I remember sitting in a Bruce Springsteen concert and wishing I was somewhere else.

How messed up is that?

It was a passing thing….I got over it by the next song and I was back….but for a moment I got caught up in missing someplace that I thought was worth missing….and I was lost.

I’ve spent some good parts of my life behaving like that….drumming up remorse that I wasn’t “someplace else”.

And in the process of “missing”….I think that I probably missed a lot of things.

For the most part, I think that was kind of a lonely young man’s game.

I don’t do that anymore.

Now, I will look up videos about Idaho when I’m hunting and pecking….scraping my brain….for a blog topic.

I don’t think that Idaho is a Shangri-la or anything.

It’s not a place that I need to go to before I can be happy.

I’m very happy here…in this moment.

I am a contented man.

That’s not to say that pictures of gypsy caravans and nomads don’t make me want to pack it all up and hit the road.

I love to wake up in strange places.

I love to look out the window and see some strange bird fly by in the fog.

I love to hear a different ocean when I wake up.

I love to travel.

Maybe travelling gives me an excuse not to long for someplace “away” for a while?

All this travel talk….travel…away….and I know that the best place to be is wherever my family is.

That takes all of the hard decisions out of the equation.

“Where my family is”….an easy answer to an itchy question.

And my family is a sail….not an anchor.

My perception of what money I have or don’t have is a strong mental anchor.

I don’t want to be panhandling for gas and cracker money somewhere in Utah while a bunch of little eyes look out of the window of the Grand Caravan (and doesn’t just the name of that vehicle make you think of taking off and driving through some big desert….meeting the bedouins and having some hummus and dates on a Persian carpet?)….what was I saying? Oh….a bunch of little eyes look out at me and wait for me to make us all mobile again.

I guess I get scared of running out of anything.

Money….gas….love….time…

I don’t want to run out of anything.

And the safest way to do that is to zip up the change purse and save, save, save.

And while I’m saving…I can bitch about wanting to be somewhere else….and how, at some perfect point in our lives, I’ll release the deluge of funds and….we’ll really have some fun.

Maybe the “best place to be” is right HERE.

BE HERE NOW….here….without fear…until I travel a couple of thousand miles and I’m HERE again….just in a different place.

Like I said earlier, though….the unit is what’s important….the family.

Where they are is where I’ll be.

Anyplace is good if I can hear them in the next room….