here's pretty much all you need to know to get caught up with me.

bella took the picture on the left in april of 2017.
bella took the picture on the right in september of 2017.

the moral of the story. not a whole lot has changed in my life. i'm a pony with few tricks. the part of the story that matters is my scant tricks give me lots of fulfillment.

but most people don't get that and worry for me. in evidence, let me share this conversation between my best bud bookguy and me. it is worth noting that bookguy is presently traveling around the world this year.

BOOKGUY
i saw something in the london airport that made me think of you.

TROY
yeah. what was that?

BOOKGUY
a st. augustine quote they had painted on the wall. it said, "a man who doesn't travel is like a man who just reads one page of a great book."

TROY
you get that you were in an airport and their job is to sell plane tickets right?

BOOKGUY
sure, but i don't think st. augustine was a travel agent.

bookguy doesn't understand how i don't travel or seek adventure and i don't understand how he does (at the levels he does at least). it's just another part of how we look so much like an old married couple when we're together. the reason i don't like too much travel is in the math. for me i first have to take the number of days i'm going to be gone. then i have to add the same number of days on the front to get ready, AND i have to insert the same number of days on the back-end to recover. so a three-day trip is in actuality a nine-day event. that is nine days where my normal routines get neglected or rather annihilated, which puts me seven kinds of behind in the work that is most important to me. to call it crippling sounds dramatic but there really isn't a better word to describe the outcome of it all.

and the thing bookguy and the rest of the free world don't get is that i am going somewhere but my destination doesn't have a postal code. the place i am feverishly striving to arrive at is the person i am meant to be. that is my singular goal in life and does more to explain my daily, if not hourly, actions then could one hundred pages of explanation.

a second thing this picture reveals is one of bella's favorite eateries by our house (as well as her favorite table by the window).