Song and Verse

Sleep calls, and I should answer. Tomorrow will come up too fast, the dreams I cling to will slip through the cracks of my memory and my quest to get slim again will force me out of my warm bed and over to the gym to sweat and grunt on machines.

But as is usual, I resist. Not insomnia this time, but a longing that I have to indulge.

As a friend reminded me of recently, you should always feed your mind each day. Beyond your normal examination and acceptance of all the things that normal inhabit your world, but give it morsels that will allow it to grow.

My two favorite food groups are reading and music. Nothing earth shattering, I like to read and I like to listen to music. Yet, as is the case now, I like to just examine the art, I like to dive into it. Especially music. I become different with different music. I’m heroic, contemplative, mournful, loving, jilted and sexy as the beats and melody bring me up and along with them.

A slave to the i’s of my life – Pod and Tunes – some days I’ll just let the shuffle carry me along in a kaleidoscope of moods and thoughts.

Not this night. Flush with the memory of wine and conversation with good friends, I pick and choose the musical path to steer my mind along its chosen path, unwilling to relent to sleep, yet eager for the dreams and revelations it will provide.

Good Pain: Day #1

Along with BP’s #1 and #2, of which BP #2 is back up on its horse and moving again, I’ve been trying to create a slimmer me. The holidays took at bat to that idea, but even before then I’ve been trying to eat better and exercise more.

So here’s the challenge for myself (along with many others lately): talk about the weight loss so that you can’t make excuses. The last time I had real success with losing weight, I kept that simply mantra: No Excuses. Yeah, it may sound like a cross between a stupid t-shirt slogan and a motivational book some guy with veins the size of ethernet cables popping out of his bulging arms is trying to sell you, but it worked.

The first thing I realized there was no excuse for in this quest: exercising everyday I can. I’ve got a free gym at my new apartment complex (three actually, but who’s counting) and usually wind up awake a half hour or more before my alarm thanks to Bits, who not surprisingly is asleep in my lap as I try to type this and eat breakfast…

So Good Pain: Day 1 is about me getting up at 5:30 a.m. to go work out for 30-40 minutes each day.

A message from the part of me that is not a morning person: 5:30 in the morning!!! Are you out of your God Damned mind???? What about coffee? What about your insomnia? What about your (currently non-existent) sex life? 

All good points. If I want to not do this, if I want to not lose weight and if I don’t want to get healthy. And in the interest of full disclosure: and if I don’t want to look better to the opposite sex. Yes, personality counts more, but I don’t walk around with a print out of my writing or my life story. Vanity  is a bitch.

No excuses. Maybe its not the morning everyday, but it will be excercise.

Shopping for food goes under the microscope next.

Don’t worry, this won’t become a diet and exercise blog. But I gotta break up the geekery and woe is me relationship crap with something right?

Relentless

As I’ve always and often said, Clarity is key.

The Clarity I have now is relentless. I can’t stop smiling. I’m giddy. I’m full of energy I shouldn’t possess by all rational and reasonable accounts.

Making a dream come true will do that for you.

Sure, I know there’s plenty of heavy lifting left to do. It needs to be revised and edited. Support materials need to be created for it. And there’s a long road ahead of me that offers no promise of triumph.

Even in the face of that knowledge, I still feel like I’m invincible. This moment, completing this story with these characters that have been in my head in various forms since I was a kid… is really the completion of a dream. A lifelong goal. It isn’t the story I’m Certain I Have to Tell, that’s BP #1 and that’s on my mental shelf at the moment. It isn’t even my own story. That’s for another day. It’s the beginning of a much longer tale that I hope to be able to tell to whomever will listen. Sure, there’s the potential for financial gain here, but that’s not why I did it. I’ll happily take it if anyone wants to offer it, (no, really. offer me money) though it isn’t the real joy here.

I made a dream happen. I made one of my own dreams happen.

And that makes me Mighty.

It reaffirms the knowledge that I will write my own legend.

Most importantly, it reminds me that for those select few things and people that speak to me greater than 99% of the rest of my life and the rest of the world does – just as writing and storytelling does now as it did when I was 8 and made this choice – I will never, ever give up. I may not get the best outcome, or even the outcome I want. Tomorrow is promised to no one.  Until my tomorrows end, I will not stop. No dream will be abandoned without exhausting all blood and breath.

I will be Relentless.