Okay. Deep breath.

After months of galavanting around the nation with my spirited, tireless, life-loving son on America’s Got Talent — and meeting all kinds of wonderful people with all kinds of wonderful skills and talents — I’m back. Back to doing dishes. Back to making sure kids are on top of their schoolwork. Back to writing, creating, and building worlds in books and online.

And back to raising my coffee cup to you, as we meet together.

After riding the gusty, whirlwind experiences filled with sweet relationships and delightful moments shared, it’s time for life to return to normal. Right?

Um. Not really.

Because, I ask, how do you take back all of the love and sweetness of new friends? And how do you erase the brilliance of excitement when a hundred people around you are firing on all cylinders, the lights cascade, the music pumps, and the magic electrifies even the air you breathe?

Heavens, I’d never want to take back or erase a second of it all. It’s more like, welcome to the new normal. 

Whether I like it or not, life is changed forever.

We all have unexpected experiences. Life gets splattered with them, good and bad. We hope and pray for the good while trying to avoid and slog through the bad. Most likely, the good and bad eventuate as a mixed up, haphazard, awkward savoir-faire, pouring with a splash into a concoction that reminds me of something that I did as a kid.

Whenever we had a party, we’d take out the bottles of pop (or, if you’re not from Michigan, soda), and pour together as many kinds as we could. We called it suicide. Not sure why, but the name embodied the mixture’s crazy taste.

Life is more crazy taste than anything else, isn’t it? The good and bad, all mixed up together. An insane fusion that you sometimes simply don’t even want to try to make sense of. It’s best to just drink it down, enjoy the wacky blend, and relish its reality to the fullest.

Whether you’re a man or woman, single or married, homebody or traveler, show-up-and-give-it worker or specialist-seeking entrepreneur, Everyday Joe or CEO, you know that once you’ve experienced high-level creativity, synergy, and magical moments, you can never go back.

But life isn’t about going back, is it?

I’m sitting in a coffee shop with a brand-new journal. The smell of its crisp pages waft past and mix with the cinnamon scent of my first pumpkin spice latte of the season. My hand itches, hovering, ready to script new goals… ready to sketch out the new story line with characters already chattering conversations at the bar in my head… ready to lean the binoculars against the bridge of my nose and sight the new speck on the horizon that promises to be the top of a mountain.

We can never return.
We don’t need to return.
There’s too much waiting for us.

*Thup