I Need to Be Someone Else

I need to be someone else. It's that simple.

Five Ways to Move Forward

I use the Samhain-through-Day of the Dead holidays to pause, reflect, recharge and prepare for the coming winter/year/decades. Despite the gawdawful polling on Tuesday (Day of the Dead, indeed!), I managed to pull out some positives from the four-day weekend. Here is a brief list of five ways in which I can move forward in my life:

1. Lighten up— most of the “big issues” have little to do with how the Universe operates.
2. Study for personal fulfillment— not for show, nor because I “think I ought to.”
3. Mourn losses— and then let them go.
4. Decorate myself.
5. Create.

Faith, Hope and Love Are Dead—Now Going toward the Within

The surest sign a person has that he's reached midlife is to look around and see a debris field where he had assumed his world would be. Faith, hope and love were useful ideas for a while, but they've failed to live up to reality. Love was just lust in disguise, and unable to withstand the winds of change and the vicissitudes of damaged people. Faith withered in the light of reality and the simple facts of day-to-day living. Hope was a slogan for a political campaign, and we then discovered the slogan should have been "timidity and appeasement."

What can I count on now?

I suspect the next phase of my life will be about discovering that all my resources are within. It should be interesting.

An Insight into Forgiveness

Anger, resentment and fear are signs I have given away my power over myself and my life. Letting go of anger, resentment and fear allows me to reclaim this power. Therefore forgiveness saves me, when I forgive.

This is very simple, very clear. But it requires practice, and daily diligence.

Autumn Anticipation and Summer Recap

For those of us on the east coast of the US, autumn technically begins at 11:09 pm this evening. (The equinox is at 0309 hours UT on September 23; eastern daylight time is UT minus four hours, putting the equinox at 11:09 pm September 22.) I look forward to the fall every year. I look better in fall clothes. I like the 'settling down' feeling everything gets. And midway through the fall is my favorite holiday, Halloween-Samhain. I usually take a few days off around that time and simply chill out.

This summer has been tumultuous. Some of the changes have been good, some have been bad, and some I will feel the implications of for years.

At the beginning of the summer I hung out with few friends. I have begun to do my part to repair some damaged relationships and not only get out of my apartment more, but also get out to actually meet other people. I enter the fall on an improving trend in socializing.

We started the summer frantically trying to figure out what was wrong with Mom's health, and we're ending it with her in rehab recovering from heart valve replacement surgery. In the middle of the summer (literally the middle, since I spent Lammas there) I went to Alabama to visit with my parents for a week. I gained some insights into my family's dynamics, and a new appraisal of my father.

Over the course of the summer I realized I am agnostic, and I left off all pretensions of faith. I simply put aside any attempt at active belief or disbelief, and realized that not only will I not receive answers by divine revelation or insights, but also that I have far more responsibility for my life than I am comfortable with. I reckon I will do well to become accustomed to the discomfort.

One giant honking FAIL this summer: I dropped the ball on initiating an exercise regimen, and on getting my weight down. Surely these are the big projects of the fall.

Finally, I like to note one ten-second moment of awesome that occurred this summer: as I was walking home from the Metro station one weekday evening, I was passed by a runner, a tattooed Asian male, a total mesomorph, zipping past almost silently in his Vibram Five-Fingers footwear. In a word, he encapsulated the athletic and graceful potential of the season. Beautiful.