Purpose

I grew up dirt poor and am still amazed at how I was able to get to where I am today.. not rich, but not in the gutter either.. I have my freedom, a little bit of money in the bank, house nearly paid off, two educated kids with hardly any student loan debt.. I’m not cold at night nor hungry in the daytime. I think to those peers who all started on third base and think they’ve achieved much and realize how much of a hole I had to claw my way out of just to get to first base.

And I am very, very, very tired yet feel like I have not accomplished all I wanted to.. I always thought there would be more time…

But then I think that maybe what I have done so far is enough.. maybe I started off early with such ambition because at this point in my life — even though I am still quite young — it needed to be. Maybe it was never going to be about me, but about making sure that the two kids who were my entire world for so long were going to be ok.. maybe fortune just skips a generation so that the next will be prepared to do more things at leaps and bounds…

This all sounds like giving up, but maybe it is more like realizing deep in my soul that this is the real story.

Getting started

I have no idea what that is other than a meta-memoir of a man who lived every day of his life in an ordinary, average way, thinking there was always going be enough time to deal with that later when the kids started school, then when they graduated high school, then when they graduated college, then when the house was paid off, then when… and he looked up one day and realized he had built a legacy on absolutely nothing of any discernible value other than the moments of living that could not be sculpted in any way to build anything of substance… not even a pile of sand…

Passion

“What excites you,” he had asked me a few month ago. “What gets you up in the morning.”

I didn’t have a clear answer then but I do now.

Nothing.

My passion has slowly been replaced by obligation. I do this because I said I would and you expect me to.

Dream

That sliver of time between the darkness and the dawn when the dream seems attainable. Just need to do it.

And then you realize, “Who would walk the dog?”

Parenting

The only thing more terrifying than the first night your children come home from the hospital is the day it all ends and they leave you, excited and giddy about starting their new lives and never notice you standing on the porch with tears welling up in your eyes, terrified about how you will live your new life without them underfoot and fighting the urge to cling to them and hug them tight like they were rag dolls.

But you don’t because you are the parent.

Sorry for the spoiler.

I miss your voice

I have friends who start blogs when they are looking for something. A job, themselves, a new lover, a place to be, somewhere to fit in, stuff like that.

They blog passionately, frequently and intensely. Sometimes the posts lead down a path of discovery and sometimes they seem to wander aimlessly.

But eventually the blogging stops.

And my heart aches. I know that they have found what they are looking for and I will probably never hear their voice again. I’m happy for my friends, but also painfully sad at being left behind. I fight that because it is a selfish feeling. I can tolerate almost any other insult except being accused of being selfish.

I am very happy for you, but I miss your voice. I will miss the future you and treasure the voice you have left in my head.

Nothing to say

I worried today that I have not written anything here because I have nothing to say.

But that is not really true.

I have nothing to say that I want to say in public.

But I have a lot I want to say.

Just not here.

That ok?

Writers

Good writers write about what others are thinking.

Great writers write about what others fear but don’t say.

Exceptional writers write about what scares the hell out of them.

I think.

Which is probably why it is really hard to become an exceptional writer.

Out of this many, one

I went to throw away some prescription bottles and found myself intensely irritated that I could not peel the stickers off the bottle. “Why not just throw them away without removing the labels?” I asked myself.

“Because it has my personal information, my doctor’s name and more importantly, the drug the bottle contained.”

“So what,” my inner voice lamented. “Nobody cares and nobody is going to go through your trash.”

And then it came to me as clear as crystal. I care intensely about my privacy because I know with absolute certainty that out of the 6.7 Billion people alive on the planet that I am unique. I am important. I matter.

Me.

Being forced to give up that privacy forces me to admit that I am just one out of many interchangeable human beings. That is something I am not going to just willingly throw in the garbage.

You?