Reflecting on my 44th Birthday.
In my early 20's I thought I was a poet. My sentences incomplete. Their cadence imperceptible. Paragraphs of run on, word after word after word. I had the heartbreak worthy of a poet by the hands of a trickster, a sad goddess who begrudgingly opened my eyes. I wanted to quit school to become an EMT. I wanted to be a hero. I imagined myself saving lives with a combination of fast driving and martial arts. At the time my father simply said "No." I remember feeling appalled. I was a 24 year old "Grown Ass Man", still taking orders from my dad. At my core, I knew he was wise and in the end we negotiated like men. Over the next 20 years I would become the following: jobless, hungry, supply clerk, graduate, New Yorker, importer, designer, photographer, engineer, yogi, teacher, Californian. My biggest lesson in life is that there is no such thing as a "Late Bloomer" but rather a ceaselessly cyclical life of blooming. I know this to be true because even in our saddest moments and our grandest failures, as the universe is constantly expanding we are still being propelled forward.