Success?

"... for to travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive, and the true success is to labor." by:Robert Louis Stevenson

I have traveled hopefully and I have labored, and glad to say I have not yet arrived! I have however gotten one step closer to many goals and completed others.

The measure of success is individual yet held by standards set over time and tradition. It is with and without these elements I give you my success report. I must first give more background information. I have hesitated greatly to give this much detail so openly on here yet have no problem with telling the nearest stranger in person. My success is being measured by my experiences and the handling of said experiences after serving 26 years in the North Carolina Department of Corrections. I was sent there when I was sixteen years old with a Life sentence and eligible for parole after twenty years. I am now 42 years old and yet as young as the day I went to prison in a lot of ways. That was before I had a chance to receive any personal mail with my name on it, gotten to learn to drive on public roads with a license, ride a motorcycle, to swim in the ocean, kayak, file taxes, pay bills, and many other things that kids learn to do during their high school and college years.

Since my release a little over a year ago, I have done a lot of these very things, most in fact! I had driving lessons and got my license for both a car and a motorcycle. I swam in the ocean, been dancing, went to the zoo, kayaked in the inter-coastal waterway. I have a wonderful girlfriend who understands and supports my endeavors without abandon. We have been refining our relationship for the past year and I must say it has evolved into a wonderful thing. I work for extraordinary people who appreciate the job I do and teach me when I don't know. I have developed life long friendships that reach beyond the realm of family. They are a family who has provided me with the means to make it on the outside no matter what comes my way. They have played such a vital role in my re-entry back into society that it can not go unsaid. Thank you all for the individual roles you play in my life! I am forever appreciative for your giving hearts and incessant teaching of the things I have had to learn. Their patience and willingness I hope is rewarded by my success.

I travel hopefully on as I reach for the rest of the dreams that I so dare to dream. I will labor hopefully to the day when I have arrived at my soul's moment of truth. When I have joined all my peoples and my eyes see far and wide with great happiness.