This time change thing is stupid and it sucks and it serves no good…it’s like cutting off six inches of a blanket at one end and sewing it onto the other end with expectations of somehow making the blanket longer but it changes nothing! A leftover from agriculture days, perhaps, but more like a manipulation for the convenience of keeping people inside, isolated, glued to their televisions or computers or smartphones…because, after all, it’s dark out earlier, that means scary things, fear keeps us inside, lock the doors and draw the curtains! I don’t need the fucking time changing to make me do that, to make me feel those feelings…this time of year, they seem to come naturally for me. November, November, November...despite it being my wife’s birth month (on the 13th), it’s one of the worst months of the year for me; next to April, November is the most painful month for me. It has been for many years, all my adult life, since my first child, a daughter was born on the 18th of November in ’83, I get to feeling morose, maudlin, sad and just blah…I think Depression resides in November.
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| The Family Chalmers. Thanksgiving 2014 |
I know Thanksgiving is a favorite holiday, setting aside the bullshit myth it’s based upon, it’s a nice idea for offering gratitude, sharing food and wine with family and friends, starting the final weeks of the year together is a nice concept. Naturally in practice, all too often, it’s complicated with family drama, with bad feelings and sad memories. It makes no difference if we went to my wife's family gathering or my family's gathering (we tried to swap years), there was always discomfort, ill feelings and stress. A lot of stress. I have a better time when we host the event. I enjoy the cooking, the eating, the games and the music. In 20 years together my wife and I hosted only one Thanksgiving gathering in 2013 and both our families were there...it went better, it was fun and we'll never do it again! Last year, like this year, however, it’s only the four of us…the wife, our two kids and me…and that’s even better. I still don’t like the other days, these short dark days of November. I get off my sleep routine, I get mixed up by the shorter daytime hours, I lose track of when it is and there's so many emotions blowing through me in November. We live in California now, so there’s a better climate, I don’t feel shut in by the colder weather and I smile more because there a fewer cloudy days (we get so much sunshine, that simple clouds, especially those that drop rain, are a welcome sight)! But even the change of latitude adjustment of my attitude fails me many days during November…it just hurts, November just hurts my heart.
I get by with an increased focus on my core foundations…my family, my work, my well being and my dreams. The family is elemental, it is what grounds me and keeps me moving forward. The devotion I have to my children, more than any other factor, inspires hope and a will to thrive, a reason to live sometimes. My work is my personal definition of blissful activity, it’s doing what I love most to do and getting into it deeply, so deep I lose myself and become a part of the work. My well being, my body and temple, the carbon based plasma unit that carries my soul around is very important to me. I need it to last a very long time, in the best possible condition and to that aim, I find a sense of peace in caring for my body, in exercise and meditation, in good eating, solid rest and mindful living.
My dreams are who I am and all that I’ll ever be so I dream big, bold and go for the golden road of devotion every time; I have lived a life by making my dreams into reality and I’m not about to stop dreaming now…if anything, I dream more, I dream better and my dreams are more rewarding than ever before…I use these dreams to carry me, to lift my heart like a kite, sail beyond the tall trees of confusion, the dark forest of pain and lift me away to feel better again, it’s getting better again every day.
This is how I cope, how I manage to get by during these increasingly darker days over the next few months…I’ll bob up and down with my emotions, I always do and I know this, I expect this…I’ll feel better between my birthday and New Year’s, the start of another year is always inspirational and motivates me to get things accomplished. I’ll feel better again towards the end of February and into March, when it’s noticeable the weather is shifting, when the spring starts to spring it puts a little more spring in my step too. After April, which sometimes can last until June, I’ll re-enter my favorite part of the year (June-October) and next year (2016) is going to be a busy, active year with the next book out in August, we hope to break ground on the colony project, I believe The Chicago Cubs will dominate baseball perhaps into post-season play and even the election cycle can be stimulating! However, between then and now there’s still a lot of shit to get through and so that’s what this all about…getting through the shit of life.
This past week or so, however, the shit of life has not been too bad, truthfully, I cannot complain about the progress I’ve made with the production of the audio book, the release of the Kindle edition (on 01 November 2015) and healing the wounds and rifts I’ve felt with a few of my loved ones recently. I’m taking this positive wave and riding it for as long as I can, perhaps it will help carry me until my birthday! I know there’s going to be bumpy parts of the path over the next so many weeks, I know I’ve been through them before so I have reason to believe I’ll make it through them well enough this time too but I still hate November. I still hate the time change switch-a-roo and I’ll feel a lot better when this time of year is finally over so I can get on with easy smiles and breezy miles of good feelings without effort. Working to find a smile, digging deeply to find happiness sometimes sucks…but I do it, we all do it because it helps us stay sane. Still, that doesn’t mean we have to like it, does it?
Yeah, I hate the sun being gone by the 17th hour and not rising until almost 8th hour…stupid fat lazy fucking winter Sun.
Thanks for reading, be well and take care!
