{"id":231,"date":"2006-12-13T16:01:00","date_gmt":"2006-12-13T16:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jamesrising.net\/blog\/?p=231"},"modified":"2006-12-13T16:01:00","modified_gmt":"2006-12-13T16:01:00","slug":"life-the-unbearable-brightness-of-living","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.jamesrising.net\/blog\/?p=231","title":{"rendered":"[life] The Unbearable Brightness of Living"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Today is nothing special, and yet it hit me anew that the life I&#8217;m living is the one I always dreamed of.  Not in every way: I&#8217;m not fully who, doing what, or where I want to be, but I&#8217;m going in the directions I want, and love every minute of the process, and can&#8217;t imagine life without it.<\/p>\n<p>I make just enough money doing things I enjoy on my terms with more than enough time to spare.  I make my own schedule&#8211; I sleep in when I want to, and I get up early most days because I want to.  I spend countless hours with good friends, who are creating their own paradises and struggling out of their own hells.  I&#8217;m part of more wonderful communities than I would have thought possible&#8211; every one of them a home and a family.  And I live in the Athens of the East Coast: the center of the developing world, as far as I&#8217;m concerned.<\/p>\n<p>I have interesting problems to work on, personally, politically, and for the shear joy of the hunt.  I can spend time with intricate exercises in silliness, and then switch to experimenting with the human social creature, and then join in a collective search for the unspoken questions of the day.<\/p>\n<p>Yesterday I bought tickets to far-and-away, for the end of January, fully expecting that I&#8217;d be going there alone.  Two hours later and unexpected meetings with friends later, I might still be going alone, or I might spend a week road-tripping across far-and-away with three good friends.  In any case, I can&#8217;t wait.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m in love with life, and pleased with what I&#8217;m becoming and what I&#8217;m giving.  If there was one thing I could wish, it would be more ways to spread my joy around.  I dance even when there&#8217;s no music playing.  I could die happy, right now.<\/p>\n<p>If I seem down some day, remind me of this.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Today is nothing special, and yet it hit me anew that the life I&#8217;m living is the one I always dreamed of. Not in every way: I&#8217;m not fully who, doing what, or where I want to be, but I&#8217;m going in the directions I want, and love every minute of the process, and can&#8217;t &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.jamesrising.net\/blog\/?p=231\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">[life] The Unbearable Brightness of Living<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-231","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jamesrising.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jamesrising.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jamesrising.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jamesrising.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jamesrising.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=231"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.jamesrising.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jamesrising.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=231"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jamesrising.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=231"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jamesrising.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=231"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}