June has become in recent years my own sort of New Year's Eve.

It's a time for reflection, contemplation, a chance to gauge where I am and where I want to be. Some years it kind of-sort-of-if-you-tilt-your-head-and-squint lines up. In other instances, I find the two disappointingly apart.

Why June? Well, over the past half decade, this is the month that includes the most random of the bizarre circumstances in which I tend to find myself. In one instance, I traveled a greater distance than ever before. In another, I saw two long-time musicians prepare for the (surprisingly) slow process of exploding onto the mainstream music scene. There was one June that I found myself chilling on a certain house's lawn in D.C. (or, more appropriately: trying to appear cool and collected while standing on the said lawn). It's also a month peppered with friends' birthdays - as they reflect on entering a new year of their lives, I become reflective by association.

So here I am at June 2006. Status check: 25 years old. Writer. Friends? Check. Family? Check. Misadventures? Absolutely check.

But I've felt as if I'm treading water. Not diving into something, the way I always have in the past. Get into the thick of it and then figure it all out. That's my M.O., and that's how I feel most comfortable. Too much relaxation makes me nervous. Complacency leaves me simply feeling as if I'm missing out on an opportunity I should have seen coming.

So, this June, I got to it. Projects. Contests. Groups. Ambitions. Miles. Minutes. I'm attacking it all. I'm determined to enact some change, make things happen.

I'm diving.

So it no longer involves the district city, and it has nothing to do with a plane ride. I get the feeling that it will reap just as delightful a result - if not more so - in the end.

Everybody starts out playing to win. But when sometime in their twenties they realize how hard it is to succeed, to fulfill their dreams, they give up. They make internal excuses. They become fans as opposed to players. They become shadows of their former selves. With no schoolmarm to push them, and out of their parents' sight, they're lost and broken. No, you just can't have it all. But you're entitled to quite a bit. But you've got to fight for it. - Bob Lefsetz