as i sit on the brink of my 30's, i can't help but feel an overwhelming sadness to say goodbye to an era that encompassed my awakening. i think it's a common human fantasy to wish to redo parts of one's life with the knowledge they know now applied to the person they were then, but of course, time pushes us forward and we can only do our best to keep our head's afloat and our eyes clear so we don't miss what comes towards us as we wistfully watch what has already passed.

my path to the place and person i am today was neither graceful nor conventional, full of constant violent storms and carnivorous shadows, but it paved way for a wider path in which choosing to live outside of accepted, dogmatic perceptions would be a simple matter of courage and free will.

but to be free also means having nothing to rely upon but a trust in your own instincts, something that can be both exhilirating and absolutely terrifying.

tomorrow morning i end 3 cycles. one lasting 1 month, one lasting one year, one lasting 29 years. tomorrow will mean the assignment of New--new challenges, new experiences, new connections, who knows. or perhaps, in thinking i will spring forward, i'll be forced to fall back in order to learn that we are never free from reality, and this is what we were born to accept. i don't see my lessons until i've reflected on them. i can't help but to hope for the best but prepare for the worst, but i do hope that the things i've seen and felt to be true with every fiber of my being in this last year of my awakening are true and very much possible.

the question of commitment has come up quite a bit, perhaps not in conversation, but in the collective unconscious as many people have been carrying this type of question within them. commitment towards paths, towards responsibilities both accepted and obligated, towards being a fixed person and giving up other possibilities of projecting, towards assigning a role onto oneself, towards a partnership with another.

at the end of the day, commitment is what you decide to make of it. you can look towards others for examples, see their successes and failures, see their hopes and fears. but it comes down to what is being asked of you, what you want and what you can achieve, and somewhere in the middle, a negotiation between the three through a truthful assessment of what actually exists or is required, and what is a projected hope or fear.

somewhere i believe there are no wrong answers because life is a learning experience where we teach ourselves so a bigger part of us understands. but then so many times, when people get hurt, when bad things happen, i feel like there really are wrong answers, and there often is a bad guy who ends up taking the blame. sometimes the bad guy is even me. i don't believe anyone ever walked this earth who wasn't blameless for something, but i would like to think at the end of the day, challenges bring necessary change. i just know we go from invincible children, to the acceptance that we're flawed human beings just trying our best in this world and hoping to make the most out of a life that sometimes seems like it's in our control, but really it's not.

all we can do is try our best to have good intentions, and to try to always find a way to find peace and happiness wherever it is that we find ourselves, whoever it is we find ourselves to be at any given moment.

life is made up of big moments and little moments, often simultaneously depending on how you're leaning philosophically at any point, and as long and as short as it seems to be, your own personal feelings about it at any time doesn't change the fact that it continues to be in exactly the way it will be. you can't force every part of your life under your control just like you can't grab every drop of a river to force it into a pattern that's more to your liking.

so then if there's no way to control life, the only thing left is for us to live it, to be of it and to be in it, and to search for those experiences and people who help bring us closer to who we are as unique individiuals within a connected collective, and to uncover our own personal truths within which exists our freedom.

i think my point is, there's no perfect world, or that perfect place where once you've worked so hard to get there, you'll never have another problem or worry ever. you can find the perfect love, the perfect job, the perfect amount of money/security, and once you've achieved that state you always dreamed of that represented the top of the mountain for you, from there you'll find only new challenges or obstacles that you may have never realized. i think it's a continual process of doing your best to make the most of things, and trying to find joy and love wherever you can without worrying about things that aren't in your control.

tomorrow i will go to the beach and at the exact time of my birth, put my birthday wish for my 30th in writing, that the people in my life and who come into my life will find a way to truly believe just how unique and amazing they are.

and since i'm feeling generous, i won't even make them all have sex with me to figure it out.