Reflections in the rear-view mirror.

They are closer than they appear, supposedly.

For me, there is truth in that.

No matter how hard I put the pedal to the metal, there it is.

The past, as much as we try to distance ourselves from it. It's always there.

I've been running at maximum RPM's and sucking down the Octane-laden fuel for a while now. That fuel is primarily Ethanol based.

I need to put the past farther behind. Yet it creeps up on me all the time.

I guess I can't escape it.

I try to deny that what my life was supposed to be, versus what it is...is irreconcilable.

The one beneficial thing all of this provides, however, is the impetus and motivation to keep trying harder.

In my writing, and in my photography.

I told a friend just yesterday....If I was in a relationship, in love, had my own home and was happy...this book would never get written.

I now understand the lament of many much more successful authors than I can ever hope to be.

They need the connection with pain and loss to express themselves, and to find that creativity. When all is good in the world, and we are loved and content and happy, we lose the edge.

It is only in the wanting of it. The loss of it. The regrets. The pain and the wistfulness.

That we can seek the best inside of us, to defy those things which we held so dear, and which elude us.

As Dante said, so eloquently.

"There is no greater sorrow than to recall in misery a time when we were happy".

That sorrow allows us to find the beauty and good in the world, because our soul thirsts for it. Because we crave it so intensely.

I find that in my photography. In being out there. In writing the words that express how it feels.

The price for being able to be our best, means having to experience life when things are at their worst.

I'll glance out the window and see the past gaining on me. It never seems to disappear.

But that doesn't mean that I won't push the pedal to the floor and find that starlight in the trees, lining the road ahead.