This is a journey a long time in the making. In some respects this journey is an admission to the failures of my pass that have went untreated, and have since become a nagging sense of unease that I have been unable to shake. I choose instead to bury these problems and take the easy way out by pursuing a dream that wasn’t truly mines. Though it helped to alleviated the symptoms of my problems, it ultimately distracted me from addressing and confronting the root causes. These problems eventually seeped into my work and personal life, leaving me to bear a quiet sadness on my own. Each day I climbed deeper and deeper into this abyss as I suppressed my emotions and sacrificed my life to purse a foreign notion of happiness. With each passing week, I became more exhausted and more disillusioned with this dream, as fluttering moments of happiness failed to mask the deeper sense of discontent that had permeated slowly into my very being. Days, weeks, months began to blend into a mind numbing repetition: a self-imposed prison from which I felt powerless to escape.

    A quote from one of my favorite movies, the Shawshank Redemption put it best. “These walls are funny. First you hate ‘em, then you get used to ‘em. Enough time passes, you get so you depend on them.”  As I looked around my office, I found people in different stages of this quote, from those still early on in their misery to those that wouldn’t know what to do if they didn’t have these office walls. Funny isn’t it that an office cubicle is a self-imposed prison cell that we voluntarily return to day after day without the restrictions of guards or high walls to stop us. Many of us are so involved with the everyday demands of life, the need to maintain our addictions and perceived needs that there are no needs for physical walls only mental ones. An imprisonment of the mind, can be harder to escape than any physical prison. 

     I tried to escape these walls only to make excuses that seemed reasonable and logical. It’s a recession, I should be happy with even having a job, it will get better if I can stick it out, I need the experience, I am happy, I am happy, I AM NOT. At some point in our life, we have to face the hard fact that we might have made a mistake, and make a conscious decision not waste anymore precious time pursuing a path that doesn’t lead to what you’re seeking.

     I honestly don’t know if I will find what I am looking for on my travels, or if this is ultimately the right decision, but I know it is a journey that I must take. For the first time in years I feel a sense of unease not cause by unhappiness, but by the prospects and excitement at a journey that’s not known or certain. I look forward to a road of wonderment, where I have chance to recapture the confidence, the love for life and unspoken belief in myself that I had before. As I sent out on this journey, I will be keeping this blog as a reflection for future record and to remind me of the wonders I see and the people I meet along the way.

Happy travels and bless the road that leads me to you.