Yet another relationship attempt come and gone.

I can't help but wonder if I'm too jaded these days... I remember a time (which seems like a lifetime ago) where I was a complete and hopeless romantic. To be fair, I felt a lot of that start to come back at the beginning of this relationship so not all is lost.

I finished the fourth Dark Tower book this morning... Since I've started reading that series again, I've discovered that I can waste away in front of a book for hours just as well as I can in front of a video game, forgoing the urge to eat or move from my spot until I reach the next chapter... then the next after that. I think significant difference is the distinct feeling of personal accomplishment after finishing a section of a game. Interesting...

The Dark Tower series talks a lot about something called "ka"... put simply it's fate... it's those events in life that, no matter how we try to avoid them, we will eventually end up there anyway.

For a long time, I've been one to believe in "fate"... or some semblance of it, I suppose. Specifically, everything happening for a reason. Maybe I believe it because I have to in order to cope with certain things around me... I hate to think that's the case, because... Well... I don't know why. I guess I favor myself more of a realist than that.

In any case, I think these past couple of years have held more significant challenges than any other part of my life. In a lot of ways, I think I know more about "how the world works"... wiser I guess you could say. Having said which, once it's just light being refracted by the moisture in the air, is a rainbow still magical?

Unfortunately, I'm not one to take things at face value. I always have to know why... understand the cause and effect of it all... At least that which affects me and those close to me.

So does everything really happen for a reason? Or do I take that stance on the difficult topics because I need there to be a cause... because I need to make sense of the chaos?

(One thing I will say about being single... It causes much more introspection for me... or maybe it just allows it rather than causes it.)

Whatever the case, I have faced some challenges these past two years... and I have survived them. And, putting modesty to the side, I know that I have dramatically affected some people's lives for the better during the course of those challenges... That fact crossed my mind this July 4th, and it genuinely warmed my heart. I hope to do more of that in the future.