So different

I am finding a difficult time articulating all my thoughts and feelings these days. Each night of the [Industry Conference] I returned to my hotel room, booted up the laptop, and thought about writing. But I just couldn't. I was at a loss to really fathom my own feelings. I was like those cartoon characters, hit on the head, changing colors, plaid to stripes, dots and patterns.

And now, I wish to tell you all that has taken place, mostly inside of me. Yet, I hesitate to begin, for the floodgates may be swamped, the levies may break.

Yet, through it all, I realize that I remain. I... am... still. In brief, I hold 20 business cards in my hands, booty of the socials. I have page after page of notes, and ideas, questions, and answers. Page after page is filled as well with names and emails to contact.

I learned a lot this week, about my hopes and fears, about my own assumptions and desires. Hard, hard stuff. But exciting, really fucking exciting. I am changed, at least changed from what I have been these past few years.

Paul keeps asking me: what do you need to let go of? He has been dissatisfied with my earlier response: the past. Perhaps, to him, that seems a cop-out, too brief an answer. But I know that it is the pith. Sometimes, we need not elaborate. Occam's Razor, simplicity itself. The past, in so many ways. I haven't spoken to him since last Tuesday either, not a word, not an email.

I am still sorting and sifting. I leave for Europe on Monday. I will over the next few days attempt to divulge different aspects of my experience, my thinking, my planning. I hope I will have some access while abroad, but I can't promise.

One thing I realized this week, regained really, is my passion, my enthusiasm, my excitement. I have had trouble these past few days catching my breath. I have had the sense of being on the edge, the cusp, standing at the edge of a mountain, thin, cool air filling my lungs, as I gasp for the exquisiteness of the scenery before me.

I think of Alexander Hamilton, who, it was said changed the course of his life, through a single letter that he wrote; a letter filled with wonder and amazement at the force and grace of nature, observed in the gale and rain of a storm in his native West Indies. The letter was read by a couple businessmen, who were inspired by the passion of the fatherless youth (not exactly fatherless, but raised in his father's absence--indeed the letter I believe was written to his father) to sponsor his passage to America.

I have remembered that passion lies at my heart, that I thrill at the feeling, I light at the slightest graze of the flint, it is for me sustenance enough. I have not felt this passion for so long, being swallowed up in self-pity, in disgust, in resentment, stifled by the worst of academia, rather than liberated by its best. I have not wasted these past seven years. But it has taken me long wandering in the woods to find the path that lies before me. I still know not where it leads, but the path beckons my step, growing ever more clear as the fog in my eyes begins to lift.