A couple days ago I turned 29 and I’m taking it very seriously, not because it’s any closer to 30 or some kind of reaction to age, but because I had a hard time with 28.  28 was a struggle, a constant rewording of failure in order to see around it.

I was rolling tubes of toothpaste from the bottom.

It looked like skipping wishes across firm mud that needed water instead of smoothed words.

29, I’m going to pick a point far off and walk.  28 was the last self-inventory, that episode in which I betray myself by reevaluating: to spread and fold, bend and run, like the smoke of an indoor cigarette.  With new zeal, I do my best harm by abandoning yesterday.

For better than a decade I’ve eliminated alternatives.  Testing every college within my university, I finished sensibly.  And having attempted every field in my resulting industry, I returned again undeclared.  Perhaps now another education for a second lap, or to log my resume and send it off to providence.  I think about these things while swinging a pickaxe into the hard, Tennessee red clay.  A day of paperwork was better for piano fingers, but overly black and white.

Aside from a faith journey, and a nine year story with Ashley, I haven’t known what the hell I was doing, and even then I never knew, but at least never stepped off (except in the case of faith when I was “yee of little” in several occurrences, but concerning Ashley I have retained my commitment with faithfulness to wreck her nerves by exhilarating our circumstances in my daily renewed vision).

I began writing this morning hoping to think of something, something that builds on yesterday, and nothing new, please.

The planets have realigned, another February, even a cycle of 7 completed, since I first began my questioning into the way things are: extremely cold with someone spanking me.  And like I told everyone then, “I am here, I am messy, and I need a hug.”