Pump the brakes, Hoss. This isn’t a movie and you’re not a kid anymore | 7.27.2025

Kool-Aid flavored fever dreams
of a possible future influenced by a romanticized and partly fabricated past
keep me out of the kind of sleep I need at night
but allow my imagination to stretch into long-ignored voids.

What’s more to want than
a cool country lake or to stare into a forest of pines?
… Getting lost on an unkept trail?

You’re well-established and unwavering.
Right?
Just you, the kids, and the kitten..

(Laughs)

I feel the tethers pulling at me.
Pulling me from that.
Feelings that put me somewhere I want to be
But don’t need to be – but maybe have to be.

That’s a lot, man.
Where’s your compass?

Pulling parts from the ruins that can be salvaged…
Not willing to sacrifice the present, but to expand my future…

And now these dreams.
Reinforcing those tethers…
Walking beside me wherever.
Subconscious stop signs
That turn into wide-awake red lights.

It’s hard to ignore the buzzing…
The whirring…
The all-encompassing…

(Nods in agreement)

I am blinded by the light.
I am enamored with it.

You’re smiling…

(Scoffs)

All the while
thinking about those lakes and trees and trails that have protected me…

Forever stumbling forward
into a possible future that has nothing to do with my past.

(Cue “Changes” by Black Sabbath)