Alchemic Verse

It’s been seven years on the 4th since my ex asked me to marry him. Seven years later, my life is unrecognizable and nowhere near where the woman that replied yes thought this would go.

It’s been a year since I started blogging about Life Yeet 2025, a collection of changes in all aspects of my life, an open air opera of internal and external shifts that left the protagonist irrevocably altered. Life Yeet 2025 extended well into the first half of 2026, the extended ripples of a string of causation starting somewhere around the moment in July 2024 when standing on my deck and gazing at the moon, I said “Well, shit” aloud to no one in particular.

In this past year, I sold my house, gave away some two thirds of what I owned, I got divorced, I sang in front of other people for the first time in years, I started writing again. I cut off nearly all of my hair trying to remove the years they represented and the hands that touched it, I cried on the floor of showers in the ever-changing backdrops of places I stayed, I screamed at the sky.

I left behind a life that no longer felt mine. I felt, experienced and learned things I thought beyond my potential.

Last 4th, I was sitting cross-legged on a bare concrete patio in Arkansas listening to my neighbors on every side yip and shoot at the sky. This year, I sat cross-legged over my laptop on another borrowed couch listening to my neighbors on every side yip and shoot at the sky.

In that year, I drove through 16 states as part of 23k miles of driving, much of which included circular, destination-secondary drives to sing, or to feel some semblance of movement when feeling so stuck.

The June road trip I was preparing for in my last blog was the first in that year where the purpose was not to move living arrangements, but to celebrate another year of life in a grand expression of free will by packing up the pup and driving thousands of miles for a concert.

Even just one year ago, I would never have considered that in the realm of possibility. A million reasons why it’s a bad or impractical idea would have cycled, fear circling each excuse like sharks, until the opportunity was lost and regret replaced rumination. This trip was not on the Bingo card – none of the last year was.

The roadtrip itself provided sights and experiences forever enshrined in my memory – roads where no businesses and no other cars would be spotted for an hour or more of driving, towering windmills and pumpjacks, wildflowers so deeply scarlet that the brushy grass hugging ripples in the land appeared to be pooling with blood. I navigated narrow desert canyon roads that eventually led to the feet of mountains that displayed the spectrum of seasons in their reach to snow-capped peaks. The road gifted hours of these sights which, in the sensory cocktail of windows down and music loud, had my heart aching with delight.

Each place I stayed offered a unique backdrop – a tiny home in an industrial city, an alpine cabin on a dirt road town at the base of a mountain, an artsy, austere urban renovation… a duplex in a neighborhood fighting the environmental and public health impacts of data center construction, a bungalow tucked at the side of a two-street speck on the map.

Each experience I had offered a unique opportunity – a solo concert seeing one of my favorite bands for the 3rd time in a span of nearly 20 years in an extraordinary venue, a trip to a museum where the only pace and interest level I had to accommodate was my own, the true anniversary of the minute of my birth in a hot tub dancing under the stars.

With the posture of a prawn shrimping over my keyboard, I reflect that it’s been one year and I still don’t know where I belong. I still don’t know exactly how I want to alchemize this experience into a life and a legacy I can be proud of. While this one year has seen more growth than the six prior, maybe more, I still have a long way to go from where I am to where I want to be. I still struggle with consistently making choices that honor who I am becoming, aside from the overarching choice to simply keep trying.

It’s been quite the voyage so far. Thank you for taking it with me. Please be sure to stretch your legs, get a snack, and use the facilities at this rest stop; we’ve got miles more to go.