A poem of longing for a love greater than you feel you could ever deserve. The wanting and need for something more knowing you'll never have it.

Another older journal entry I hadn’t gotten around to posting yet. This one is actually about our first date and how it haunts me.

I am thrilled to be up-and-running here on AAP again. I'm still sorting through the newest questions for 'new content' posts. A big thank-you to those who've already written in. It isn't easy in our culture to a) admit we need help and it is then 10x harder to actually b) go out and seek it. I don't pretend to have all the answers or to know everything, but I know I can offer perspectives and ideas that people might not have considered themselves. Anyway; Have a good and safe weekend everyone, and enjoy this classic: DEAR ASK A PUNK - Hippie parents turned me and my husband into punks, but we still managed to get married, and now my husband and I, still punks, are turning our kid into… I have no idea what. I wish I could say my son was weird, or unique or at the very least interesting, but at nine years old (almost 10) he is odd only in that he's seems to be such a conformist by nature. What gives? My husband and I created a world of possibility for him and...[more]

This is an excellent verse because it shows God’s authority in his true light. When no one else can do what he can do, then you need only call on his name for strength and clarity.

An update to yesterday’s journal entry- since I like to be honest in the emotions that I share- along with today’s entry.

Another day, another up-to-the-minute journal entry. This one about a present I created and gave with a heart full of hope…

This not is about the forward progress of learning. There should be an end goal to all tasks. If you want to be a lawyer, go to law school , if you want to sell online, sell online. Do not get distracted with new things and people who don’t care about what you care about. Set your goals.

Another day, another journal entry. I really seem to have no shortage of these, do I? This one was brought on by the simple act of putting a fresh blanket on the guest bed…

DEAR ASK A PUNK - I'm 26. I have a basic college degree and have been working about four years. I work at a big company (offices all over). I'm on my second "real job," which should be good, right? I HATE my f-ing job. I’ve been here a year and a half. I didn’t realize how bad it was until my review: "no one is getting raises this year." I just shrugged. Later I realized the guy telling me that makes WAY more than I do, doesn’t seem to do anything but read the paper and check his stock portfolio… and HE has an assistant, a company car, and five weeks of vacation. Is this the best I should hope for? I know pushing paper beats digging ditches or being a migrant farm worker… I AM willing to work, work hard, 70 hours a week even… IF there’s a point to it. The harder I work, the richer someone else gets. I pay bills, buy beer. I grew out my mohawk when I started. I feel like a sellout who sold out cheap. I want to do something else. signed …Drone

This is one of the journal entries I had written a few weeks ago, but it still applies today. This desire is an overwhelming one that I am constantly fighting against. Even when she isn’t here, I long for it.

This time I discuss how managed to better my life, and then how life caught up to me and put me back down where I belong.

This is a journal entry I had written a few days ago but never got the chance to publish. I am actually sitting on a few such entries, but given that I specifically call out a day in this particular entry, I thought it prudent to mention that fact.

I am writing how my relationship has been after a year of dating, it's not how other people say it is and it doesn't get "boring". If you truly love each other THIS is how it should be.

Another Aak A Punk "Classic" - shared for free today! As I re-read these original AAP posts, I wonder about the people who sent them in. When this woman wrote in, she was in her floundering "After college, what now?" years, and worried that "in ten years" she would just be 10 years older and nothing would have changed or improved. That was back in 2008. Seventeen years ago. I still wonder - did she make the move? ...and is she happy?

Conflicted thoughts on parenthood. Who am I without them? How do I raise them? Who will they become and does it even matter in the end if I do my best?

This isn’t just about devotion. It’s also about exhaustion, loneliness, and that fragile thread of hope we cling to that love, even when tested, can still be enough.

This piece comes from a place of deep loneliness and the ache of feeling unloved even by those closest to me. Sometimes, when the silence gets too loud, I turn to fleeting escapes, hoping to forget the emptiness, if only for a moment. This poem is my way of giving voice to those quiet wounds, the hunger for connection, and the fragile hope that maybe, someday, someone will stay.

Today’s journal entry is being posted in real-time (I have a backlog of entries and even more planned) because its a little different than the normal sadness I am used to putting out there.

I decided to make this journal entry free because I feel like it is something many people can relate to. It’s a small slice of the grief I am going through as I navigate the loss of my heart.

Today’s journal entry, while prompted by the vacation she is currently on, is actually about all the vacations we planned and are now not going on.