Five years ago a good friend told me something about "living on the edge." I couldn't tell you if five years ago me had any idea what that meant. "If you're not living on the edge, you're taking up too much room" she would say, and she sure liked to repeat it.
Five years later, I'm sure that the edge exists. So it goes. I've found myself on the edge of santity, sleeplessness, solitude, bitter defeat, the law, and (on occation) common sense. The edge isn't a place that exists on any map. It's not somewhere that you can just wake up at one morning, and I'm not even sure if it's a place as much as a thing. The edge is a forbidden world that exists only when you realize the Garden of Eden needed to be spiced up with a few apples.
In twenty-six days I'll leave my job of (at that time) 2 years and 10 months. As of right now, I have no idea what will happen on day twenty-seven. I am quitting my job at Epic without having a replacement lined up - something that flies directly in the face of whatever stands for conventional wisdom and common sense in the days of 8% unemployment. It's this life change that is once again bringing me back to the edge, a place that I'm retrospectively realizing I've been away from for too long.
It's been written that, "out on the edge you can see all kinds of things you can't see from the center." In a way this quote summarizes why I'm quitting; I was offered a guaranteed future in the center with a complimentary bag to put over my head. In the end I decided to say "no" and am once again looking for a razor's edge to surf. The extent of the adventure has yet to be determined. It's possible that I move to a new city and pick up right where I've left off, which would make this entire story a rather depressing fairytale I'm only telling because I like the way it sounds. It's also possible that the romantisism of travel will get the best of me and I will end up halfway across the world somewhere on the edge of life trying not to get sliced in half.
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