Just Another Feel Good, Glass Half-Full, Happy, Go Lucky, Positive, It's a Great Day To Be Alive, Smilin' To Myself, Upbeat Post

Dear readers, friends, family, passerby, lurkers, stalkers, wanderers, seekers of knowledge, holders of truth and countrymen – and anyone else who happened to stumble upon this page –

I write today from the California State University, Sacramento library on a glorious spring day. I am not actually in the library proper, but in the open-air breezeway that is at the entrance to this monolith of the collected knowledge of mankind. A brand-spankin’ new Java City just opened here and the sitting area they added to the breezeway is where you’ll find your intrepid wordsmith this fine afternoon. The temperature is expected to reach 80 degrees today, but at just past midday, it’s an¨ über-pleasant 70 degrees or so.

It has been brought to my attention that I have not posted anything new in several days. Although I knew this to be true, I didn’t think anyone really noticed. Not believing that my words are anticipated or even missed is perhaps partially responsible for my lack of motivation. It is an irrational thought and an attitude that has not pervaded my psyche in a very long time, but like a weed, it was inevitable that it would pop up again somewhere sometime.

That is not the whole story. Like anything in life, a multitude of factors, both interrelated and completely isolated, come into play to deliver me at any one particular moment. Other obvious considerations include; the winding up of another semester with all the attendant pressure associated with it; the changing of the seasons with the gloom of an over-extended winter finally coming to an end; the 33 day (and still counting) absence of my long-time companion and confidant, nicotine; and oddly enough, a strange sort of complacency with success. Those old familiar feelings of not enough and not fast enough have made slight inroads. Perhaps there is a chink in my armor.

The most effective weapon in my arsenal against self-destruction is self-awareness and the most efficient path to it lately has been these very words. Writing, specifically blogging, has been my salvation… my ace-in-the-hole. It has been working to change my perspective in the recent past and, viewed in retrospect, it always has. It is doing its thing right now as my fingers dance off the keys of my iBook. It’s almost as if I am a concert pianist, the flow I feel when my words come spilling out through this conduit. (Interestingly enough, I have very few typos when in this mode).

Just as curious, it is when I become somewhat “down” that my desire to explore diminishes. It’s almost as if I don’t want to know why. Hold on: I need to be perfectly clear here. I was not exactly depressed or even all that “down,” but I was, however, heading in that direction. This time, at least, I have been able to stop the progression dead in its tracks. This is a new revelation for me, for real. I just now discovered - again (I know… I not too bright sometimes!) how important the daily maintenance of staying connected is.

My MO has always been “to go there.” I mean, I get immersed in and wallow in the self-pitying, poor-me, nobody understands and (my personal favorite) “you don’t care about me, so why should I?”... Oh, yes – I go there! But for the last almost two years it has not been so and the results are obvious – just read my archives. The question was and still remains – why? I am understanding the “how” part more and more everyday – I know what has been working and more importantly I know how to figure out what works for me today. Knowing and doing, however, are not the same thing.

Though my hiatus had a duration of only four days, it has been four days (actually, a little longer) in which I have not been my usual positive self. I have been just a little “off.” That is not to say that I have been “negative,” but rather coasting – not applying much enthusiasm – consciously or perhaps subconsciously choosing to be reactive rather than responsive… indeed, at the edge and looking down. The down escalator analogy applies for me; if I stop moving forward, I’m moving backwards. It’s got everything to do with attitude and perspective. Mine just needed some minor tweaking; it wasn’t in need of a complete overhaul…

This time. I had not slid very far back on that escalator. I was still, out of habit more than anything else, doing the “things” that needed doing. My schoolwork, my housework and other regularly scheduled external activities that have to take place on a recurring basis got done, but it was mechanical, almost robotic. I was just going through the motions and not really connected to what I was doing. I was in fact heading towards corrective action and thankfully, because it occurred relatively sooner than later, that action was of my choosing.

Now re-aligned and in synch with the powers that be, the synergy present is undeniable; it’s palpable, it’s thick and it’s deep. Ready or not, here I come…