"You wanna fly, you've got to give up the shit that weighs you down."

Writing.

It's what I am meant to do. As much as I loved math and computer science in school, once I settled into my first newspaper class and learned to find a voice, I knew I'd found my love. Which is what has made the past five-plus years so bloody frustrating.

I've always been a perfectionist. I let projects go unfinished because they don't come out looking like the pipe dreams I've built in my head. I push away people when shit gets messy, in part because I'm an only child and in part because I learned at a very young age that I am the only person I can trust to truly take care of my heart. I teeter back and forth on epic life goals because life is messy and messy is scary.

But that stops today. My voice has been trying to escape through my keyboard again since I left ESPN, but no blog subject has been "perfect", so I've put the kibosh on more than a dozen ideas after a post or two in the past five years. I have so much to say, but it doesn't fit into any perfect "niche" mold that I could turn into a business, build a following and make my actual job... because the only mold it fits into is me.

So I'm committing myself to this blog. What is it about? Rediscovering my voice, in whatever ways I decide to do that. There will be hikes and food and friends and hockey and weightlifting and whatever magical shit my heart desires. It's going to be messy and I'm going to be scared. But I'm going to embrace it and everything will be okay.

There's no other option.

I have to write again.