RELATIONSHIP OF COMMAND

THE INSPECTOR GENERAL IS COMING

I like to do my year-end review a little earlier than this, not because of some arbitrary date that everyone chooses to make promises to themselves that they will break, usually in short order.  For me, usually November is when I begin to look back and assess how my year was and what I need to do to make progress to wherever it is I am going.

So far, this year has been a good one for me.  It did not start that way with my getting struck by a car on the third day of 2011, but it is finishing well, with school going strong, a visit from Ken, and steady progress in getting myself together. 

My early-winter blues hasn’t left me incapacitated and I have mentioned how they seem to be easing.  I feel noticeably better these days and am once again looking forward to the future in my so-called life.

FACING FEARS IS ESSENTIAL…

…if you want to live your dreams!

Thomas posited a question about what people imagined about.  One person left a comment that was so touching that I did not want to leave an extended ramble about the things that I imagine.  Then I thought about how the things that I imagine are the things that I actually live. 

My childhood included plenty of days spent wondering what I will be when I grow up.  Since I am still wondering what that may be, maybe I am still a child, a boy in a man’s body!  Can’t say that I did not think about the career/job, the wife, and I am sure I pictured the house and car.  But my imagination has paled to the reality of my life because I believe that I have made headway on to most of my childhood projections.  After all, I have not the foggiest idea of what I’d had been doing at this time if I hadn’t made the connection to Omaha when I was a young boy.

 

You know, once I got here and begin to feel comfortable here the real question for me is more like what can I imagine for myself NOW.  My imagination never operated in the ‘macro’, like I whether or not we will have flying cars in my lifetime or have peace on earth; my imagination was more about what I could do in the world that I was in.  If anything, my wanderings is more about what can I change in my ‘now’ so that I can fulfill and be worthy of the future that is pulling me forward. 

Another little phrase that I use to ‘imagine’ my future with goes:  “Others have done it before me; why can’t I?”  The implication being that I should not fear pushing myself or enduring difficult times, as there have been others who have either dealt with or are currently coping with, difficulties similar to mine and go on to triumph over their obstacles.  In the Saturday World-Herald’s local section, there was a story about a young man with TBI who walked at UN-O with his BA and is looking forward to graduate study.  I imagine myself reaching my goal, a degree in whatever-it’s-in and while I was out in a glorious December sun, I had the sensation of living somewhere near where I was riding, in one of the apartment buildings, and working…

That was something that I did not see clearly.  But like most everything I have sai ‘Geronimo’and taken a leap at, because I missed its edge, does not mean that it wasn’t there for me to have latched onto. 

Maybe that feeling brings me to what I imagine… that I make better decisions and choices in those crucial moments where the hinge swings open either opportunity or ‘non-opportunity’ depends on which door I go through.

Another recent entry from Thomas that appealed to me at this is one here.  I could go on and on about what I felt when I saw it, the idea that there is a throng of people trying to take the escalator when the stairs are available with unimpeded access.  I don’t mind when things get hard for me because I felt that it was the testing of the deserving to what it is that they wanted of their life.

The biggest loss of my no longer being able to box is that my style of fighting, like my philosophy to living, was eclectic. But it was also visceral and when you got the opportunity to see me ‘do what I do’, you had verifiable visual evidence of what kind of person that I be!  When you try to describe and tell someone that you are ‘this’, especially when they think you and everyone like you are like ‘that’, when you got to see me fight, also got to see ME.

Sitting here with the remnants of an episode of vertigo (which is what hied me back to my apartment) and watching football, once more I am reflecting on how good my life is and how much better it is getting.  Not that things could be worse (and that is the same for errybody) or anything, but I like where I am at … and I like my odds at success.  Isn’t it funny at how much better your odds become the harder you work and the more focused on the goal you are?