Let The Wild Rumpus Begin

It is almost midnight here in Los Angeles and I am a bit beyond tired. That is because I started my day at 6:45 AM, Eastern Standard Time.

Yep, Sunday night I flew out to the East Coast so that I could hit a couple of meetings and then hopped back on a plane to come home. It wasn’t my first turnaround and probably won’t be my last, but it wore me out a bit.

This time around I decided not to bring the laptop. Figured that I could make use of the mobile phone and that if I really needed a ‘puter for the meetings I could borrow one. Fortunately I didn’t so I didn’t have to shlep one around.

Instead I got to shlep around a large Russian man. Ok, I didn’t really have to carry him but he sat next to me on the flight home. That is really my polite way of saying he mostly sat on me and seemed not to care.

It would be wrong of me to say that he disappeared into the bathroom for a good twenty minutes and brought back whatever it was he meant to leave there. That was about 3.5 hours into my flight and if there was a moment when I wondered what would happen if I stretched out my arms and accidentally slapped the side of his pumpkin size head.

It is one thing to sit on me, but biological warfare just isn’t cool.

I Opened Pandora’s Box

A long while back I opened Pandora’s Box and have been enjoying the benefits/consequences of that ever since. I have no regrets for having done so. I chalk much of it up to the lessons I referred to in this post.

But I could use a short break to catch my breath and look around to see what’s what. Life doesn’t work that way so I don’t expect things to slow down but I figure it never hurts to ask. The list of what I haven’t seen is long so it is possible that I might discover that which I have been searching for by simply mentioning it.

It reminds me of when I was a boy and my father and I would fix things around the house. Most of my memories consist of a moment where he reminded me that there was rarely an advantage to using my strength to force things to fit.

That is one of my favorite lessons and something that I still work on today. Call it finesse or diplomacy. Or just describe it as taking a moment to remember that sometimes the smart thing to do is stop, look and listen.

My son is very good at this. He is not the boy his father was. I always figured that if I jumped off the side of house I would land safely in the pool, learn to fly or come up with a solution on the way down.

Little Jack is smarter than I was/am. He looks at the challenges and takes a much more methodical approach to solving them. It makes me smile to see that.

My daughter isn’t always like that. Her soccer coaches tell me that they love how fearless she is on the field. I laugh and tell them they ought to see what happens if she is irritated with a player on the other team. She is a sweet girl, but she has a double dose of me, at least when it comes to sports.

When Possibilities Become Opportunities

One of the meetings I sat through evolved because I figured out how to turn possibilities into opportunities. There is a much longer story tied into this, one that discusses whether things are meant to be and whether the universe is involved in life, but this is not the place to discuss that in detail.

I mention it because it is connected and deserves consideration.

Anyhoo. when I left the second meeting I walked away feeling good but still went through the “I wish I had shared this” moment that we all have. The good news is that it wasn’t the one where you kick yourself because you think you did poorly.

I didn’t. I did well and I feel confident but that doesn’t mean that I don’t wish that I had mentioned a few more things. It is just how I am built.

It is tied into a million different things, this feeling. And it reminds me again of that boy I was, except I think about how sometimes I would tell my father that there was a time when muscle would be of benefit.

I think that time is now, except now I am not relying upon physical strength. Now I am using the mental toughness I developed over time and am seeing the beginning of some amazing results. And one day when my kids read through all these posts they will sift through the ones where I say that life has been hellish and come across this one and see that I was serious when I said it gets better.

Life isn’t perfect, but it is better and I expect that to continue in a big way.

What about you? How are things in your world? If you are a reader who doesn’t comment often now would be a good time, especially those who are locked in dirty hotel rooms out of state. 😉

Exhaustion has finally hit, sleep calls and I shall answer. See you in the AM.

This is part of Just Write #41.

• Saved: Children, Just Write