Some existential mid-life birthday prose:

What else is there to do but to keep walking? When you’re lost with no food or water, you should just keep walking. It’s days like this though, when you see the same landmark for the 45th time, that you face the fact that you are indeed going in circles. For the 45th time you say there must be another way. You stop and sit and wait for direction. None comes, so you get up and keep walking. My clothes have changed, my face has changed, I’ve built up callouses so my boots no longer give me blisters, I even carry different things, but the lost feeling remains. It could be that this lostness doesn’t originate in me, but in the bad maps that promise a destination. This lostness may have started when matter left its home in the void, and I’ve been wandering in widening circles ever since.