I absolutely adore Kelowna. I live in the most stunning city, surrounded by amazing people and budding opportunities – yet I can’t help but feel this constant desire to set everything I own on fire and run as far away as possible; live a life of grubby hostel floors and two backpack straps.  Am I really happy here?  Of course, when I say here, I’m not really referring to a place at all.

White capped mountains linger to my left; a lake-side basketball court basks in the evening’s silver-water reflection. Houses topple upon gleaning green hills that offer horizons past the vast shores of Okanagan Lake – empty homes, broken families; all of it teeming with imperfect life.  There is conflict, sure, and uncertainty—but there is also undeniable beauty, and I when I look at the organic life around me, and I realize that I am a part of it—I feel so alive.

For all I have, there is so much more out there in the world: I want to be sitting in an eccentric coffee shop in some foreign country with unknown languages spinning and intertwining in the caffeinated air above me.  Bring me history, cobblestone streets, ancient castles, people I don’t know, places I haven’t seen.  I want to be surprised.  I want to jump in to the lukewarm bath-water that comprises the Mediterranean Sea and feel the turquoise waters invigorate me.  I want to live in a world of adjectives and action. Most of all, I want to feel free to leave.

The mist is cloaking the mountains outside my window.  I hope for snow, soon, because I want to snowboard, even though the thought of it terrifies me.  I love and hate being terrified.  I force myself to be uncomfortable.  I am constantly doing things that I don’t really enjoy at all, because it’s only then I learn, grow, and change.  Learning, growing, and changing in relationship with others is all that life is about, if you ask me.

It always surprises me how quickly the sky darkens.  You feel like you’ll have the day forever, like you couldn’t possibly fill it all – you forget that time is a lying leaver that moves on.  Too fast, the mountains are gone, lost in that inky blue-black sunset: the colour matches the tide and I rest for tonight, happy with where I’m at. And I don’t really mean here, at all.