A Curious Year in the Great Vivarium Experiment

by Tim Shields

I am so grateful for: 1. The relief I experienced in hearing my father’s voice. 2. The possibilities that have spread out before me. 3. For being fortunate enough to fund a writer’s workshop while traveling for nine months. 4. For the quiet nights in Beijing and Shanghai that I got to just read my book in the bathtub after a day of making money. 5. For all the other interesting writers I met at the writer’s workshop. Today I intend and create: 1. To surrender negative feelings and older energies of loneliness, sadness, unworthiness, self-doubt, fear, and anxiety. 2. To not be discouraged by what I wrote at the workshop and to continue searching for the question and the answer. 3. For a sign that I am on the right path and for a sign about where to travel after the Philippines. 4. To be able to someday write the book and express the feelings I’ve had in my heart since I was seventeen. 5. To have obscene amounts of fun in the Philippines and meet awesome people who I can be friends with for life.