No nickel, no dime, no quarter, pennies extinct

Why are we alive? 

Why am I alive?

Can I even ask that at my age, much closer to death than the time I first drew breath?

I'm not sure. I know it is best I continue to prioritize the importance of each one, in and out, replenishing from the world around me as I go to make sure I have the sustenance to do everything else.

Am I alive to breathe? To process? To act like a mollusk to filter my experience as I can, so much more advanced with a brain that I know can dream because I've documented it in journals and occasionally in blog posts.

I find sometimes I alive and on a frequency that offends most people. As in, I don't know how to modulate it all of the time and it comes across as if I am unhinged. Perhaps, but all I can see are the sliding doors all of the time, possibilities that don't come to pass because I've already decided how I am going to act.

Cautious.

Conservative.

Anything to preserve the isolation that brings me sanity. 

The older I get the more I realize I just am not intended to be around other people. I know what I want to do all of the time, and that is to do the work I have chosen to do. I don't know anyone else who shares this impulse, the one to get better and better about writing even if it means making decisions that pull me away from the rest of the world.

Still, the sun rises and still the sun sets, never still at all really. 

I feel a calm inside of me that wasn't there before. A sense that any sense of gravity is always going to come from within me if I make sure I stay true to the spirit of the last six years and continue to see this venture through. I so want to plan for another way, but walking around this evening I had this amazing sense I'm supposed to be here, even if I know I'll be alone for the duration. 

But I'm not alone. I am aware that many people read my work, the work I spend my life doing because I love the stories and I love that I managed to get myself to this point. I don't hear from a lot of people and all of this is absolutely maddening sometimes, but I know it is appreciated.

And that's going to have to be enough.

This is somewhat public even though I don't publicize it. I just wanted to write something positive on what could have been a really negative evening for me. I choose me over any other option, because that's what a lifetime of believing in the humanities has enabled me to do.

I wish others had that, and I can see in my own life stories I need to tell.

Just not here in this silly place.