The Silver Shoes as depicted by the original Oz illustrator W.W. Denslow.

HEALTH REPORT: The blog is fixed now after copy/pasting every individual post and adding in each image by hand. It lives again! Perhaps it was my neglect that made it “disappear.” It was clearly mad at me.

I’ve been away for a while. Months now. And it’s been difficult to put this overwhelming journey into words. Many changes have happened in my life, affecting everything from where I live to how and what and when I write.

Starting with the first part … I moved.

I no longer live in Southern California. My “silver shoes” have taken me home again, and I have relocated to the Midwest. Specifically, my hometown of Lawrence, Kansas. This was not a knee-jerk reaction to the events of 2009, but there is no doubt that the tragic deaths of both my parents last year spurred me to make life-changing decisions. We only live once, as the saying goes. We can dream, wish, hope, and pray that things change for us and that life takes us down new and interesting paths, or we can physically make things happen and rock our own worlds a bit.

I spent the past twenty-three years in the Los Angeles area. First, Hollywood, then Studio City, then Valley Village, and finally Hollywood again—all within a ten-mile radius. I had many exciting adventures along the way, and I have no regrets and (mostly) wonderful memories. But the time had come to move on. Los Angeles was not the same town that it was a quarter-century ago, and I was not the same person, either. I had felt the strong desire to live elsewhere coming over me for the past five years at least. Sometimes we stop at desire, and sometimes desire turns into motivation which can evolve into action. That’s what happened here, in my case.

Did I make a good decision? A smart one? A profitable one? A challenging one? I can only tell you that it feels right. I’m reminded of a wise and brilliant lyric by the legendary theatre composer Stephen Sondheim from “Move On,” a song featured in his Pulitzer Prize -winning musical Sunday in the Park With George.

I chose and my world was shaken—so what?
The choice may have been mistaken, the choosing was not.
You have to move on.

Time will tell whether this was a good move. I’m sure to learn from it either way. I know my priorities have changed dramatically in the past several years. Perhaps it’s a sign of age or the old midlife crisis creeping in. But I measure success, happiness, personal fulfillment, and my own identity in such different ways now. I don’t look at myself or other people and judge them for what they do, but rather who they are. Not an easy distinction. It’s a lot harder to see who a person is behind the flurry of activity, because you have to look beneath the surface, but it’s well worth the effort. I had been “successful” by traditional standards. I was pursuing many of my own interests and passions. I was making good money, had an exciting job, an impressive job title, and I was living in a place that people around me admired. I was happy, right? Wrong. Well, to be fair, I was happy for a while, but after a quarter-century, my life in Tinseltown had run its course. I could have stayed and weathered the storm. I imagine, in time, I would have grown used to the unsettled and unsatisfied feelings. I would have become complacent about my situation. It’s very easy to say, “count your blessings and shut up!” I did that for years. And for me, it ultimately didn’t work.

Perhaps losing my parents made me see just how important people are in my life. They mean everything to me. Without them, any material successes or gains I achieve are meaningless. I must share them with the people I love and care about most, or they are valueless. I now see “success” as what I can share with others I love, rather than what I can attain for myself.

Wow, this post is longer than I intended it to be, and I can see I’m rambling … and, okay, preaching a bit. … A lot.

Suffice it to say, I’m changing now. Hopefully for the better. It’s affecting my writing, my goals for the future, and my life in general.

“Just keep moving on.”