Exit Stage Left

I guess this absolutely needs to be the end.

I’ve been writing in one capacity or another over the course of most of my life, and while there have been some complimentary phrases such as “I love your work” or “Your truth comes from a place I’ve never imagined” or of course, the stuff I’ve read in Messenger that only deserved a “May God bless you” response. Putting righthanded scribbles to lined paper, MS Word or that blue hardbacked journal from Nature’s Classroom fifteen years ago has been quite the solace for wherever my mind has taken me - but at which point, when do I get out of my own head?

I’ve survived a monstrosity of things that should have killed me if not outright curtailed my own path.

Sometimes being the most loquacious wordsmith in the room has led me down some irrepressible rabbit holes, and sometimes it implies that the weapon I have selected most frequently during this lifetime either wants another chance for a nostalgia a bit rosier or has come to grips that the original road seemingly less traveled was truly rife with brambles, stickers, and jagged rocks along the way too painful to drive upon. Apparently, the latter has become the case for me, and as they say, what doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger:  That six-pack is hidden under a gut full of tasty barbecue, Golden Grahams, and more cold beer than I would care to admit drinking over the past twenty years.  

Then there is the fact I surrendered my twenties chasing a dollar bill that seemed to outrun me just by a smidge on a weekly basis instead of making memories to have numerous tales to regale my little one or reminisce with friends one day. You know, the price of being poor is very expensive.

You're almost there! pic.twitter.com/C6VjqKORdn

— A. Cedric Armstrong (@cedteaches) June 5, 2021

Yet, that trusty pen and pad became more than a necessity:  it was the vessel that solidly pulled the most banal thoughts out of my head into a format worth reading about in a later venue and through the untold editing days which occasionally became weeks if not months. Once an idea met paper or in this case, MS Word, it would often vacillate between becoming something noteworthy or due for File 13. Somehow my writing process decided if I needed to advance subject matter by conducting research (again, I never rely on solely the stuff in my head – and that insatiable quest for knowledge periodically has gotten me into some trouble).

During the life of AD&AD, I think the longest time I went without posting was six weeks. In addition to running out of content, I messed around and decided that sanctifying my family’s privacy by any means necessary was paramount to almost anything else going on in my life whether it be working up new sauce recipes for DSB; the never-ending drama surrounding the church that deserves its own reality show; or the realization that the dead-end of working for a conglomerate several states away that only knows me when things go sideways onsite is clearer by the minute.

Everything has a season, and for the incubation, nurturing, and carefully pruning of each phase for better or for worse, the time for release eventually manifests itself to no longer modify the wheel.

I will still be around albeit not in the same familiar capacities many of you recognize me.

My pen and wayward thoughts need a vacation from each other, so…I bid adieu.

In the most ACedA way I have said:  God bless, I’m out.