Hope Doubled Up

Nothing like the prospect of a new job to fire up the hope gene.

You try to make changes in your life - gonna lose weight, gonna choose happiness, gonna learn new stuff, gonna treat yourself better, gonna get positive.

You know how it goes. You enjoy a burst of change-ness and then slip back into the routine.

Same old life. Same old you.

Change is hard. Because we are all hard wired to be who we are, even if who we are isn't who we want to be. Which is truly ironic. And tragic.

But over a lifetime you develop survival mechanisms, ways of reacting, faces you put forth, and these things become who you are even if they are not who you are. They become so deeply ingrained that thinking is not required to pull off the act.

And therein lies the problem. It takes thinking to effect change.

Changing jobs jerks you out of complacency.

Next Tuesday I start at a new job. I will be doing something completely new with people who are new to me in an environment that is new to me.

That is fresh, that is precious - that is a catalyst for change. I refuse to take it for granted this time around.

I am hyper-aware of my existence now - more so than ever before. Aware that I am alive and am living something called a life. Aware that I have pretty much pissed it away up to this point.

Aware that last year, when I semi-retired, was diagnosed with cancer, and took on a part time job, did not work out the way I thought it would.

Apparently it is not enough to sit back and say "Hey, I am semi-retired now - my life is about to get better".

I am going to attack this new job with a smile. Gonna learn it, gonna own it, gonna take full advantage of working in a creative environment that will lay every type of entertainment under the sun at my feet.

I am all about resuscitating my soul and it begins now.

Since I gave my notice at the thrift shop I started playing my guitar again. My theory is that this is the perfect time to rewire my brain. While I am hopeful, while I am positive, while I am jazzed.

I will dive into other pursuits as well, pursuits I have started and failed at before, things I know will make me whole.

The point is that I am immersing myself in hope. I am seizing on this change in my life to spark other changes in my life. Things I can control, things I can make happen - things that will make me happy and proud of myself.

And it is the time of year that some people describe as spring. You walk out of the house and the buds on the trees are ripe and ready to burst. There is pregnant beauty all around you, right on the edge of exploding into pure delight. You walk out of the house and you smile.

In another week you will walk out of your house and laugh, stunned at the amazing way nature keeps being reborn. Forcing you to realize that you too can be resurrected, rescued from the prison you have made for yourself into a life that satisfies you. A life that you feed and that feeds you back.

Hope bubbling up from my soul, hope provided by the beauty of nature - man I am getting such a strong and positive vibe that I feel so alive. So fucking alive.

At some point in your life, no matter how late it gets, you gotta give it your best shot. Otherwise your life trickles away in a sad, meaningless, waste of existence, which is the most heinous crime any human can commit.

I am jazzed, baby. I like who I am right now - at this very moment in time.

Gonna try to etch that me into stone.