I am currently working to update and in some ways change my blog. The honest reason is I am sick of looking at it, and while you newbies may not yet be bored, somehow I don’t think that I am the only one. I want to put this small disclaimer in here: there is so much information that I don’t actually understand about websites that if you should log on and see something a little crazy, just wait for it.

I have learned that the best way to progress when it comes to change is first to simply research. I am sorry to say that I am a champion when it comes to research; I may even have an award or two lying around. Need to know your family history? Got it. Need to understand the unbelievably fascinating idea that the universe is expanding? Got it. Need to know what that spot on your back really is? If I can’t definitely tell you I will research the best doctors until I find one who will reassure once and for all.

After you research you have to begin to put the pieces together and start to listen. You have to listen to your heart, to your artistic muse, you even need to listen to those that are smarter than you. While knowing how is very important, it isn’t the most important; the most important question you must ask yourself is who do you need to become? What do you need to fill fulfilled or even alive? What is it that your heart is calling for? What is that bring your soul the upmost joy?

So you have the educational knowledge, and now you have the heart knowledge. But you need more. Unfortunately for all of us we must come to terms with the fact that there is a society out there that is expecting something from us. I don’t know what that is and I am not sure how to get it right for longer than a few minutes, but I know that it is there. It is there in the fake smiles, the false encouragement, the dark underbelly that exists on each plane that we are forced to traverse. It is there and we have to decide what of it belongs in our lives and what belongs in the imagination we are blessed with.

And if you think this is the easy part – I probably have something to sell you. The hardest part of any journey isn’t what is inside of you; it is the mountains beyond you that are climbed, pushed by requirement, and represented by the conscience of millions. It may take you awhile, even years if we are honest, to figure out who and what you are. Because life should be about solely who and what we determined we can be. Expectations are healthy, even needed. Rules, laws, those pesky details that determine that we are on the right path are needed. They are there and there is nothing you or I can do to completely circumvent them and find our own dance.

But what is the requirement that society has for you? And in this argument let us work with the idea that society can and does represent not only the broader, nebulous form that automatically determines what is beautiful and what is ugly, but the society that is our family, our friends, the guy at the coffee shop that you wish so hard would simply turn around and smile at you. What does he have for you? What requirements does he, in his representation of all that have come before him and all those that will come after, expect of you? Because it is there. Building, constructing, engineering, designing is not about the beauty of your own mind, but what you have to do to be accepted, to be taken seriously, from a world that can not be defined in a simple photo.

But maybe you’re now thinking you shouldn’t change. The price is extraordinarily high. The cost of time and even the outlay you must own is overwhelming. There are those that must be pleased at a high cost, and there are those that must teach you in a world where nothing is free.  Do you sit in your rut wondering if you are choosing the right path? Do you sit in your little world and wonder if you can accept that change you are trying to construct? Do you put your faith not in society however small it might be but in yourself? Its possible that like me you look around and realized for all of its lack, the world that you have constructed to this point is desperately safe. Not safe for your benefit, but safe for your sanity.

You were looking at that change, the construction of something so important to you as a good thing. Maybe like me you were so excited that even knowing you didn’t understand half of what they were teaching you (deer in headlights) you at least were going somewhere. How easy the beginning of the journey can be when a lot of luck isn’t what you need, or even what you pray for. How easy is the beginning of a dream before you realized that the metaphor was so blaringly oblivious everyone saw it but you; it wasn’t a website you were wanting to change, but deep down inside you need to change you.

Not for that coffee shop guy, and not even for another comment on your blog. But because the knowledge of your own stalemate with your soul, your own fight against not society but your own courage tests you and fails you. Because as most of the most beautiful souls in the world will tell you, “It isn’t how you walk through the sunlight, it is how you stand in the darkness.”