Early Morning Improv

I am just shucking and jiving this morning and going with the flow.

Got an early gig at The Asylum and The Stones lined up for the ride. In fact they are standing outside my house right now, shivering. I won't let them in because they are hooligans ; who knows what damage they will reek on my house.

Somehow I am developing a more mature attitude about things. I don't know where this is coming from.

I am realizing that although my job sucks and the people I work with suck, still, it is a paycheck and a mediocre to good one. I can ride it out until I put something better together.

A small portion of my diseased brain is realizing that writing may not save me. I won't give up on it; I still believe I have enough talent to at least make a little money on the side. But there are millions of people who had dreams and died with those dreams.

How am I different?

I am going to get back to exercising if I can make sense of my insane schedule. I have been out of breath at work lately and this perturbs me because I wasn't out of breath when I started this gig. I have allowed this job to destroy my health and I have helped that destruction along quite willingly.

I am facing down sixty and I am not going gently into that 7th decade.

I have cut back on the whiskey lately. I am trying real hard. It has been my go to solution for a very long time even though it solves nothing. However numbness does come in handy when your life is a psychedelic nightmare.

I am motivated, suddenly. I feel energetic, I feel like I can get stuff done.

Ten good years. I am looking at ten good years. maybe. If I am lucky.

That may be part of this new found motivation. It is in the back of my mind, lurking. I am contemplating a poem or commentary to be revealed on my birthday, January 1, 2014, titled Ten Good Years.

It really means something to me.

But that is only a part of what is going on. Real change is happening at a molecular level and I am digging it.

Are you kidding me? When my iPod didn't work up at Old Orchard Beach as I sat serenely on the porch staring down the sun and taking in the ocean, the old me would have thrown the damn thing into the sea and fumed and whined and ruined the rest of the day. Instead I calmly returned the device to the hotel room, walked down to the beach and had me a talk with the sun.

It was a transcendent moment on more than one level.

I am changing. Internally. In my soul, in my brain. I am changing in the right way and maybe in the nick of time. The changes that are happening are the right ones. No bullshit. Somehow, suddenly (? - after 59 years?) - pieces are falling into place and I am starting to see myself.

That's where my head is at as we coast like lambs to the slaughter towards another frightening, glacial-like, 10 month New England winter.

In a bizarre way I have been trying all my life without trying all my life.

My mind has been working feverishly for decades to try to figure out what the hell is going on. To try to alter my course and my approach to match the road that was laid out for me at birth.

At the same time I have coasted down the road of responsibility like a blind man, going where I was expected to be, doing what I was expected to do.

Maybe, just maybe, I can arrange things so that I get to taste what it is like to live my life in sync with my soul.

Bet it tastes like chocolate.

Gotta go. The Stones are getting belligerent. Banging on the window. Actually Keith and Ronnie are banging on the window, Mick is adopting a pose, and Charlie is standing back with a wry smile on his face.

Maybe I'll share a pot of coffee with them.