sabbatical

many of you know i put my stuff in storage and have been taking a sabbatical for the month of august...i've been telling people i'm homeless which is a statement weighted about its neck with the millstones of many emotions...

there is a freedom in having nowhere to go and therefore everywhere to go...there is a longing for the happyness of a settled life...and a mysterious sadness for something not yet found...fears that i will never find my way...and fears that i will settle and get stuck in some place i will come to resent and regret...

the lessons are really only the hints of lessons...strange vapors that wrap around my heart and mind and whisper stories and thoughts and hopes and dreams and discoveries and condemnations...mometary clarity and nothing more...i know less now than when i started and i didn't start with all that much...

what in me stirs this dissatisfaction...what keeps me longing for something more...i don't know...i've been reading "on the road" by jack kerouac...and except for all the drugs and the sex...i find myself in the story...the longing for home...and search for the place my heart can settle...and the seeming insatiable desire to discover the world, to open my heart wide and drink it all in til i drown in the wonder of it...

i find myself more mindful of the places that have been wrong...the places that though i can't quite put my finger on it, i know that there is a deep sickness in the community...something not true...something not real...like smoke and mirrors...crazy people, if you spend enough time around them, will start to make you question your own sanity...i don't want to go back to those places...

i've reflected on the friendships, or supposed friendships...finding the deep truth of who is a real friend and who was simply using me for whatever they wanted at the time...again...those who make you feel like it's your fault that the friendship faded...those who believe the lies of others about you...those who spread the lies themselves...

and the friendships that have been true...tried by fire and come out shining as pure gold...the people who are thoroughly convinced of my intrinsic value...and who by their loyalty and kindness, have convinced me of their own great value...those who have checked in with me in my journey...reminding me they are praying...those who know how incredibly difficult this time has been, not because i told them, but because they care enough to pay attention and to ask about me...

i have joyed over the deep love of friends and family...and grieved over the betrayal and abandonment of users and frauds...

and i have been battling...waging war against complacency...apathy...trying not to settle for the easiest way...i want the road less traveled...i want this journey of my life to mean something...i don't want to exist in a space...i don't want to simply take up space...and i don't want to just work to fund that kind of existence...

all the great stories are not ones where the main character plods safely and easily along, following the path of least resistance...the great stories find conflict and challenge and the desire for more...the drive to take life by the horns and channel its power...like jacob wrestling with the angel in the desert...refusing to let go until you get the blessing...

so what is my story to be...where is the "happily ever after?"...who knows...i don't...but i gotta believe there's something good coming...i gotta believe if i keep holding on and wrestling through this black night...i will get the blessing...limp and all...