When I was growing up, I received the cut-rate version of everyone else's toys. Video game systems were purchased at Radio Shack. Clothing came from one of the many odd-lots or discounted super stores. Before Target was established, K-mart was the mecca for all things.

I knew my family didn't have the kind of money that was all around us in our affluent Columbus suburb. I was aware I was living in the "slums of Arlington". And apart from some serious issues with not being heard or witnessed as a child and young adult, I had a pretty happy time of it. I didn't want for anything, and I quietly accepted the fact that I'd probably end up playing my Tiger Electronic Football game while other kids talked about how exciting Intellivision was.

I had my own game that was far more valuable than anything that could be purchased for me, and I played this game alone for days, weeks, years. All it required was a bag of army men, some el-cheapo Micronaut figures, maybe some GI Joes, or barring that, popsickle sticks and glue. The stories that I told myself were epic, complicated, involved. Sometimes they required leaving the house and finding the proper setting. Often they were helped along by rapidly flowing curb gutter water after a rain. I would incorporate my already blossoming pagan spirituality in the tales, all the hours I spent walking the woods or talking to the water, knowing that I could never share these experiences with anyone else, that the only way to share them was to fictionalize them.

There were bad guys and good guys, and the good guys were often flawed and somewhat misunderstood, and the bad guys were unrelenting masterminds. In the end, the good guys won, but not without a struggle that would last hours and span continents and usually come with a cost.

When I was in fourth or fifth grade, I was asked to write a one to two page fiction piece on Egypt. Instead, I wrote ten to twenty pages that involved, among other things, how the Pyramids came to be, how the Sphinx lost its nose, how the Nile river was named, and what happened to cause the Nile valley to be as it is today. There was also a hippo, and for some reason some kind of flying machine. I'm fairly sure that gods played a part.

I got an A+. The teacher said it was one of the best things she'd ever read from her students. She then lost all the papers from that assignment, and so I never got to see her comments or read my story again. But what I remember from this was one of the very first times that my world and that my creative mind was valued, that I could see some kind of worth in my lost afternoons and maybe some kind of validity in my solitude. As a child so vastly different from everyone I knew, so alien in his own family, it impacted me and changed my life.

As an adult, it's been very hard to value these things and to allow myself the complete open heart and spirit to let myself go. I resist the practice that would keep that energy flowing regularly. I get lost in bill paying and coding, in spinning about cats or health or love or money. I overbook or I distract frequently. I don't give these spaces the same priority and promise that I give other things. In December of each year, I go crazy with Christmas purchases for my family and preparations for a return to the "slums" for a week. At other times of the year, I have other, similar all-encompassing tasks.

What happens is that I feel the imbalance keenly. I feel the absence of that portal, of the sparkly magic that is reflected, and my evenings and spaces alone seem lost and empty. I experience this in the mood crash that occurs after I finish working, when all the minutes before me are weighty and confusing.

I think it's easy to get lost in the buzz, in the sheer noise. It's easy to want to wait for completion or perfection before action, completion and perfection that will never come and do not exist. And I also think it's easy to swallow the pill, to believe the lie, to be quiet and become involved in what you are told should involve you, or that you were raised to value, whether or not that is valuable.

Days pass and weeks pass and months pass, chasing the moment of "When this is done, I will do what I want to do". But there's always more to be done, and time is quite happy to take from you what you want to give it. When the world you choose to live in is somewhat different from the world that is easy to live in, it's always less work to close your eyes.

Last night, I sat on the porch, bundled up, and I watched the rain. It was cold and the drops struck and stuck to the spider webs that are still woven around my door and between the posts of the railing. That sound of heavy water striking mud, the crispness of the air, was one of the best moments I've had in weeks. I felt that I could think clearly again, that I could see clearly again. When I went back inside, I felt I could understand far better the absense I was sensing.

In 2008, I hope to spend more time in the world I choose to live in than the world that is easy to live in, and to place the value on the places in myself that I deem valuable. I hope never to be very far away from the things that inspire and fullfill me, or the interfaces that bring those things into my heart. And I hope to find more balance in-between.

I would hope for each of you, the same.