RISK EVERYTHING FEAR NOTHING

1. Let go of minor annoyances before they become major conflicts.
2. Live by the Golden rule: treat others the way you wish to be treated.
3. Live by the Silver rule: Do not treat others the way you would not like to be treated yourself.
4. Smile at someone who never smiles at you.
5. Fear nobody and nothing; that which is the most precious in you cannot be damaged by anyone or anything.
6. Do the very best you can, with what you have.
7. Do not mistake pleasure with happiness. Let me repeat. Do not mistake pleasure with happiness. Now you say it. Do not mistake pleasure, with happiness.
8. Take control of the controls.
9. Don’t ignore hunches.

And last, but far from least: When you like someone. Tell them.

For now, dear readers, gotta dash. My time on this computer I sit at, in a small internet forum on a busy street in the heart of Bangkok, is about to run out.
I’m coming home, wherever home is. Where the heart is? I don’t belong in one place.

P.S. Nate, if you’re reading this, hang in there. There’s too much coming your way to give up on it all now.

Sometimes, when I look back on it, it’s like recalling a particularly vivid dream. Other times. The memories have a strangely detached quality; as if what happened was from a story I’d heard, or things reported to me that happened to someone else. Maybe one of those TV shows. But in moments of clarity, I know the “story” is none of those things. No matter how I try for some inner censor to distance myself from the pain, I know I have experienced what I remember.

Even as I see myself from the outside looking in, I still recognise that all of this has happened to me. Really happened. The entire experience a part of me, as much as anything else. The flood of feelings that I hate possessing. Closing my eyes – for the millionth time it seems – I allow the movie to run again on the inside of my eyelids.