Hi. I hope you are doing well. I hope your last cup of coffee was the right amount of warm, and the sun shined on you just a little bit more than you anticipated. Last month, I turned 21 and finished the tutorial of life. I walked through the velvet curtain and saw the small, wooden sign that read "And so it really begins...". I turned around and looked back at each of those peaks and valleys that I walked across, that I jumped over, and that I crawled through. Next to the sign laid two small mirrors: one in which I could see myself in the present, wiser, yet still growing, and in the other, my image towards the beginning of the tutorial, a sponge, eager to embark on whatever would be thrown my way. I miss those earlier versions of the game. They were much more malleable with fewer expectations of what the game was supposed to be or how it ought to be played. Not all publicity is good publicity if not refined accordingly, but we carry on regardless. And so I take my first steps into the real game with the easeful exhale that I have trained 21 years for: "And so it REALLY begins." I'd be a fool and a liar not to admit that I am currently losing this game. Not for the first time, not for the last time, but substantially all the same. And if the sunset is just a little too bright, I want the universe to know that I am not your strongest soldier, but your proudest Wilbert Diaz. I am trying, ok? Only with a little too much wiggle room and a diminishing amount of focus. I thank anyone and everyone who reads all the way through my poetry, my vulnerable moments, and my essays of honesty from the depths of my soul posted under random bathroom selfies. You are cherished and a blessing.💜