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