I am amazingly simple in some aspects. The complexity resides in one’s ability to stop looking for the key when the door is already open.

Desire. That is how you attract me, that is how you keep me.

Sure there are layers to the details and desire alone is not going to make it happen, but without the demonstration of desire you can never get there.

It was a long week, and the upcoming one will also be long. I got this though.

I am completing the process to move from temp to perm and while this is still not the place I will land for good, the mediocre of the moment doesn’t erase the good it is providing.

With the arrival of October comes the celebration of my 50th rotation around the sun…..AND BOY ARE MY LEGS TIRED! yes bad dad joke.

#also with it comes Halloween and the battle to not give into the darkness of memories.

I explained to the little one that being here gives me the opportunity for something…..else. This place and the people do not know the story. While on one hand that makes me have to carry the weight alone, it also gives me the freedom of putting it down a little. I am not required to soothe the pain of others who know, while also bandaging my own wounds.

2019 was the first time I gave myself permission to live and enjoy my birthday, and that created not just Philly vs Everybody but also the relationship which dropped me here at this table I type at currently.

2022 I get to choose how to celebrate for the first time without having to worry if my joy will be shit on by someone so small that they cannot celebrate if they did not contribute. Yep. That happened and it’s one of those little things – okay not little – I brushed away and didn’t share because it might color how the world – and ME – saw him.

I swallowed it whole, as my fault. It was not.

I still carry the gifts of that day with me, in more ways than one. The apron is sitting behind me right now, and the watch band is a daily reminder of what can happen when you allow love without qualifications.

The other gift I try to also wear daily, the choice to remain small or live large.

Being in scramble and hustle mode since May has slowed the living large but it has not stopped the living. In November, the 1st of the month will no longer be as ominous and from there out? Well stay tuned.

First comes 50 – and the crown.