“The writer must write what he has to say, not speak it.” Ernest Hemingway

New Beginnings… Usually come at the expense of something else, an ending. Despite the pain and debilitating stress it's hard to leave behind something that has defined you for so many years for better or for worse. I can count all of the triumphs but know that I have had them. I can remember the close relationships, and cherish the transformative ones. That is what I hope to walk away with, and remember years from now. The ups and downs now are disproportionately down compared to the ones of yesterday. The sacrifice and distraction away from the important things will be easy to say goodbye to. The desire to get ahead and work on something other than what I really need to spend my time on--won't burden me any longer. The sordid politics will not turn my stomach another endless minute. I begin a journey new to me, and my family. A new town, a new career, a renewed lease on life. Life is temporary isn't it? Change and circumstance in which we are powerless to alter so much of our time here, yet blind to what we truly can do when we apply ourselves. We deserve our stake in our perpetually moving existence and fail to seize it. We have a responsibility to not only ourselves, and our family, we have an obligation to do what's right by them. You don't get to go down in flames by choice when you have kids that call your name every morning just for a moment of your time, and a calming embrace. You can't have your addictions, and not own up to what they are and what it will require of you to overcome them in the name of what is good and true. I am as average as anyone else, self-awareness usually doesn't come without tears and suffering. I walk away from my enlightenment not scarred but jaded. Not damaged, but cynical. Not despondent, but focused. It's all vacuous and inauthentic, yet we build our lives around it and fail to be honest that we are slaves to our own vanity. Victims to our own comforting and mindless routine… How do we walk away, head up, pride intact, self-aware… I am, and I do it in earnest. A new life with clear eyes. No regrets, no questions, no sentimentality, just lost days only now to be forgotten. So it begins… My journey to be written about here, not for sentimentality, instead for my understanding. A record of where I was, and where I want to go as an individual. Goodnight, and until tomorrow's first light.