Time for a fresh start; a new beginning so to speak. Things have been pretty rocky for the past long while. School nearly killed me, but the light—an ever so small pin hole of white on the horizon—is now finally visible and I think I pretty much fully recovered from the accident back in March (2 tonnes can't keep me down, bitches).

As for school, this semester is my last and it's going to be a hectic one, so it's time to really switch gears and finish things off right. But that's not really my main drive at this point; Art is.

Look, I fell in love with the pencil and paper at an age that I can't even recall anymore. I spent my childhood and a substantial portion of my adolescence under the soft glow of a lamp with nothing but a pad of paper, a Staedtler mechanical pencil, and it's respective white/blue eraser. Somewhere along life and needing to pay rent, buy food, and keep myself in some kind of luxury, I recklessly abandoned my one true passion: Art. Something that shut the world off from all the shit I (and really anyone) has to deal with on a daily basis. I think without that buffer, I paved the road (and quite meticulously I might add) for my own destruction.

Look, I'm someone that needs a buffer, a barrier that protects me from all the greed, jealousy, misery, and even love and happiness life has to offer. I think I feel a little too much. The expression, "When you smile the whole world smiles with you, when you cry, you cry alone" seems apt, but when I cry, I seem to drag the world down with me. Put it this way, I have a lot of contempt for the human race. They are miserly, selfish, and squander their given intellect and compassion on selfish gains. I'm also an extremist. A catalyst. A fucking asshole. A lover. (Can you see the immense conflicts inside me yet?) I'm constantly troubled by a good heart because I often loath humanity. If I was a complete asshole, then I imagine I wouldn't care all that much. But I have good in me and this constant battle between light and dark, yin and yang are eating me up inside. These varying degrees of separation are tearing away all that is me. I've tried to abandon them, wall them up, tame them, live with them... nothing works. So I need to go back to what did: Art. Expression.

Look, I need to forget about all the shit. The petty squabbles. The petty lives that, for whatever reason, can't (or won't, or don't want to) amount to anything great. And I suppose that's fine. If everyone was great, no one would be. But all this shit that I struggle to manage drags me down to the level of a wild dog. A dog that just wants to bark, bite, and maim all other dogs. I need to find my centre, because for as long as I care to remember, it seems like I've been spinning out of control. A world without an axis. Sure, there are moments of stability, even bliss, but higher highs just make for lower lows. And I'm sick of this roller coaster ride to oblivion.

So things are going to change. I want to do what I like from now on, and not what is expected of me. I want to chase my dream, not someone else's. I want to be free again. To regain that childlike look upon the world that knows no bounds. That is not restricted by practicality or convention. I want to look upon the world a will bare fruit, not harbour it. And if this means pulling a 90 degree, then so be it. If that means being radical, being unpredictable, being deviant, then I'm fully prepared for the road ahead. At least I know that if I do this, I won't be paving the road to my own destruction, but rather my salvation. And that, in and of itself, is a comforting thought.

I'm always reminded of Einstein's words: "Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition through mediocre minds."

So throw up your glasses to change, to serenity, and to fucking living your life the way you've always wanted to live your life. If you want to shoot a thought my way, raise a glass up to me in a bar, or smoke a joint on my behalf, then fire, toss back, and light away.

After a while of concession after concession, no matter how small or trivial, you really do find that with each compromise, you lose a piece of yourself... I'm tired of being incomplete... I just want to be whole again.