Keep the Fire Burning is a call – as much to myself as to others – to do exactly that. Keep that inner flame alive, stoke it through the night and let the blaze bring the dawn.
Practically speaking, this blog focuses on that which nourishes my fire and that which for so much of my life had done all but extinguish it.
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A bit about the author…
If I were a jellyfish my name would probably be a sequence of colors, reflecting the many environs I’ve floated through. And, I am not a jellyfish. So you can call me Josef.
Though, like a jellyfish I’ve spent much of my life being forced about by the currents of an ocean that seemed beyond my control. Until I decided I didn’t want to live like a jellyfish anymore.
I’ve been diagnosed with a laundry list of mental illnesses throughout my adolescence and early twenties. They increased in severity until I had to make a choice… I made the wrong choice. And, in the aftermath of the wreckage of my existence I took the first steps towards curing my mind, my body, and my life.
My claim to fame – such as it is – is that I embody the proof that mental illness is not something you are doomed to live with until the end of your days. Healing is more common than you might think, and yet within the bubble I lived in the idea that there could be a morning I could wake up to where I was blissful regardless of my external circumstances and without medication was alien to me.
‘Professionally’ I’ve done everything from working eighteen hour shifts at low-rent restaurants to building bridges in the woods with materials I schlepped out by hand days before. Life has brought me to an embodied arts retreat center and intentional community, much like it might have brought a jellyfish, where I work, love, and play.