THE DAWN OF THE MOST PROMISING SUMMER IN YEARS

It has been a challenge to rebalance myself.  There seems to be a shortage of time and opportunity, but that is not true.  Focus, which is a cognitive process that has been developed through evolutionary processes, requires more energy to use.  It can be seen when we allow ourselves to “veg out” either on the computer or in front of the television.  Decisions that utilize little effort are made by our default or “system one” brain processing.  Too often, whenever convenience is can be seen as the primary option, and is the easiest choice of the available options, it will be the choice that the brain chooses.  This is one of the dilemmas of being human, to be willful and choose effort over comfort, work over the ease of doing nothing.

There needs to be a strategy to develop my downtown Rock Steady franchise.  The “if you build it, they will come” approach only work if there is something that is “built”, and that hasn’t happened yet.  While cold-calling is still a valid approach, it needs to be more honed-in and not this random “hither and yon” way I have been functioning.  I am left to wonder if this is because of hesitancy on my part, if there is something inside of me that is being intimidated by the prospect of being a business proprietor.  Which brings me…

I have begun to openly wonder if I am not leaning on my condition for an excuse.  Not only without or as the world sees me, but more importantly, but from within and how I see myself.  Whether this is me blaming my environs (not that I am, but the word “tired” was not a part of my personal vocabulary until I moved with Kitty) and not taking responsibility is open to discussion.  The truth of the matter is that I have to make sure that I hold my own feet to the fire and do the difficult work that building something from scratch demands.  Rock Steady Indianapolis provides more than enough support to help a franchise-- the question is what am I doing to take advantage of it?

In other personal news, me and my youngest sisters have formally “buried the hatchet”.  They both have terminated relations with the oldest girl in our family, which is a net positive for the both of them.  They both have lived their lives and have managed their families as well as anyone could have hope, given their individual circumstances.  Now, having added Skye to my life, I feel more whole than I prolly deserve to feel.  Anywho, I remember what I had in mind when I set my hopes, my dreams, on moving to Omaha and rejuvenating my life.  For better and for the not-so-much, the things that I primarily had in mind coming her has been what I have been what my life has been about.

I am well (polyp or not) physically and in a great place mentally.  Now I need to summon the energies that I have available to me from not having “drama” around to be a concern, and apply the twilight of the promise of my youth and make something worthwhile of myself for my daughter’s and, most importantly, for myself.  I am going to resuming being the person of which it can be said, “That kind of stuff happens to other people, but that NEVER happens to Mark!!”

HOW DO WE KNOW THE THINGS THAT WE HAVEN'T BEEN TOLD?

TACTICAL

I am doing well!  Still a residual loss of range of motion in my left wrist and right ankle that were both afflicted with gout, but I am going to begin stretching both joints to see if by increasing the flexibility of the joints, that will alleviate the problem I am having.

Did NOT get the colonoscopy.   Several reasons… none of them enough to PERMANENTLY write off the test, but with the timing of things coupled with some misfortune, I felt it would be better to have the procedure done next year.

Opening up the calendar and looking for July dates to visit Indiana and my good friend Ken and his wife, Beth, at their home in South Bend.  Hopefully this will be the start of our being travel pals, too, as I am looking forward to traveling (somewhat) around the country, including Detroit!! I don’t think that I need to explain why I need to make traveling home a notable place for me to visit, but after my last trip there, seeing my Dad would likely mean more to me than I had previously anticipated.

Now I am going to keep blogging… I feel that I have to repeat that to myself.  I do miss coming out and seeing what other people have to say, way more than I do having things to write about!!  I do want to start making videos that pertain to health and fitness, including discussions and Q & A’s about working out as well.

HOW DO WE KNOW THE THINGS THAT WE HAVEN’T BEEN TOLD?

Even had my gout not been nigh-incapacitating, I still could have pictured less frequent trips to make blog entries.  The community aspect that was so prevalent when I first began blogging has kind of drifted away from me.  I believe that there are still corners of the internet where people gather with common interests.  But it seems that the community which I once felt a part of has begun to drift away, pushed apart by dark energy.  And for me, that is cool.

There is a line in a song by The Clash (the only band that matters… man, and to think that they lived up to that claim is astonishing..!) “Lost In The Supermarket” … “...that’s how it’s been all around me…”, and while I am aware of the lyrics implication to the song’s character, it feels as though the singer was speaking directly to me.  There are things that, despite their seeming incongruity, has always been in and about my life that I have become accustomed with.  Yet in being accustomed to certain expectations does NOT mean that I also consider myself a prisoner to fate.  Observing other people who feel as though life’s tender mercies are far crueller to them (though as for that, personally, I feel that life is indiscriminate in allocating its blessings) than they are to others, to say nothing of life's bounty of good fortune unfairly being denied them.  That’s not me.  I knew that then, as a teenager, and I know that now, as an adult.  So why did this song, and more importantly, one particular line, have resonance with me?

While I don’t know (and yes, I am aware that the knowledge is a few keystrokes away from me) when they stopped publishing the Zander Hollander sports yearbooks, I remember being in junior high school and reading the college sports, football and basketball, from cover to cover.  Because I lived so much in my head as a kid, I would pretend I was the next big thing in football, only I wanted to be an undiscovered gem at some small college.  Schools like Azusa-Pacific and Cal-Poly Pomona, as well as a host of other universities came into my awareness, including that number, along as “the usual suspects”, was the University of Nebraska (at Kearney, which I have since learned is pronounced “Car-ney”, and not “Kerr-ney”).  I don’t know how many hours that I would spend fantasizing being a football player that starred at a school I was only familiar with through the agegate type in the newspaper on Sunday mornings.  But I do remember thinking that it was likely a town that had the same kind of relation to Omaha as East Lansing does to Detroit (it doesn’t… Kearney is in THE STICKS).  Not sure if I will ever find a way out there, just to say to myself that I have been there (which is what I have done in my world travels).

One of the things that my months-long battle with gout has accomplished is make me reaffirm my “want it bad enough” with regard to my life.  There are things that I still want to do, there are goals that I still aspire to reach.  I got the title of my entry from a recent segment on “The Moth” radio program.  And like my life’s connection to the music that I listen to, the connection to this story is only in the appreciation for the expanse of emotion that it covers, and how the words cloyingly represents the feelings and emotions inside of me.  This is where the ephemeral becomes persistent, and is more of a durable character trait of mine.

Though this start of this year has seen me grudgingly accept the continued progression of my condition, I have in no way abandoned any of the hopes that I have for myself.  I never expected to not face fell challenges en route to wherever it is that I am going, and it is with that understanding that I have coped and mollified my interpersonal disappointments.  Things that I

do know, which have more in common with things that I don’t know that I know, or even where I know them from, won’t let me fall prey to the thoughts of people who have not considered the world beyond their own understanding, but are comforted in the ignorance that precludes the notion that there is more to living than just being.  There are experiences all there for the taking as well, and there has to be more reason for not going out on said experiences than “because”.

“WORDS ARE LIKE A CERTAIN PERSON…

...who can’t say what they mean don’t mean what they say”.

I haven’t been too interested in trying to ascertain the relationship vibe here in Omaha.  The main reason is that I simply came to Omaha completely out of f*cks to give.  So when it comes to thinking about Nebraska, Princess, or any of the other three women that I have dated since I have moved here, it has simply been NEITHER this NOR that, and all that is related is that they chose to have left me alone.  This topic bears worth mentioning because I received an odd text AGAIN from the woman with whom I had the best first date ever.  The substance of the conversation is unimportant as is the countenance under which I held it.  I mean… what?  While this melancholy topic would have provided quite the introspection, to do so would fly in the face of things that I said about myself YEARS ago.  I always spoke to the uniqueness of my feelings for Tee Jay, and that having “followed prophecy”, I freed myself from that burden.  One of the things about her that I KNOW that I shared, is the importance of my “formula for happiness”, and how I interpreted Nietzsche’s words.  But then, I guess that is the difference between us… I can and do say what I mean...