Pieces of Yourself

 I've written a lot of missives on the internet since I started using it in the Dark Ages.  Most of them are still out there - and I have this tendency to be very open and honest about what I'm feeling in that moment, so of course there are some personal things I look back on and I have to cringe about a little.  Some of them, well, were written in very prominent and public places. But that's how I felt at the time - I have to remind myself that no one is perfect all the time, and sometimes things you mean with all your heart change over time.  But there's nothing like having things you've written be on one of the largest media conglomerates in the world, and lingering there long after everything you wrote about kind of crashed and burned.

But that's who I was then. The guy who wrote that still lives in my heart, but most decidedly in the past. And I'll never be upset I wrote and shared those things when I did.  Too often we float through life not saying the things we want to say.  Maybe it won't mean anything in the future.  You hope it will, but there's always the chance it won't.  But I know "the risk always lives". Sometimes you roll the dice and the outcome stays with you.  Other times, it was a beautiful moment that fades away like so much else in your life.  But the important thing was that you were there, you did it, you etched it in stone, and then cast that stone into the river of life.  Most people just sit on the river bank, wishing they went down the river on a raft with Tom and Huck.  I know I built that raft and took a ride on the mighty Mississippi - if only for a while, and that it was unforgettable and something that shaped who I am today.