I’ve made a comfortable living providing purely technical solutions to moderately complex problems, and it’s been, all told, a satisfying career. But as I recently expressed to another dearest friend, I feel that particular passion waning. I have plenty of good, interesting, challenging work left in me - years’ worth - but I’m beginning to warm to the idea that my next “professional” journey will be quite different from that which has lead me to my current place in life.

And perhaps that’s why my friend’s comment has sent me so curiously, so wantonly, along warm, winding paths of thought about love, meaning, passions, identity, age, respect, perception, and what one gives and expects of one’s loves, one’s life. So many questions…

I feel awake. I’ve been reviewing some of the romantic masters - Byron, Keats, Whitman - and I feel quite alive. I wish my words could do them the slightest justice as I try to describe the vitality coursing through me this afternoon. I look, “liberal and lusty as Nature,” forward to this next journey. (Thank you, Master Walt, for that phrase.)

In the words of Byron…

“Why I came here, I know not; where I shall go it is useless to inquire - in the midst of myriads of the living and the dead worlds, stars, systems, infinity, why should I be anxious about an atom?”

I hope, along the way, I remember that a simple, loving comment gave flight to such fancy. Byron also said, “Be thou the rainbow in the storms of life. The evening beam that smiles the clouds away, and tints tomorrow with prophetic ray,” and, “All who joy would win must share it. Happiness was born a Twin.” Amen.

For those of you closest to me…I love you, and I apologize in advance for the ineloquent rants you’ll surely suffer in the coming weeks. You may choose to think twice before buying me a drink.

Jelly