Fall Reflections

Well I've been out walking 
I don't do that much talking these days 
These days-- 
These days I seem to think a lot 
About the things that I forgot to do 
For you 
And all the times I had the chance to 

Well, it's been nearly 6 months since my last public journal entry.  I've been waiting for that moment when it felt right to stop and take stock, and, I guess the impulse to share abated for a time perhaps.

A lot has happened.

I left my business partnership in July, and I decided to take a break from being an entrepreneur. I have been studying to bring my professional skills up to snuff and re-enter the workforce as just another guy.  But I keep getting these consulting contracts and I'm making good money, enough that getting a regular job doesn't make any sense.  I'm grateful. I guess I'll go with the flow for now and keep doing what I'm doing until things change.

I've also done some travel.  I spent a little bit of time in the Blue Ridge mountain s in North Carolina, and did a really fun road trip up the east coast culminating with a stay in upstate New York.  It was amazing and something I'll never forget.

I left the beach and moved to Orange City Florida, which is a little town just outside of DeLand.

Leaving the beach was a tough decision but the correct one, and something I should have done years ago.  Bottom line was I was spending way too much money on maintaining my lifestyle while my financial position was eroding.  I just didn't want to face up to it.  Now I have and I do plan on returning to the beach one day when I can be a buyer and not a renter.  And not as a leveraged buyer with a big mortgage.

If if if  ::laugh::.  If I had been more realistic about my situation and done some things differently this step would not have been a necessity, but I didn't do things differently and so now I'm living a low overhead existence and saving my pennies, and it's going to be like this for some time.  And as it turns out, I'm pretty darn happy with it.  Stuff owns you, obligations own you, it's all fetters, chains, the ties that bind.  I like being free.

Since the beach is a 20 minute drive I've turned to cycling as my main outdoor activity and it's been great.  The only group in my local vicinity that rides regularly is a very fast and athletic bunch, and my initial attempts to hang with them was tough sledding.  I pressed as hard as I could and was still getting dropped within the first 10 miles on most days. My body started breaking down from the stress and eventually I had to step back and let it heal up a little.  But after getting recharged and rebooting my training I was able to start hanging with them.  It's great to have some people to hang out with who are into healthy lifestyle stuff instead of getting wasted and waking up hung over.  I like the friends I'm making in my new town.

The other big change was I took up a philosophy/mental discipline that makes sense to me, which is Buddhism and regular meditation.

What happened was everything was going great and I was pushing my limits in all areas of my life, and one day I was at the house by myself and I had a seizure.  I lost all motor control, I was lying on the ground unable to move, wondering if this was it.  After about 5 minutes I regained control of my limbs.  I wasn't quite myself for a couple of days.

If left me shaken and scared.

I got myself checked out and I was fine physically.  I had just been pushing myself too hard and my brain gave me the finger and shut down.

I went over everything that led up to it, and the conclusion I reached was that all my life I had done things to reckless excess and boozing was a way of applying the brakes (until the brakes took control of my life and starting destroying me).  Without drinking to slow me down I was running myself ragged because I didn't know how to listen to my mind or my body.

So I began to look into meditation as a possible solution.  That decision changed everything.  I discovered that I was hiding a lot from my self.  That the persona I put forward was a very different thing than the perceptions I had of myself.  I had some primitive coping mechanisms that were based on being a very insecure person.  In a nutshell I came to the conclusion that I was an insecure neurotic mess!  :)

I'm working my way through it.  It's already quite a bit better.  Sometimes the biggest part of the battle is honestly coming to terms with stuff and not being afraid.

Now mediation has become part of my daily routine.  It's really added the ballast that I needed to be a calm balanced person.  I've never been happier.

I took this photo on a morning bike ride a couple of weeks ago.  Kinda says it all.

-s

Survival never goes out of style.

If you could save yourself,
you could save us all.
Go on living, prove us wrong.
Your leap of faith could be a well-timed smile.
Survival never goes out of style.

Editor's note:  playing video at high volume while reading blog entry recommended.

One year.  Three hundred and sixty five fucking days.

Lost: 77 lbs

Resting heart rate: 48bpm

Ridden:  5,796 miles on my $600.00 entry level road bike.

Diet: completely overhauled

Possessions:  most of the excess crap sold off.

The beach house:  Fond memories but it was time to move on.

Debt:  Paid off 

Established a semblance of a relationship with my brother

Lost my woman; got her back again

That's what sits between me and my last hangover.

I didn't have a drinking problem, I had a thinking problem.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
As children, adolescents and young adults, people are taught learn and develop a set of strategies or 'tools' for coping with life.  Mine were woefully inadequate   Life dealt me a couple of shitty hands and I didn't know how to care for myself.  My tool of choice when the shit hit the fan was to numb myself with alcohol.

I'm fortunate that things broke down, that I broke down, and that I was forced to develop some better strategies for coping with life.  It's been the best thing that ever could have happened to me.

The first year of this blog is my gift to you.  It is a living testament to the fact that if your life sucks you can change it.  It's not easy in the beginning, but if I can do it you can too.  It's worth it. The world becomes a much bigger and more interesting place when you stop running from your problems.

Life is an amazing and precious thing.  Strange how lightly we treat this irreplaceable, matchless gift.  Like playing football with a Ming vase.

So stop fucking around and take control of your life right now.  Don't waste another moment.  Seize the day.

Be well and I'll chat with you again soon.

-s<

Looking at the crest of the hill

Well, this last month has been like a country music song.

My dog Rell, my best friend, was struck and killed by a hit and run driver  She died in my arms.  I miss her.

Not too long after that I was surfing and suffered a neck stinger.  I felt it in my back but it turns out it's a neck thing.  I gutted it out and did a century ride on the bike I was planning and basically was bedridden for two weeks after that.  I'm recovering now, can sit upright, but it's still pretty tender and may take a while to heal.

Needless to say the big hero trip to Indonesia I was planning for May/June of this year is not happening.  I was pretty devastated at first.  I worked very hard to get to this point, and to fall short of the goal is a bitter pill to swallow.

My work situation is weird.  As I have gotten healthy mentally and physically I could see I was involved in a really unhealthy and dysfunctional situation, and trying to stay involved with it was a very bad idea.  fortunately someone has popped up to take my place and I don't feel the least bit regretful about moving on other than complications with making sure my brother lands on his feet, which I am actively working to address.

The good news is I am officially debt free.  Selling off all my extra crap and moving into a much humbler living situation has served me well and I was able to dig myself out quickly.  Great feeling.

I've also got my diet fully sorted.  I don't eat compulsively at all any more.  It's wonderful.  The blood sugar crazy train is a thing of the past.

I have hacked away all the withered old growth, the dead branches, the BS, have freed myself. I can choose. And I will choose wisely, always keeping my long term objectives top of mind, not distracted by short term tactical concerns or a need to please others.

I wake up every morning with a calm clear mind and sense of well being I have never experienced in my entire life.  I'm cool with just being me.  I have nothing to prove to anyone, and there is nothing about me that needs fixing.  I'm just....Steve.

Decluttered, but not declawed.

"People asking questions, lost in confusion
Well I tell them there's no problem, only solutions
Well they shake their heads and they look at me as if I've lost my mind
I tell them there's no hurry
I'm just sitting here doing time"

Been a long time since my last entry.  At that time I mostly reviewed what had changed in 6 months of making a commitment to personal growth, although the word recovery would be interchangeable I reckon.  Hey, let's talk about that for a second.

Recovery....hmm what am I recovering from?
I am recovering from all the damage that had been done from being unwilling to accept and move through painful situations, from being unable to accept reality when the facts were not beneficial to me, from trying to control things situations and people I had no control over when I could not accept the reality.

Emptying the Box
The thing is, you can't really escape pain whether you're willing to accept it or not.  You can try, but it only makes it worse.  And what's more, when you begin to avoid (which is what eventually happens when you refuse to accept it for long enough), there's fear that develops which magnifies the problem, makes it seem bigger than it really is.

I had all this stuff I was avoiding and rather than look at the individual things, I was just shoving it all into a box called "try not to think about it".  And since I had been working diligently at forgetting what was in the box, I started to fear it, that at some point it would come open and spill out, destroying my life.

The box is mostly empty now.  Once I opened the box and realized it wasn't as bad as I thought.  I set about clearing all the crap out and it kind of developed a momentum of it's own.  It was quite a lot of work, going through a lifetime's worth of accumulated possessions and beliefs, taking stock, dumping it all out in front of me, deciding what to keep, what to sell, what to donate, what to discard.  Then taking what was left, reorganizing, rebooting daily life in a new configuration.

I've gotten rid of most of my possessions.  I'm renting a room now, don't even have my own place.  Sounds weird, but the math said it was the smart thing to do for at least a year.  One thing that's nice about it is I don't really have the ability to accumulate things as I would have no place to put them.  Hopefully I can maintain that when I go back to having my own place.  I don't want to collect a bunch of useless shit again, pain in the ass having a lot of possessions to worry about.

Retracing steps
After all of that craziness I needed a break.  I went Costa Rica for a week, a place I thought I would never visit again.  I wanted to retrace my steps from an earlier time, compare and contrast how the world and I have changed in the last 8 years.  I'm really glad I did.  Met some great people and left with a few things to think about.

The next big step is Indonesia   Once I've been back to indo, I think the retracing of steps will be complete and I'll have a more solid sense of direction.

Embracing life
I'd heard it all before, that the only moment that truly exists is now.  Yesterday and tomorrow are constructs of the mind and if you lose yourself in them, you find yourself missing out on life.  I used to think those were concepts best suited to those who don't have to work for a living and have a lot time to just sit around.  I see now there is a practical application in daily life, no mystery to it really.   The more mindful and present one is, the more life you can have, and that's something that is very energizing to me, so I will continue the follow the path of embracing life, in whatever form that takes.  Sounds like a bunch of hippy shit or something don't it.  Beats waking up with a hangover and wondering if I have any smokes left.