Time Carries On

I’m turning 35.

That fact that I’m fast approaching another birthday is something of a surprise to me. When I was young and often sick I watched as death became a fairly normal fact of my life, stripping away those I cared about one after another. Mistakes I made along the way ended up making me choke more often than I’d like to admit, putting me perilously close to feeling like death could snatch me up at any moment. I honestly didn’t think I’d make it out of my twenties, but that fear was disproven half a decade ago.

This past year I’ve dealt with doctors more often than usual, as new health concerns arise. I had an anxiety attack that made me inaccurately deduce I was having a heart-attack, but the opportunity to look at a death I couldn’t fight through (like choking) was a revelation. My life isn’t the sum of my accomplishments and failures. My life is the love I leave behind in this world that can resonate and carry on like ripples in water. Most will never notice, but some few might. Even if they don’t dwell on the time I happened to be on this cosmic mud ball, I’m good with my own mortality at this point. Hopefully my brief presence in the proximity of their perception was beneficial to some, and negative to fewer.

There is a very real possibility that I am at the halfway point in my life. Considering the first fifteen years or so of this one didn’t afford me much control, or a vested interest in opening my eyes and mind to the world around me, I feel the adventure has only recently begun. So long as I’m able, I’m going to keep writing and creating stories I find interesting, offering them to the world as entertainment, even though I bare a fair expanse of my soul with each tale. With an open heart and mind, I smile at the distant horizon that waits for me, no matter how quickly the river of fate carries me there.

I hope to see you stop by and share the campfires with me along the way, indulging in stories that exist only in our fantasies, as they hold truths we dare not speak plainly. Love as deeply and often as you’re able, and I’ll keep trying to do the same.