Welcome back.  It's April of 2015.  I don't remember how long it's been.  I'm tying on a mechanical keyboard.  I don't wonder if I can fill my gas tank.  I drink bourbon for relaxation on the weekends.  It has been a long, long time.

Reflection is an interesting thing.  I once learned that the best way to write something well is to write it in the heat of emotion, put it in a drawer, and not look at it for months upon months.  Years, if possible. Distance.  Do you want to write something well?  You need distance.

Isn't that ironic?  You need emotion and soul to write.  You need distance and objectivity to tell if it's worth anything.  So you write.  And you wait.  And you write (I hope).  And you wait.  And you wait.

And you find you blog three years later.  These perspectives and thoughts are no different.  Nothing speaks to your soul like the words from your soul that you yourself wrote.  You tear up.  Maybe it's that bourbon.  Maybe it's the truth.

Let's be real here.  You have become complacent.  You had to spell-check the word complacent.  You haven't written.  You haven't thought the same.  You have forgotten.  You are blessed.  You don't HAVE to remember the anguish.  Sartre's existentialism as a humanism.  Derrida's Deffierance. Your soul is stagnant.  Your soul is unchallenged.  Your soul is distracted.  Your soul is a proxy.  You watch the challenges from a distance.  You have built incredible walls, of financial stability and daily monotony and stability and cynicism and projection.  Reflect.  Look upon yourself.  Know thyself, you coward.  You master of distraction.  The starvation of perspective, the reality of survival is lost on you.  Once, you knew that you had it good.  That it was easy to live, and therefore, you at a RESPONSIBILITY to use your mind, to wonder, to struggle, and to suffer (as futile as that word is when you have a mattress and fridge at your HOME) and to strive for understanding, comprehension development.

Think.

Write.

Listen.

Listen.

Listen.

Don't stop listening.

Do you hear me, self?

Don't stop listening.

To the self-absorbed, listen.

To the unheard, listen.

To the proud, listen.

To the brave, listen.

To the brilliant, listen.

To the idiots, listen.

To the kind, the friends.  To those with your best interest in mind, listen

To your elders, listen.

Do your youngers, listen.

To those you despise, those about whom your bile duct rages, remember the patience of a former, entitled life, and LISTEN.

Listen.

Listen.

Listen.

Does this word mean anything still?

Hear words.

Hear hearts.

Listen, before casting judgement.

Listen, before hating or loving.

Listen.

Listen.

Listen.