Sunsets only paint the sky at twilight.

We are designed to be creatures that live by redemption. We don't just fall and then stay down, but we learn to be resilient. As babies, we learn to pick ourselves up after shedding a tear or two. As toddlers, we learn to scale walls and toy blocks again, even after scraping our knees over and over. As teenagers we run with our hormones and then learn to scale back when we realize we've let ourselves be too vulnerable. As college students we try doing things we never thought we would, and later learn that we didn't have to do them to feel comfortable in our own skin. And as adults we just wade our way through the torrential waters of life, unsure what we'll step on, or whether we should take our wading boots off, but somewhere we figure out that what came to pass was part of what made the present exist - whole, utterly empty, but still worthy of living through. 

Sometimes I look at where I've been in the last 24 months and I feel that I've done nothing. I'm afraid this is a feeling I'll harbor forever - knowing I am only human, and no matter what I do it will never be everything I wanted to have done. But that's not the point... I don't think. Today I realized that the last 24 months yielded so much more than I allowed myself to see. There was so much life in the time that passed. I am not even that person anymore.  Yet, I didn't need to reinvent myself to find discoveries. I just needed to constantly move, to constantly grow...to keep writing even when it felt useless, to keep searching even when I felt lost, to keep living in the best way I could even when I felt like I was just doing the running-man in place and going nowhere. Because after 24 months I think I've learned that I covered a lot of distance. And not in the usual measurements that I'm tempted to these days - in record deals, superficial praises or gigs acquired, but in emotional growth, life experiences, healing, finding love, learning to love, work achievements, traveling, meeting new friends, finding new music, and other things that can't be put into words (I'm finding I can't put much into words of late). 

Isn't that the beauty of life, after all?