Some clouds will end.

I feel like running away, starting a new life in a new place, meeting new people, walking a new path, looking at a new sun. This place, though the geography is beautiful with its mountains and forests, deserts and rivers, is steadily depleting my enthusiasm for life. The people here are dull. The singularity of the culture is suffocating. I have no purpose here, no hint of a bright future. My growth here is stunted.

These feelings are not a recent revelation. They crept into my consciousness several years ago. Their intensity swells and subsides with regularity, however in recent times, it seems these tides are not receding as they once did.

Each morning I drive 27.7 miles and each evening I drive the same. I follow a straight line that cuts through a sea of buildings and concrete. Mountains loom large on all sides, though the yellow-grey air mars the impact of their splendor. Some days they are barely visible.

I am drowning in this place. I reach out, but the people have boarded themselves inside.

Inside Steeple City.