Not Such A Bad...Year In Review

"To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize."--Voltaire

I was thinking about all those Christmas brag letters tucked inside Christmas cards that begin to flood the mailbox this festive season. I never had the desire to do one and mail out to people, but on the other hand, I never really minded reading about the happenings of those I care about. Bits and pieces of their lives that can surprise and enlighten are to be found in the words they contain. Tucked into them are messages they are trying to express: such as happiness, loss, joy, pride.

So following (if interested) is my 2013:

January 1^st, employed with 401K, health insurance and good job. January 2^nd, unemployed minus all that other stuff previously mentioned (see quote above by Voltaire). No murder committed despite this occurrence. Begin the stages of grief over this loss, also begin job hunt. Job hunt reveals experience seems to mean little compared to not finishing that Bachelors Degree in the 80’s. “Too old to Rock and roll, too young to die” to quote a Jethro Tull song from my youth. Look into degree completion opportunities at local universities. Damn…found out that college classes expire after three decades and don’t easily transfer. Still working through those stages of grief. Actually stuck on #1: anger. Sign up for group to help me deal with these issues. Especially issue #1. Start sociology class in college. Remain grateful to my friends and family who are standing by me and offer support. Seriously good medicine is true friendship. Interview for jobs…keep coming in second. Try a $10 per hour job to kill time and realize I have no tolerance for "fill in the blank here." Especially when they are your boss. Especially at $10 an hour. Didn't I learn this already? Gain new appreciation of those workers making minimum wage. Learn how underrated sleep is and how badly I want to sleep well again. Don't sleep at all some nights. Generic sleeping pills are a blessed thing. Love my college class and begin to feel hopeful. Grateful that my wife is awesome and understands. Continue to get up and get dressed every morning even when I don’t have a reason. Group therapy is going well. Learn from a psychologist about people with personality disorders. Realization: That it is what was wrong with them  and it wasn’t me after all. Wife reminds me that she has been telling me that all along. Wise wife! Must learn to stop blaming myself. Sign up for more college classes, including psychology, as I need more information. Get an opportunity to do some freelance work and I love it. Get to see western Iowa, Illinois, and eastern Pennsylvania. Meet outstanding people that I can count as friends. Learn a new computer program and keep exercising my old brain. Starting to relax about nine months into this.  Discover there is nothing affordable about the Affordable Care Act. What can you do? 10 ½ months in, I get a call for a job if I want it. Hell yes. Can still do the freelance work and still attend my college and work for people that are AWESOME and NOT CRAZY!

Madi and Me

And I didn’t forget the best news, I just saved it for last.

Madilynn Paige. Granddaughter. Born November 30^th.

What a great year of discovery it has been.

To Get My Feet Wet, or Not?

"To have faith is to trust yourself to the water. When you swim you don't grab hold of the water, because if you do you will sink and drown. Instead you relax, and float." -- Alan Watts

The symbolism of the water's edge helps me navigate my way through life. It gives me clear boundaries to my physical existence that mark where I can proceed and where I need to stop or get wet or get out of the boat and step on shore. These boundaries--these shores, beaches, riverbanks--exist both when I am on dry land or floating upon the water. We can transition between the medium easily enough, but not without some skills or mechanisms to allow us to survive for long. Especially if moving from dry to wet. We need protection from hypothermia, drowning and now bull sharks swimming up our freshwater rivers. Bull sharks, I kid you not. A thousand miles up the Mississippi River caught in Illinois. Saw it on "River Monsters" on the television so it must be true. Probably trying to make it to Chicago's Shedd Aquarium.

I am often envious of animals such as the waterfowl and shore birds. They can transition an additional medium when they take flight and wing through the sky. To be able to fly without a ton of steel and plastic and jet fuel would be outstanding. 

I use the transition symbolism in tackling other aspects of my life, which lately consists in what I am going to spend the remainder of my working career doing. Right now, not unlike many other people in the past, present and probably the future, I am standing on the shore and trying to decide what stroke to swim, or what boat to paddle or even if this canal needs to be crossed. At least I need to decide when to cross it and what I hope to find when I reach the other shore. 

I believe it must depend on the means I use to cross it, and like Alan Watts said, "relax and float" may beach me where I was meant to be.

Stories

“The universe is made up of stories, not atoms.” – Muriel Rukeyser

Who doesn’t love a good story? I know I do. I also love to record them--on paper, on film, in my head—so that I can preserve and share them with others.

Try this if you have a moment during your busy life. Think about something that you have a memory about and take a darn close look at that thought. Hold it where you can really feel it your mind. Picture it with your eyes closed (unless you are driving). Now grab a hold of that thought and what it really is made out of. It is a recorded, remembered story from your life. Memories truly equal the stories that we hold on to.  They are like different color paint that takes thoughts into the drama, the clarity, the lesson and the joy of our mind. They decorate the wall of our soul.

My Dad wrote me several e-mails with some childhood stories that are some of my most treasured words. Stories about childhood dogs, his first shotgun and his first car. They describe the events with details that would not have been remembered with just verbal words. Thanks Dad.

So tell your stories. Write them down. Paint them on a canvas or record them with camera and video. Build them in the sand on a beach.  Don’t let them fade into the vast universe of unremembered things.

Build them for collectors like me.

What Will the Silt Reveal?

"The point of your activities throughout the day is not to make a living, but to make a life; not to 'work' but to create joy. If you are doing what you are doing merely to 'pay the bills,' you will have missed the major reason for All Of Life. The purpose of life is to know and express Who You  Are. If you do other than that during the days and times of your life, you will have not used those days and times in a way that profits your soul. It is soul profit we are after here, not body profit." 
– Neale Donald Walsch 

Like many other people during these troubling economic times, now I get to really step back and listen at what Walsch is telling me. I realize you have to pay the bills. ‘Nuff said. But what happens when the heart questions the reasons that it shares the oxygen supply from the lungs to the tips of the fingers? It feels broken. The soul feels deprived of life.

So I am forced to reassess some of the purpose in life. Sure the job held part of the purpose and could at times be a big time suck but that fact can be something that prevents the soul from blossoming. But now that obstacle has tumbled out of the way. So for me, I am going to have to really think about how I want to live the rest of my life. I know deep down that the answers lie there waiting to be stirred out of the silt of the years. Not a real easy thing to do because a lot of stuff that settled there I have tried to forget and is densely mixed with what I need to remember. As well as the stuff that hasn’t settled into the silt yet still floating around with it.

What will that silt mixture reveal to me? I bet I will be pleasantly surprised.