I give thanks for this little postage spot since there are many nights when I cannot sleep and find myself in situations like this...Do I base my life on one day and live it to the fullest potential? Or do I look forward to what may be held in my future stack of cards and play it safe? Nah, screw it I say, and live every day as it is your last...but, but, but nothing I guess, it is up to us, and only us, to control and guide our lives in the direction we want them to go. I used to think that protecting my heart meant sealing it off, but now I think it comes down to just patiently guarding it instead - not closing the door and pasting bricks in front of it because that would not be living everyday as it should be...how do I know what may come around the corner, and what her smile may do to my senses and how her words may effect my conscious thoughts, wants and desires. I know I am a sucker for a beautiful smile, soft skin and close vicinity of touch and taste but aren't we all? Do we all not want that one to fall asleep with, wake up with, and plan our days with? Not so long ago, my future was planned out with rocking chairs all-in-tow but now it is not so, and amazingly enough, I am okay with that. Not so much because I have to be but more so because it now opens the door for the one to walk into my life and make her presence known. I am making myself in the only image I know - my own because that is the one I always knew fit the best. I also know who "the one" for me is, and that has always been...me, of course. How can you give yourself if you are not whole yourself, right? It only makes sense to make yourself first and then they will follow...trust me on this one folks, trust me.

"Whatever ganes are played with us, we must play no games with ourselves." - Ralph Emerson Waldo

Here I am, on a cold winter night, just sitting and thinking...I have all these friends all over this great world - well, okay maybe not ALL over but fairly close - and I find my self thinking of what travelling means to each of us. Having spent the last 5 years on the road, seeing the sights I have, experienced the journeys first-hand, meeting the people I have met and forged bonds of steel...I find myself wondering what comes next? I am here for the next 4 years, in school where I want to be, but I find my mind wondering when I sit down to study, and picture where my feet will lead me on my next flight of fancy. Australia? Nah, I would rather see New Zealand...Uruguay? Nah, I would rather see Egypt...I think my next major trip will be to South America, to check out that land of hot sand and even hotter women; to head to Chile and ride in the Andes mountains, take in the fresh, different air, and just breathe in life...But only after this particular goal is accomplished and not until then. That is what life is all about, is it not? It is to me at the very least. We must soak up all of this life has to offer - to understand what it means to walk sandy beaches, ride off a 20 foot cliff, laugh with new friends, experience the qualities that are up to us to savour. To know the semantics of study, become a scholar so you can initiate, join, and continue any conversation you may become a part of - to know that your comfort zone is so expansive that it is out if sight and just around the next corner waiting to be rebuilt again. Take it in your hands, my friends, take this glorious object we call life and just breathe...Feel it fill your senses, absorb into your internal and escape from your mind like all the stories that scream to escape their dark confines...How they long to be opened and shown to others so that they may share their own, and that we may all laugh...Carpe diem.

"The cost of a thing is the amount of what I call life which is required to be exchanged for it; immediately or for the long run." - Henry David Thoreau