So my deal is pretty simple.  I have been struggling to write for awhile.  It has irritated me to no end.  I have been royally frustrated in the highest.  Yet somehow the words just would not flow.  I would sit down indignant with the state of affairs, and swearing profanely that this time would be different.  And each and every time, I would walk away ashamed at another failure to write.

I was unsure what the problem was.  There were plenty of excuses.  I am legitimately extremely busy with a full personal and professional life.  I have a job that extracts everything I have mentally each and every single day.  I have a burgeoning family that all have real needs that only an actively engaged husband and father can fulfill.  In the course of putting the two together, it extracts everything I have most days and then some.

And yet somehow I want to write.  I want to take the ideas I have and put them on the page.  For the longest time it was my passion.  In the beginning I wrote without any thought to the long term.  I was just writing, because it was who I am.  Putting my thoughts on paper was just what I did.  It was my passion.

And then one day, I lost it.  I am not sure when it happened for sure.  I do know for certain that earning my first rejection slip had something to do with it.  I am pretty sure it happened before then though.  Somewhere along the way, the passion to transition and get my work published became more important than my passion for writing.  And then when that transition was revealed to be folly with the rejection slip, I think I just gave up.

It is easy to quit.  It is easy to let the inner critic win.  I let it win for months after the rejection came.  I had good excuses.  I am busy.  I am tired.  I really should working on the work I get paid to do, than on something that won't see the light of day.  And there were many many more. They were all very rational in nature, all very logical and linear.  It makes sense to be about the things that make sense.

And yet somehow in that surrender, I felt more depressed than I ever felt when the rejection slip came.  I felt like I was squandering something I had been given.  I also felt like I wasting my essential gifting by hiding my 'talents' in the sand as it were.

I realized recently that it was about the loss of my initial passion that started all of this.  I surrendered my first love for something I knew nothing about.  I know now what I have to do, what is required.  I need to just shut my yap, and rekindle my passion for writing without a care in the world for anything more.  I don't really know how to do that candidly.  I don't know how to recapture it, because I don't really grasp how I got to that initial place to begin with.

I have hashed out a rough plan though.  I need to set really short term, highly focused goals.  I need to sit down with the only goal being to capture the first sentence, with the hope of doing more.  Maybe just maybe that will lead me to where I was before.  I am not sure to be perfectly honest.  I just know that I have to try.

Here's the deal...  I have a bad habit of engaging in various thought experiments, that lead to an interesting conclusion in my head.  I then pontificate as if I have mined a new truth.  Then God uses a combination of experience and life events to teach me that the motto, 'Physician heal thyself' is rather applicable.  At the conclusion I feel sheepish and foolish.

Take today for example...  I spent some time in contemplative thought.  The conclusion of which was an interesting thought, that I turned into a tweet via my twitter account, (due to my linking twitter and Facebook it appeared there also).

The tweet was:  The degree which people think they are tolerant/forgiving is inversely proportional to the actual degree the universe requires it of them.

This was the direct culmination of spending some time on twitter watching people engage in various activities of incivility and false piety.  I found myself feeling rather indignant.  It ended in the tweet.

The rest of the day was spent being reminded frequently as to how imperfect and in need of as much grace as anyone else.  I lost my temper more than once.  I was judgemental at times.  I had a short fuse with those around me.  In short, I found myself wondering why I ever opened my mouth in the first place.  The thought, 'what does the world need with another voice adding to the cacophonous madness, even if it is my own' struck me.

I found myself thinking the thought, 'I never learn'.  This string of events happen to me often. I do find myself in the midst of this moment often.  I open my mouth and speak only to discover that I am in as much need of heeding the advice I am offering as anyone who might happen upon my random pontification.

I considered all of this at length as I walked my path of thorns the rest of the day.  I came away thinking not that I should shut my yap entirely.  Rather that I need to remember and speak frequently that more often than not when I am speaking, I am speaking to myself more than anyone else.  I need to accept that the things that occur to me, strike a cord with me for a reason.  Sometimes it is nothing more than something I need to work on.  Other times it is something I need to remember.

I have to keep in mind that grace is abundant.  Growth only comes in the midst of the revelation of truth for us all, myself most of all.  Accepting first my imperfections in life and in relationship with those around me is the starting point of wisdom.  Not from the place of stubborn refusal to change.  Rather accepting it from the place of having the full spectrum of who I am revealed to me  so that healing can begin, so that times of refreshing and renewal can come, so that growth can happen.

Acceptance from that place, is healthy.  Acceptance from there is healthy.  Acceptance from there is what God was trying to get across to me all day long.  I do wish that I learned these lessons the easy way.  It would not be consistent with who I am, and who God made me to be if I did.

Let me sum up by saying this to you, my reader, I am not perfect.  I make mistakes.  I sin.  I fall short.  My sins are no worse or better than yours.  We all sin differently, but sin is a binary, not gradient based item.  It is a one or a zero.  In saying that I am saying that I am not any better than you or than anyone else.

I get that my experiences are not universal.  I get that there are more paths to ultimate enlightenment than I can fully grasp.  When I speak, I am trying to speak from a place of grace illuminated by truth as I have come to understand it.  If your experience differs from mine, or if you come to different conclusions than I do, it does not me right and you wrong, or vice versa.  It just makes us different, nothing more.

If you are trying each day to live the life granted you by your creator to the best of your ability, then you are my brother and my sister.  If you like me understand your limitations and your failures as well as anyone else, then all I can say is welcome to the club.  Please help keep me honest.  I am just doing the best I can as a man looking through a glass darkly.

​Your patience, and grace is genuinely appreciated.

It would be easy at this time of the year to post a curmudgeonly item laced with diatribes about this season.  It would be easy to wave my hand, figuratively speaking, and declare it all to be a ‘humbug’.  There is certainly a lot of that going around in various media outlets.  Rather than go that route, it is my best interest to try to be positive and hopeful in this holiday period.

The best path to that is to start simply and fundamentally.  It is important not to focus on the lust for things that is so prevalent at this time.  It is an easy trap to fall into.  Marketing is geared to make us feel incomplete and inadequate if we do not go on a quest for this season’s ‘must have’ thing.  This path will never lead to fulfillment.  It will always lead to a cold, incomplete search for fulfillment by the acquisition of things.  There will always be a new thing.  There will always be a new spate of marketing intent of making you want it, desire it, and lust for it.  It is the merry-go-round of sadness.

Rather a path to happiness at this time of year is not found in materialism.  For me at least, happiness starts in finding joy in the current moment.  Things are nice, but if they become the center of this season’s focus the fundamental message of this season is lost.  The path that leads me ‘home’, to the center of what it means to be me, begins and ends in a spirit of thankfulness.  Oddly enough, it can be difficult to cultivate such a spirit at any time of the year, but in this time if you don’t already have it can be even more so.  But it is an essential element for happiness both in these long dark months and the other months of the year.

Joy in this season starts with counting blessings.  Any search for fulfillment that focuses on the external as some path to happiness is giving into the idolatry of materialism.  Whereas starting with a rigorous inventory of the blessings already granted to you puts the focus where it belongs.  This inventory helps you recognize the truth.  That being this:  Most residents of the industrialized world are blessed to a degree that is impossible to fully calculate or appreciate.  For example, if you start by counting clean drinking water and a functioning toilet you are more blessed than several billion of the world’s inhabitants.

Joy comes in grasping the inventory, and fully understanding the geography involved.  Laying hold of the notion that we are so blessed on a day to day basis, that allowing the lust for this season’s new thing to wreck that, becomes a silly notion.  Understanding that the list of blessings are impossible to fully calculate leads to a place of humility.  That might not sound intuitive, but it is true, at least for me.

In no small measure it is true, because any accurate inventory forces me to realize that the blessings that have accrued to me, having little to nothing to do with me.  They did not by and large enter my life due to my effort and striving.  They entered my life, because of the work of my creator.  They entered my life not because of anything about myself.  They entered my life through the grace of my God.

This realization forces me to a place of humility.  It forces me to be grateful for everything that has already come into my life.  It reminds me that very little of my life is about me specifically.  A life lived from a place of selfishness and vain self-interest, is a wasted life.  It never leads to joy.  It never leads to long term fulfillment.

The inventory usually forces me to accept that when I put myself at the center of my world, I have made a basic mistake.  It forces me to grasp that a life lived well, is always focused on ‘the other’ as it were.  When I give my life to my creator to be poured out as a drink offering for the world in which I have been placed, I am fulfilling my primary function.  In essence, we are blessed so that we in turn can be a blessing for others.  It is the consistent witness of the parable of the talents.  When we hoard all that we are given in service to ourselves and hide it in the earth, we fail the most primary reason we were blessed in the first place.
​
So the message I am fumbling along trying to communicate is this.
                -Find your center and appropriately prioritize it.
                -Take stock of your life.
                -Count your blessings frequently and rigorously.
                -Find your way to a thankful spirit.
                -Understand that by and large it is not about you.
                -Be the blessing to others that you were meant to be.
 
It may sound silly, and rather cumbersome.  It is however not.  It is the only path by which I have found that real joy in this season may be found.  And that, at least for me, is all I am after in this life.

This is the traditional season for thankfulness and gratitude.  I tend to pause during this time to consider this at least on some level.  I try to delve into the subject as deep as I can manage with the goal being to allow it steep into every fiber of my being.  I can't say I am perfect in this regard.  As it is with everything I have good moments and bad.

This year has been more challenging than most to find the time for much more than a surface level and cursory view of the subject.  This hasn't been, because I did not wish to.  Rather it was the result of my life equation being out of balance in a definitely negative direction.  I have been spending my time running from one five star problem to the next.  If I were honest, I would have to admit I have not made much headway on any of it.

This morning in the wee hours of essentially ohmygawditstooearly for this, I got a screwed up wake up call.  I mean that in the literal sense of the word.  A little after six this morning, I awoke to someone pounding on our front door.  Now given at this point I was running on maybe three hours of sleep, work priorities ran into the early portion of the wee hours.

Let me be clear, I know that urgent notifications at this point of the morning are never good news. Publishers Clearinghouse has never pounded on my door at this hour to announce I have won a prize.  I understand that this is usually to notify us that something awful either has happened or is happening.  I get that good news tends to arrive at a decent hour when sun is shining.

This was a neighbor of our checking on us and notifying us of a fire nearby.  His insistent pounding on the door made us aware that our neighbor behind us had a fire.  Everyone in the family woke up, and found the fire behind us to be fully engorged.  Our neighbor's garage had caught fire.  

Words cannot describe what I found when I went to the back window of the house.  I could feel a raging fire through the triple pane windows of my house.  I could only see the fire and the smoke. Everything beyond the fire was obscured in smoke.

For a moment I considered attempting to do something.  That thought evaporated when I opened the door and felt the oppressive nature of the heat.  Then I heard a series of booms and bangs, which told me that there were things in the realm of the fire that were excessively combustible and were feeding an already horrible moment.  I had to pause and realize all I could do was make sure the fire didn't spread onto my property.  About this point I hear the sirens of the fire department, and saw them arrive and deal with the problem in short order.

As the smoke cleared and the sun rose, the house was not burned.  My property was largely untouched.  My neighbor lost four cars, a garage, and everything inside it.  The good news was that no one was harmed.  All the residents of the house and their animals were in good shape. Given the possibilities of such an event, that was the best outcome if something like that has to happen.

The event in and of itself set to wondering, as things like this always do.  The fire put all of the stuff I struggle with on the day to day basis in better perspective.  I deal with a lot of crap in a given day.  Some of it has been and continues to be serious, but I am not struggling with a burning house or garage.  I am not now having to deal with the intricacies of making an insurance claim.  I am not trying to figure out what was lost.

Before you think me a particularly craven sort of person, only concerned with myself...  I did check on my neighbor later on in the day.  They are all fine.  ther were insured fully for this event.  Their insurance company had already been to see them and rental cars and initial checks for immediate damages had already been written.  So they are fine in the immediate sense.  They will be walking through the process of clearing up the damage and starting over again in the coming weeks.  This is a good thing.

The event reminded me of some simple things.  I have been and continue to be blessed beyond my ability to fully comprehend.  My struggles being what they are reside within the realm of being resolved.  Even if they weren't I reside in the presence of a God that hems me in on all sides.  In tough times my God is there.  

This wake up call was jarring.  And it made for a completely different day than the one I was thinking I was going to have.  It was a sort of interrupt to the normal stuff.  It forced me to remember and be grateful for all that is within the sum total of my life.  It forced a different tone to my season of thanksgiving.

It forced me to move beyond the superficial aspects of this season.  It forced me to remember who I am and whose I am.  It forced me to remember my placement is not accidental by any means.  It forced me to remember that in all things God is there.  It forced me to remember that my creator has my back in all things.  It forced me to remember that it is in the context of this most primary and primal relationship that my worth and my value is determined.

I find myself praising God in this moment.  I find myself driven to my knees in thankfulness.  I hope that your season of thanksgiving does not require such a wake up call.  Allow me to extend a warm happy thanksgiving to you all.

From my earliest memories of story in all of its forms, I have been fond of the monster.  A good creature feature with an ‘alien being’ in black and white celluloid with a scratchy soundtrack or on the printed page alternatively, I found to be compelling entertainment.  Whether vampire, werewolf, mummy, or from the black lagoon mattered not.  I loved them all.
           
For a time I confused my passion for the monster with a passion for horror.  As I delved into the genre more, I found my path separated from horror and that I really enjoyed the monster archetype and all of the associated tropes.  Now don’t get me wrong, I love a good scary story.  I adore a things that go bump in the night tale.  That is a secondary passion to my affinity for the monster.

More specifically, in the space in which modern horror has diverged from the monster tale, I have diverged in my affinity for the horror genre.  My intention is not to throw stones here by any means, but modern horror has on some level devolved into a grotesque mockery of itself.  It has on some level become a modern outlet for torture porn bathed in buckets of blood.  Not something of which I am fond by any measure.
           
A good creature feature now, that always has my full and undivided attention.  I will line up for them.  For the most part I have seen them all, good and bad.  In no small measure I find a distinct affinity for what most in fiction refer to as ‘the other’.  The being that didn’t ask for their current state.  The one that has been cast out of modern society.  The one that went to its own looking for acceptance and found only rejection and pain.
           
This forms the basis for all good monster tales.  Some say this is a maudlin holdover from the Victorian roots of the form.  I find this to be tripe, and a justification for the current state of modern horror in most cases.  The monster trope, the archetype, is at its best when it honors its roots.  It is running at its peak when it is delving into the deep questions of our humanity.  A good monster tale can do all of that and a lot more.
           
When the form does what it is supposed to it reveals our human weaknesses and frailties.  In the hands of a master of the form we realize that the creature is rarely the monster.  The creature is merely the reflection of the true monster.  We realize that it is Von Frankenstein that is the monster and his creature is merely the thing he created.  We realize that Count Dracula is the reflection of our dark side that dwells in all of us.
           
I grew up adoring all of the forms of the monster.  I grew up loving the Dracula tales.  I bayed at the moon with Lon Chaney.  Listening to a medieval organ played by a masked figure touched me in a deep place.  The dark places these creatures went revealed in me more than I wanted to know.
           
In recent years though, my affinity for the werewolf, the vampire, the dragon, and others has waned.  The reasons for this have more to do with my distaste for popular culture.  I hate what our culture does to a thing when it obsesses over it.  It takes something wild, something frightening, something altogether alien to the modern world, and well wipes its arse with it.
           
When the [insert monster form here] becomes the newest craze, all of the things that drew me to it in the first place gets wiped away.  It becomes a well-recognized thing.  It becomes the current darling pet of modern culture.  It becomes something less than it deserves to be.  And we cease to be able to fear it.  And that end result is one that I find disgusting.
           
So usually by the time something I adore finds its way into popular acceptance, I tend to exit stage left.  More often than not I do not wish to watch or read what comes next.  The defanging of the thing that once scared me, is an act that I do not wish to be party to. Certainly I can’t either abide or endorse it.
           
And when it comes to the monsters I select as participants in the fiction I write, I opt for the less common ones.  I reach for the ones that have not been bleached by the klieg lights of our popular culture.  I reach for that which still scares me.  I reach for the things that still put a knot in my stomach when I think of them.
           
So it goes without saying that I still adore the original forms that scared me, but when I put pen to paper, I seek out the rare and the obscure.  When I need to tell a monster tale featuring a member of the draco family, I reach for the wyvern and not the dragon.  When I need to tell a tale of the dark and foreboding featuring misunderstood beast plaguing humanity, I reach for the ghoul and not the vampire.
           
Some have accused me of being contrary in this perspective.  On some level they may be correct.  I do not wish to tell the stories that have already been told ad nauseum.  I wish to depart from the common forms when I write fiction.  I do not wish to let the reader have a sense of familiarity with the tale, because they know the form.  I seek first and foremost to force the reader to pay attention precisely because they do not know the form.
           
A common quote of which I am fond comes to mind at this moment.  ‘I aim to misbehave’. I aim to go where the reader does not expect.  I aim to seek to honor that which we know by going where we haven’t been with something that we are not familiar.  Failing that, I hope to do that with something with which we are not intimately familiar.
           
It is always my hope to take the misunderstood and weave a unique tale of my own creation.  In the course of doing so, I hope to honor the tropes and the archetype.  I hope to delve into the places that cause us discomfort.  I hope to reveal as much about ourselves as about the monster in doing so.

By now most people the world over have heard about the horrific acts perpetrated by cowardly thugs in Paris.  There are few facts as of right now.  Most responsible news agencies are reporting a death count greater than 100.  They are all saying that that number will continue to grow as all of the facts are collated and numbers are tallied.

If I were to take my own advice right now, I should keep my mouth shut.  Facts are in short supply, and the 24 hour news cycle is filling the airwaves with rampant speculation.  I don't want to add to that with any missive of mine.  Some news outlets are trying to stick to the facts.  And I want to applaud that without calling any out by name.

I am however compelled to express a few thoughts.  I will try to be brief.

My heart breaks for the citizens of France and of Paris in particular tonight.  It appears that lives were cut short in the midst of various celebrations at the end of a work week.  People out eating a meal, taking a concert, sharing drinks with friends, or enjoying a soccer match across the city came to a horrific ending tonight.  It was awful, and to use French President Hollande's word 'horrific'.

The citizens of Paris did not deserve this.  The French people did not deserve this.  The world as a whole did not deserve this.  There is no cause under the sun in the community of man that justifies these actions.  There is slight, no wound, no injustice that makes this course of action acceptable.

This coordinated and calculated assault on the people of the world cannot be allowed to stand! Innocent blood has been spilled this night.  Innocent lives wantonly slaughtered.  We as a species must unite as a single entity in order to hunt down those that perpetrated this act.  More than that we must find those that planned it, those that funded it, and those that gave the operational approval for it, and hold them accountable.

The temptation to devolve into vengeance here will be strong.  We must resist that temptation with every fiber of our being.  It is not enough to end those responsible, though that is important. It is important to show these barbarians how a civilized world responds to barbarism.  We need to bring justice to them, wherever they may be!  We must be swift and sure, but we must be as just as we are civilized or at least we are supposed to be.

The ends will not ever justify the means here.  It is not enough to put the skulls of the criminals responsible on a pike.  It is important to ensure that we uphold all of our traditions in the process. That means fully investigating this crime.  That means an orderly trial and appellate process.  And only after all of that is complete, then delivering the last full measure of justice to the guilty!

To all the victims of this senseless act of criminality, you are in my prayers.  I weep for the dead and their friends and families.  My heart breaks for all of you.  I don't know what I can do to help other than pray right now.  If it occurs to me, I will do it, and encourage others to do likewise.

That is all for now.

​I have spent some time this morning working on the National Novel Writing Month challenge that starts tomorrow.  I have to confess that I don't feel ready.  I have to confess that I am not fully there yet to start word one, line one, page one.  I have to confess that I am feeling less than from a confidence perspective.  

My dilemma is simple.  Regardless of how I feel, it starts tomorrow.  Regardless of my confidence, it starts tomorrow.  Regardless of my preparedness level, progress toward starting tomorrow, research completion, and on, and on, and on.  It starts tomorrow.  I have to confess it is daunting to me.  The temptation to surrender the field and walk away is strong.

The thing I need to recognize in the process is equally simple.  I can't let outside factors like contests, challenges, and the like impact me.  I can't let that rule my psyche.  It can become what the writer of the book of Ecclesiastes calls more than once, 'A Chasing after the Wind'.  By that I mean, if I let it, it can rule me and when that happens it changes me along the way.  It can make me respond out of fear and radically alter my writing process.

Letting outside factors rule me, and the processes from which I work is never productive.  It leads to results that I am never happy with.  It leads to me running after the thing more than doing the work.  As an aspiring writer, I need to focus as much of my energy on doing the work, and doing it well as possible.  

That leads me the following admission...  I am not ready to compete in NANOWRIMO right now. And somehow that has to be ok.  The blow I took to my confidence still stings, and that has to be ok.  I have to set those two specific things, and many others I am not able to fully articulate to the side, and not let them impact me right here, right now, Today.

The task before me today is simple.  It is about picking up the pieces.  It is about coming back to the work before me.  I have pick up my pen, dust off my pad, and return to my gifting.  I have to knock off the rust, and inhabit fully the role assigned to me by the outrageous whims of the fates.

It is time to put on my big boy pants, set aside my ego and just be.  There is work to be done after all.  There is a thing I am tasked with doing right now.  I need to be about the work assigned to me.  I need to pour forth the substance of my imagination onto the page.  I need to pour it out, all of it, organize it, and edit it.  Then after I edit it, I need to drive it to completion.

So I need to accept the challenge before me.  I need to rise to the challenge.  Then I need to just do the work, word by word, line by line.  It can be tough, it can be a slog, but it is the work I am here to do.  And it is only in just being present in the moment.  It is only in fully inhabiting the now, and doing what I am here to do, what I am meant to do, that I can find success.

Success is something that I need to define as living up to the hope placed within me.  I cannot define acceptance of my work as being success.  It puts the cart before the horse somewhat.  If my process fully implements my talents, skills, and abilities, then that in and of itself is success. In this current moment, that is all I am shooting for.  Anything more is bonus, but it is not a factor in my view of the success equation.

So now, I have to get back to my process.  I need to get back to the work before.  Thank you for playing along with me right now, and reading my process update.

It goes without saying for those of you that know me well, that this last few months have represented a rough patch in my life.  In almost every aspect of my life, there has been some measure of turmoil.  I kept hoping this was just a bumpy patch along the way to smoother air. The most truthful analysis of this period is that this not the case.

It appears that what I am experiencing is either the new normal, or the birth paigns of a new phase of my life.  In either case, I have been forced to take stock of where I am currently and evaluate it with a critical eye.  I am not fond of certain aspects of this current context.  I am less fond of certain new additions to it.  Even less fond of the lack of control I have over a lot of it.

Which brings me to my first admission.  I am not a person that handles powerless well.  It has been a fundamental truth that has defined me for my entire existence.  I hate being unable to change things.  I hate being able to fix things.  I despise the things that force me into a place of powerlessness.

This leaves me in a simple place.  I can either continue to tolerate that which makes me powerless or I can part company with those things and move along to something else.  I am keenly interested to use jeffersonian language, 'in the course of human events there come moments in which...'.  I am hesitant to do so, as I am person given to hyperbole and in some cases over-reaction.

I am forced to spend time in quiet contemplation and consider the situation before me.  Not in that angry with it, screw this sort of fashion, which is little more than complaining and whining. Rather I have been reviewing it in detail and from a holistic perspective.  I have taken time to pray and meditate on the situation.

The inescapable conclusion I have arrived at it is simple, I am where I am supposed to be at least for the immediate future.  God planted me here for a reason, and that reason has not been invalidated currently, so until a clear exit visa is granted by my heavenly father, I am forced to make the best of it.

Along the making the best of it line, I have come to the conclusion that in order to deal with the turgid nature of things, I need more rest.  By rest I do not mean sleep.  I mean I need more rest. I need more time at peace taking joy in the blessings that are abundant in my current planting. Doing so seems like a cop out to some looking at from the outside, but it is certainly not.  If I am meant to be here, and the inescapable conclusion is that I am, then I have to savour what it means to be here.  I need to understand more clearly what it means to be here.

The reasons I am where I am at this point I am aware of but a fraction.  The Father knows them all, and as He is my provider, my guardian, and my protector, he is accountable for them all.  My responsibility is do the work put before me to do, and to fully inhabit the roles given to me.  The means I need to be the best father, husband, son, brother, uncle, employee, leader, and writer that I can.

In order to fulfill that, I need to be filled and equipped for those tasks.  If the Bible is true, it says that each and every day I am granted all of that if I am plugged into the source appropriately and properly.  So this feeling of being a dry and worn out sponge means I am not plugged in properly which means there are things I am not doing correctly in some aspects of my life.

So the search to fully inhabit the rest side of the work / rest rhythm needs work is the appropriate conclusion to arrive at.  I need to find ways to not worry about the work before me when I am not in the work side of the equation.  I need to recognize that I am only one man, and that if I have done the best I can in the work side, and made the most effective use of that time, then when I am at rest then I shouldn't be thinking about the work.  Easier said than done, but it is something I need to be doing.

Sure I need to take better care of myself.  I need to find ways to push the health side of things into the equation.  It means fewer unhealthy things, or at least smaller indulgences in the things that are not entirely in my best interest.  It means more activity when I am in rest mode.  It means walks when I want to sit and sulk.  It means being with my family when they are with me, and not isolated trying to put in more work.

Rest appears to be my word for the day.  I hope I have not overused it in this humble post, but it is something I need to take seriously, and felt the need to share those that read my missives... Thanks to all of those that read my stuff.  You are the reason I do this.

There are those that postulate the essential nature of reality is like a string of reality instances laid on each other like slices of bread.  It is one of the most fundamental concepts in string theory.  Its most fundamental flaw is that it is not the most economical use of scarce resources.  The law of scarcity in logical models says that the most economical use of resources is probably the most truthful one.  This idea in string theory is not the most economical use of space.

The truth, in my opinion, is more akin to be infinite realities occupying the same physical location but in different bandwidths of reality.  Simply put location A in space time most likely is occupied by an infinite number of reality instances simply stacked in different space time bandwidths.  So instead of slices of bread laid on each other, it is likely to be a single slice of bread imprinted an infinite number of times with distinct reality instances all with their own time space bandwidth assignment.  The difference between reality instance A and B is more likely more a matter of attenuation than of physicality.

This does not presuppose that space time location A has a physical location correlation to all of them.  In fact, the best guess is that the only thing they share in common is the space time bandwidth marker.  New York City is unlikely to reside in more than a single instance location.  So in one reality that space would be New York, and in another it could be something else altogether with a different name and different organizational principle.

In fact, it is entirely possible that humans may only exist in this instance of reality.  In others, bees may have become the dominant species in some.  Reptiles may have risen in others.  In others dinosaurs may never have fallen into extinction.  My fundamental point is this, the idea that there are an infinite number of specific people residing at the exact same time and place in other realities is highly specious.  Chaos, entropy, and random chance make this concept a virtual impossibility.

It is highly unlikely that what I am suggesting is entirely new.  The best guess is that this is a central tenant of science fiction and that my thoughts are a product of that.  Regardless of the ultimate source of the idea, my thoughts do raise, at least for me, some interesting questions. 
How are the bandwidth markers assigned?  What decides how an item is placed within a space time location?  Are the space time bandwidth barriers firm, or can they be penetrated?  Can items from one instance of reality travel to another somehow?  Can this travel occur frequently, or is there a price to pay for this travel?  Can something from one instance reside in another without obliteration?  Can it return to its point of origin without obliteration?
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These questions and many more occupy my imagination at the moment.  I plan to explore it in the future.

There are just some moments that people will not listen to the advice of anyone.  There are just lessons that have to be learned the hard way, I suppose.  It is a sad fact of life.  The school of hard knocks can be and often is the most brutal way to learn.  I do not wish it on anyone.

I come to this in the firm understanding of my experience.  There was a period in my life of definite and sincere regret.  For several years, I had to walk out the consequences of some poor choices.  It was a time of lack and poverty for me.  I was always broke.  I had a huge list of needs that I could only fulfill some of on my own.  There were times, that I had no clue where my next meal was coming from.

During this period, I had to do things I had never considered just to eat.  I had to work very hard to afford things like the cash for a used tire for my beat up early 70's camaro.  The few times I could afford to put a full tank of gas in the beast came from cash that was a gift of some sort or another.  It was a hand to mouth existence.  I hated every minute of it.

I learned humility during this period.  I learned that there is never a job beneath anyone, least of all me.  Pride, I learned, is a luxury you can only afford if you can pay your own bills.  This time broke me in fundamental ways, that I cannot fully explain.

I learned that life, the world, and society owed me nothing.  I learned that you earn pretty much what you are worth.  If you have minimal skills, you get paid accordingly.  I learned that a life, an existence is guaranteed to no one.  I learned that the only way out of my poverty was to pick up some skills somehow.  I needed to be worth more to the bottom line, if I was ever going to be able to have a normal life.

In my case, I left that life of poverty and lack and joined the Navy.  It was a tough choice for me. I was a stubborn person.  I was also willful at the same time.  Joining the military was a risk for me.  It could have gone very wrong for me.  Thankfully, it went very well.

Something happened to me during that period that was good though.  I learned a lot about life and about myself at the same time.  I learned that good things only happen after the work gets done. I learned that only in disciplining myself could I ever hope for anything that approached a normal life.  I learned that life happens, and you have to be able to deal with it on its terms.

I learned a lot during that period.  Most of what I learned came the painful route.  I learned that I too can clean a toilet with a toothbrush and somehow find a way to take pride in doing it, or find out what its like to do it all over again, after the command master chief uses it in a foul and disgusting fashion of course.

I sincerely do not suggest anyone follow my path.  I suggest in the strongest of possible terms that if you have a choice between swallowing your pride and saying the words, 'I am sorry', and walking away, that you find a way to swallow.  I suggest that you find a way to keep your mouth shut and value your existence.  I suggest that you not go down my road.

Life is rough.  It owes you nothing.  It has the power to take everything from you.  The hard path is not suggested for or to anyone.