In a heartbeat, you can look up and find yourself quite lost.

You don’t know how you really got yourself there…

But you’ve certainly arrived and there’s that perplexing feeling that even if you looked back to examine all of the events that led up to this moment they still wouldn’t describe how you actually came to it.

It’s safe to say that I’ve arrived there quite often recently.

In a way, I’ve felt lost for some time.

There are moments, flashes of lightning where I feel it come together and then I lose it again. It can be maddening. Pieces of this coincide with the events of people in my life. While I have a wonderful life I’ve also had a rough go at it in many ways with people who I’ve deeply cared about and that has struck the depths of me harder than the strongest earthquake.

So I stand there shaken to my core and the compass thrown off wondering which way to go neck.

Truth is, there are so many ways I could go. But I know that I have to go “some way” soon or else risk getting stuck. I can’t get stuck. I really can’t.

I’ve ended up far in left field seeing many paths to go and a bit nervous about which will take me where. This insecurity picks at me when I let it start planting fields of weeds in my mind. I believe that for some time now I’ve suffered from the heavy hand of doubt as it has crept in and made work of battering some of my hopes and dreams.

The hardest part is having allowed the space to do its work.

Adventure.

Adventure continues to breath into my soul. The last time I went off I couldn’t have anticipated the shock I felt as I walked through the streets of Florence by myself. I felt like I was in a different world completely. In reality, I didn’t actually know what to do with it. I was almost paralyzed by that much personal freedom. At times I was scared to move.

Despite being uncomfortable, I felt like I was cracking open. The situation and the journey was forcing me to change into something I knew I could be. I was becoming more. I was changing for good.

Everything that has happened as of late has led me down a road in reflecting upon what got me to this place. I’ve been asking, “Why do you feel so lost?” Part of the answer that I’ve come up with, and having a week to think on this when sick helped, is that I’ve lost my own personal sense of roots. I’ve strayed far away from writing here and that has left me feeling like the personal journey I’ve vowed to take within has stopped as well.

There’s lifetimes more to discover and learn and it’s time for me to pick up the pen again.

It’s time to me to dive farther and farther within and come to a peaceful place where I can decide where to go next. Because here, while enjoyable at times, is a manifestation of being in the mud.

But with new ground under my feet, I can start again. I can create again. I can explore again and take that lost feeling and turn it into something. This lost is a feeling of being disconnected with self. The type of lost of standing in front of a beautiful ancient building you’ve never seen before is one of being almost at home. 

I remember in Florence I had said that my soul had been there for a thousand years and it was only a matter of time until my body caught up the rest of me.

I have a feeling I will be getting that in many different ways in other places.

I write this tonight not as a man who is impenetrable to fear, doubt, worry and the clawing fingers of anxiety. But rather as someone who is doing their best to cast these darker shades out into the light to set myself free from their clutches.

It comes as no surprise to me that as I paint these white pages with ink the expression becomes an act of catharsis in itself.

The suffering subsides.

The room lightens.

The breath returns back deep into my stomach.

It’s my deepest intention to renew my love for this place, the blog that holds so much of me and start my writing again. I’ve been gone for too long now. I must come back.

Evan Sanders
The Better Man Project