MY WRITING is nothing more than a chronicle of my emotion, an assemblage of scenes both painful and bright, exciting and mundane, stitched together with this thing called I as the thread.

I hope to convey how no story is more meaningful than the other; none more beautiful. They’re all beautiful to me.

A painful scene tells me I’m alive and that I’m human — a joyful one that I’m truly living.

But should anybody care about what moves me? I wonder. Why should they?

Because I know I’m not alone.

Because I’m a writer.

I’ve chosen to share in the hopes that what I experience and what you experience — whether on similar planes, timeframes or disparate dimensions — may find some commonality.

Maybe these words can help us both carry on.

Maybe they can help us both smile, no matter what we’re going through. In the words of writer Jorge Luis Borges:

“A writer — and, I believe, generally all persons — must think that whatever happens to him or her is a resource. All things have been given to us for a purpose, and an artist must feel this more intensely. All that happens to us, including our humiliations, our misfortunes, our embarrassments, all is given to us as raw material, as clay, so that we may shape our art.”

Thank you for filling a moment of your day with what I have to say.

I hope my stories illuminate the possibilities, the love, the meaning in this human experience, which is anything but simple. That wouldn’t be any fun.

Standing on the subway track awaiting the train to take me home. It’s a typical Wednesday night — the first day of the rest of my life.

I sense that there’s no room for half-measures in your life, one of my best friends texts me when I tell him what I’m about to do. He’s right.

I’m all in.

If there’s a chance at success I want to leap; if there’s an adventure to be had I want to step through the gate.

Not everyone will see life this way, and that’s okay.

But I can’t stand drifting through a fog of indecision; I can’t stand playing it safe.

I’ll get to where I’m meant to go because of my willingness to go all in.

It’s why I stand up when I’m scared and speak when my heart longs to speak; it’s why I — more often than not, I hope — take a chance when my body shakes with fear.

My heart’s beating fast. ThumpThumpThumpThumpThumpThump

I wanted to sprint through the teeming station; words on my mind of gratitude and love, appreciation and truth.

My truth.

I’m gonna tell someone how much I care.

Irrespective of how it goes, I’ll be alright. We’ll be alright. But I need to take a shot on love.

Unburdening my heart — no longer playing games but saying what I want to say, making a decision and taking a stand — that’s the clarity we all deserve. That’s movement. That’s peace.

My body knows when it’s being honest.

It hurt when attempting to conceal how I feel; I felt pain in the silence when my soul longed to burst. Irrespective of what happens, expressing the life we feel — the love that’s lacking not in energy but in words unsaid, energy unused, a river, a heart, a soul dammed — clarifies; honesty’s a guiding light which pulls me from the fog.

Life is funny, strange, painful, a miracle, isn’t it.

I strap on my shoes and run hard around my neighborhood. No music, just my panting breath gulping for air, my steps resounding in the silence and my shadow pulsing in the moonlight.

My love.

I’m sweaty. I’m terribly alive. Keep pouring out your heart and soul into all that you do, and the future will surpass your wildest dreams.

I’ll take this life of love and pain and depth and intensity; of romance and struggle and longing and truth.

Of release. Rebuilding. Clarity. Light — a worthy fucking fight — over an apathetic sojourn through existence any day.

All we can do is get up and try again.