I’m going to tell you the truth even if it makes me look bad or uninteresting, even if it makes me less attractive, is sort of my motto, and why I have such a hard time complaining and whining and usually find myself tempering whatever edge I’m leaning into to make me a little less flat and sharp, a strategy that makes me hit harder ironically, as things that are loose and heavy and relaxed often do.

I wish I could say these last twenty years of my life have been great. But they haven’t been great, though some have been good for sure, and the majority of them have been serviceable. The great days I can count on a hand and I define as being above average and unexpected.

Like the sensitive work of trying to pick a title for a poem that serves the poem and welcomes the reader without giving the whole thing away before it even starts, these last twenty have been good enough to serve my life and balance it, and that’s something, though I wouldn’t call it great.

I’m like the whistleblower on my own life always pointing out how I’m being unethical or immoral for the sake of some good old fashioned power, greed, freedom or love, one who must pay a steeper price to logically make up for all the psychic debt and self-cruelty I’ve been giving myself, the reward a dose of asceticism or poverty which can work wonders with self-forgiveness, and make me come off all optimistic.

I think I’m like the father who’s trying to teach his 8 year old son about responsibility by letting him run away from home and realize if he stays out in the woods he’ll probably go hungry, that it’s better to give up and come running home for a warm meal than be that. I’m like the father, but I’m always the son too. I guess I just like waiting to see how I’m going to be stubborn, and resist realizing something more important than my ideal for how to have a great day.

I want to know what happens to a consciousness when it chooses needs over wants, and also what happens to the world around that consciousness because of that choice. I need to know just how compassionate people are willing to be, including myself, so I can know, other than myself, who or what in my mind to let go of while I’m still here.