Essays On Life At This Moment

Introduction

Hello, there! How have you been?

I write these words for you who are reading this, as well as for me - this me that I haven't seen for a long time. Too long, I almost forgot this part of me existed.

I gradually found myself resurfacing after finishing Evenstar, as though I was seeing me peek out from behind a tree in a forest I have long ago stopped visiting. Having left myself there, I ventured out into the world to create a different me - one suitable for the workplace, molded into a modern-day slave, an instrument of corporate industry. Instead of the forest, the sunlight and flower fields in the daytime and the canopy of stars at night, I was confined to concrete, air-conditioned rooms for over eight hours a day. These were beautiful rooms, and it was financially rewarding work, but I had lost something valuable in the process. Too tired in the evenings to even look up at the stars, I turned to the internet to relax and lull myself to sleep. As the years progressed, I no longer remembered who I had lost and it seemed that this life was the only life I knew how to live.

It is quite a good life, actually, when all physical needs are met, when there is food on the table, a sturdy roof over our heads, money for things and travel, savings for medicine and emergencies and going to the doctor or the vet. But I remember now that I am not only made of flesh and bone, also of soul and spirit. Feeding only the body, the soul dies little by little. 

Is there a way to balance everything? Can I go back to how I was before? Before the daily grind, even before school took me away from being free to watch the day go by, or bury my head in a book until the sun crosses the sky to the west horizon. These days the woods of my childhood beckon me to my first love, and I wonder if I have the courage to answer its call - to write again, as I wrote when I was a child.

This collection of essays will be a venture of sorts, of me trying to go back to that forest, to the trees, to the stars. I hope I will find that person peeking from behind a tree and befriend her again until we become merged into a new me. Maybe you are facing a similar journey. Let's find the answers together.