He was but a boy, thirteen or so, with bright blonde hair swept over one side of his head. Solemn aquamarine eyes, framed by long eyelashes, stared out at the cobalt ocean. A knapsack had been slung over his shoulder, light in its contents yet heavy from its implications. Even at such a young age, it felt as though the weight of the world balanced atop his bare, scrawny shoulders, striving to bring him down to his knees and never let him stand up again. His heart was drawn to the vast ocean before him; it tugged at his heart strings and called his name at every waking hour, and as sleep swallowed him into its quiet abyss.
There was adventure there. There was drama. There were all the people he would meet across the waters, on the waters and maybe journey with below the waters. However, his knapsack called him towards the fields, towards Mr Johnson and labour…towards his eventuality as yet another field worker. Was that all his life was to be? As a boy and finally as a man, grinding for yet another piece of silver and should he work far more diligently than the others, a piece of gold. And yet it was all swept away to food and tax and the necessities of life. How he wished to escape to the seas, to live free of his expectancy on the field and to be first the boy then the man he wanted to be.
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I guess that’s a bit of an analogy of where I am now and where I want to be. I am that young bare-chested boy with the cares of the world weighing him down, telling him to work to get paid, to pay for the things he needs the work to pay for in the first place. An endless cycle that swirls close enough to the sweet ocean to smell the air and taste the breeze but never be able to touch nor escape to it. Writing and being at home or the “office” to read and write and know that doing that, which I love, pays to continue to let me do what I love. Now that’s a cycle I wouldn’t mind swirling through.