What makes life worth living? What is it that makes a person excited to wake up every morning?
I have spent the past couple of months pondering exactly those questions. It would be so easy to say that I have this figured out, but every great thinker, since human beings began recording their thoughts, has pondered this and will most likely continue doing so long after me. The only thing that I have in common with any great thinker is that I am learning my own answers to these questions.
Where oh where to go from here?
The Old Familiar Place of course!
You know where it is.
It never left you,
Nor did you leave it.
Welcome home!
2026 has been a season of great upheaval and loss. At times, I have felt like Prometheus presenting my liver for life to devour daily. Only for it to regenerate nightly and keep the cycle repeating. But unlike Prometheus, I have been able to free myself from the chains I was left shackled in atop the mountain. While I will carry the scars of this period for the remainder of my life, I now look at them and smile.
My first novel, The Phoenix of Eden’s Rest is actively querying. I am hard at work on my second novel We Have Your Soulmate or WHYS, as I have come to call it. There is a forthcoming poetry publication that I am keeping close to my chest until it goes live with Collateral Literary Journal. I recently started a new part time role that has been a dream of mine for so long. A new violin found its way to my hands, and I am proceeding with lessons to ensure I devote myself to it fully this time. And finally, I am once again in a good headspace to return to reading and book reviews.
The irony that so many things that bring me happiness have flourished after this season of chaos is not lost on me. destruction is never pleasant but sometimes it is necessary. Like a prescribed burn upon a land that has become stagnate in growth, the flames make way for new life. the truest version of a phoenix that may ever be seen outside of mythology and stories.
What I have learned is we must each be our own fire starter. Instead of trying to rush forward and hope growth follows, sit in the silence and ignite the spark. I will not lie; it is not pleasant holding a torch on everything you have tried to keep in darkness. It is comforting to turn away or shield your eyes. But comfort is a lie. It is an illusion that keeps you stuck in darkness and ensures nothing new ever grows.
So, to return to the questions, I will give you my answers. These are mine alone, maybe they will ring true for you as well, but I encourage you to find your own. The baroque paintings hanging on my walls, the notebooks full of drifting and surgical notes, working in the humanitarian ecosystem, and never letting a day go by where I do not write or read, that’s my happiness. Being able to do these things every day, are what make me excited to wake up every morning.
What is yours?
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