Last night my wife  unibun and I found ourselves on the outskirts of death valley. We met up with some of her friends who were, coincidentally enough, in the same area for reasons of their own. We hung out for a bit, and in the early hours of the morning drove to a somewhat secretive natural hotspring.

Because of the time, we had the springs to ourselves. It was a natural pool, but it may as well have been man made it was designed that well. It had two pools connected by a narrow trail through the long grass; the water was thermally warmed in one pool, and cooled as it flowed into the second.

At one stage in the night the group migrated over to the cool side, but being highly content with the warm water, I decided to stay put. As their voices faded into the distance, I relaxed against the grass that matted the wall and looked around me.

The moon was out, but behind a cloud. It's light broke through it in the most unique fashion; the white light beaming through its spiraling rims before darkening in gradients through royal blue to a dark purple. It looked as if a galaxy was floating in the sky above me. It was one of the most beautiful and surreal images I have ever seen.

My eyes drifted to the stars behind me, and my first thought was how dull and dark they looked. And then I realised that, despite spending my childhood gazing and dreaming about the stars, I couldn't recognise anything above me. It sunk into me that I was very far from home.

But then my eyes fell on a cluster of stars higher in the sky, and I squinted quizzically. I had never seen the northern hemisphere before. But growing up obsessed with learning about space, and the northern hemesphere having such a significant cultural weight between the ancient Zoroastrians and contemporary NASA, I knew I was looking at the big dipper.

It was odd, how something so alien could look so familiar. I realised that my own life was much the same to me now. Its changed so much in the last three years. I went from living life between my office and my room, passivley watching my life progress through my 20s, watching my friends move away and marry while I worked and waited for... Nothing. So in 2013 I decided to get more active. I made some furry art and finally participating in the community I had lurked for so long.I started travelling, and went to some cons. I met a girl I fell in love with, and married her. And I moved to the furterest place on earth to live with her.

I never imagined that one day I would have been lying in a Californian hotspring looking at the big dipper while I waited for my wife to return. Not that it matters though as I doubt that I could have ended up there had I tried. You often hear about people who achieve their dreams by working hard and persisting. While this is true, there is also a crazy amount of dumb luck in any successful outcome. No one is in control of their lives; no one has a fucking clue about what they are doing or what it would be like once they made it to where they think they want to go.

Some people start with a dream and die having achieved it. This isn't the typical life. And I'm not envious of anyone who lives it. The real experience of life comes from the failures abd opportunities we don't expect or imagine. Its the discoveries and growth which makes us turn left along the way.

Its cliche, but I have learned in my incrementing years that life really does have a way of working out. There's often devastation and heartache along the way, but so long as you are trying, and persist through the darker stretches, then stuff you never imagined will happen.

Life is a game, and there are countless ways to win. The only way to lose is to stop trying.