RAW

I have identified myself in many new ways this year: I taught 5th grade, I climbed a mountain (even though I was ready to shoot myself for doing so the whole way), I ran more than I ever have before...but my biggest accomplishment has been in simply better understanding who I am. Even though the only audience I wrote for this year was...me, well and you guys...I have written deeper than ever before becuase I have learned and lived from the depths.

HONDURAS means DEPTHS, and even though I took a path that wasn't really a step closer to my dream job, and I did very little to advance my career as a writer on the outside, I'd say this year has the potential of having the best effect on my writing.

Very soon (I hope) I will make a career out of what I love to do. But sometimes when what we love becomes our source of income we lose the very freedom we need in order to love at all.

Every year, every day brings me one step closer to eternity (which God has written on the hearts of all men--Eccl 3:11) This year has been one of the most meaningful in my life. I dove into the depths of my soul, my desires, my confusions, my heart--and somehow I'm still alive, treading water, reparing and preparing for the next watering hole. There were days I felt so free, submerged in the lifestyle as content and natural as any other large mouth bass swimming around. And there were days I felt like a sparrow wondering what good wings would do me under water. This environment, my mind, this pen, my current state of being have all been a huge part of me recognizing the HONDURAS of myself.

There's some serious shit in this water. Stuff I gotta learn how to clean out. Stuff I never saw before. And when the rains came hard and heavy (and they came often) what a muddy muck they left. But wow, on a hot sunny day with huge puffy white clouds in a beaming blue sky--there aint no other place I'd rather be than swimming in the honduras of this place.

This is what I can take with me in the portfolio of my mind. Snapshots of the good and bad gena, the happy and sad gena, the fake and the real gena...me--raw.

With every future word I write, any story I tell, and article or music review--they will be stained or even merely wrinkled with the watermark that holds a thousand memories from an enlightening journey towards eternity...