On Attitude…

I have had a pretty rough weekend.  I helped a friend move for 5 hours in 100+ degree weather.  I missed another friends birthday party due to the promise to help move which was made before the party was a known quantity.  My brother asked me at 12:30 in the morning to drive his significant other to the hospital for a non-emergency illness, and I didn’t return home until four hours later.  This then caused me to miss an important trip to my wife’s church to be moral support.   I lost almost 30 hours of invested time to my own completely stubborn refusal to cede ground in my slightly unrealistic dream, and I am battling soul sucking doubts about my ability to be successful in my other life pursuits.  I purged a significant portion of my twitter base which eliminated almost half of the individuals following me, just so that I could restore some sanity to my twitter feed.  I am sure topay a steep cost for such peace of mind.  To top it off, my wonderful son is at the stage of development which includes taking off all his clothing, including his diaper.  This leads to interesting moments when a bathroom break is required, but potty training has not yet been acquired.

And yet… here I am.  Butt in chair, just like I was told would be required by the very wise Jim Butcher.  And I’m not really all that broken up about how rough the weekend was.  It’s kind of a odd moment for me, sitting here with all of the collective nonsense of the past few days behind me.  I don’t feel broken.  I don’t want to throw in the towel.  Perhaps pugnacious tenacity is not the curse I had assumed.  The hammer blows of life no longer carry with them lasting pain, instead I feel like a particularly stubborn piece of metal in the hands of a master smith.  I know that I am being forged for something, but I haven’t yet been made privy to the blueprint.  I’m not usually a religious or spiritual man, yet at times like these I have to wonder at how neatly all of the lines of my life converge. 

I have imbibed the poison of failure so often that I am largely immune to it.  I carry with me no real sense of pride or ego.  I do not have any preconceived notions of greatness, no delusions that success is something owed to me due to my superior abilities.  Such barriers have all been thoroughly beaten from me like I was a rug an angry child was forced to whack the dust out of.  Thorough as the beating may be, the rug is never destroyed by it.  Instead, it is liberated of an otherwise useless burden it had been desperately clinging to.  Scoured though it may be, it is renewed at the same time.  That’s how I feel now, cleansed.  Not destroyed by the beating life has handed to me, only purified by it.  Freed of the fetters of my emotions, I can create without self-judgement.  I don’t know that I could have achieved this priceless state of mind any other way.

Thoughtfully,
Justin