I launched Midlife Crisis Crossover on April 28, 2012, three weeks before my 40th birthday as a means of charting the effects of the aging process on my opinions of, enthusiasm for, offense at, and/or detailed nitpicking of various works of art, expression, humanity, inhumanity, glory, love, idolatry, inspiration, hollowness, geek lifestyles, food, and Deep Thoughts.

Eight years later. 2,177 entries and over one million words later. Here I remain, still tending that same path.

It’s a dedicated platform for contemplating the world and its wonders, its peoples and their arts.

It’s an anthology of my responses to whatever’s in front of me, all connected end-to-end rather than scattered across various message boards, Facebook threads, comments sections, emails, product review pages, nonpaying gigs “for exposure”, or any other websites controlled by entities that reserve the right to alter or delete user contributions at any time without notice or cause.

It’s a wordy diary, a pretentious journal, a first-person narrative, a stream of consciousness, and an ongoing series.

It’s an independent production with no passion for revenue, investors, marketing, or compromising for profit.

It’s a boutique stall with over 2000 lovingly handcrafted trinkets to show off.

It’s a creaky soapbox atop which I can hear myself filibuster into the ether.

It’s my small fish tank away from the big pond, where I can breathe comfortably rather than drown in a sea of other, louder, popular voices.

It’s an assertion of creative control over my online self-expression.

It’s a place where I literally collect my thoughts.

Sometimes it’s noticed. Sometimes it strikes a chord in readers and passersby. Sometimes it’s a party. Sometimes it’s a launchpad for a particular essay or article or photo or memory to glide away from the nest and stay aloft on its own.

And sometimes it’s an open road beneath a clouded, distant sunrise. A Monday morning when businesses awaken and glimmer on every side, pinpoints of drudgery or passion in the routines ahead. When passing cars are few and far between because the world has changed and other drivers have decided as a majority that they simply would rather not. When the Lord watches the Earth spin, one mile at a time, toward another day of living, another day of forward motion, another day of chances.

And the only response that feels natural is to keep aiming toward the beauty at the end of the road.