I have struggled for months with you. I’ve pushed to make my blog into something I love, but often I am unable to sustain my momentum. I want to transform this electronic space into synecdoche, a small spinning sphere that imitates life as all good art should. So I’m taking some bold steps to try something new.

I am taking the month of June off from blogging. I will return on or around Independence Day, but that’s a soft deadline. With my return, I plan to have a robust portfolio of my writings, photographs, and songs. I am going to redesign my approach to bring consistent content to the table, but I plan on building flexibility into the schematics so that it will still, after all, be me talking and not some machine. My voice is an important thing to hold onto. My sabbatical will give me time to develop my art instead of feeling pressure to show it the light of day before it is ready to shine.

Although I’m not 100% set on them, let me give you a rough sketch of what my plans are:

• I want to begin writing fiction serials in weekly installments here. As I was growing up as a kid, my grandparents would pull clippings of 6-part stories from the Sunday newspapers and mail them to me. I’ve been in love with the idea since.
• Since I’m pretty big into literature, I want to do a book review / fictitious backstory for main characters / analysis breakdown / segue from thematic elements into how I see them reflected in today’s world / research into the authors or genres themselves / some mishmash of the above for the different works I consume.
• With my music, I’m going to start posting more infrequently, simply because the songs I’ve written recently haven’t been reaching their full potential; once I record them, I find it difficult to change their arrangement. So, while they will come fewer in number, they will be better. I promise you this.
• I want to begin a travel log feature. In case some of you were unaware, I’ve been to five continents over the past 9 years. So my posts will likely consist of photosets and memories of luging in New Zealand and arising to sunrises in Dubai and more of the like. It will give me an opportunity to recall memories and share my vision for where I want to go in the future as well. Wanderlust junkies: you’ll be all over this
• Food. I’m not sure exactly what to do with this one, and it may be sparsely populated at first, but I do cook fairly consistently and I get pretty creative with my creations, so we’ll see if something shapes out. I’ve had some success with this in the past, but anything and everything is subject to change.
• Topic of the week / month. I’m a constant researcher, so maybe I’ll alight upon an interesting topic and add to it as I go. Over the last few weeks, it’s been Maurice Ravel and French Impressionist composers, but next time around it might be the 1990s and why I was born 20 years too late.

Like I said, these are rough sketches of ideas. I think I can add more and delete some as I go. You will almost definitely see poetry somewhere in the mix as well. Please be aware that I am very excited about these plans and can’t wait to return to all of you lovely people. This is a wonderful community and I will miss it dearly in this time, but I need to seek out a better role for me to fit within it.

So don’t be alarmed; I’m not going away forever. But I will be gone until around the 4th of July. Call it a necessary separation. I plan on returning better than ever. Here’s to the future, Tumblr.

There is a special joy that enters a household when one of its members graduates into a new journey. Even I have been impacted and can’t help smiling. This family is happy, and my brother is in high school no longer.

He asked me to catapult him into the couch; he walked away with a scar. We threw machetes at one another. We clubbed each other with four-irons. I shoved him into a rosebush stump, forehead first. Our PlayStation session were intercut with fistfights. Can you tell that we love each other?

Today, my brother and dearest friend in the world flips the tassel on high school and the rest of the adolescent world. I have the hardest and yet most rewarding relationship with him of anyone I know. I absolutely beam with pride, being able to claim him as my flesh and blood.

King is to you, Josh. Can’t overstate how excited I am for your journey into the future.

You woke up one day, sky no longer streaked but rather smothered in hues of ash and slate. You had often used your own low dreams as ballast for your airy spirits; today, everything is grounded anyways, so that mask can go back into storage for a few moments more. Your eyes had shone with defiance, but your fingers now tremble like static creatures on fire. Crinkled faces, tongues of flame, flicker irregularly in and out of your stupor. When my own craggy-toothed smile crept into view, you asked me to dress you up with effects of crimson delicacy. But I couldn’t give you security with my work; fear still dribbled out of your nostrils, emotional influenza. You are craving rhythm in the mundane, and you cannot slow your heart rate.

Arrangements: if you can only tweak the sequence of ceremony you will then be liberated from the monochromatic dance of time unfurling in a vacant space.

There are two reasons why no one writes in the second-person anymore: the reader is resistant to idly-constructed sermons, and the writer wants only to talk about his own soul. What do you mean, I am deconstructing? Well, you are - you have been since you were four years old and the aura of the fake world cast a funny sideways shadow and the jig has been up ever since.

When you find good things, tear down your sheetrocked walls and record them on the 2x4 supports of your stricken heart.

When you unearth lovely wine from the caverns of her emerald-flecked eyes, you have discovered something hard to find.