Drifting, Not Adrift by Nicholas

Drifting calls to me. It is one of my all-time favorite images. I picture easy summer days, though this can occur in any season, of floating along with the tide or the current. No resistance though there is movement. Drifting along on an inner tube in a stream. Drifting snowflakes. Drifting into day dreams. Drifting conjures up images of movement, movement in a fluid environment, like floating in water. It appeals to me perhaps because floating is the only thing I actually can do in water.

          Drifting is not like being adrift. Being adrift is to be aimless and not necessarily moving at all. Being adrift is akin to being lost whereas drifting is a more imaginative state of seeking.

Sometimes I think I have been drifting through most of my life since unlike a lot of other people I never adopted a certain, single career path that I pursued devotedly--or slavishly--but have pursued a number of careers. And I never tied myself down with raising children, seeing the little ones grow because I helped make them grow, following a course until they went out on their own. I guess I attach a lot of freedom to drifting. I’ve always had a lot of freedom in my life—freedom to move on to another place, start or stop a job or a career, make or end relationships—without being constrained by too many responsibilities.

          Of course, my life hasn’t been completely unmoored, untethered, without anchor. Being with Jamie for the last 27 years has certainly brought me out of my self-indulgent freedom now that I plan life changes with him and not just on my own whims. And that change has been good as well.

          Now, that in some ways, my drifting days are over, drifting is even more a state of mind with my imagination conjuring up memories of wandering. I used to spend days wandering or drifting around the Northern California coast on Point Reyes or on the slopes of Mt. Tamaulipas. I used to drift about the fascinations and splendors of San Francisco. I once spent a summer drifting through the Sierra Nevada mountains. How nice it was to just drift along, letting the stream carry me, sometimes literally, to whatever lay around the next bend. Drifting is a form of exploring.

          Not many people these days or at my age seem to think of life as an act of exploring. But that is sometimes the only way I seem to be able to see it. We are all, after all, just drifting from somewhere to somewhere else or maybe nowhere at all.

          Later this afternoon you might find me at home, drifting off to sleep

© July 2014

About the Author 

Nicholas grew up in Cleveland, then grew up in San Francisco, and is now growing up in Denver. He retired from work with non-profits in 2009 and now bicycles, gardens, cooks, does yoga, writes stories, and loves to go out for coffee.