I do not just want something made.

I want to make it.

I know what that means.

But loss is not the only theme I come back to.

The other one is expectation.

A 27-hour drive sounds impossible when you say it all at once.

Break it into four days and it becomes manageable.

Break each day into three or four segments and it becomes something you can actually do.

I needed structure.

I needed a creative outlet.

I needed a place where the things inside me could become something other than symptoms.

I only knew I had seen the invisible machinery.

That changed everything.

As I got older, the movies I loved changed.

Mortality has a way of clarifying people.

For some, it creates a list. Things to accomplish.

Enemies to beat. Titles to earn.

It was the old machinery starting up again.

The best I can do is try to recognize it sooner.

To say, “This is the month.”

The body sees a scoreboard.

The body sees proof that everyone else figured something out.

The body says, “You are behind.”

I started asking a brutal question:

What would the fifty-two-year-old version of me beg the thirty-seven-year-old version to do?

I was thirteen.

What I learned was not that I had a religious calling.

What I learned was that my inner life was dangerous to other people.

I dropped out of the program.

Then I did something worse.

I deleted everything.

You teach yourself that you cannot be counted on.

Then you wonder why confidence feels so slippery.

Religion says: surrender your soul and be made holy.

AI says: surrender your data and be made efficient.

I know the material.

I know the music.

I know the threat beneath the smile.

I know the arguments.

I cannot make the past give me permission.

So I am going to stop asking.

That is freedom.

A loving hostage note.

A threat written in the grammar of prayer.

A dead father’s estate turned into an evangelism tool.

I’m tired of mistaking restraint for virtue.

I’m tired of acting like desire is something I need to defend in court.

I missed the mark. Not for the first time.

It’s stupid. I know that. Maybe that’s the point.

I don’t know what it means.
Maybe it doesn’t mean anything.