A year ago today I woke up here in my desert cabin for the first time, and I have no idea how much has changed or was supposed to.

In some ways, of course, my entire life is different but it's also very much the same because, well, I'm still the one living it. The things I do are very much the same, but not what I look at when I can pull my eyes from the computer screen. That's nothing at all like what I saw for the first sixty years of my life and I like the new scenery.

I think the biggest change in me is one of degree, not of kind: I'm just more of what I was. I have less confidence than ever, more insecurity, and an increased sense of not fitting in with the rest of the world. Up here, alone, there's no one to contradict those feelings, so maybe that's why they're growing.

I've done far less to make this place my home than I'd planned to, and I have no idea if that's a good or bad thing. One thing I've noticed is that this first year was spent pretty much putting off doing anything with the excuse being that I wanted to see what the weather was like and to make it through the first year discovering what it would be like to live here. That was an excellent way to procrastinate, and I just about wore that excuse to the bone.

Maybe it was there all along and I'm just using it as an excuse, but I've really taken a hands off approach to life and living. I love it up here and do want to make it my home, but I don't want to be responsible for changing any of it. The bushes, plants, and wildlife were all here before me and I don't want to get in their way. I'm not planning on making any of this the way I want it to be, I want to let it all be and mostly watch and respect it.

I've taken a lot of this, of course, to extremes, but I think that's because one of the things I brought with me from the civilized world was me.

I haven't met very many people up here and haven't yet met anyone I want to spend a great deal of time with. I'm frankly scared of many of them, not of what they might do but that I won't fit in and that they won't like me, anyway. That sort of fear has pretty much ruled my life and, once again, I brought it with me.

Living in the desert isn't very close at all to what I expected, but I came up here with very few ideas about what to expect or what it would be like. It was a place I knew about, had visited and could afford, and that's really the only reason I came up here. I think I'd only seen this area at night before being driven around to look at properties by my real estate agent, so the whole scenery thing was a total surprise. It's not a view of much, I admit, but it's a great place to view the desert and what people have done to it.

The desert, like the world and everything else, is what it is (to be profound), and I don't feel comfortable judging it. It's harsh, except for those of us who live in homes, and I like that. It's patient and minimal, and I like that, too. It's very much different from the city, and I like that best of all.