I'll take it from here.

I've been offline for a while. I've taken on responsibilities for organizations I enjoy, worked a lot, started a new relationship, prepared to move into a new apartment, traveled the country, and perhaps most influentially, ended an old relationship. All of these things cut into my ability to be online the same amount of time I used to be.

But even more is ahead - more time constraints, that is - and even more importantly than that is the question of whether or not I will ever be online the same way I used to be.

I had a plan. Maybe it wasn't written down on paper, and it wasn't even fully formed, but I was on a path, and it was a shared path. It was five years, after all. Five years. Who in the world stays with someone for five years and doesn't change the shape of their life to complement the other's? Who stays with someone for five years and doesn't start assuming that that face and that voice and that life is going to stay in a decisive role for the future?

Now I've lost that plan. I was forced off of that path, told it wasn't the one for me all along. I'm on a new path, and there are bends in the road I can't see where they go, and forks I can't tell the end destination of either side. I get to decide what happens next, and I don't have to weigh anyone else's thoughts or feelings into my decisions. From decisions as small as what to have for dinner, to whether I'll go to London this summer, to whether I should drown my problems in drinking heavily, it's all on me. Exciting, isn't it? I control my destiny. It's a headrush. I don't have to give a damn about anyone. It's all I want, I want, I want.

But as stated in one of my favorite songs from one of my favorite musicals, "It made me feel excited - well, excited and scared." Yeah, I have the reigns to this carriage, and I can ride it right off of a cliff if I want to. The future is open with infinite possibilities, and an infinite number of them will lead me to hurt. An equally infinite number will lead to happiness. Infinite numbers will seem like pain at first and end in joy, and vice-versa. And there's no way to know. No one to tell me the future. Friends can advise, analogies can be made, previous experiences related. But ultimately no one knows, and the only decision-making criterion I can fall back on is whether or not I thought something through and made the decision well enough to justify it to myself later if it turned out to be wrong. Also important, if I can learn from the wrong decisions enough to shape my future decisions towards better results.

These are the things keeping my mind occupied while I pack up the memories of my former life and prepare to start the new one.

I'll take it from here.

I've been offline for a while. I've taken on responsibilities for organizations I enjoy, worked a lot, started a new relationship, prepared to move into a new apartment, traveled the country, and perhaps most influentially, ended an old relationship. All of these things cut into my ability to be online the same amount of time I used to be.

But even more is ahead - more time constraints, that is - and even more importantly than that is the question of whether or not I will ever be online the same way I used to be.

I had a plan. Maybe it wasn't written down on paper, and it wasn't even fully formed, but I was on a path, and it was a shared path. It was five years, after all. Five years. Who in the world stays with someone for five years and doesn't change the shape of their life to complement the other's? Who stays with someone for five years and doesn't start assuming that that face and that voice and that life is going to stay in a decisive role for the future?

Now I've lost that plan. I was forced off of that path, told it wasn't the one for me all along. I'm on a new path, and there are bends in the road I can't see where they go, and forks I can't tell the end destination of either side. I get to decide what happens next, and I don't have to weigh anyone else's thoughts or feelings into my decisions. From decisions as small as what to have for dinner, to whether I'll go to London this summer, to whether I should drown my problems in drinking heavily, it's all on me. Exciting, isn't it? I control my destiny. It's a headrush. I don't have to give a damn about anyone. It's all I want, I want, I want.

But as stated in one of my favorite songs from one of my favorite musicals, "It made me feel excited - well, excited and scared." Yeah, I have the reigns to this carriage, and I can ride it right off of a cliff if I want to. The future is open with infinite possibilities, and an infinite number of them will lead me to hurt. An equally infinite number will lead to happiness. Infinite numbers will seem like pain at first and end in joy, and vice-versa. And there's no way to know. No one to tell me the future. Friends can advise, analogies can be made, previous experiences related. But ultimately no one knows, and the only decision-making criterion I can fall back on is whether or not I thought something through and made the decision well enough to justify it to myself later if it turned out to be wrong. Also important, if I can learn from the wrong decisions enough to shape my future decisions towards better results.

These are the things keeping my mind occupied while I pack up the memories of my former life and prepare to start the new one.