I'm Floating

I didn’t take this photo, but this is what it looked like. The St. Croix River creates a part of the border between MN and Wisconsin before joining the Mississippi.

I spent Labor Day on the St. Croix River with my friend, Joe. I wasn’t sure exactly what the day would entail, but I knew it was going to be blisteringly hot, so I needed my swimsuit and some turbo-charged sunscreen. His wife, Suzy, drove us upstream a few miles where Joe pulled out a collection of inflatables. We picked two and carried them on the short walk to the river—a mini-portage.

Leaving behind our phones and watches—no need to be reached, or to know the time—was a step out of time and into freedom.

Being a holiday, I pictured a ton of boats and paddlers out on the water. And we saw a handful, but the water was so shallow it wasn’t very traversable for boats with motors. Which meant that for almost five hours we had peace and quiet. Solitary floaters on a gorgeous river. It also meant that sometimes we couldn’t float because of the shallow water.

The wind was also fiercely blowing upstream, meaning the current and the breeze were in a battle for which direction to actually take us.

We ended up walking most of the way back to home base—in the river. Sometimes it was so shallow it looked like we were walking on the water. Other times, the river bottom fell out from under us in one step and we were swimming with one hand, with the other managing the floaty.

The adventure of it all was glorious. The peace and quiet was astonishing. The conversation was life-giving. The sunscreen worked (mostly) terrifically.

I feel like I’ve been on vacation.

I imagine this story contains some kind of beautiful analogy to life. But I’ll leave that to you to decipher for yourself. It was profound for me.

I will add this—because I literally cannot resist: No matter which direction the wind is trying to blow you, or which way the currents are trying to pull you, you get to decide which direction you face.

Music Update

The Marcus Royce train is officially on the tracks and moving ahead, certain the journey is the point, rather than reaching a particular destination. Mostly likely, there’ll be many interesting stops along the way.

We released the first single last Friday — “What I Want” is a super fun song I wrote (with & produced by Doug Beiden) about….ready for it?… temptation. Fun, right? I love it and I hope you do, too. It’d mean a ton to me if you could take a second and check out the track. To make it super easy for you, I’ve created a link to all the different places you can stream or download it! Here It Is! I look forward to hearing your thoughts!

The next phase is to experiment with some targeted social media marketing, with the goal of building the audience for my songs, in addition to continued social media posting. If you’re not following me on social media yet, please do!

My job this week is to be present, to be aware of the beauty surrounding me while I float down this awesome river of life. And to continually surrender my expectations about how it should all turn out, falling into faith to keep me afloat.

There I go again. HA! I love a good analogy. All the best to you this week. Thanks for your companionship.