Revisit

Oh my. Dear friend. It's been so long. I can practically feel the dust.

I've come back now, a lot older and maybe a bit wiser. Warmer. A bit more careless, to be honest. But also a lot more forgiving.

And slightly more accomplished; I can now spell my name with three extra letters: PhD.

I swear, the biggest difference from before to after is that everyone keeps asking me how it feels. 

It feels... Wow. But you know, not in a loud way. It's a quiet wow, the kind where you beat yourself up trying to climb to the top of a high tree or rock to see the view. Once you're up, you forget that you did all that fighting and clawing to get there, all you can take in once you arrive is -- the view. And you see where you came from, and kind of have to give yourself a thumbs up for being tough enough to get there, but still it's no big deal really. In myself I have developed trust, rather than pride.

But all it did was make me finally relax, and realize somewhere that the efforts I put in, earnestly and sometimes with little hope of finishing on time/gracefully/impressively, are the reason I can look at my accomplishment, acknowledge that it's the biggest thing I've made or done, and still know that it's just a beginning, and a testament to the fact that I have stamina.

That's gonna make it easier to cope with life in general from now on, I think.

Here's to hard knocks healed, and bitter medicine swallowed. I am well now. So very well.