When you find yourself looking up at the sky, trust me.
I am too.
When you see yourself and you wonder if there’s anyone out there who gets it and I mean if there’s anyone out there who really gets it. Please, add me to the list.

When the wind is cold or the rain is heavy and you find yourself looking out of the window, or when you’re lost in thought or somehow drifting like the blanket of gray clouds overhead, just know this, know that you’re not the only one out there.
Know that you’re not alone. Not now.
At least not anymore.

I don’t know if I ever thought that any of this would work out for me. Most of all, I never expected life to turn into this, with me being here, right now.
I’m not sure if I believed in myself as a person or the ideas that I could take myself to the next level.
I know what people say when someone doubts themselves all the time.
I know all about the word potential. I used to hear this all the time.
People would tell me about my potential yet none of this ever made sense to me.
Then again, how could it?
To me, this was all a lie or a made up hoax just to get me to walk the line or quit living like I was going to die anyway.

Maybe I was too far gone or unreachable.
At least for the time being, this was absolutely true.

Let’s not pretend anymore. Life has changed. The world has changed.
The way we live and the way we interact with each other is different now.
We’ve all gone remote, at least to some degree.
Almost everything has a hands-free option now.
There’s such a thing as “no touch” delivery which, to me, I think this is an interesting play on words.
No?
Everything has changed since the shutdown which, if I’m correct, I believe the other day was the anniversary of when the world shutdown. It was March 15, 2020. This is the day we were told to stay home.
We were told to stay indoors because of a virus that was spreading around the world.

Timing is interesting to me because in light of all that’s going on around me, trouble and turmoil, thoughts and feelings; yet, in the moment, I came across an old note of mine that was written as a divorced father of a girl who I knew was going off in a different direction
This is part me, part “this” and part confusion and part apropos because like I said, timing is everything. Excluding a few edits and corrections, all of what I am about to share below is unchanged since a long, long time ago.

I can think of it now, The Old Man coming in the television room, which we called the den.
He would ask, “What are you doing in here? Get outside!”

We never had video games like the ones that kids have today.
We had Atari. We had Pac-man. We had Asteroids.
We had Elevator Action. We had games called Frogger and Space Invaders. 
Other than that, the video game life was not the same as the video games that we have now.

And then there was the world, right there in front of us.
But did we know it? Did we know anything or did we only think we knew?
Life was about to happen. There we were, right on the verge of a new chapter; too afraid to turn the page and to eager to hold out for the right place or the right time. By the way, I wonder about this because sometimes there is no right place or right time. No,
there’s only life and it’s happening to you and me, right here, right now.

No one ever tells you how big this is going to be.
No one can prepare you for what’s about to come your way, at least not really.

There are a thousand things that you will see and hear. There will be things you’ll taste and things that you’ll smell.
These things will last forever. This is good, trust me.

There will always be life ongoing and unfolding because life will always happen, right in front of us.
You are going to see things that are beyond belief. You will encounter moments that go beyond comprehension. While this might not be easy, life will still happen whether we agree with it or not.

It is 3:33 in the morning.
Actually, it’s only 2:33 but the world pulled a trick which we call daylight savings time.
I am awake (of course) when I would rather be sleeping.
I am tossing and turning and sifting through random ideas, like “hey, how great would it be if this were summertime and we had a vacation home that was somewhere far from the rest of the world?”
How would it feel to walk through the door of a place that was seasonally hibernating and pull back the blinds to uncover the view?
Must be nice to have something like this.

I know I’ve told you about the farm and my own version of what I’d like to create someday. I want to build a farm of my own; however, my reasons and my intentions are not the same.
My reason for this journey is no different from anyone else’s. In the beginning of my life, I suppose my goal was to find my purpose. But I struggled
I wanted to find something that made sense to me. I had challenges.
I suppose why I started writing this journal (or any of my journals) is because I wanted to detail my trip in the best possible way. My goal was to help me understand the life I lived as well as learn new ways to process the information around me.

Sure, I’ve been fed up before.
I’ve sworn off things and gone right back to them the next day. I admit it, I have my struggles with change.
I have my bouts the same as anyone else does. I’ve been at the intersection of doubt and hopeless. While standing at the crossroads of my life, I had to come to a decision. Decisions are like deadlines.
They kind of suck . . .
I had to make a change; but more, I had to make a choice to change. I had to give myself the permission to continue, to follow through, to make the moves necessary to create the change and lastly, I had to give myself the permission to look away from my usual patterns. Otherwise, I’d have been stuck in more of the same.
Know what I mean?