Explosion...

When you're young your growth is more of an explosion. You learn at geometric rates. Exposure is in the fast lane and when you learn to learn you start to believe that you can accomplish anything if only given the chance. The world, in a general sense, appears simple and making a mark is only a question of when; there is no if. You wait for that opportunity, but for some reason, it doesn't knock on your door.

The explosion wanes and when the dust settles you find pieces of yourself strewn about and quickly starting to erode in the harsh environment of the real world. The hypothetical is much more appealing. It's clean, it's pure, it's uncorrupted and fresh. But then the outside elements are introduced: time, desire, doubt, urgency, priorities, etc... This is the dust settling, concealing those nuggets of knowledge that would have once sprouted into a golden calf.

Time seems to speed to a sprint and you're moving as though through water trying to uncover the pieces that you once held dear. You start to feel that tug of the chain of time and grow frustrated that you can't gather everything simultaneously. You grow so angry that you're ready to toss whatever it is you gathered and surrender to the momentum that is no longer in your control.

But you wait. You pause for a moment and question whether that suicide will solve anything. You decide that if you travel that route you will simply feel a failure forever and regret will be your life partner.

So you continue the quest and pick up another piece, but now you polish it as you travel to find the next. You study and catalog it. You compare and contrast. You file and index. You systematize and categorize. You do all of that so that if another coat of dust settles, you can uncover anything you lose with ease. Its a plan for preservation. Preservation of that which you hold so dear... Yourself.