"No symapthy for the devil; keep that in mind. Buy the ticket, take the ride... and if it occasionally gets a little heavier than what you had in mind, well... maybe chalk it off to forced conscious expansion: Tune in, freak out, get beaten."

-HST

I'm just going to start going for it, I think. I want to be that strong type of person who takes risks, dives headfirst, is brave and independent, and confident. I would hate to live a whole life without risk. I don't recall ever really making any stupid, impulsive decisions (maybe romantic?) in my life. Time to change that. As Mary Oliver said, I don't want to end up having merely visited this world. I want to inhale it deeply, dig into it with my hands and find it wedged under my fingernails. I want to wake up next to it before the sun, covered in dew and curiosity.

I am nearly 25 years old. At the quarter mark. I have decided there is no longer time for excuses, for time lost because of fear or over-analyzing. Now is the time for great lunges, leaps of faith, Hail Mary passes. I want to remember making an active choice to stop getting in my own way and to start propelling myself forward with the force of my own momentum.

As a birthday present to myself, I am going to register for the travel writing and photography courses at MatadorU. What the hell? I've never tried to do anything at all with my writing. Not that it amounts to much, but I don't have any other marketable skills, so... why not? What's $350-$600 bucks in the grand scheme of things? I want to get a job that allows me to travel, preferably encourages me to do so; here's an option. I am also going to book a flight to North Carolina in time for the Iron Festival and start networking around Penland to see if I can't get an internship in the photography or iron department, maybe drive to Asheville or Boone to see what employment possibilities look like there. And finally, I'm going to put in some applications for jobs teaching English in Southeast Asia or South America.

All forward motion counts.