Marking each day with vignettes of randomness. Workloads never cease. Must learn to train your trainers. Wondering haphazardly where I’m going so fast. The workdays sap my energy. By nightfall, my mind and body are shot. Exhaustion envelopes me. My conscious mind dreams of dreaming. My aching sense of exhaustion dreams of being momentarily unconscious, asleep, resting, dreaming wildly by the day’s end. Is that any way to live?

Along the long walk home, I shuffle past the sidewalk vendors and weave underneath the awnings of the shops and shopkeepers that line the city’s side streets. Sometimes I pause at red lights. Sometimes I don’t. I look over at my reflection in the storefront windows and linger briefly in momentary amazement at that young man who is moving so intently, whose shoulders are slightly leaning, whose stride is so quick. Where is he going in such a hurry? I wonder if he’s bothered to look up at the great expanse of open sky above him.

Smile more. Dream always. Look up.

~Daniel