Closing Things Down (Officially)

As has probably been obvious for some years now, I am no longer maintaining this blog. In truth, it has served its purpose for me – that is, as a prolonged post-accident writing exercise that restored confidence in my mental faculties, and also as a way to chronicle my experiences in a format that could perhaps be helpful to others that are in similarly choppy waters.

No further updates will follow this post, although I plan to leave IAM exactly as you see it now – broken links and all.

My reasons for doing so are various – pride, sentimental attachment, and macabre reflection all come to mind – but I think the biggest, most substantive reason is to serve as a reminder of how important it is to never let up, regardless of how hard something is.

I'm largely reassembled now, but I still have issues. Some of those issues will be with me until the day I die, while there are others that I still have hopes of rectifying in the coming months or years – a familiar line, I know, but a sustaining one nonetheless.

I struggle even now, as I write this, with deciding what this blog's final words should be. You can find pithy maxims in earlier posts – and some even of my own devising, huzzah! – but ending in that fashion feels wrong to me. Instead, I leave you with this final rant and a submission of mine from several years back:

Life is hard, and frequently far harder than it should be. Misfortune rarely checks the ledgers to determine if the person whose day it is about to ruin in any way "deserves" such a fate, much like Lady Luck frequently dispenses her boons in a fashion that is anything but equitable. But I ask, so fucking what?

How it didn't or shouldn't have happened isn't the operative issue here. Instead, the only question actually worth asking and answering is, "what will you do now?"

Everyone copes with adversity in different ways, and my place is not to instill in you the "right" or "correct" means of doing so. But I implore you: whether for yourself, your loved ones, or even the causes and ideologies that animate you, dig deep and figure out the answer to that question for yourself

This I believe.