Somebody is Trying to Tell me Something.

Ramblings Post #208
I wanted to put song lyrics here for some reason. Not explain it or even mention that they were song lyrics. I'm guessing they would appear as muddled train of thought writing perhaps. And people (okay, person) who reads this would look at it and be puzzled for a while until they heard it on the radio and went "Oh, yeah." Then it would be less mysterious. But I guess I'm not putting up song lyrics. Don't know why, just not.

What horrifies me most is the idea of being useless: well-educated, brilliantly promising, and fading out into an indifferent middle age.
~ Sylvia Plath

I have often mused that God speaks to us by pushing the little levers in our lives that create the opportunity for larger things to happen.  By maybe nudging the coin during the flip, by making us pause for a minute for no reason we can think of at the time, starting a chain reaction the end of which we might not ever see. It's a odd way of looking at faith if you will.

So I went to my second religious service in less than two weeks. The first service for a funeral, the second a christening. So like bookends if you will. But what was most interesting is that both sermons talked about living your life to the fullest.

The funeral was for a man who had died relatively young. Relatively, because he was way older than I am now, but as I intend to live much, much longer it's still a bit unnerving. The reverend, in the classic mold of the old Southern preacher - sweating, shouting and infusing the words with the power of truth, implored us in his sermon to "live your life so that when your time comes, they don't have to look for, ask for, beg, or pay people to come to your funeral to share your story." I've heard that idea before, live life to the fullest and all that, but then little over a week later after the christening, the sermon from a young preacher echoed this theme, pointing out we only have so much time - and so we need to start "living" that time. He asked us to do so because the worst thing you can do is "return yourself to God in the original packaging."

Perhaps "someone" is trying to tell me something.

It's not like I haven't been working towards self improvement for the past few years. I went to school at night and working by day, committing all my time, energy and attention to carving if nothing else higher education..and in a larger sense a better opportunity for me. And that plan is in its final stages, buckle down time. It is living of a sort. But then, I've kinda sacrificed a lot of other parts of my existence to get to here. And truth be told, although I've done a whole lot of living, there are whole parts of my reality unexplored.

So I've printed out a passport application.

I'm going to start back on my writing. And concentrate on one title, this time. (Well, maybe two... three... four stories tops!)

Cut back the indulgences on my diet. Yeah, that sounds counter-intuitive, but technically for the past few weeks I've been breaking my indulgences with my diet. Plus I looked good slimmer. Well, I still look good now, but I looked even better even slimmer.

I'm going to speak up on some things I've been silent about for too long.

I'm going to get back to my friends, my family, my people, the city and city living. Get back to living because as they like to say, "none of us are promised tomorrow." Get back to good company, good restaurants, and the quiet joy that comes from what seems like an unremarkable evening that you know will live in your memory forever.

Well, maybe after I take the bar..., 'cause I got like loans and junk.

Barkeep. Make this one of my last ones, because all that studying I was doing on the side is about grab the wheel again.