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Since life first appeared on this earth billions of years ago, there has never once been a gap, an interruption, in the transferal of life. Organisms create new organisms before dying, animals give birth to their own kind before passing on. In this sense, every living thing today is connected to the very origin of life. From prehistoric bacteria to the tips of my fingers. There has only ever been one glowing ball of life spanning hundreds of millions of centuries, creating and expanding before it has the chance to burn out. One day it will blink out of existence of course, it's inevitable, but until then every living thing remains connected through this one entity.

Almost as if life is a huge metaphorical wave spanning through time. Everything is presently living. I guess you could imagine life as related to the ripple effect. There's the formation of life, and from there everything branches out and expands and grows. And, of course, there are millions of dead ends with every second that passes, but at the same time there are just as many organisms reproducing and creating the next generation of life which will continue the aforementioned pulse of life.

Thinking in this grandiose way always makes everything I've ever imagined as important seemingly trivial, but in a way, everything really is. Nothing matters, but in the same breath I can say that everything matters. All is relevant. Everything and everybody will disappear one day, and that will be the end of existence as we know it, but until that actually happens, we all have everything and there's not really much more to the say than that.

2

For the past year or so I've had Robert Frost's poem "Nothing Gold Can Stay" in the back of my mind. I wrote down the poem sometime last year and but often find myself returning to it. I know the poem, it's only 7 or 8 lines long, but for some reason seeing the words written on paper gives them another dimension and feel like it helps to actually see them. It's a good poem to reference simply because it makes you feel better once things you care about are gone. Not to say that I'm always losing the good things, but every now and then some thing slips away and I have to let it go with some level of understanding.

Of course sometimes that "level of understanding" is rather low, but existent nonetheless. It becomes easier to look back on things when you can say to yourself "you know what? Those things were wonderful, but they were never meant to last." It's a romantic approach, I know, but sometimes you just have to be easy on yourself. I give myself shit all the time and it's nice to let myself off the hook every once awhile and shake off the situation as an act of fate. Basically, it makes me feel better and it's good to feel better.

1

I don't want to be any kind of writer, really. When I hear "writer" you think of some great cliche, like there's this self-pride and arrogance surrounding the whole pastime. I have to believe that there are an overwhelming amount of people who enjoy writing about their lives and their experiences without labeling themselves as something they aren't. I'd like to be thought of as such: someone who likes putting thoughts and ideas down on paper without really thinking of anything else. In essence I guess that's really what a writer could be defined as, but like I said before, it' not something I take seriously enough to give myself that title.

It's difficult for me not to write down things that pass through my mind recently. This is part of the reason I started keeping journals a couple years ago, to record things I find interesting and informational. If I don't keep these logs I feel like I'm letting something pass through my fingers and pass fade into oblivion. Once you become aware of yourself and the things you think everyday it almost seems necessary to write it all down. I can't tell you how many brainchildren I've been able to put on paper over the past 24 months. Not that I'm even writing them down for any particular purpose, to have something to go back and reference when your mind is feeling rather sluggish is reason enough for me to take out a pen a couple times a days and jot down a line or two.

To those who don't write or keep some kind of journal: think of all of the great ideas and quotes and theories you've come across over the course of your lifetime that you can not recall now, simply because your brain doesn't have the capacity to remember them. It's discouraging when you realize how much you're forgotten. If you can purchase a notepad, I advise you do. If not because you want to remember that worth remembering then because life is too short to continue living in a way where everything passes by you. The more things I write down, the more I think and challenge ideas and formulate hypothesis. Every thought is a stroke of the brush to the vast white canvas you are when you're first born.

I find it funny and somewhat ironic that I started this article trying to separate myself from the writer cliche, only continuing to lecture on how writing is an important part of life. Then again, maybe that's the point. Writing is vitial to growing as a person and establishing character. Writing is thinking with permanence, a tangible script of that which runs through your mind. This is the very reason I enjoy writing; not because I want to be associated with the "writer" type, but because it's so crucial to my own development. Again, that's probably what most writers would say when asked why they write. Fuck it, I guess I'm a writer. A modest, humble, level-headed writer.

I'm thinking I'm going to start writing more and more, especially on the computer, since it's so easy and doesn't take such a physical toll on my delicate, delicate fingers. It's nice to be be able to write at great lengths. I don't usually do so, for the most part I write no more than a paragraph, but with the introduction of the computer to my life, I'm thinking it'll be real simple. I'll give the passages numbers, because numbers have this inexplicable order to them that just makes them ideal for keeping things organized.