A man cannot be comfortable without his own approval.- Mark Twain

I don’t know about you, but something I have been looking for all my life is acceptance, whether that has been from family, friends, lovers, co-workers, bosses, or more importantly myself.

As I see more and more of my high school friends’ names on Facebook I am reminded of a time where there always seemed to be an “us,” and “them.”  What I have learned over time is that is exactly how “them,” were feeling too.  And yes I know I used the word them improperly.

I believe it was my Sophomore year of High School when our student body president took his own life after a party at his home, just days before school was to start.  I regret that I can’t even recall which school year it was, or even his name but it was such a surprising turn of events for someone so popular, so well liked at school, someone with such promise to do something so horrible.  The discussions surrounding the event always seemed to hover around the question, “How could he be so sad?  He had it all.”

Fast forward a couple of years to the high school I actually graduated from, and it is my senior year.  I won’t name any names, just in case.  But as graduation day approached every senior was of course bombarded with that same question day in and day out, “What do you plan to do after graduation?”

Once again, there was a person who I thought had it all together.  It all seemed to work out for him, he was constantly in the limelight and was chosen to play lead in all the best plays we produced.  But when I asked him that very same question, all I saw was fear in his eyes when he attempted to answer that his choices were between the air force, and college.  I think it would be funny if he actually came across this post, that’s how much an impact his reaction had on me, I still remember what his choices were.

While the two cases are different in that the first more than likely suffered a mental illness and needed medical attention, and the second was just having some doubts, where they are similar is in the lessons I learned but never took to heart.

There is no such thing as a perfect life, there is no one out there who isn’t looking for some form of acceptance.  We all feel a bit lonely and insecure at times, we all doubt ourselves, we all suffer from some fear that immobilizes us from time to time.  I think about Bam Margera the professional skateboarder and just plain action junkie who broke down into tears in the movie Jackass, when they locked him in a horse trailer with a snake.  This is a guy who’s broken many bones doing some of the craziest action stunts and he’s utterly terrified.

The acceptance I am focusing on now is the only one that is important, self-acceptance.  One of the most valuable lessons I have learned over the last year is that to be a whole person does not mean you have alleviated every single problem out of your life, that you are perfect.  The last time someone showed up and was perfect we all know how that went down, and believe me I tried to walk across our pool water to see if I was perfect and I fell to the bottom and got a nose full of chlorine.

However, to be a whole person means to accept both parts of yourself the effective, and ineffective.  It is realizing and accepting both your attributes and faults, then improving on them both to spur continued growth.

As always, the things I am grateful for have not been fully realized.  I accept that they will be someday, so therefore I am now grateful for it being true.

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The heart of a mother is a deep abyss at the bottom of which you will always find forgiveness.  ~Honoré de Balzac

This morning will probably be one of my most intimate, and darkest posts ever, because I am about share something I have been working on here lately.

March 3 will mark seven years since I had received a call from my father that my mother had been found dead with a gunshot wound to the head, most likely self-inflicted.  This was not the first call we had received like this, where she was living at the time was always a hotbed of rumor, and if anyone ever left for a few days for whatever reason was rumored to be dead.

However something deep inside me knew this time it was true.  I instructed my father to drive down to her place to confirm that this was true, but knowing deep inside that it was I still went ahead and gave the news to the girls.  We all handled it a bit differently.  Megan stayed on the couch and cried, Michelle sat at her computer desk and said nothing.  Hanna crawled into bed and cried and I just laid next to her and comforted her.

The thoughts that were going through my head as I awaited confirmation were “Please let it be murder.”  I know that sounds harsh, but for anyone to die by gunshot whether it be murder or suicide is horrible, but if it was murder, it meant that my mother did not once again reject her children.

My mother suffered from a lot of issues including both her mental and physical health.  She was bi-polar and in and out of hospitals for most of my life.  She also suffered from a variety of chemical dependency issues ranging from alcohol to pain killers.  I do not fault my mother for these issues, I know she was just a product of an extremely abusive mother and absent father.  My Grandmother Ferguson was an evil woman, and I never fully realized the effect she had on my mother until as a grown man I watched my mother take a call from her and start to visibly shake.

My father called back rather quickly and it was true, she was dead and they were going to rule it suicide.  There would be no investigation other than a cursory look at the body on the scene.  My father and I began to try to rationalize things, denying that this was true because there was no real investigation, but once again, I knew in my heart the truth.

I then spent most of the night at my desk crying non-stop, and honestly more for myself.  I wasn’t just feeling this loss off my mother, but extreme amounts of guilt for being such a horrible son and letting her down on so many occasions.

While my father and I have a great relationship now, growing up I was definitely a mama’s boy.  She is the one who I got my love of movies and books from.  She is the one I spent most of my time with being the baby of the family.  We would sneak off for a matinee while the older kids were in school, or sometimes sneak out and see a movie at the drive-in.  She introduced me to classic movies and took me to see some of the most interesting movies of that time.  We saw almost every Woody Allen movie that came out, she even took me to see movies like Cabaret and Andy Warhol’s Frankenstein.  In high school when she would come home from her job on the road for a couple of days, we would rent three to four movies a night and stay up all night and watch them, sleep for a few hours, go to the video store and get more.

But our relationship changed over the years, there were a lot of divisive issues that faced our family, way too personal to share.  But my mother in her last few years became very hateful towards me.  More than once I received phone calls late at night where she was either drunk, or extremely depressed and she would tell me how she was going to shoot herself over the phone so I could hear it.  I finally confronted her one day and asked her what kind of mother would say such things to her child?

So this is the burden I bear with my mother.  The painful reminder of her suicide, the unanswered questions she left us with (no note, just a strange phone call to her sister).  The feeling of being hated until she passed, the feeling of part of this was my fault, rejection, all forms of guilt.

It took me about four years to finally forgive my mother, and honestly I have.  But I sit here today and can honestly say I have not quite forgiven myself.  There can be no amount of words that anyone can say to ease my mind, regardless of how rational they are.  This is a process I will have to go through and come to forgiving myself, and I will in time.  I know I did not pull that trigger, nor did I move her hands to commit such an act.  I also know that my siblings deep down all share a sense of the same guilt and I am not alone in this, but we all walk a different path and will hopefully come to forgive ourselves in due time.

I miss my mother who was such an influential part of my life, I miss making her laugh, I miss calling her and sharing in good news and asking her advice on issues that are plaguing me.  Even seven years later I still think about picking up the phone to call her when something new happens.  I have dreamt of her often  and those dreams were vivid, warm and as beautiful as she was.  I am grateful for the time I had with her, how short it all seemed to be.

I titled this post “I am grateful for forgiveness,” not because I have already forgiven her, but to bring into my own life that forgiveness I need for myself, in order to stop being mobilized by thoughts that I don’t deserve this, or that, including happiness, because of how horrible a son I thought I was.

Thank you for listening and allowing me to share.  This was definitely one of the toughest things I have ever had to write down.

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Measure your health by your sympathy with morning and spring. If there is no response in you to the awakening of nature –if the prospect of an early morning walk does not banish sleep, if the warble of the first bluebird does not thrill you –know that the morning and spring of your life are past. Thus may you feel your pulse.

I used to say “I’m not a morning person.”  Most days I would get up an hour (or less) before work, shower, dress and show up just right on time.  Often this was at the expense of my health because I wouldn’t eat a proper breakfast, or anything at all.

I now just have to admit that I wasn’t a “night person,” I just chose to act irresponsibly and stay up all night doing whatever it was I was doing at the time.  I can tell you now it was never really all that important.  Most times it was just watching television, or hanging out with friends.  And when I was working out of my house as a freelance designer, it was because I was having to make up work I did not finish during the day.  What it really boiled down to was I wasn’t prioritizing or making the right choices in my life.

That work should have been completed during normal business hours in order to afford more time with family in the evenings.  Instead of staying up or out all night during a school or work week, I should have been in bed getting a good night’s sleep, thus being more productive and healthy.  This list could go on.

Recently I have adopted new behaviors that I am committed to keeping.  Some of those new behaviors involved some major changes to my life, and lifestyle.  I began with emptying out my room of all non-essential electronic devices.  So no more computer or television in my room.  I also took out all reading materials, so no more reading in the bed either.  Now if I want to read, write, or work on the computer, I do it in the living room, the bedroom is now a sacred place reserved for only two things.

I now work hard on keeping a schedule for any and all medications or vitamins that I need to take and I get to bed at a decent hour.  I start to wind up my day between 9 and 10pm, and I’m usually asleep by 11 pm.

But it all really starts with my mornings.  Now instead of staying up all night and sleeping in late if I can, or only getting 3 to 4 hours sleep, I’m up between 6 and 7 am, ensuring I’m getting at least 7 hours sleep.  Almost every morning, I’ll lie there for about 10 to 20 minutes and come up with something really funny to text to all the cuties in my phone book to get their day started off right. I then make some hot tea or coffee and spend about an half an hour or more reading my current book choice.  Sometimes after that I’ll just sit and meditate on the day before having breakfast.  Then I journal, which includes this blog.

I have been doing this now for a bit over a month and I have to say it is doing wonders for my mental and physical health.  No longer am starting off my day in a rush, which only sets the tone for the rest of the day if I continue in that state of mind.  My day seems longer, and much more productive so I don’t go to sleep feeling as though I just let another get by me.

But let me clarify.  I’m a very unpredictable person prone to doing whatever it is I choose to do in the moment.  So please understand, I do not do these things to the exclusion of spontaneity.  I find a lot of pleasure in life, and one of thing I choose to practice and become more of is malleable, and having the ability to flow with life, to the extent that I don’t allow life’s own unpredictability to control my emotions, and therefore behavior.

However, it is nice to allow myself enough time in the mornings to do the things I choose to do at the pace in which I choose to do them.

Have a wonderful morning!

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Love:  A Suggested Definition - The ability and willingness to allow those that you care for to be what they choose to be for themselves, without any insistence that they satisfy you. — Wayne Dyer, Your Erroneous Zones

There isn’t a single person out there who could accuse me of being normal, I dare you to find even one.  And really that’s the way it should be for us all.  We are all our own unique individuals and should just let each other live in our individuality, to express ourselves as we see fit to do.

I’ve been accused of being an over-thinker of things.  I jokingly consider myself a “philosophosizer.”  I in no way compare myself to the likes of a Plato or Socrates, but yeah I do like to go off into my own world somewhere quiet and mull on things.  I have done so since I was a child.  My mother used to say that I was such a quiet child, if she wanted to know where I was, she just had to go look in a corner in my bedroom, and there I’d be just sitting and thinking, or reading a book.  But men like Socrates and Plato were not considered to be “over-thinking things.”  They were considered the greatest minds of their time.  I consider myself to be the greatest mind for me.

This hasn’t always worked out well for me when it appears in the form of “self-talk.”  That’s that self-defeating inner dialogue we can often times find ourselves partaking in that does nothing but destroys our self-esteem, or leads us astray from what is the truth.

But when I sit down and write these posts, for the most part, these are culminated from thoughts that I have had over a period of time.  Often times it could be an issue I experienced the day before and meditated on since then.  Or it could be tied into a book I have been reading for months and I see clearly how it fits into something going on in my life presently.  But this is the way my mind works, this is me.  I may work through things slower than others, but usually when I get there it is worked so deeply into my mind and my soul that I take what I needed to learn to heart, and I progress from there.

I began this site as a diary of my poker playing, it then morphed into a gratitude journal.  Each day I planned on writing just some things I were grateful for that day, a bullet list, not these long drawn out sometimes rambling posts…LOL.  There would be days that when I would write something along the lines of my original purpose for this site, I would get private comments like, “well you phoned that one in.”  This started to become work.

I am at a selfish stage of my life, because I have to be. I have been so giving to others for so long I have nothing else to really give, especially to myself.  So to say that when I write these posts, I write them for me, no one else, but me.  Linda as well as my family will attest to this, that while I spout off some very intimate parts of my life here, for the most part, I am an extremely private person and opening up here takes a lot of effort to admit to the world there are parts of my life that I am not very proud of.  These posts are the lessons I learned often at times at the hands of hurting someone close, or even doing something detrimental to my own physical, spiritual, financial, or mental health.

I truly appreciate the comments, and I am so grateful that you all share in the lessons I have learned, and if there is something you can learn through my mistakes, or my daily bit of clarity then that makes me all the more grateful.

But to get back to my point about being unique.  This “over-thinking” is just another part of me that makes me unlike you, or you, or you.  It doesn’t make me better, it just makes me, well, me.  And as Stuart Smalley used to finish off his affirmation in the mirror with, “…and doggone it, people like me.”

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If a man were never to fade away like the dews of Adashino, never to vanish like the smoke over Toribeyama, but lingered on forever in the world, how things would lose their power to move us!  The most precious thing in life is its uncertainty. — The Buddhist Monk / Poet Kenko

After visiting my Doctor for a my six month check up, I was told last week that my PSA results were high again, and that I would need another biopsy.  At first I was bothered by the thought of it, and I went home and sat with myself in the quiet and just let my mind work through it all.

I don’t know if its the medications I am now taking, the self-work I have been doing, the individual and group therapy I have been attending, or a combination of it all.  But here lately I feel a lot less affected by things in life.  Events caused by people, places or things do not dictate my responses as much as I had allowed them to over the last year.  It is all a matter of choice in perception and how I think which determines my emotion, which then determines my behavior.  Jim says I’m becoming a sociopath. Haha I don’t think that’s it at all.

But to get back to my biopsy story.  I didn’t allow myself to go into the future and start to worry about all of the possibilities, what may or may not happen.  Of course my mind would try and I would have to refrain it from wandering too far off and repeat to myself, “I am allowing myself to worry, I now choose to be happy.”  People kept asking me if I was doing okay, and I truly appreciated their concern and the prayers and well wishes I had received.  I took great comfort in those.  But during that week, I can honestly say that there was little to no worry at all.  I had just accepted the fact that I was on a path and for a reason, and there was to be a lesson to be learned in that.

Well I had the biopsy Monday, and thanks again to my best friend Jim for supporting me and driving me there and home.  Now was the time to wait for the results, I was grateful that they went with a quick turnaround and scheduled me to come back in on Wednesday to receive them.  Once again, I had accepted whatever was coming, all I could deal with was each and every moment as it presented itself.  The day of my results would be here soon, and I would deal with that whatever the case may be.

Now don’t get me wrong, I would be lying if I were to say after sitting in that little room for almost twenty minutes, about fifteen minutes into it I wasn’t muttering under my breath, “Let’s get this over with.”

Well the doctor came in and gave me wonderful news, there was no cancer in the tissue, but some inflammation.  I will be going back every six months for check ups until this is all resolved, and once again proceed from there.  As Billie reminded me on Facebook yesterday, just keep living today, and that is what I shall continue to do.

Now why am I grateful for death?  I just finished reading The 50th Law by 50 cent and Robert Greene, a great book by the way.  It is a book on how obtain a fearless attitude and the last part of the book is all about dealing with your own mortality.  In 2003, the rapper 50 cent was shot nine times but survived and he comments in the book that everyone thinks that’s something special, when in fact we all have a bullet with our names on it.  We will die, and the sooner we realize that, the sooner we’ll start to really live.

I have been confronted with the possibility now of cancer two times in less than a year, and each time I take a little bit more of what I learned and apply it.  What this last time pounded into my head and something pretty fierce I might add, was that truly in life there is nothing anyone can do to you outside of taking your life.

We all wake up with our petty little worries about how our boss is going to treat us today, or worried that our mate is still mad at us, what people will think about how we dress, the rumors that get said behind our back.  This stuff is all insignificant bullshit when you consider that you’re just a speck on the time line of infinity that is this universe.  Some 10,000 years ago, some being may have stood where you are now and is long forgotten, and 10,000 years from now, they won’t be discussing your bad haircut, or whatever minor issue it is that you’ve spent another sleepless night fretting over.

As Wayne Dyer asks, “How long will you be dead?”  Pretty much forever, and that could start tomorrow.  So time to live, invite death into your life willingly.  Think about it, dwell on it, and learn to accept it.  Because once you do, you will come to realize these moments in time are fleeting.  So instead of trying to obtain some sign of material “wealth.”  Try to obtain a life with purpose and meaning.  Leave a legacy of love to your friends, your loved ones and your fellow travelers on this plane of existence.

As always, this was my lesson to be reinforced.  Take from it what you will.  I hate to preach from a pulpit, and when I write, I write it as a journal to myself more than I write it to any reader.

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Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive. - Howard Thurman

Sometimes life propels you in the right direction, and sometimes it creates situations that force you to get up off your ass and get moving.  In our youth we thought we were invincible, that we had all the time in the world.  a bit over 20 years later and I can’t believe how time has gotten by me.

Now don’t get me wrong, I am not complaining.  Because in those 20 years I have had some amazing experiences and met some amazing people.  I have always been in the right place at the right time and still am today.   Which I guess what I’m saying is now is the time for me to really learn and understand how valuable that time is, and what to do with what’s rest of it, how short or long.

We sit back and think to ourselves we can skip this family reunion, there will be plenty more.  Or this year we won’t go on a family vacation, there are plenty of opportunities in the future.

Well not really.  If you consider that there may not be another family reunion for 10 years, then you could very well only experience a couple of those in your lifetime.  If you save up to take the family on that one big trip every couple of years, like to Europe, or Disney World etc..  Then that could mean maybe a couple of trips before your kids grow up and start to leave the house.  There are those things in life we just do maybe once every two years or so, count how many years you might have left and see how many more times you get to do that.

The average life expectancy of a man in the U.S. is 77.6 years, for a woman it is 80.4 years.  I once read about this man who counted how many years he had left if he lived to be the average 77 years.  Well me being 43 years old that would be another 34 years.  He then multiplied 52 weeks a year by however many years he may have left (1746 weeks for me).  Now each of these marbles would represent a Saturday in those weeks, and on every Saturday he would pull a marble out and dispose of it.  This would serve to remind him how many Saturday’s he had left and ask himself if he made that Saturday special.

While every day is a gift, we of course can’t always be out jumping out of planes, hiking up Mt. Everest etc.  But we can spend each day making sure we reach out and tell someone special we love them.  We can pick up a new hobby and learn to paint that painting that is within us, write the book that speaks from our heart.  And on that “Saturday” we have off, which here in Vegas that could be any day of the week.  Don’t waste it on the couch sitting in front of the television, you really don’t have very many of those left.

Now speaking of direction, this post seems a bit directionless.  But let me tie it all together.  Now that I have direction in my life, and I know what it is I want, and what it is I don’t want.  I can now spend that extra energy and time I have ensuring I stay focused and continue to move in that direction, while making sure to enjoy those 1,746 Saturdays I hope I  have left.  I do believe I have a purpose in life, and while I have not yet fully realized or utilized my talents to express it, I will.

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A book reads the better which is our own, and has been so long known to us, that we know the topography of its blots, and dog’s ears, and can trace the dirt in it to having read it at tea with buttered muffins.  ~Charles Lamb, Last Essays of Elia, 1833

There once was a time where I thought to hold a book in reverence was to keep it in as pristine condition as possible, no wear and tear, the spine still tight and strong, no dirty smudges or notations in the margin.  To me this was giving a book the utmost respect.  I was wrong.  A book’s purpose is to be read voraciously, with enthusiasm, whenever, wherever and as often as possible.

Now pretty  much all my books show evidence of much love with its yellow highlighted text, hand written notes and the fingerprints of as many hands as I can get to touch it by passing it on.  Knowing that it becomes a part of each person it touches both mentally and physically through the passing of atoms is knowing that it is fully living out its purpose to infiltrate the minds and hearts of as many people possible.

There is a secret life to these books, one that we as “physical beings” are unaware of.  They don’t just sit on the shelf waiting for just anyone to show up, they know their rightful owner and as you walk by they do their best to seduce you into picking them up and taking a much deeper look inside, knowing you will fall hopelessly in love with them and begin a life long affair.

I say this half jokingly, but you would be amazed at how often the right book for the moment I am going through, the lesson I need to learn just magically shows up whether it be on a cart in the library instead of on the shelf, or in a used book store out of place just enough to catch my eye, or even with someone just mentioning it as a suggestion whether it be a friend, or a random guest speaker on a talk show.

I have about two years worth of reading in line right now, and each book knows when I will be ready to experience whatever it is they will bring to me and wait patiently.  They are the best of friends, and the most patient of teachers.

I am grateful for books.

I am currently reading The 50th Law by Robert Greene and 50 Cent.  I highly suggest this book if you are still holding onto unnecessary fears in your life.

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“Watch your thoughts, for they become words.
Watch your words, for they become actions.
Watch your actions, for they become habits.
Watch your habits, for they become character.
Watch your character, for it becomes your destiny.”

Never have truer words been spoken than in today’s quote.  I see daily examples in my life how this pattern has led me to experience successes and failures in all aspects of my life.

Maybe I’m a bit too introspective for my own good, but I go through cycles in my life where I spend a lot of time being reflective and introspective.  I go into a place in my mind and just stay there for hours on end and this could last days, weeks or even months.  And then, for no real obvious reason, I will put the books down, the journal down, and maybe even stop blogging for awhile and just go put things I learned about myself into practice.  I will become a creature of the physical plane once again, succumbing to all the simple silly pleasures that allow some of the pressure I allowed to build up to release.

It is during these times where I go out and put these things I learned into practice where I gain the most insight.  It’s sort of like inventing something new, and putting it through all the wear and tear stress tests to see if it’ll hold up under the most severe conditions.  For the most part I just try to enjoy that part of my life and let things just go and flow, it is when I try to create a controlled environment is when the experiment tends to fail.  And then, once again I will take this insight and disappear back into myself for a little while for some fine tuning and tweaking.

Maybe I’m a bit slower to fix some of the issues I need to work on in my life, sometimes I have to experience things a couple of times before I finally gain the insight that was needed to progress onto the next experience.  Either way, I do take a valuable lesson from it all, whether it was bad or good, and hopefully experience more of the latter.

As always I am grateful to all my readers and their wonderful comments and emails I receive, they all touch my heart.  Thank you for spending your valuable time on my posts, I truly appreciate it.

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God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. - Reinhold Niebuhr

Tuesday morning a situation arose in my life which at first seemed to be something horrible, but as it progressed, I saw how absurdly funny it actually was.  I apologize for being so secretive, but I’m not prepared to share everything just yet.  But let me just say, after it was all over, I was able to walk away without the baggage I had been carrying for almost a year now with this person.Never have I removed a person in my life and felt great about it, but I had an epiphany and realized this person was venomous, a poison to my soul, an energy vampire if you will. I can only assume the reason I continued to allow them access to my life was because of some void within myself I felt they could fill, when I now understand, that void was only growing larger by the day because they were only taking and rarely ever giving, if ever, and there is no way I can expect someone else to make me whole, that is my responsibility.

I have already forgiven them in my heart, but no, that this person will never play a part in my life again, and that is something I am content with.  Of course I never like to leave anything, whether it be a job, friendship, or relationship on bad terms, but I can’t change how it all went down, I just know it did for a reason.

Deep down I knew having this person still in my life, I was unable to make space for someone new, someone who would  lift me up instead of tearing me down, someone who actually would bring value into my life and not chaos.

So while telling them I didn’t want to be in their life anymore seems like a horrible solution, it was honestly the best and healthiest choice I’ve made for myself in a long time.

I immediately found the lesson in all of this right after it was over.  It is personal for now so I won’t share it, but it was a good one and I am so grateful I had the experience to learn it.

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“Everyone tries to define this thing called Character. It’s not hard. Character is doing what’s right when nobody’s looking.”

Everyone needs a Teri in their life.   One of those quiet unassuming friends who day by day makes subtle changes to their life that amount to huge progress the likes that most never achieve.  No fan fair, no need for recognition, no blog to write about it on .

I’ve known Teri for a few years now, but have never quite had the opportunity to really get to know her until she stayed at our house for a few days about a week ago.  She’s a walking talking example of someone living in the moment, someone to admire and model.

We spent quite a bit of time talking about a number of things in life, and the care she took to take the time to sit down and share her life experiences with me will always be appreciated.  They say if you can take away just one thing from a book that you can apply to your life, then that book was well worth the price on the cover.  Well I tell you what, Teri’s an open book, it was all free, and I got the advice of a lifetime.  I am still applying a lot of it right now, and living a slower, more comfortable paced life because of it.

Thank you Teri for all you did, and all you said.  You made an impact on my life, and are someone to be admired for all that you have done for yourself.

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