I shot this yesterday in (of all places) Borås. I spent 24 hours there checking out a few of the city’s excellent museums, including Borås Konstmusuem, Abecita Popkonst & Foto, and Borås Textile Museum. It was my first visit to Borås in almost 45 years and even if I don’t remember Borås being much fun back in those days (early 1980s), I was pleasantly surprised to find how much the city has evolved – especially culturally. It’s still “small-town Sweden”, but in a charming way and with much less of the “Hickville” vibe some towns never shake off no matter how many cafés and shopping centers they have.

Part of my trip was also to do some soul-searching, which is something I tend to do every spring.

My view of life varies from one day to the next. that hasn’t changed much over time. My baseline is generally very positive and optimistic and I can usually deal with the slew of normal, everyday setbacks and obstacles that come my way without much effort. My survival strategy has always been to focus on keeping my journey going without dwelling on the stuff I can’t overcome or bypass and to not look too much or too closely in the rearview mirror.​

Push on, move forward.

I try to keep my eye on the long game and the exciting, creative stuff that each day provides. Even if each is short-lived and only gives a tiny burst of happiness, by stringing all these small joys together and looking forward to experiencing them, I’m usually able to maintain a healthy mindset throughout my day.

I suppose I could redefine “problems” as “challenges” just to put a more positive spin on tougher stuff.​

But tackling life’s inevitable hurdles and barriers might then become an exercise in semantics and minimize the achievement of coming up with more or less creative solutions that help me move forward.

I’ve always preferred taking on problems straight ahead and not letting them pile up.

Although some of my challenges can’t be resolved, especially chronic pain and general physical degradation that arrives as I age, I tend not to dwell too much on them unless they prevent me from doing really fun things, like skiing, which I will probably not be able to do this season as my back is still not completely healed.

I wrote this post mostly to remind myself of the book project “Happy Islands” that I’ve been thinking a lot about lately.