I approach my 26^th birthday with my 27^th in mind. I feel the shaky fragile vigor of emptiness, the quiet whisper of boundless options.  I have clawed my way to the starting line and it is only a starting line but at least I have an idea of the length I will have to go.  No more fitful fleeing and starting over and over.  I will pace myself for a humble incremental increase so that I am better off in a year from now.  Whereas my impatience has led me nowhere. I graduated over three years ago and I am still pushing my credit card limit from border to open border.

It is lonely in the rarefied air of un-distraction.  These sober ocean views and days of solitude in my uncle’s Costa Rica mansion still echo with the clamor of Colombia as the dense blur of experiences there have the chance to bubble up and are sifted.  I sift and rake my six months there, trying neither to avoid nor obsess over memories of the girl, as well as keep an eye out for that demon nostalgia.  She has not yet haunted me much, but give her time and a restless present and she is sure to make her rounds.

 And I do not pretend to have such a hopeful grip on selfhelpfulness so as to predict or advise myself.  But 25 was a good year all things considered.  I lived in Cabo for three months, started my first digital nomad job slanging CBD on Facebook, cleared my cystic acne up, started dating somewhat consistently for the first time, lost weight, reduced drinking, had a relationship, albeit in Spanish and it only lasted four months, but took someone into consideration before myself nonetheless.  I stayed abroad the longest I ever have (with just a quick visit home for the holidays), Mexico for three months, Colombia for six months, now in Costa Rica  for a few weeks, and back on to the South of Mexico on Friday just in time for my birthday.  I invested in Crypto (a miniscule amount but skin in the game), practiced the Wim Hom breathing method, filled in my beard a little more, and maybe my Spanish is even a little better. I regained the ability to nollie heelflip, though the maneuver has forever scarred my crotch (emotionally).   I started teaching English and enjoying it.  I realized that teaching is something to care about, not merely a breezy back up plan to fall back on condescendingly.  Every endeavor is harder and more admirable than it appears from afar.  These are not boasts. These are humble concessions in the way of progress for my default, self-deprecating mind.

 I am still an emotional mess and I honestly hope in my 26^th year I can  attain health insurance and see a therapist, but when I consider the circular pit of neuroticism and alcohol I was entangled in from adolescence into adulthood, it is a miracle I have made so many strides on my own since turning 25.  Sure, I have no career to be proud of yet, I am in debt, I am single, and if I skip one day of exercise I start to look like a hung-over Alec Baldwin, but I feel that 26 is the starting line of the slow race, the real chance.  No more pathetic wayward sprints and plunges, he said before immediately regressing into his old ways.

I am well aware that there is a foreboding glint in my audacious optimism.  This is not my first sweeping declaration.  Of course the fits and starts will still be a part of my day to day, but I hope to slowly weed out more and more these reactionary defense mechanisms, these hysterical hatchings of plan-B’s, endless throwing-ins of the towel, perpetual packing of my bags.

 To respect the disorder and chisel towards progress.  To meet at the top of stable chaos that roaring silence, that miracle of making things happen, that is this Hero’s Journey.