Putting The Matches Away

Looking for the matches in case there are any other bridges I feel like burning, I realize that I have failed to appreciate the good things that came out of the bad situations in the past year.  I hate it when people tell me to look for the positive in the negative but it's how I usually coach myself through dark times.  As stupidly cliched as it sounds to my ears, there is serious value in making a practice of examining everything that brought us down to find out how it might lift us up.

It's like this: crap on your shoe is disgusting but crap in the earth is enriching.  Same crap, different perspective.

So I want to observe that while the things I thought I was going to accomplish and overcome in 2009 were not the things that I actually did overcome and accomplish but other surprising unplanned crap-into-manure situations did occur to enrich me as a person.

• The two lost friendships seemed like a bummer and certainly came about in painful ways but the unexpected blessing from it is that stripping people from my life who weren't true friends made me feel less lonely and left out.  Quite the reverse.  I feel more grateful for the tried and true friends I'm lucky enough to have.  Any event that makes you value what you already have has to be counted as positive.

• Writing that book just about ripped me apart.  My first book.  108,000 words and while it's resting for a while before I come back to it I have to admit that this book shook a bunch of old shit loose that needed to be scraped out and cleaned up from my soul.  It also showed me that I can write fiction and more than that it showed me that I'm supposed to write fiction.  That was an incredible professional breakthrough.

• Still being fat after all my efforts. Though I still panic about how nothing I manage to do right makes any difference at all, needing to do more fitness led me to Kung Fu and doing Kung Fu may not make me thinner, but it is making me feel stronger and it's giving me an outlet for the rage that writing the book (see above) unleashed.  Naturally the anger has been there for most of my life, but once the book opened me up I had to do something with it and now I have a safe place to let it out.

That's all I've got for right now.

I have to go attend to some things while I get Max and I ready for Kung Fu. 

Just wanted to say that I put my matches away. 

For now, anyway.