When I put out the call for essays for BEGIN AGAIN, I didn't know what I was going to get. The theme was, at the time it was conceived, definitely and assuredly springing from the fact that I'd just gone through a breakup after dating the same woman for five years and then getting engaged only to break it off. When you shed such a big part of your life, it leaves you asking things like "who am I now" or "who was I before this relationship"? There's both new construction and remembering because time is a flat circle and we are, if anything, cyclical beings.

So I asked writers to explore a transition, a move, grief, a breakup, repeating patterns or breaking patterns, cycles and rebirth, remaking yourself, or laying out plans for the future...