Soft Light. Wide Horizons.

I have written journals for many years, and now I’ve been blogging since the end of 2008. Almost all of my writing in these venues is characterized by questioning, and struggling. Especially blogging, I have written mostly about my journey in sobriety, and then as I have become more settled, my journey in my professional life. Sobriety will always be the cornerstone of this space. I have reaped incredible benefits from the effort I’ve put into this long-rambling catalog. Several times a week, I wrestle another barrowful of words to the lip of this digital canyon and dump them in. Hoping they fall in some useful order.

When I began, my questions were existential. How do I live as a sober person? Can I contribute to the world? And through living and writing, I answered them. Deliberately. Most days.

Now, my questions have less urgency. I know how to live as a sober person now. I take the days from morning to night essentially as they come. I do today what I can do today to make my life better. Most days. And today, contributing to the world feels like something I do both personally and professionally. My life’s labor is useful. I am a part of larger things. I give back to communities I care about.

Today I have a new love in my life. A flock of birds at sunrise. Vast surfaces in constant flux, vibrating unpredictably, but along smooth, familiar patterns. Exciting and sudden, spontaneous. Ancient in the same moment; a thing that’s happened unchanging for eons. The undulations of the natural world flung suddenly into startling presence. This is the respiration of nature: the long breath that sustains the palpitation of thriving life.

It is the first time in my life that I am going into a relationship fully present. This is the best time in my life. When everything is warmly lit. While I face east into a limitless dawn.