Mom,

I feel your warm bright support every day. It helps me so much.

I love our phone calls, when we get deeper into things. It comes through strong that your life has been a hero's journey. ...With the thrills and the sorrows. Grounded.

I love that you're a quintessential night owl (e.g. up until 5am the night before last, haha). My friends that thrive deep in the night... it feels like a party with you owls... easy, playful, no where but here.

The open invitation to call you whenever. ...This is an awesome opportunity, that I'm mostly squandering. Your son Mike, with the stress, with the regimentation. I know I won't have this opportunity too much longer.

Your drive! All life long. Your drive to create. Your rejection of ho-hum complacency. I think that, in my own way, I've inherited that from you.

...It's a blessing and curse.

I throw the hail-mary passes. The anxiety of that. ...For me and for my signifcant other. Sometimes, for some of us, the ball is caught. And it's fucking glorious. Sometimes, the ball hits dirt and the game is lost. Historians record the winners.

I don't work the ball up the field, ten yards at a time. I suppose that's the practical thing to do. The reliable way to "win". The spirits don't watch those games.

But, ugh, the anxiety. The chest-crushing fear, with its shortness of breath and crippling of the mind.

All the same, thank you so much for the inspiration to create. To get something out there, that adds positively to the story. ...The human story and maybe the life story.

I know you write beautifully. You create rich worlds. I want to want to inhabit them. What a shame it'd be, to not do that until after you die. ...And to not be able to genuinely celebrate and discuss your creations together. Ugh, regret.

I've had my head in textbooks for years. The drive to know and master technical things. I'm excited about what I'm slowly building, around energy-equipment installation and related software. I think this will work out. To work for myself, on my terms, _and_ pay the bills!

Striving to live with more space, for stories and for feelings and for gratitude and for touch-the-grass-and-smell-the-wind living. I believe I'm moving towards that. I need to believe this, even if I'd never let myself have it.

I love you Mom. Thank you thank you thank you.

I'm excited to be together this summer. Some laid-back party time, forgetting the bullshit together for a few minutes. Coffee and gin. Let's bump some George Michael.