I live in a sleepy little town. Not much going on, not much to do. There are two grocery stores, Albertson’s and Vons. There’s a Carl’s Jr. and a McDonald’s, but neither of them have drive-thru windows. The whole place is just… quiet. With the windows open, I can hear the waves sometimes, at high tide. Crashing. I can also hear the train go by. My apartment is surrounded on one side by waves, and on the other side by Amtrak. But mostly, it’s just quiet.

We’ve been having good evenings the past few weeks. Quiet evenings. Watching Avatar, the Last Airbender, and watching this great photography course by Ben Long. I’ve been enjoying sitting next to the boy, watching him learn about shutter speed, aperture, and ISO. He’s learning it really well, and really fast. It’s been great to hand the camera over to him and watch him start taking photos.

A note about rooms. When I was a kid, I remember my room being really messy most of the time. I don’t know how it looked to my parents, but I’m betting it looked something like this:

This is what the boy’s room looked like the other day when I decided enough was enough, and told him to go work on it for a while. I’m sharing it here because I think it’s nice when we show each other our messy rooms. There’s something special about being inside someone else’s home. You get a better connection with the person. It’s even more special when you get to be good enough friends with someone that they’ll let you in their home even when it’s not perfect. We spend so much time cleaning, tidying, scrubbing, scouring, vacuuming before other people come over, because we don’t want anyone else to know that we have a lot of stuff and we’re not always that great at keeping it clean and organized. We don’t to let others inside our life unless we can make it look perfect first.

And I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with cleanliness. I prefer to live in a clean house and have clean rooms and I like things tidy and organized. I just don’t want to let that be in the way of having real relationships with people, where they can show up at my door and I will welcome them in, even if I have to clear a space on the couch before they can sit down.