We go places even as we sleep.  We visit other universes without taking a single step.  We surf the web and experience the world from our office chairs.  We speak to friends and family only to find afterward that we’ve delved to deep reaches and flown to great heights.  In all that we do, we travel without moving.

Thus has been the last ten days for me.  An introspection as it were, a respite, a hiatus from blogging that allowed me to come and go at will sans need to worry about xenogere.  A trip to the stars, a visit to an ocean’s abyss, a walk in places which are alien to me.

I admit…

…after losing my job last November I fell into the depths of depression.  I hated that job.  I needed that job.  The economy isn’t exactly in a condition to offer a great many alternatives.

…at the end of 2009 I “met” someone who quickly placed me atop joy’s pedestal and within six months quickly dashed me against the rocks of reality’s disappointment.

..I fell in love for the first time in six years.  That love soon revealed itself as unrequited.

…the truth of what I’d become since Derek’s death in 2004 hit me in the face, and I discovered I very much disliked the new me.  But after spending so many years forcing personal evolution, finding my way back seemed like an impossible road to navigate.  But I knew it needed to be done.

…so many things changed these past seven plus years since I began blogging.

It rests here: we cross our bridges when we come to them and burn them behind us, with nothing to show for our progress except a memory of the smell of smoke, and a presumption that once our eyes watered.

And somewhere in this crowd of journeys I lost my way.  Paths torched behind me, I straddled the center line because the road ahead was too dark to navigate.  I hid in the shadow of historic smoke and future light because what lurked just beyond the least of these frightened me.  I stood back from what is and what could be so I didn’t have to face the real world.

There is a Latin phrase, “in consiliis nostris fatum nostrum est”, which roughly translates to “in our choices lies our fate.”  Thus is the best definition of my traveling without moving.

So begets the new me, the new xenogere, the new future resting just ahead.

Blogging is not a thing to be terrified of until it falls by the wayside.  No, it’s something that once frightened me but now calls to me like an old friend.

xenogere still lives.