Chapter 1

Beginnings are wonderful and beginnings are difficult. What will this second year look like? Can I raise the bar higher and expect more and better of myself? Can I do this in the noisy droning distracting world I currently live in? Can’t I do it without props and help each day? Can I dig deep enough, live deeply enough, to find this within myself? Can I create the space and margin to actually make this happen? Does it demand more structure? More planning? An outline? Perhaps it simply just needs a beginning, a start. 

So here we are in Shelbyville Kentucky, on our second road trip of the year, the year of Coronavirus where little is certain, plan-able, nor predictable. This is the start. The beginning. A fresh effort at more. Today since I am in a hotel room by myself, I have the silence, the mental space to do this. But will I continue when I am back in the frothing Earl-world? Will I continue when things aren’t going well and I don’t want to write anything? Will I continue when my mental and spiritual well is so dry that there is nothing to write, minutes or hours ticking by while that blank page sits there?

In the face of all these questions and doubts, there is still the chance to do something new. Do something better, or bigger. And new and virginal untested unchartered landscape to paint this coming year, if I have it within me. Honestly I don’t know if I do, and then again I will never know if I do if I don’t try. So here is to new beginnings and fresh starts.