The first and most important thing I need to stress about this piece, is that it comes from a good place.

This feels like a spiritual successor to Smoke, upping the ante to a ridiculous degree, but in a way that's fit for purpose as I've been striving to do better and, frankly, live up to my potential.

I started work on this at the end of a very intense day full of feelings; most of them positive. I had a moment of clarity of what it is that I do for a living - pursuing a life that I wish for myself and then relaying, as best I can, the experiences, thoughts, and emotions that come about from it through my art, all so that others may learn from, or at the very least, feel seen by it.

This is a rather exhausting cycle of intense, consistent vulnerability that I'm proud to have maintained and made good on in the ways that I do, at least to some degree, but the reality of it hit me like a truck. For years now, I've been desperately seeking out any way for this to be a sustainable endeavor, on several counts, despite the strongest, most visceral desire deep within me being:

To cut myself open and show everyone as much as I can of what's inside.
It may come at a very heavy price, but to me, it's worth it,
because it feels so damn good for me to be seen, understood, and appreciated that way.