New Years Day

Slight navel-gazing post ahead.

So, New Years is the time to be productive through purging. It is also the time to look over the past year, take a couple of lessons from everything that happened and move forward into newer, better things.

The last three years (or so) have been object lessons in moving forward and learning more about myself. Nothing compares to the work I've done since the shooting, however. That near-death experience intensified my time in therapy; not only did we deal with PTSD from the shooting and other events over the past few years, we focused intently on some motivating experiences and tackled some very deep-set anxieties and memories. It was the kind of breakthrough that shakes (and shapes) everything you see and feel about the world.

One of the end results is that I have a very different feeling when I look at Banana these days. I also have a very different sense of the lessons I have already learned and still need to learn about my 37 years. And, taking a page from Buddhism, I am working to appreciate myself and others for what we are and can be, rather than dwelling on the mistakes I/we have made in the past. It's not easy, but it is good.


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That said, does anyone care about Iowa any more? I'm already tired of the presidential campaign, and I haven't even thrown my hat behind a single candidate.