Spent the day roaming around the island of Hawaii with my family. All the while seeking inspiration for my daily blog. I never like to force the thoughts, I like to write on what comes to me, or what has the most impact during the day. Since today was for the most part a “typical vacation day”, I did not have many inspiration sources. I suppose spending time with family, in one of the most beautiful places in the world is great inspiration, but not very motivating! More then once I thought about chucking all responsibility, opening a food truck business and running a tour guide service on the weekends.
We took at tour of a lava tube, which was interesting. I looked for one off the beaten path, and we certainly found one. As it turns out one of the tour guides was a oceanographer from Scripps institute in San Diego. He decided to spend the rest of his days hanging out in a small shack on 30 acres of lava bed giving tours of a tube that runs underneath his home. Fascinating, really. He had a mesmerizing voice, and I felt he could start a second career as a meditation coach. If Armageddon was occurring this guy could talk you through it as if you were simply just making a sandwich for lunch. No problem. Do not worry, everything is happy, everything is safe.
That was a fun activity, but nothing I could really point to as motivating in terms of following and keeping commitments. We visited a few places along the coast. A nice bakery, in which I blew my nutrition plan completely and a black sand beach which did nothing more then influence me even further to do as little as possible. Finally, we ended up touring the active volcano south of the island and at one point I decided to take a little run along the crest of the volcano. I figured I could blog about that. I ran at the top of the world, in the southern most part of the United States and along the rim of a very active volcano that just erupted last year! However, I only ran a mile or so and I felt like I wimped out. The bookstore had a cool poster that referenced the inspiration you could receive from a caldera. You could rise to the occasion, make a big impression, vent when you need to, and get fired up. Yeah, I did not know that the word caldera either. A large volcanic crater. When the volcano erupted last year the caldera increased significantly in size. I thought for sure this would be my inspiration source, but it seemed a little cheesy. We ate at a restaurant and we saw an advertisement for a man offering classes on therapeutic writing. I thought there was some definite truth to that! Maybe I found my new mission in life, but then I realized that me struggling to find something to write about all day was not a good sign.
I went to an art store, took a nature hike, checked out the sunset over the ocean on the southern cliffs and watched the shadow of the volcano cast across 800 acres of brand new land formed last year. I thought for certain that I could find something there. Instead, I drove around the other end of the island, through a heavy downpour of ran, some fog and eventually pulled over into a gas station. I had to take the 90 some mile journey across Mauna Kea to return to where I am staying, so I decided to use the restroom at a Shell gas station in Hilo. That is where I finally found my inspiration. Yes, that is correct, and no it was not graffiti. In an attempt to distract graffiti artists, the gas station owner put some cool quotes on the wall. The one that became the title of the blog tonight is this one:
“One Day or Day One – You Pick”
I thought that was awesome. So that is the phrase I will choose as my greatest source of inspiration today!
Guy Reams
