I was a sweet kid, a happy child, I remember I was almost always smiling, you know except when my fathers belt came off because back then that was the norm and it hurt and it was scary and it was what it was but I survived and whatever damage that may have done isn't as bad as what I have done to myself since then.  Apparently there were a few other times I wasn't always smiling back then that I don't recall, one time in particular, a story my step mother loves to tell and in all truth I like hearing, is that one day, back around kindergarten or first grade, I had a stray dog follow me home from school and when I got to the gate of our front yard I started to yell profanities at this floppy eared creature.  Profanities that neither my step mother or I can guess how or who I would have learned them from at that age... but the story makes me laugh and smile like I use to in my childhood and its such an absurd thing to picture me back then being angry and mad and yelling at some poor dog for doing nothing more than keeping me company on my walk home.  I can't find anything on the surface of my memory to complain about when looking back to when I was naive and happy.  My father worked swing shifts or graveyard shifts and I thought graveyard shift meant he worked in a graveyard.  He even had a work ID were he was wearing a werewolf mask and had me convinced he was a werewolf.  I lived with him during school days and spent many weekends with my mom and she did all the fun stuff.  Camping, fishing, flying kites and parks and all that childhood goofing off summer day type stuff.  She made jokes and pulled pranks and was deathly afraid of snakes and I loved her and my father.  My father taught me how to be a good person, he showed me the difference between the false idealism of being a manly man over the greater reward of being a gentleman, one being sincerely concerned with the well being of others and the other being self centered and hollow in anything but the pursuit of his own satisfaction.  My mom helped too, but she was more of the wild card and the humor councler of my life.  They both always encouraged what ever my young mind thought I would want to do in life, they both showed belief in me.  Something I failed to learn how to do for myself as a became of an adult age, which was no fault of theirs.  
I can't explain or pinpoint where or what day the smiles became less frequent and the happy child drew itself back into the folds of memory past and out of present day.  I'm not miserable, I don't hate my life... I can honestly say and express gratitude for my life up to this day.  There has been far more good than bad, more friends than enemies and annoyances, more love than heartache, even if just by a little... My nights may be restless more often than not, but I've never been one to enjoy in the overindulgence of sleep and have always preferred the minutes of the moon over the hours of the sun.  
In all honesty, I'm nothing more than a goofy kid in an adult body... but still it feels like something is missing.  Some part of me is out of synch.  I have my to do list, my road to the mountain of things I want to accomplish before I'm buried or burned or sleeping at the bottom of a lake with no one knowing that I've passed on.   I have dreams of high ambition... unfortunately my motivation seems to be sleeping in.   It use to be easier to sit down and illustrate and paint and dance and sculpt and go from one thing to another... I have enough work to do stored in my sketch pads and head that I don't have to worry about running low or not having anything to do next.  Procrastination however seems to be my strongest characteristic... if it wasn't I wouldn't have written this because honestly, I don't know what I'm doing and I never had.  It just use to never get in the way before and now it's scattered all over my workspace and I can't scrub it off my desk and I can't shake it out of my bones and I just laze on the couch and watch it eat the time I should be using to get back on the road towards the mountain... tomorrow though right?