In case any of you were wondering, the main reason for my trip to Chicago was to attend this event.

Well, in case any of you were an IRS auditor from the future, anyway.

But here's the reason I really made this trip: to see my people. My people whom I've known a lifetime, or half a lifetime, or a third of a lifetime. And my people whom I mostly or only know from our time together online, I came to see you, too.

It's lonely out there, and tough, and these are strange times to be a human being on the planet. In fact, it's so crazy out there right now, with so many people running around like characters out of a Lewis Carroll story, that it becomes all the more important to hunker down with one's homies and get the truth via that mirror:

Yes, you're okay.

Yes, you're sane (or at least, crazy in the good way).

Yes, it's kinda wild out there now.

Everyone knows how hard it is to get tone right over the internet. And the phone helps, but really, it's a measure of last resort, and a far, far better tool once you already have some grounding in reality with the person. I'm here to do the bonding in person, because that's what people who live in the third dimension do: they see, touch, hear and, depending on how close they are or how the spirit is moving them, taste and smell each other.

I can't begin to describe how difficult my life has been these past several months without A PLAN. Because (a), historically, I've operated under one; and (b) when I've done, I've done well. Even if I hated what I was doing, I at least knew why I was doing it (money, ambition, fame) and what to do. Now, I'm down to a mission statement, and one of your spazzier ones at that: "To be a joyful conduit of truth, beauty and love."

Some business plan, huh?

I had a new (internet) friend write me recently to ask if maybe I was work-impaired. I guess I am, but not in the way (I think) he meant. I've got all the work I can handle right now, being me and figuring out how I make myself useful to the universe. It's work I chose, and that meant I had to stop some other kinds of work, i.e., the paying kind, to do it. If my father was here, he'd tell me I was crazy like my mother, and then ask if I needed money.

For the record, I'm not and, for now, I don't. I am trusting that if I work hard at what I know I can do, write stuff down, illuminate darkish corners, make people laugh a little, the rest will work itself out.

It is a leap of faith, the stopping. But the alternative, to go and go and go, and be stopped by whatever rock drops on my head in 10 or 20 or, if I'm lucky, another 47 years, is no longer an option.

I gotta be me. Nonstop, 24/7/365.

And now, off I go to meet a few new old friends...

xxx c

Image by emdot via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.