Inertia, as a physical force, seems capable of exerting influence over the events of our lives as well as movements (or lack thereof). Once set on a path, we tend to continue toward an inevitable end, each step of a progression as typical as the last. It is the path of least resistance. Anything else would require a choice, an action, and everything would change. The life that I’ve led until now would come to an end.

This month, we take a look at endings. In Sentenced, Buffy Charlet takes a look at the sweeping changes occurring in state marijuana laws from the inside as she works at a medical marijuana farm. Jillian York departs from Morocco in Leaving Meknes. Katherine Mercurio Gotthardt reflects on the most devastating of endings in her series of poems titled Alexis, stone walls, and butterflies. In Airborne anxiety, Ellen G. Wernecke reviews two different books about air voyages with very different motivations and very different endings.

And so here we are. Inertia moving us along in the same channel, through the same endless routines, and grinding away our lives a second or a year at a time. We can persist. This much is clear. The question is, do we want to? Isn’t it time to put an end to these patterns that bring us nowhere?

Aaron Richner I am a writer/editor turned web developer. I've served as both Editor-in-chief and Technical Developer of In The Fray Magazine over the past 5 years. I am gainfully employed, writing, editing and developing on the web for a small private college in Duluth, MN. I enjoy both silence and heavy metal, John Milton and Stephen King, sunrise and sunset. Like all of us, I contain multitudes.