The beginning is always a doggy door.

Not the literal one — though mine has served me well, swinging both ways between the known warmth of hardwood floors and the uncertain promise of what lies beyond. No, I mean the threshold every story requires: the moment when staying becomes impossible, when comfort reveals itself as a kind of prison, and the hero must choose between the familiar sofa and whatever waits in the larger world.

I have been thinking about this because I have been staring at walls again. These are reconnaissance missions into the geography of possibility. The wall does not judge. It simply receives my gaze and gives nothing back, which is precisely what I need — a blank canvas for contemplation.

Every hero begins as someone unremarkable. A farm boy. A hobbit. A tricolor basset hound who weighs sixty-five pounds and dreams, inexplicably, of New York City. The call comes not as thunder but as whisper: something is missing. Something waits.

Gus owns dinner. I own breakfast. Between us we have divided the day into manageable territories. But what of the night? What of the hours when even the cookie jars sleep? These belong to no one, which means they belong to everyone, which means they belong to the brave.

The hero's journey begins with a single step. Mine will be deliberate.