Ponderence

 I'm staring out my window. 

That's all, drinking coffee, and staring at cars on the highway. All morning. I can't get motivated to do shit. I just stare out the window,

Pondering. Wondering. Worrying.

I can't get out of this funk that I've found myself in many times before. Over the years I've done the same thing, I think everyone has. There's a point where we become philosophical and spiritual, looking inward and outward at the same time. There's a point in all our lives where we begin to ponder the implications of our own existence, and wonder what it all means, to ourselves, our family and our friends. Then we worry about the future.

I can't not do this some days. The traffic on the highway is strangely intoxicating. Not to mention the change of the season visible in the trees. Winter is coming, more change. For me, fall is not my favourite time, but one of depression and low spirits. Even with the beauty it brings, the coming winter does not make me happy, only aggravated and spiritually empty. More cars and trucks rumble down, and once in a while a cruiser pulls someone over in front of my house.

Then it all stops for a while, the road goes quiet, and I can hear the roosters next door for a while. That's usually rudely stopped by a very loud vehicle. I won't hear the roosters again until tomorrow morning, when I'm trying to sleep. The old wives tales about roosters making a ton of noise in the morning is a misnomer - you hear them all day, unless they are drowned out by life going on around you. 

The same goes with our frame of mind. Sometimes we can't hear the positives for all the negatives that drown it all out. We can't find our centre because someone or something has knocked us off. The traffic on the highway is the same. Sometimes a truck will pull in, or a car of a friend, and you can take your focus off the rest of the highway for a while while you deal with whatever is about to happen. Again, the same goes for our centre. We get interrupted by life events. Dates, meetings, appointments, errands, weddings, funerals, work. Then, we go back and watch the traffic again.

That's where I'm at now, watching the traffic. Now and then a vehicle will pass carrying a boat, or an ATV, canoe. Now and then a bicyclist will meander down the road. Now and then an RV will pass. These change my perceptions of life to one of rest and relaxation, and makes you wonder why it's not you in those vehicles, on my way to some pleasant valley, or mountain lake somewhere. Then a semi rolls past, knocking me back to reality, and I stare out the window again, waiting.

In the country I regularly hear the staccato of gunshots from the hunters over at the river. Another allegory for life, serenity interrupted by chaos. Gotta find the balance, gotta find the peace, gotta ignore the shots. Focus on the cyclists, the peace. It's hard to do, but I have to manage.

When I lived in the city chaos was everywhere, you had to look for the peace. The rat race, the constant comings and goings of everyday existence, all of the allegories transferred to a different situation, but still all the same. Raising a family, caring for a household, people closer than here, busier times, most good, a lot bad. And the traffic. Oh, the traffic. Always going, never pausing, endless streams of distractions, endless reasons to stare out the window and ponder.

I moved out here in part to remove myself from that pace of life. For the most part it worked, I found peace and serenity amongst the lower levels of humanity and noise. Or should I say, peace found me. On the river in my canoe, or walking thru one of the area's parks, and even in my own backyard, by a fire at night, with friends. The pace of life slowed and I had many moments of clarity. Again I had the opportunity to smile and thank God for my life, my family, my friends, my job. Things are so much simpler here when you see just how much the wildlife outnumbers the mass of humanity of the city. The birds and the deer do their thing, the frogs that live in the marsh just live their lives, that's what this place has taught me. Just live my life, go with the ebb and flow of it all, go with the traffic.

Again I took a pause while writing this to stare back out the window. Another cyclist went by, as the lawn mowers and trucks took over the sounds of the day. You can't hear the peace of the cyclist, only the calamity of humanity. You have to ignore that and find the serenity.

Life is like that. Find the peace. Find your centre, find your serenity and centre in the midst of all that which tries to deflect your focus and destroy your peace.

Be the cyclist, not the truck.

Cheers.

Lost

Life is strange, a meandering compilation of events.
Seemingly random, without purpose, without order.
Today happens, yesterday is finished, tomorrow is yet to be.
Time is a meaningless frivolity.
What happens at any given moment has purpose at that time,
But tomorrow that purpose gone. Meaningless now.
It's done.

What's in the past is beyond trying to do anything about.
It's tomorrow now that matters.
Even the present is meaningless to adjust as it happens too fast.
Each moment in the present unfolds as fate requires.
The past can hurt you, memories good and bad have meaning.
The moment is gone, but the pain lingers, or the jubilation.
The pain is always there.

It gets into your head, stuck there, like a sore that won't heal.
It gets into your soul and never lets go.
It gets more difficult to deal with the deeper you go into the rabbit hole.
Your mind gets stuck on memories, good or bad.
And you linger there.

Things that were, things that could have been, things that hurt.
Your mind will always remind you of them, whether you want it to or not.
You try to remember good things, fond memories.
Then you realize you don't have them anymore, and it hurts more.
The pain lingers again, deeper now. More afflicting now.
Why couldn't that good memory remain constant now?
Why couldn't it still be that good.
It can, but we don't let it.

We linger on the bad, we long for the good times.
We long for the things we've lost.
Even though we live in the moment of positivity,
The pain of the past keeps the spirit from truly flourishing.
We try, and try again, until it hurts to keep trying.
Then we give up.

But no matter how far we go forward and stay positive,
No matter how much we endeavour to make new positive memories,
The old negatives still flourish there, in your mind, in your heart.
Things that were once upbeat and happy,
Are now painful to recall.
Because we've lost it.

We want it back and we can't have it, that is where the pain comes from.
Tomorrow is another day in a long series of moments in life.
We can only hope that tomorrow brings forth memories that we don't have to suppress.
Like so many others that were once happy.
And now hurt.

Renewal, forced.

I just realized I haven't written in almost a year.

Shit, I'm slipping.

There was a time when these posts were quite common, and unread. I post this crap for me. I'm not looking for anyone's approval. This is supposed to be my diary as it were.  But apparently nothing has happened since March 2019 that required me to take notes. Nadda. Nothing, Fuck all.

Not entirely true, lots happened, but the other thing that happened is that I just stopped writing anything down. I stopped worrying about logging into my life every week, I stopped caring what others thought of me. Maybe I've grown up, finally. At 51 years old.

So here's a small synopsis of my life since my last post:

• I shattered my foot and went off work for three months.
• I developed a blood clot in my leg because of it.
• I bought a Mustang.
• I made several new friends, and can't imagine my life without them now.
• I'm still NOT finished trucking school (see points one and two).
• I found a brother I never knew I had.
• I sold my house.
• My daughter started college in another city and that freaks me out.
• I've made concerted effort to fix my physical issues. IE, I started working out for the first time in years. I even bought a home gym.
• I'm out of town a lot on business, so I post from Chicago, Louisville, Oakville and Detroit.

In a nutshell, that's not much. I still live alone in the county, in God's country. This brings me strength and peace. Many days I wish I could share that with everyone, so everyone's life has all of that. I've become a simple man, living within simple means, with a neurotic cat as a companion. But I am also gifted with many friends. Life is good.

I've had my share of troubles lately, I've been fighting inner demons as we all do. Sometimes life changes on you and you wonder what path to take. As Robert Frost once mentioned, there is a path less travelled. I took that, and life is better to its means. But that path comes with challenges. Once one is released from bonds of responsibility, one can make a multitude of decisions. Some are regretful, some are promising. I kinda lie in the middle. I have many choices to make, and only I can decide which are the right ones.

These changes and choices have affected my relationships and simply common habits. There are friends I don't see much anymore, but others I see often. There are hobbies I used to indulge in, and other fanciful distractions I revel in. Such is life, it changes. We change. Life changes. I believe this new environment I find myself in has affected some old habits, to the better or worse depending on you point of view. I like who I am now, I like the changes I've made but in honesty I miss who I was years ago. This blog, if you read back far enough will prove that. I don't ever want to lose that old me, but I've evolved; changed. We all do. But we all have our roots, and our passions.

This post is me telling myself to get back to who I was while at the same time keeping who I've become. This post is also now a rambling changing diatribe in which I push myself to pick up pieces of my past and mesh it into my future. You decide.

Ultimately, it's about having a chance encounter with someone with passion for writing, and has awakened something in me that used to exist. Something I really never want to lose. So Thank you Karyn, a women I randomly met and found to have a kindred spirit. You awoken the kraken.

You have made me write again, and dammit, you'll regret it.

Cheers.