"I'm Up On the Tight Wire"

It was a "Judy" kind of day...I could not get into the Zone even though I made several good attempts; there was always a reason why I couldn't sink into it. I feel a lot of guilt when I have days like these, and today's funk came unexpectedly and suddenly. The evening continued to feel uncomfortable, though I DID find something to entertain me on YouTube. In fact, it was a drive through video of the town where I grew up and it brought back images of my childhood, my adolescence, my young-mom years...and even my adult years to the recent past. Fate and Destiny loomed large alongside the images, and both the emotional and intellectual responses it illicited. Isn't it interesting that I grew up in that Small-Town-USA kind of community, and here I am still planning on trying to rent an old farmhouse to re-capture that hometown feeling? I must remain firm and rational: you can't go back. "Or can you?" asks the other side of my brain. Emotionally you most definitely CAN go back, sometimes whether you want to or not. To be able to go back, to start over, to try again...these are strategies i was taught as a child to utilize when trying to perfect a skill or accomplishment. The pre-requisit to going back though is to learn from the previous error or imperfection. It seems, in fact, that at some level, the Universe ITSELF provides us with replay opportunities! It's like the Universe says, "Okay, here we are again, but THIS time, you know so much MORE...so I'm giving you another opportunity to make things right." Yeah, it's just like that. And so I must proceed with caution, but also with a sense of being grounded...and most of all...BALANCED. "...Like a rubber-neck giraffe You look into my past Well, maybe you're just too blind to see I'm up in the spotlight Oh, does it feel right? Oh, altitude seems to get to me I'm up on the tight wire Flanked by life and the funeral pyre Putting on a show For you to see..." -Leon Russell, 1972

Truth...Stranger Than Fiction

Today is Damien's 15th birthday - the first of his 15 birthdays that I've not been with him, and it kinda hurts. Another sure sign that it is the end of an era. Fifteen years since Damien's birth, and so fourteen years with James. As if it's all coming full-circle, Life...the Universe itself...seems to have brought me to a pivotal ending and a pivotal beginning. I feel like I have crossed over...entered a new realm...and in several literal ways, I have: new degree & credentials, new job and new experiences with making financial decisions. New place to live. New furniture. New car. New responsibilities. New hopes and dreams...new passions. I was feeling as if I was getting a little bit closer to gaining some sense of resolve that, although my life has been tragic at times, in the end, I managed to pull it together and emerge as a more fully-cohesive me. Now it appears that there will be a potential twist in the story...an unforeseen fork in the road...and perhaps even a one-in-a-million opportunity to proceed mindfully, willfully, with insight and hindsight...and the conviction to support the weight of a thickening plot. I remind myself to not jump to conclusions, make assumptions, or get my hopes up too high. And yet, some would say there has been foreshadowing every step of the way. Some would say that Fate and Destiny are involved. And then I wondered: What exactly IS Fate? And what is Destiny?? It's "when it is all finished and you discover it wasn't random." Eventually everything connects and makes sense and while you "may not end up where you thought you were going," you realize that you will "always end up where you were meant to be." Apparently, there is a lot more to my story; it is important that I enter the next chapter of my life with trust because, after all, I am the author (at least to a large degree in terms of how I respond to Fate and Destiny). It seems we often meet our Fate on the road we take to avoid it - or so I've heard. "Yes there are two paths you can go by but in the long run, there's still time to change the road you're on." "And it makes me wonder..."