21 comments?????
Damn, folks!
I'm really sorry if I worried anyone with my abscence. Quite frankly, I didn't think anybody would really notice so I haven't even looked at my blog over the last month. It wasn't until Lynn hunted me down and chastised me (she didn't really, but I felt really bad about worrying her.) that I even stopped in to see what was up. I appreciate all the concern and I'm sorry if I panicked anyone.
So (you're wondering!) where the hell have I been? Ahhh . . . excellent question! The sad truth though is that I don't really know. My abscence was for no reason at all that I'm aware of. I simply woke up one morning and didn't feel like posting, so I skipped it. Next day . . . the same. Then another day and another and now I see it's been almost two months without a word from me. (How did you all survive???) It's been an odd sort of time lately.
I've been shifting things about in my brain, though I can't for the life of me tell you why or how. There wasn't anything dramatic that happened, or some grand epiphany that brought me to a higher plane of consciousness, or any of that crap but things inside me started changing. Stresses and problems I've been dealing with for years suddenly disappeared and goals I'd been struggling to achieve seemed to lose their importance. It really happened overnight and I don't know why. (sort of a mini mid-life crisis, maybe?) Only it's more of a relaxation than a crisis. I've been in a calm place for the last two months . . . sort of sitting on the bank of the river watching life float by and trying to figure out where I stand in it all, ya know? Usually, these sort of thoughts stress me out and I start looking for dramatic changes to make to fix my "problems". The fixes usually just manage to stress me out even more but this time things went pretty calmly. Instead of looking for external fixes, I (for some reason) started looking inside. I came to a realization that I needed to fix the "me" before I started pushing forward on my dreams. So, that's what I've been focusing on.
For starters, I've been running regularly. I've dropped quite a bit of weight over the last year (51 lbs to be exact! Yay me!) and I'm trying to go a little easier on myself from the "success" standpoint. I am coming to realize (slowly) that a lot of the things I beat myself up over are because of other people's expectations, not mine. There are things I want to do and things I think other folks want me to do. I'm learning to separate the two. I'm also learning to enjoy things for the sake of enjoyment and not for the acclaim they might bring me. That's where my writing is. I haven't written a single word since my last blog post because every time I tried I'd knot up inside; worrying over if it was good enough, marketable enough, polished enough. It was becoming just one more stress in my life that I hated and blamed myself for, so I had to set it aside for a bit. I have to find my peace with writing and do it just because I want to. I'm close to that again (hence, why I'm able to write this wondrous post!) I'm looking at the rest of my life the same way. I'm learning to eat only when I really am hungry. To run because I like the feel of straining muscles and sweat. To stop and look at the sunset when I want to. To tell people "no" when I don't want to take on a responsibility. To allow myself the freedom to dream my own dreams and not the ones everyone expects me to dream.
The Wife is panicking. She think's I'm getting in shape so I can find some young chippie and run off to Hawaii. (Sorry, babe, you're stuck with me!) Really, all I'm doing is trying to get back to being the person that I really am on the inside. I let myself become a grumpy, fat, dis-illusioned old man loooonnnnggg before I had any right to be one. I tried to be someone I'm not because I thought it was the responsible thing to do and it was a huge mistake. I'm not that guy. I'm a lot of things, but that's not one of them! :-)
So, I'll be back around (maybe not every day - work is kinda crazy right now) and I'll let you know how things are going in my life. I have to say, I was really touched by everyone's concern . . . you're all good folks.
Truly.
I'm sorry if I scared you. Oh, and Lynn: {{{L}}}} Gracias!
Later!
