There is something about the light that I love. I could spend every sunrise and sunset with a camera and never resent the hours I could have slept or otherwise spent. I always want to drop everything and follow the unseen path that those golden hours create, making all the old things new and the new things newer still. It is this love of light that always draws me to the stars, to the clouds, and to the sky. Relentlessly.

I've been reading a lot about the Space Race time in history. Now all I can think about is how much I love the sky, the science that lets us touch it, and the light it contains.

The truth is, I am never going to want something else the way I wanted to fly. The way I still want to fly. After trying for years to redirect this longing, I simply cannot imagine succeeding. I've taken a good hard look at my life. I know that flying just doesn't fit right now, doesn't fit in the foreseeable future, and almost never pencils out when you don't even know how you'll use it. It is in the way of every other goal I have. Every other goal I have is in the way of flying. Me against myself. Myself against me. Stale mate.

But I still want it. I debate with myself constantly. Am I down and out of the game? Or am I just on a low that I will pull myself up from? Back and forth I go. My friends and family have their opinions and perspectives; but, unless someone is paying for flight school, it doesn't really matter what anyone thinks. It doesn't even matter what I think. I think but I don't really know anything.

I'm on a work trip for my new career that doesn't include air planes the way I once expected. It's hard to fly commercially in a painful deep-down-that-I-can't-explain way. It makes my bones ache. On the flight out here, I wrestled and I found some of the right words. You see, there is no plan. Since I got fired from what I thought was my dream job turned night mare, I have tried to adapt and, in adapting, I have tried to manufacture a plan. And then another and another. But there isn't one. These last three years, there has been no plan. I am only just now believing and accepting that.

This week's goals include: do a good job, make time for the important things that present themselves, and don't be a jerk. Above all, invest in and appreciate the good things that are currently in my life. They just might be a vital part of the plan that I haven't discovered yet. I try to shake this hope for flying but what I am discovering is that, some days, hoping is not hard or heavy. Other days, it is just asking too much. So I do it when I can and leave it in some proverbial box under the bed when I can't. I marvel at my own inconsistency. I am learning not to apologize for it because it is better to be strong and able some days than no days.

I don't understand why I want to fly. I don't understand with all the might of my analyzing abilities why it hurts so bad to be so far away from flight. I am a practical person, by and large. This is not a practical longing. But it is mine and I belong to it. So I will hope and not hope in turn; but above all, through all, and with all, I wait. And I keep busy while I wait. But if you look closely at my face whenever I am flying on a sales trip at sunset, I am always fighting back tears.

Oh Lord, my God, for what was I made if not for this, the sky?