This year I put down two extremely important things.
I speak here with utmost love, respect and gratitude to the woman who was my wife: after nearly seventeen years of marriage, it became clear that, together, we were no longer growing, and I had reached a point when I could no longer put brakes on my growth. We tried for many years to make it work, as befit our love. But this year it became time to set down that weight.
And then at the very end of summer I was asked to put down another major aspect of myself. For a period longer than even my marriage, I identified as a writer. Jerry challenged me to think otherwise, and so I asked the universe, and the universe provided me a clear answer: Writing is a skill I possess, a practice I will continue, and a necessary tool for the work I seek to do, but writing is now a means to an end, is no longer an end in itself.