemon tree was dying, and I couldn't figure out why.

For weeks, I stood in my yard looking at its curled, sad leaves, blaming a mysterious disease or a hidden army of gophers. I was ready to call in experts or spend hours on diagnostics, assuming a complex problem required a complex solution.

Then I walked upstream.

I was standing on the corner, waiting. Well, I was not standing—Alegria was standing, and I was sitting on her back.

It was Monday, and the Monday market stalls were just beginning to pack it up for the day. The time was 2:09 PM.

There is a particular kind of energy that surrounds certain events. Whether it is New Year’s Eve with its pressure to ‘have an amazing time,’ or a massive local festival, these moments arrive with an unwritten, heavy expectation:

You must have fun. You must stay up late. You must immerse yourself in the crowd.

As though by having enough fun, or staying up late enough, you can somehow prove your worth as a human - I am a fun person! Look at me! Look at how much fun I am having!

The day after the ride that had been a catalyst for annoyance rather than delight, I had an immediate opportunity to revisit all those uncomfortable feelings.

Yesterday, I was annoyed.

I shouldn’t have been—or so I told myself. I was on a late afternoon ride with David on Deseo, and Jose on Cappuccino. It was another training ride for David (9) and Deseo (2), who have begun to find their stride together. I was riding Luna, Deseo’s mom. The sun was out, the temperature was perfect. It should have been amazing.

Except that it wasn’t.

Do you ever have one of those days where you are feeling a bit low energy? Not depleted, exactly. Just tired. Without a lot of "forward." What do you do when you feel that sense of inertia?