With Apologies to Fitzgerald, Frost and Every English Major I Know

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

This line has haunted me since I read The Great Gatsby in the late 70s. This weekend I worked on the last of the unpacking in my new place and I took advantage of global warming the freakishly warm weather to make a trip down to Seaside, part of my old stomping grounds, for the day.

Both of these contributed to my doing a bit of navel gazing as did a friend's post that triggered something for me and as I wrote my response I thought (some might say selfishly) "Hmmm, I think I'm going to put this in my journal instead."

For all the dreams I've lost or walked away from; for all the pain, my own and others; for all my fear of the unknown and the chaotic; for all the (although I am loath to use this word) regrets that appear fleetingly and go *poof* like a spectre before I can even name them

When I look at my inner mirror and see myself *dancing* to the beat of my own drummer, because a march cannot contain my joy,

Every fucking penny of the fare I payed was worth it.

My road is still (hopefully) long and I have miles to go before I sleep but sometimes (to bastardize borrow a little more Robert Frost) it hits me that...

[Several] roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel [them all]
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
[Then took one of them]

....

Oh, I kept the [rest] for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I [knew in my heart I should never come back.]

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.