Cautious yet Happy and Hopeful...

It is 8a on Monday morning, 24 May. I suppose it's been a couple of months since I really started to work at getting more physically fit. I've been riding the X Bike 5 days per wk and walking 2-4 miles a day. I have made some changes to my eating habits (mostly eliminated soda, cut back on ice cream and eating before bed). In a lot of ways I feel better, more energy, I feel like I think more clearly, etc. That all sounds pretty positive I believe, right?

Except that I am really hurting...every morning I feel like I've just fallen off the roof, for lack of a better description. I know I have some serious physical limitations (some would call them a disabilty, I suppose) as a result of a pretty serious accident as a 17 yr old kid. But I really thought , uh expected this exercise to help but it mostly hurts more.

It limits my ability to get proper rest: I sleep in 45 min segments throughout the night, usually to sleep around midnight and up around 4-4:30a. I do take a siesta in the afternoon which I started doing recently and that has helped. Part of the problem is that I can't stay in one position (like laying down in bed) for maybe 4 hrs total before it just plain hurts to lay down.

I've been patient and will soon be getting that physical I've been waiting four years for (insurance) and hope that will help my Doc and I define a better program for improving health and healing. I have also accepted that I have some very damaged bones in my back that truly need some surgical attention and I am prepared to deal with that this coming winter.

I have a great deal of support and I'm optimistic and motivated to move on but it occasionally gets discouraging at times....so I write about that here. Lucky readers....

SWR (Sun Will Rise)

Ahhhh, another sunrise (behind the dark clouds somewhere, I'm sure) another day and yea, a new opportunity to find some peace and serenity. Typically I'm pretty good about staying positive, even in the face of adversity but I have my days, such as yesterday when I just want to scream...and so I did.

Now I will move on.....

All about nothing....

Torrential rain today, all day. Combined with this lingering sense of discontent and repressed anger, it is creating a disturbing scenario, with my rage just starting to bubble to the surface. It reveals it's fear, wrapped in hate...lashing out in tongues, wagging. I just feel pissed off....about nothing and just because.

ODAAT

Today, the 10th day of May, 2010....a Monday. Nothing exceptional really about today. It was typically cool, though sunny barely reaching the high 50's and a brisk SE wind was blowing most of the day. But underlying the obvious normalcy of the day is a hint of promise...

For me, it was just another day waiting for the rest of my new life to continue taking shape. An odd thing to say? Maybe but it's really not such an strange comment when one is essentially beginning their life over at the age of 47. A new financial situation and budget parameters. New medical insurance and the possibility now of having new procedures and surgeries that promise at the very least, a bit of hope of having a life w/out so much physical limitation and pain.

I'm now convinced that my "temporary" move from Holland, MI to Coldwater Lake is in reality more like a permanent move now in hindsight. And it's more then cool with me. This island was my dream, a virtual paradise for me as a young lad and now I get to live here, honestly never imagined that would happen.

Accepting such a drastic change in one's lifestyle, expectations and long term goals wasn't nearly as traumatic as I once envisioned. It all happened rather naturally when I decided to get sober...and healthy.

The actual decision...er, uh..choice to get sober was a rather easy one to make once I was realistic about my alternatives. I either stopped drinking and drugging or I was going to die. I actually thought I had made the choice for the latter but fate intervened and WHALAA!!.....I was somehow choosing life against my will as it were. And I can't even begin to explain how grateful I am that it worked out that way.

If I have a complaint today it is that I am not a patient man...and yep, I am still waiting for certain things to happen before I can totally complete my transition to this "new" world as it were, that I now will live in. I have never been one to trust success...I'll wait for the other shoe to drop and everything to go to hell in a hand basket. There is part of me that is just skeptical that perhaps, after 5 long years things have truly worked out for the best. Intellectually I can see it, it's logical and makes sense. But trusting that it it will indeed happen is  is a completely different matter. Acceptance will take time...

65 years gone

May 8, 1945  Victory in Europe Day: VE Day

No, we haven't forgotten. Yes, time has faded a lot of the physical scars...of the wounded soldiers and civilians, of the destroyed cities, towns, villages...the torn, bombed out and scorched earth of Great Britain, Russia, Eastern Europe, Western Europe, the Middle East, Italy and most of that part of the world. The lights have long ago come back on in Europe after those many years of darkness, the Thousand Year Reich but a horrid memory, drifting slowly away on the swirling smoke of memory, thank God.

And at that time, 65 years ago today, we mustn't forget that the World War was in fact not over, not by a long shot. For the many US soldiers and Marines who were at that time fighting a hellish battle against the Japanese on Okinawa, VE Day meant little to nothing. "Their" war was still very much alive and consuming lives at a horrific rate. To them it seemed that this horror would never end until death...their own death. For them, the war would last another 3 months....an eternity to a rifleman.

But for a large part of the world, peace was at hand. A great tragedy was starting to end...the healing could begin...to begin. America, my country, rejoiced...millions of service personel would be coming home..they had survived. And a great many families would look to a peaceful future...without that cherished brother or cousin or father. They were still holding the line at Casino...or in Normandy, at Bastogne or in the Vosges Mountains. Perhaps they were resting peacefully entombed at the bottom of the North Atlantic, a countless victim of the U-Boat menace that now no longer existed. Those families had to find a way to move on...alone, into a very different world.

So as I sit here tonight, I think about all those who served in that war. And those who waited at home for them. How grateful I am that I live in a country that so selflessly gave so many of it's young so that the world could be free. Thank You....

All around us....

A stormy night in S Michigan....kind of fun to watch the rain sweep in across the lake. And it's certainly better then being out in the same freaking rain, that's for sure.

Not sure why I started off that way tonight because frankly I feel somewhat discontented. And I'm going to blame the TV on said discontentment. That's rather ironic actually since I watch very little of it myself. Sports, mainly college FB and some ML Baseball...the Weather Channel, History and Discovery Channels, stuff like that and again, not very much. But and this is a huge BUT here, The TV is on in this house most of the waking day thanks to my father. I share this lake house w/my Mum and Dad in the Spring, Summer and Fall if I haven't mentioned that before.

Well my father, who I love very much insists on having that bloody, fucking TV on all hours of the day. If that weren't bad enough, he has to have the sound on even if he happens to be out of the room. This really blows because he is half deaf so the volume is MAXED out to boot. Pretty annoying right...I mean most folks would find that disturbs any realistic chance of having any serenity at all in the house when he is in it. Oh yea, that's not the kicker....he basically watches only one TV station...anyone care to guess which one it is?!

FOX NEWS? FUCKING BINGO BABY!!!!

Now I am actually rather open minded when it comes to politics and, er..uh pretty much everything else really. I am not registered to any political party and I always vote for the candidate who I think is the best fit for the post regardless of their affiliations. I tend to be somewhat liberal in certain ways and yet I am also conservative in others. I don't get on any one's ass if they happen to feel strongly in their political point of view. I just want my view and right to choose it to be respected as well.

And the purpose of this blog tonight isn't to debate or put forward any particular political point of view. It is however a chance for me to spew on about how freaking sick I am of hearing FOX NEWS. Jesus Christ, give it a rest all ready. I mean fair and balanced?! REALLY, how do they figure that. Hey as far as I am concerned, they have every right to broadcast what they want. I happen to think it's a good thing actually.

And really all I am saying here is I disagree with their opinion that they are objective. They are not...they push a very conservative agenda...and that's cool with me. It really is...I just don't like them telling me it's a balanced reporting of the news because in this day of the 24 hr news cycle, every network is biased, has a very specific agenda and pushes it vigorously. To gain money, power and influence is the name of that game, simple.

I feel the same way about MSNBC or CNN or NBC, ABC, CBS ow whoever....they are free to report what they want to report, however they want to report it. That's not an issue with me. I  think I am being fair and balanced when I came to the conclusion a long time ago that all of the Networks and their Suits are liars. They lie to gain popularity and influence....that in turn generates money which also gives them more influence and power. Their goal is to control. That's the way I see it and I couldn't trust them all any less. And again I accept it for what it is...

Now back to Fox. So basically I'm only singling them out because that happens to be the Network er, ah....politics of choice of my parents, mainly my father. He's not stupid, he says he likes watching them because they are conservative and attack liberals, who he doesn't care for. It's that obvious to him....why shouldn't it be to everyone else?

Well, for me the sickening part isn't so much the politics...as I've said, I feel everyone has a right to their opinion even if I happen to think they are ridiculous. That's what freedom of choice is all about. What drives me nuts is the way they drive home the same tired points of view day in and day out. Taking things out of context, stirring up the emotions of their viewers with suggestions that the enemy (IE: whoever they don't like) are trying to take what's theirs and take over the world. They scare the shit out of honest people with out presenting actual facts. I know we live in a dangerous world and that there indeed are folks who want to destroy our way of life but this isn't the way to deal with it in my opinion....

 They also have turned former mediocre political hacks like DICKMO (Dick Morris) into some sort of conservative super expert who always seems to have it all figured out. Only he doesn't, all he does is emotionalize, criticize and use scare tactics...seldom offering any kind of solution of his own. His entire agenda, night after night after night is to push his latest book. 

Now I don't watch MSNBC (hell I actually don't really watch FOX either, I'm a captive audience) but I would bet that the very same thing goes on there, only playing to the liberal point of view. I have no doubt. And this 24 hr news (and Weather now) isn't going to go away, nope... this shit is only going to get worse. It frightens me that a large majority of Americans are forming their opinions on Foreign Policy, Civil Rights, The Budget, Health Care Reform, etc. Etc. based solely on what some TV Network tells them to believe. Folks like Lincoln, Churchill, Robert Kennedy, Thomas Jefferson, FDR and others are all rolling over in their graves tonight.

People are sheep, blindly following one another over the edge and into the abyss...

Not dead...me thinks.

Have I been busy? Yea but I usually am so that's really nothing new. I've had ample opportunity to write but frankly I just haven't much to say.

When I started blogging I didn't realize that I would very quickly start to feel obligated to write something pretty much every day. And for a time that is exactly what I tried to do.....and the blogs became somewhat if not mostly uninteresting, even to me.

Even now I can't really define what I was trying to achieve in writing this blog. I assumed that I would capture my thoughts, feelings, opinions, etc. and just take it from there. At the very least I would have a bit 'o fun and and hopefully improve my limited writing ability. Along the way, I also threw in some fiction that I had been dabbling with, throwing it against the wall as it were, just to see if it might stick.

In considering all this, I realize that I am writing a blog that has no singular, defined, specific purpose and perhaps it would be better if I narrowed down what I am trying to do here to a specific set of goals, it might prove more interesting, at least to some.

But that is exactly what I was trying to avoid when I started.  What I really wanted to try and capture was the wonderfully haphazard way in which I process what I see, what I experience, feel, hear, think....you get the drift. And sadly, I haven't really come close to achieving anything close to that up to this point. It bothers me because I was certain that "IT" existed, that there truly was something there worth writing about...

Then I realized that the problem was that I have been holding back. I haven't been honest in my attempt to capture the truth as I experience it. I was intellectually and emotionally censuring my own work, basically out of fear of what people would think. Fear that if I did people would see me as I really am and perhaps I wasn't truly ready to do that. And there lies the rub....

For this blog to be true to my vision, to represent TRUTH as I experience, feel and think it, I have to be courageous enough to say what's on my mind w/out worrying about the reaction of others to it. And perhaps better yet, say it and challenge others to respond to it no matter what. I simply wasn't confident enough and if I am to continue I must not worry about the reaction, instead focus on what I can control...my thoughts, feelings, opinions, etc.

Well now, that feels a bit better getting that big 'ole hear turd of outta the way! I could not figure out why I was not feeling good about this blog...and now I know: It wasn't honest and that just wasn't going to work for me. I have decided that If I am going to continue this endeavor that from this point on I have to remove the restraints of fear and be my caustic, sarcastic, loving, humorous, opinionated self, warts and all. Some folks won't like it but hey, that's the way it has to be.

And so, I will begin again and see where it takes me....