In a year that started with the complete unmooring of all that I had once considered my well planned future, starting this blog is a milestone of sorts. Not one of those “life milestones” you’ll find in your work benefits package or that are written about in help yourself articles. It is a milestone because it marks a new time of independence. My goals and objectives are no longer those written in my development plan to be parsed, minced, and graded at the end of the year. My aim is simple – live a life filled with life. Pull out the compass and ask “What’s next?”. Be guided by the sky at night or the sky at dawn, looking for the X marks the spot on the map only I can see. If at the end of this journey I have collected moments of happiness, days of laughter and toasted to a few good bottles of rum, then I have achieved the possessions a pirate covets most – treasure. This be my journey. On becoming a pirate.