Hello again friends and welcome if you’re new here! 

Two years is a long break from the internet. And I can tell you, it was a needed one. A restorative one. 

But time is relative:

Six years is a long time to focus your energy on one passion project—the amount of energy I used to expend on work, school and helping other people achieve their ambitions. 

Over twenty-five years of working, ten of those while putting myself through school, the rest of the years full and over-time, some unpaid “for the experience”, trying to save up enough, trying to catch up and catch a break, trying to “do it all” meaning both my art and my day job, trying to keep my head up under feelings of not fitting-in, not being good enough, not being enough.

Then everything stopped. And I gave myself the chance to decide: Continue or set a new course? 

Going against all those years has felt like swimming against a strong current, and not just that—very odd, like flipping to a backstroke from a breaststroke with two new appendages. And sometimes, sometimes you realize you’re not swimming in the water but flying in the air, with rainbows and clouds and orchestral music.

And then you wake up.

By refocusing on healing, figuring out what I want exactly and trying to bring my dreams a little closer to life, I have felt such amazing highs. But I have also felt like the most selfish, entitled, pretentious person in the world. And still do sometimes. 

It has been nine years and counting: Trying to find joy—despite and because of everything! Becoming a homeowner for the first time and making a home for myself and my family!! Creating the epic story I’ve always wanted to read!!!

And now it’s 2022.

Now after all these years away, what do I have to say? Why am I still here? Why are you still here?

Not “here” generally, I mean on this blog. (Though I would love to explore existentialism in a future post.) What kind of stuff would you, should you expect of me? 

I’ve become a stranger. 

All those tiny changes add up. And when you’ve looked away for a while, you may not be able to connect the thing you see now with the thing you saw once. However nice, or cringey, or strange, or intriguing you once found it. 

But the thing is, I always was, am, will be a stranger. Even to myself. It’s not that I think I’m so special. It’s that life itself, you, me, the universe was, is, will always be a mystery. 

As easy or tempting it is to make judgments and put people in boxes, Art has always defied that. For every trend, there is a counter. Every pronouncement an exception. And for every piece that seems perfect and complete there is a but… 

This doesn’t just frustrate me—it frustrates me in all the best ways, it thrills me, it keeps me going, looking for new mediums, trying to find better words to capture the feeling, idea, or scope. Tenuous like the golden rays of a song, a scrap of tulle flying in the breeze, dancing over old trees, gone in a moment. Or the realness of now, so hard the colors are too bright, the edges too sharp, but when the clouds gather, the melancholy comes, and the sorrow can pour itself out. Finally.

And for every end there is a beginning. All I have to tell you now in 2022 is I’ve only just gotten started. The best is yet to come.