A Living Magazine - Homecoming - Epilogue 7 - A Truthful Summary

As a final Epilogue to the Living Magazine and Homecoming Journeys, I suppose a summary is in order. I'd begun to write this post then deleted it several times in the last few days. I just couldn't seem to sum up so much experience and give it the flavor of the overall Journey. I was also disheartened (as I am prone to be) about the glacial pace at which all of this is progressing.

Anyway, I should start with an explanation of the Journey names. When I left Livermore a year ago I had planned to use the Living Magazine name only until I reached the Southeast, then rename the whole thing, "Homecoming." Yet, the Living Magazine was so apt and appropriate to all I would do on the march back to Maine that I decided to use it as the major title to all subsequent Journeys, with their separate names as subtitles.

That is why I call the trek from Livermore to Athens the former ("A Living Magazine") and the hike from Athens to Portland the latter ("A Living Magazine - Homecoming"). However, they are all part of what I refer to as the Second Crossing (the First Crossing, being the "Manifest Destiny" Journey). Therefore, there are two Crossings, made up of three Journeys.

I know this sounds confusing, but if you were bored enough to sit back and think about it, I believe it will make sense. To avoid future confusion over such terms, let me say that all future Journeys will be subtitles listed after "A Living Magazine."

Prologues and Epilogues to Journeys will always occur in seven installments each, before and after a Journey respectively. Though Journey days will be numbered to be associated with each consecutive day of said Journey, Prologues and Epilogues will probably be summations of multiple days before and after, as these seven posts have been.

Ideally, I should account for every single day--even between Journeys, since I never stop working on them (the last and the next). But shit, I'm only human and can't fill every single moment of my life with interesting stuff for you, much as I'd like to. Unfortunately, this has the side effect of costing me money. I am just as desperately broke right now as I have been at anytime in the last five years. I have a place to sleep here in South Portland at my sister's place while she is in Germany (and access to the bathroom and shower, which is nice), but I am not being fed. Since returning to Maine I have received two donations from very generous readers, totaling $64. I did my best to make that stretch for the last 18 days, but ran completely out yesterday when I splurged for spaghetti and sauce at the Dollar Tree.

Suffice it to say that I am itching to get back on the road where life is tough, but I have a better chance of eating each day, because I can publish and do my job.

I thought the last Crossing would be my last need to Journey in this rough and often uncomfortable way. Even on the Manifest Destiny Journey I thought for sure that I would at least get some books out of it. I even have the first of those books written and ready to go, but after running an unsuccessful Kickstarter campaign, there was no way to fund the rest of the project. Similarly, all through this Crossing I consoled myself during the hardest times by thinking that surely some financial situation would develop allowing me to have enough time to write about it, and then sell the books as a means of income. But nothing has developed. It really is as if none of it ever happened at all.

But it did happen and this blog is the testament to that. It is difficult to summarize something so large. If I were to edit and print it out in glossy magazine style complete with Blue Ray disc, it would fill about 4,000 pages, containing about 12,000 pictures, 500 videos, and dozens of audio files.

I'll do my best in this post to make a run-down. I would remind people to join the Facebook group, "IWALLK America - Journeys" (or click the Facebook link at the bottom of the page) to relive or see this last year's Journey for the first time. If you missed it, this would be a great time to catch up. It is only on Day 19, of 367.

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California blew my mind when I first arrived there, but then became a disappointment and felt like a trap. The people were pleasant enough. The free thinking that the rest of the country assumes exists there is there. However, there is a lot of pretension and unearned pride as well. Although the climate is quite comfortable, the lack of rain has caused the state to artificially water everything. If you see green anywhere away from the coast, its water is probably being piped in.

Something that really surprised me about that state was the lack of animals, large and small. I never had issues with simply laying out the tarp and just sleeping on it in my sleeping bag. It was very nice, actually. The same could be said of Oregon and Washington, although there were a few more critters there than California.

In those most northwestern states the climate was similar to California, but with a lot more naturally sustained vegetation. The people were more genuine and I was profoundly impressed by the cleanliness of the roads and city streets. Even the smokers did not toss their butts on the ground. They pinched them off (called "hot topping") and put the extinguished butt back in the pack to be thrown out later.

I was most impressed by the women of the Northwest. I found practically all of them to be extremely attractive, not just visually, but with radiant and easy-going personalities. On the East Coast a man my age does not usually say hi or smile at a younger woman when passing on the street. So, it was strange to have these women in Portland, Oregon not only say hi and smile as they walked up to me on the street, but on a couple of occasions they would stop and just start talking to me. As an Easterner - at first - I mistook this for flirting. This was especially true when they would get up so close to me, smiling as if they wanted to be my friend for life, even asking me if the pack was heavy, then suggesting I take it off and start rubbing my shoulders! These were complete strangers! The level of trust that they exhibited toward me actually made me nervous until I got used to it.

I had been privileged to spend my birthday with a lovely friend named, Susanne, in a town called Newport, on the Oregon coast. It was a terrific stay and energized me for the walk to Portland.

Portland was one of my favorite cities. It had its share of street folks. And the sleep spot was almost paradisiacal. It was at the Rose Garden, for many days. But like all the place I visited, if you are living on the streets things get old quickly, and I crossed the border into Vancouver, WA, only to have a painful condition set in.

In Seattle, I got to meet in person a wonderful friend who I'd only known online named, Ellen. She brought me to a tent city for the homeless and let me stay at her place before moving eastward to Spokane.

The Northwest was a different land, filled with very real and warm-hearted people.

I also met a woman, named Cassie in Spokane who came the closest to convincing me to give up my Journey and stay there with her. It was something I did not discuss here and is more appropriately covered in future books, along with a whole bunch of other more adult-oriented material which I refrained from mentioning. Suffice it to say that the Journey was twice as interesting as what I decided to put in this blog. Why did I leave it out? Because, I knew that future books needed to be written and a bit of new intrigue would be a welcome addition to them. As long as I remain without funding, these things will remain only in my memory.

Spokane became another of what I would call my "languishes." Livermore was the first and lasted five months. Redding was the second and lasted about three weeks as I waited for boots that would never arrive. Then, again, I waited in Grants Pass, Oregon eventually using specially donated funds to buy boots there. I suffered quite a bout of hernia pain in Vancouver, Washington as I mentioned above and that slowed me down, even preventing me from posting for a few days. And then, Spokane was a vast month long open ended stay, sweetened slightly by being with Cassie occasionally and the legal availability of cannabis.

A major wind finally filled my sails when, with the wonderful donation from my friend Allyson for an Amtrak ticket for a Spokane to St. Paul, Minnesota train. This ended my time in the West and introduced me to the Great Lakes culture of the northern Midwest.

I spent three weeks with Allyson--a Maine transplant and one of my high school friends, with her husband and son, exploring around the twin cities, having a very nice day in Duluth and enjoying evenings of great conversation with her. I also received the biggest treasure of the entire last two years by mail from my "human protector," Jeff; my precious and incredibly helpful North Face Particle 13 tent.

My time there allowed me to plan what I think was my most organized and progressive leg, down the states on the east side of the Mississippi. I planned and successfully went to eight cities, in Wisconsin (where I got to know how to use my new tent), Indiana (where I dealt with the "Shadow Man"), Tennessee (where I shewed off a curious coyote), Alabama (where I waited out an angry stray dog), and Louisiana, hitting one each week (going by bus), for two months. My wallking in these places consisted of exploring the cities not walking between them, and so didn't count as advancing walking miles on my Travel Record. Nevertheless, I estimate that my feet did travel at least an extra 500 miles or so.

By the time I arrived in New Orleans I was beat and the sticky humid air, combined with the chaotic and weird mojo of this sultry Gulf city conspired to turn me completely off. I'd had to walk through one of the dirtiest and poorest sections of the city to find a Motel 6 in the middle of the night, and then convince the very skeptical manager to accept my expired Maine license, for a two night stay. During that time I hastily pulled the last of my money together beat it to Georgia, buying the cheapest bus ticket I could find.

My original plan to spend Christmas in Florida was thwarted by a relative (by marriage) who said that he didn't want a visit from me, because he was afraid I'd bring bugs into the house. That completed my ill impression of the state, along with its hyper-ignorant conservative redneckism, anti-vagrancy laws, no places to rough camp and its relatively dangerous animals. Frankly, I never looked back and still have no interest at all in visiting Florida. I'd been there a few times anyway when I was able to visit relatives and live the conventional tourist life. The thought of rough camping in putrid swamps, struggling for money, being hungry, getting harassed by the police and stepping on fire ant hills sealed the deal. I hope never see the place again. Sorry, Floridians.

Although it was a brutally long and uncomfortable bus trip - actually passing back up through the same three cities I'd stayed in in Alabama (which was quite surreal, to see those rundown bus stations again!) and suffering through the blight of the Greyhound station section of Atlanta in a miserable layover - arriving back on the East Coast was therapeutic.

I quickly found a great sleep spot in Athens, Georgia and settled in for what I thought would be a few days. Then the longest period of rain I'd faced yet hit the East and I languished again, dealing with each day by begging for donations online, writing, and taking full advantage of the Starbucks there. Spiders made their grand entrance into the story at that point, with a male brown recluse clinging to the inside of my tent screen one morning.

Eventually, after 14 days of solid rain, I developed a way to deal with it. It was a crash course in trying to stay dry, completed with the purchase of a waterproof tarp that would be absolutely integral to hiking north. Yes, everything happens for a reason. And, I'd dealt myself as much punishment as I could handle, maybe a bit too much. But it worked and was instrumental to my being able to withstand the rainy and even snowy days to come.

The plan for the final hike up the East Coast was to have it truly be a hike - by foot - nearly all of the 1,200 miles to Massachusetts. I was going to do it old school, no matter what. Honestly, I never again wanted to face the criticism that some people had foisted upon me for not walking enough on the Manifest Destiny Journey. I subtitled this final walk as "Homecoming," though I really wasn't sure what I was returning "home" for, nor if it would even resemble a home; a premonition that has now flowered into the same old uncertainty I had before ever leaving Maine. But in departing Athens, I still had hope for a triumphant return.

I left to Journey up through the Southeastern states on New Year's Eve, picking up my new tarp at the Athens post office on my way. The first destination was to be Anderson, South Carolina, where I had friends who had become readers and supporters. The way there was quite edifying, if slightly muted by the constant overcast of the Southern winter.

By the time I arrived in Anderson I was ready for a break. Spending just over a week there, I enjoyed the very generous and friendly respite that my host, Jan and editor-friend, Fay (the person who got me the Front Page of the Gaston Gazette, and her husband, offered. We had great discussions, ate delicious meals and drank ample amounts of wine. I was reluctant to leave such great people, as I had been with Cassie, and Allyson, Ellen and Susanne, months before. But I had to stick with the plan. I had to complete my Journey and see what would emerge for me on the other side.

It was a long and rough trek that lay before me to my next destination, Wake Forest, North Carolina to visit my second cousin, Jeff and his family. I hadn't seen Jeff since we were in junior high school, and barely remembered that brief meeting.

Walking north through South Carolina was the beginning of a lesson in Civil War history, from the Southern perspective. The lingering vestiges and ghosts of Reconstruction (to them, a euphemism for the half-hearted Northern attempt to rebuild what the Union Army had utterly destroyed) were still palpable in many towns that I passed through.

Only a few days out from Anderson, I experienced my very first near miss with a black bear who was rummaging around a river just below my sleep spot. There was no actual encounter, and the peaceful creature passed me by without incident. But, it DID make me even more aware that wildlife was something to be respected and gently handled.

The people I met and the sometimes-desperate economic conditions in which they lived left a lasting impression on me that I still feel even now writing about it. There were towns like Gaffney where I walked down the main drag and saw that 90% of the businesses were closed, or buildings were up for lease or sale. It astounded me. I felt genuine pity for these places, and more significantly their long suffering residents. People in the rest of the country would do themselves a spiritual favor by reviewing my time in South Carolina.

In Spartanburg, I had my first encounter with a sustained amount of snow. I stayed there to wait out what New England was experiencing as a great blizzard. Even where I was, the snow was deep enough to remind me of Maine. I learned the best way to deal with it for the relatively short time I was there.

Passing over the border into North Carolina was an immediate step up in the economic conditions I saw around me. There was money there. The gray skies persisted, but bits of blue were penetrating them as the winter slowly moved toward spring. The hundreds of muddy rivers became a laughable cliche as the many miles through rural land passed by. There, I discovered that, by far, short densely packet pine trees with a bed of pine needles beneath them was the safest, cleanest, driest and most critter-free place to camp. I also solidified my confidence in highway cloverleafs as great places to spend the night, then looked for them every chance I got.

Reaching Wake Forest was a real achievement for me. It had been one of the toughest and longest treks I'd taken and I arrived at Jeff's house dirty and ready for a good rest. Though I only spend five days there, it was one of the most enjoyable experiences of my time away from Maine.

Getting to know Jeff, the only relative I'd met with, was like gaining an older brother. Our life experiences through the decades since we'd first met were uncannily similar. We shared the same sense of humor and temperament. We got along so well that we now call each other brother instead of cousin.

I was also honored and delighted to get to know his wife, Natalie and their son, Spencer. Natalie and I shared a great love for plants. And, being a horticulturalist and landscape designer, she gave me the inside story about how this work is done, while imparting her considerable knowledge about plant species, varieties, and uses. I drank in this information readily and remain impressed with what she does.

In addition to having a great time, with delicious meals and superb evening conversations, we went to visit acquaintances of theirs, named Liz and Logan, who had constructed a completely self sustaining house and property. With my interest in building a nearly identical thing in Maine, I was overjoyed to see what these two energetic people had done completely from scratch. They improved my understanding of what is needed and left a huge impression on me about just how viable a concept such off grid living could be. I'm convinced more than ever that I can eventually do the same thing in Maine, and that the simple, clean, organic and wasteless life that Liz and Logan were perfecting will be the way most people will live in the future.

My departure from Wake Forest was bitter sweet. Spring was really developing there near the borderlands between the South and the Mid Atlantic states, but my new friends were difficult to leave and I still long to hang out with them. I wish we could be closer together physically, but I feel we are now close spiritually, and that cannot be undone.

Next came the watershed destination of Washington DC, where I would temporarily suspend my walking by arriving there from Fredericksburg, Virginia, via my first train ride since that long trip from Spokane to St. Paul. First though, there was the whole lot of Virginia to hike through.

As North Carolina had been in better economic shape than South Carolina, so was Virginia situated even higher on that scale. Yet, I didn't see much of this prosperity, because I had to cross a couple hundred miles of the more rural parts of the state.

In the longest and most isolated trek, I crossed a hundred miles in five days, with no outside contact; the longest period of separation from my friends on the internet that I had yet experienced. At the end of the incredible struggle and adventure I was foolishly, but deeply, disappointed after believing everyone had been worried about me, that no one seemed to have noticed at all. I discovered I'd only been missed by one party, my ever vigilant friends, Frank and Vicky.

That is when a cold feeling ran through my veins. If I had broken my ankle and was unable to move on the second day, no one would have even noticed my absence until I would most likely have perished at some miserable campsite, hidden in the tangle of vines and trees in which I'd been sleeping.

It was a rude and vicious wake up call. I was confident in my abilities and also in what I believe was some unseen help, but who really knows? The full weight of the fickle nature of a "public following" really hit home for me. I was ready to say "fuck you." But with a few days of recovery and debriefing, alongside an emergency plan with Frank for future times of internet silence, I gritted my teeth, then bit my tongue, and kept moving toward Washington.

When I'd reached Fredericksburg, I had traveled nearly 600 miles entirely by foot. It was a stunning personal achievement for me. It showed I could do it. And, vicariously should have indicated to my tiny world of readers that if I can do it anyone can do it. Yet, there was something hollow in the moment. I faced no outward celebration of this feat.

Instead, a new impression was dawning upon me. The more amazing the things that I would do, the less people seemed to understand or appreciate them. It was like folks didn't really believe it was possible. I'm sure most of you did appreciate them to some extent. And the mention of this emotion of mine is not to fault anyone at all. Rather, it is to illustrate the fact that I was learning to discard my expectations for how others react to my achievements. Though, admittedly, I am still being crushed by new expectations. Overcoming this problem is turning out to be one of my major life lessons. Perhaps by the time I no longer give a shit about what anyone thinks, I will have earned the rewards I erroneously had always sought. Or, is that just another expectation? Ha!

 My days in Fredricksburg were very nice. I slept near a Civil War battlefield and became temporarily obsessed with the events that had happened there. This reached a peak when I suddenly and psychically "downloaded" an entire story about two brothers on opposing sides of that conflict and wrote it up (see Ghosts in Gray and Blue). I am very happy with how it turned out and the great thing about stories removed from one's own mind and published (even in this paltry way) is that they do remain available for future use.

Spring was in full bloom when I took my comfortable but short train ride to Washington, DC. I arrived during a warm and dry period, found a safe sleep spot near Georgetown University and settled in for a few days of pictures and sightseeing. The ability to sleep for free and in relative safety in the capital city of the nation I'd explored so thoroughly, encouraged me about just how much I'd learned and how well I could put it into practical use. I really enjoyed my time there.

But the itch to get moving again--that insatiable need to find out how all of this travel would end up, drove me to keep the momentum going. From Washington, I took a bus to Elkton Maryland, where I struggled again to raise money. I had been dreading the passage through the Mid Atlantic states of Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey and New York.

I put up with a moderate walk to the Wilmington area, a place I found cold and somewhat dismissive. There, I was but an invisible traveler from another dimension. It caused me to forgo any notion of spending time in nearby New Jersey; a state which had been on the original itinerary but was easy to dump off of it, and go instead to my next destination, Poughkeepsie, New York. There I planned to again take up exclusive foot travel up through western New England, east across New Hampshire and then down into to Boston--the city that I'd left nearly a year and a half previously.

Through the generous donations from a few readers, I bought an Amtrak ticket that would take me through the Big Apple and up the Hudson River to Poughkeepsie. It was not a long trip, compared to many that I'd taken before, but it left me again penniless and worn out.

There was a timespace drag, like the friction of physical matter passing to quickly through the ages of the world that set in as I found a sleep spot in Poughkeepsie. I just wanted to get back to Maine and regroup. The overall Crossing had not been as I'd imagined it would be. Again, expectations wrecked on the rocks of reality. Still is was something. I just wasn't sure what...and am still not sure...maybe even less-so.

When a small amount of funds came in I ran like a rabbit to Connecticut. I again pulled out the stops and crossed 60 miles in only a few days, ending up in Torrington, Connecticut. From there, my next destination, tendered by another online friend, Melinda, was along a fairly direct route, up through western Massachusetts to Greenfield. This was a mercifully pleasant hike. Though the funds were only trickling in, the land and the weather were a pleasing motivation. I acknowledged for once and for all to myself that I was most at peace when traveling between the small towns of states, sleeping by night and splitting my daylight hours between walking and writing.

I arrived in Greenfield to meet Melinda for the first time in person. A jovial and positive-minded woman who has a deep understanding of healthful energy work, she brought me out for Mexican food and we had a lovely time getting to know each other. Her place was warm, bright, and inviting. She let me sleep in my own room. I even got to house sit and have some private time while she attended a conference. It felt quite comfortable staying with her. Knowing my next destination was Brattleboro, Vermont, she brought me there as a preview and we ate a delicious BBQ meal, then we toured around the beautiful area between the two states, ending up driving through several small and quaint towns she knew well near Greenville.

When it came time to leave we said goodbye and I walked away into the evening, knowing it would rain at some point, but somehow expecting the gods to delay it until I wasn't on the road. I stopped a little farther than midway to Brattleboro and camped for the night. On the next morning those gods laughed and opened up the skies while I walked. It was the heaviest rain I'd ever walked through, and I did it for three hours. I might have conquered camping in the rain, but walking in it was still and always will be a suckfest.

In Brattleboro my friend Jeff (the guy who'd sent me my tent) had done the amazingly grand thing of buying me three nights at the Motel 6 there. We met up and had a great time. I hadn't seen him since the ride he gave me from Rhode Island to Connecticut way back in 2014.

He was the last friend I would see before returning to Maine. And, I would see him again a couple times as I made my way to Boston.

The walk through southern New Hampshire was one of the most enjoyable of all. It was not free of stress, especially, as usual, over money. Yet, the weather was nice, while being very hot and humid. There was no rain though for most of the trek. Seeing the Bao Chon Zen Vietnamese Buddhist temple in Peterborough was an immense pleasure and an experience I will not forget.

My next multi-day stay was in Nashua. There, I tried half-successfully to raise funds for the trip back down into Massachusetts - the eastern part of the state - to make the final leg through the historic towns of Concord, Lexington and Arlington where I would camp near Boston and prepare for the Amtrak Downeaster ride back to Portland.

During this time, Jeff met up with me again and helped buy an adapter cord for my tablet and also for the first time got to meet and have dinner with his wonderful wife, Ann. Buying this adapter cured a technical problem that had been frying out my camera's memory cards. We agreed to meet up one more time near Lowell, Massachusetts to visit the gravesite of Jack Kerouac and Jeff gave me a paperback copy of On The Road, a gift which would make what was about to become nearly unbearable, much less so.

When hardly enough was raised, I jumped at the chance to get going again at made it from Nashua to Tyngsborough, Massachusetts in the first night. On another rainy morning walk I reached Chelmsford and spent an absolutely disastrous night in the worst downpour yet. I spent many hours on my hands and knees in the totally soaked tent, flirting with self destructive thoughts and wondering how the hell I would dry all of my stuff and myself. It was the second worst night of the last year and a half (the first being Boston on my very first night outside of Maine, October 22, 2014).

But I did make it through that debacle and enough sun returned the next day to dry out the tent. I even did a laundry. On the third day in Chelmsford I received a donation for a hotel room in Bedford and Jeff picked me up for our trip to Kerouac's park and gravesite. This was a good day.

There were about two weeks of my year long Crossing left. The remaining towns of Concord (where I slept three nights at the actual North Bridge Battlefield) and Lexington (where I spent three nights in a field on the historic Minuteman Trail) were really quite nice. The second day in Concord mostly consisted of a nail biting search for my DC tablet adapter which I'd lost and then miraculously found again at the Dunkin Donuts there. These two towns were not just historic but beautiful in plant growth and architecture. I indulged my history sweet tooth as often as I could. I had come back through the west of Lewis and Clark, to the Civil War regions of the South, continuing back in time to the places of the American Revolutionary War. All that was left was the trot trot to Boston.

This was when the expectations began to be defeated again for the final time. For some reason I was getting more than twice as many reads as usual. People were really getting into keeping up with the blog, but donations were drying up. I still don't understand why this happened. I can only hypothesize that people were pretty sure I was going to make it back to Maine and were not all that interested in donating to a done deal. But I don't know. Frankly, only you do.

What I had fantasized about as a grand event - reaching Boston after so much struggle - petered out into a desperate situation and perfect financial storm of hardship. Arlington was a wonderful place to be, close enough to Boston to see and do a lot, but far enough away to allow for relatively peaceful nights of sleep in a great spot. I'd wanted so dearly to really sink my journalistic teeth into this final week, and instead PayPay, which had been so reliable, developed a glitch for the last three days, disallowing transfers of even the tiny amount of money I had left to my debit card.

Being a gravity source for bad fortune was now utterly confirmed. I was the supermassive black hole where timing led to an almost complete lack of financial support, a PayPal's glitch, another camera memory card loss preventing me from taking pictures and videos, no food, the inability to even get online, not much attention about these problems from the readership, and the psychological uncertainty about my coming life in Maine, all fell into my gravity well. And no light could escape.

It was awful, painful, terrible and complete. I was failing at the end of the greatest thing I'd ever done, after a life of failed projects. I will be honest... I contemplated suicide for a few long moments. Again, when I'd lost everything, somehow the weight of the situation lifted. I was already dead, but still alive. There was no place to go, nothing to do. So I filled my time devouring Kerouac's book and looking for sources of water. A few kind souls donated at the very end, just as the PayPal glitch was resolved. But the damage was done. The end of the Crossing had been marred just as the end of the last Crossing had been.

I salvaged the pig and tried to dress it up and put lipstick on it. "Never let them see you sweat," used to be tag line for a deodorant called, Dry Idea. As I rumbled back to Portland on the Downeaster from Boston, I felt a bit better. At least now this all could pass into history. I wanted to make a big splash with rolling waves and ended up with a dripping faucet, ripples in the inch of water of my clogged drain.

What does a man need to do to get attention these days? Kind friends tried to console me about how I should be happy with the personal achievement. But that is not what I ever wanted. Why should I be happy with something that I didn't want? What kind of person settles for the lowest common denominator and then has the mental power to convince himself that that was good enough? Give me the potion and I'll take it. Dangle the gold pocket watch in front of me and I promise to be hypnotized into believing that my own personal edification, experience and adventure should have been what I wanted all along.

I don't consider that progress, moving up, or advancing... I consider that delusion, compromise and stultification. It is twice as cruel to hear that I should be satisfied when I'm not.

In the late night watches of the last two weeks I have come to terms with coming to terms with it all. I don't doubt the loyalty of this hallowed readership, since I'm still getting plenty of reads on this blog. And I certainly don't doubt my ability to complete projects nor go through hardship. I simply MUST accept that my hour has not yet tolled. I am coming back around to thinking it will. Is this one of my rationalized expectations? Perhaps. But a person needs something to set up in the distance; a target; something to look forward to...something to expect.

If I could, I would throw myself into the self sustaining property project and finally have a place I can truly call home. There has to be a way to find this distant goal and not compromise my beliefs.

What I need to do now is keep my eye on the next Journey and "keep walking forward." The first Prologue of the next Journey will outline its basics.

I genuinely appreciate every one of you. We did all of this together. I DO thank you for sticking with me through all of my melodramatic episodes, crazy assumptions, paranoia, losses and gains, sounding like the glass will never be more than half empty, my million mistakes... well you know... me being me. Ha, ha! The thing I most value is you being you.