I am happy with my life.

That does not mean I do not want more.

I want more money so I do not have to stress quite so much about bills. I want a house that belongs to us, with land and room for my boys to be outside. I want better health, because even though I am healthier than I have been in years, there are still mornings when I wake up too dizzy to do what I planned, too sore to move the way I want to move, too nauseous to function normally, or with a migraine that changes the entire day.

I would love to travel more. Someday I want to make it to Thailand and Laos, places tied to my wife’s family and history. I want a bigger writing career because I want more people to hear what I have to say. I want more freedom, more choices, and probably more ease.

But I also have a three-bedroom home where my family lives together. We have internet, books, audiobooks, and entirely too many streaming options. I have a place to make art and plenty of art supplies to keep me busy. We have enough to eat, even if sometimes I have to get creative with what is left in the kitchen. I have a vehicle. I have good doctors. My health is better than it has been in a decade.

And I have my family.

Those things go a long way toward making me content.

This morning, I was sitting on the porch with my boys. It was a little overcast, with the sun coming through every once in a while. After a week of rain and storms, the grass had gotten ridiculously overgrown, and I was wondering when somebody was finally going to come mow it.

But it was only 78 degrees. The humidity had finally broken, and the breeze felt amazing.

I sat there thinking about how much I still want. I would love for that overgrown grass to belong to me. I would love for the porch to be attached to a house we own, sitting on enough land for my boys to run around outside.

But wanting it someday does not stop the breeze from feeling good today.

I think sometimes people misunderstand contentment. They hear someone say, “I am happy with my life,” and assume that means she has stopped wanting anything else. Maybe they think ambition requires dissatisfaction.

The people who know me best know I have not stopped trying. They know I am building within limitations. Some of those limitations are physical. Some are financial. Some days I only have so much energy to give, and sometimes there simply is not enough money to make the next thing happen yet.

I think I learned how to live that way after I became chronically ill.

There was a time when I was very sick. Eventually I ended up in respiratory failure, looking directly at the possibility that my life might be much shorter than I had assumed it would be.

After that, I got tired of waiting for my life to get better before I allowed myself to live it.

There was always another condition I could put on happiness. I could be happy when I felt better, when we had more money, when we lived somewhere nicer, when I could travel, when my body cooperated, when life finally got easier.

I could have spent years waiting for all of those things to happen.

At some point, I decided I was going to live the life I had while I still had it. Not because it was perfect, and not because I stopped wanting anything different. I just understood, in a way I had not before, that none of this was promised to me.

Looking at your mortality square in the face really does rearrange some things.

It made me pay more attention to what was already here. My family. A good book. Something ridiculous that made me laugh. Art supplies spread across a table. Food in the kitchen. A car that can take us somewhere. A cool breeze on the porch after a week of storms.

I still want more for myself and for my family. But I no longer think wanting those things means I have to be dissatisfied with everything that came before them.

I can be deeply grateful and still want change. I can be happy and still have goals. I can love the life I have and still imagine ways to make it better.

Mostly, I think about the next step. Not in a constant hustle kind of way, but in a quiet one. What can I do with the health, money, time, and energy I have now that moves us a little closer to the life I want?

Then I live here while I work toward there.

I still want more.

The breeze still feels good today.