This is my first post on my blog. What is a blog? I don't know, but I figure it is probably something that I won't be able to do properly and nobody will read this. Oh, well. I will do it anyway. I'm about a month away from turning 35 and lately, my mind is so busy running from thought to thought, question to question, I find myself longing for the days when I was 15 and life was the least of my worries. You know, where the biggest thing I had to worry about was whether or not my shoes were cool enough to keep the big guys from tormenting me...Ahhhh, those were the days. When I flash back to that time in my life, I can relive those moments with more happiness than I remember having at the time. I see the year 1996. The Atlanta Braves were three months removed from finally winning a world series title, I was a freshman with a scrawny body, big feet and a huge head, and my family was still intact. My Dad was alive and still married to my mom, my Grandmother (Nanny) was living next door, as well as many members of my Dad's family living on the same block. Those days were awesome. I flash back to the summer of 1993 where my days were spent riding bikes, playing baseball until dusk and having fistfights with the rowdy kids who lived around the corner. I can remember the smell of the honeysuckles that grew at the back of the yard. I can remember having mosquito bites that I scratched until they bled. I remember getting in trouble with the cops for shooting squirrels with a bb gun. (I never did figure out who called them) After I find myself lost in these thoughts, I shake myself back to reality. A reality of a wife, 4 kids and BILLS that have to be paid. A reality that makes me ask "What am I doing here?", "Where am I going?", and "Where did I go?". At first, these questions bothered me. They made me feel as if I somehow regretted the life that I have built for myself. Even though I knew that I was happy, I still wondered if I could have somehow been happier. Could I have been smarter with my money? Could I have been smarter with my time? The answers are not so simple, but the best I came up with is "probably so". But, knowing that I can't change anything now, I have to go from here and be smarter. Be better. I have to take the moment I am in and make it count for now, and work toward a better future. A future where my kids won't have to worry about the things I worried about, or have to eat their hot dogs on sliced store-brand loaf bread. I say future, but it is now. It is, both, future and present. It is present for us, but future for that big headed kid that I was. I feel as if somehow I exist in both places at once. I'm here now, but I'm also there in the 1990's. At this moment, I am living out the future of my former self. Maybe it isn't the future I thought it would be at that time, but it is a present that I would not change for the world. I feel that it is the right future for my teenage self. That version of me cannot imagine the life I am living. A beautiful wife, great kids and 20 plus years of experience at living, since that time, that made my young self what he is today. The experience of love, loss, divorced parents, death of family and friends, friends becoming strangers, strangers becoming friends, birth of children, changes in jobs, etc. In this moment, it is clear; every single thing that I have experienced up to this point has prepared me for the next step. Maybe I'm just reacting to being in my mid-thirties and approaching half-time of life, or maybe this is just another experience to help me move to the next step on my journey. I don't know. But one thing I DO know is that I am enjoying this ride of Life, Love and General Nonsense.
More to come.....
Peace
