Just when you thought it couldn’t get lonelier. Just when you thought it couldn’t possibly get any more difficult than it already is. There will be no resting on any laurels. The road ahead climbs up steeply, into the forbidding vault of the heavens.

On one of these drives from L.A. to S.D., I gazed at the northern sky and watched the planes queue up to land at LAX. It looked like rush hour at 30,000 feet. I could almost imagine a freeway stretching from the tarmac up to the stratosphere, creating an enormous arcing bridge to the rest of the country. The vision was actually a little breath-taking.

The road that I find myself faced with makes me think of this impossible thoroughfare, some sort of concrete, ultramodern version of the rainbow leading to the pot of gold.

There are no quick fixes. Either I face the obstacles in my life, or I spend all my time avoiding them. They’re not going to go away on their own.

Like every journey, it’s going to have to be one step at a time. I do worry that as I reach those heights, I’ll start running out of oxygen. This probably shouldn’t be a journey that I can take lightly.

It’s onward and upward or bust. Ain’t no turning back now.