next step first step the last four years have been a mess of life lessons, intense moments, relationships building and ending, stalling, putting off doing anything important, wallowing in my sadness, running away, running towards, breaking and mending, loss, grief, exhaustion, abuse, joy, love, expectations blown apart, nostalgia, forgetting, finding myself and ultimately losing myself again and again. these are the years that are responsible for forming who i will inevitably become. all the years before but especially these, and i am leaving this place now with so much gratitude. moving is six weeks away but it feels necessary to write this now because i already feel gone, like some part of me has already left and is moving on to the next step. in a matter of weeks i will be en route to beginning an adventure that will change my life. it has finally now occurred to me that if i want something, if i want to be something, i have to go out and make it happen, i have to put in the work, because it isn't just going to fall out of the sky. i have no idea yet what the end result will be, but right now i know that i need to put myself out into the world, to see things, to write about them, to find it in myself to write again because i have been so separated from it for so long. i have reached a point where i know i need to make myself focus, because i wasn't put on this earth to hide in an office puttering away at a keyboard secretly making art at home on my days off. i am meant to write things that change people's lives. i am meant to make art that stirs people into motion, makes them think, makes them feel. writing is something that is so much a part of me that this separation from it has really been indicative of a separation from myself. i need to get to know myself again, to tell my story, to tell the stories i have been told, to create safe places where people can go to learn something about themselves, to grow. i am meant to make gardens with my words, to create because it is my living urge to do so. it isn't for anyone else, for fame or money or glory; i will do it simply because i have to in order to thrive. i have been surviving, these last few years, on the bare minimum. it is time to stop coasting and start doing the things that make me feel alive and whole. |