How to live with regrets? live your life.

I wish I could come up with some pithy title for this post. Alas, whatever appears at the top will be developed en route to the end of my thoughts. I am not going to lie, its been a rough summer. The last several weeks have been awaiting the inevitable passing of a family member. Thats never cool. I can't stand hospitals of any type. My hell will certainly involve a hospital room. Too much personal pain there. To much wishing I could take someones pain from them. 

Instead of rending my clothes and gnashing my teeth with social media, I just suck it up and hope I have the capacity to make it through the week without another crisis. Trying to stick to a routine of work and workouts that gives me sanity. I feel fine. Sure, I bury emotions deep down and let them bubble up so I can meditate on their implications over days, weeks, months rather then letting that emotion scar me or cause an irrational schism with my normal life. Oh sure, I will scream and rant and rave like the best of them, but these explosions are best left for personal time and not in front of the family or business. Only in front of myself. 

And for some things, it doesn't matter how pissed off you are, it changes nothing so why stew over it anyway. Let it go. Death doesn't seem to bother me much, hospitals another story.  We all go to soon, with things left unsaid and undone. It's always a shame. 

This wasn't to be a post on mortality. 

If anything I am an Optimist, so I count my blessings first. If things do not fall apart, more than usual right (?), I can end this year pretty well. Mae is super healthy, off the chart tall. Mighty Mo is not so great but right now its good. He starts public school next month and I can only imagine how his life will change for the better. Mistress is my rock. I am healthy. Thats saying a lot. That I would actually give a crap about my personal safety before I decided a course of action, shocks my family.  Shocks me. 

It is usually at this point that the writer has pulled all his ideas into a cohesive summary. At least a hard ending. I don't think I am accomplishing this today. Oh well. 1,800 posts and they can't all be wrapped up in a perfect little bow. Lots to think about, lots to do. Regrets of course. I wouldn't be living if I didn't. Huh, I think I got my title. 

It is not enough to exist, I am going to Live. 

Sleepless Endurance

I've battled insomnia all my known life. Haven't really got into the Why's and How's, I just have it. I suppose I could have by now worked with alcohol or sleeping pills to develop an action plan but I try to live better than that. Though when GHB was legal, I finally found out what it was like to fall asleep in five minutes. Instead I try to work off my sleep rhythm and when that roughly 90 minute mark comes along I do what I can to fall asleep. It is not all that reliable. 

Which is why I really enjoy Friday family dinner and movie night. We have homemade tacos and later pile in the parents bed to watch a kid friendly DVD. If I am lucky, I will fall asleep and stay asleep till an early rise for training with the team. 

Last Friday I feel asleep at 8:30pm. Nice. But was wide awake at 12:30.  Suck. Nothing was going to get me back to bed so I went through my DVR shows downstairs. Then I got restless around 3am and decided to run on the treadmill for a couple hours. Around 5:15 I hit the jacuzzi with a cup of coffee for a sunrise prayer session. Then Mighty Mo got up and the day went on. 

I really thought I would be asleep early Saturday. Yet as my wide awake timer finally hit 24 hours on Saturday night I was staring at my ceiling in bed wide awake. I grabbed a book and finally two hour later, I got eight hours sleep. 

These really hard insomnia sessions tend to really throw off my body rhythms and my eating cycles.  I can't really put 100% into everything like I normally can. As an Optimist, I look forward to Mondays as the start of something fresh. A new opportunity.  Regardless of how I feel inside, I have to push it just as hard and recover on the back end. This is one instance where I am not a fan of long weekends. 

Maybe the monsoons will bring me some sanity.

These last several weeks have for me, quite unusual.  I uncharacteristically sleep till the last possible moment, then rush out the door to work. Work has been nothing but stress and anxiety, deadlines and expectations.  My only solitude is the lunch time run or ride that no sane person wants to do in this kind of afternoon heat.  Then I get home late and stay up late decompressing.  My weekends have not been full of training or rest, but connecting with a boy growing up to fast and a daughter who wants nothing but warm milk, Kraft cheese and to cry over incoming teeth and anytime the word, "No" is uttered. At her or not. My greatest failure is not being the husband I have to be. 

Last week saw the conclusion of my effort in several projects at work and most of the ongoing story lines in my personal life so hopefully this upcoming week will return me to a more normal mindset. I could use it. While I have a very survivor like mentality, a mindset that is fluid and adaptable; I much prefer a mechanical life, I know what and how and why something goes up and down. 

First off, we need to resolve Mistresses auto accident several months ago. Part of my disconnect must be the fact that I am driving borrowed vehicles. We hope that by the middle of August the settlement will be complete and we can get something in our name. Mighty Mo and I have wished for years to buy a Jeep as a weekend vehicle but now it might be my next daily driver.  That would make he and I very happy. The expectation to buy another vehicle and even one that could bring he and I so much joy, has got me over focused on car buying websites.

Mighty Mo's health has had some serious ups and downs the last several months and while it seems everything is in a remission, it is not time to let the guard down. We have been burned by that before. This quality of life issue is part of the reason we are considering a Jeep sooner than later.  Mighty Mo has some big steps coming up for him this year and it's more important than ever that he and I have a iron bond.

I have always, always believed in being worth more than I am paid.  Many people may not understand that affirmation. It doesn't mean I am underpaid, it means I am indispensable.  As a mindset it has always benefited me. As a business owner, as a partner, I mentor, inspire and train people and I need more education on my own behalf to continue to be the tip of the spear in my position. To that end, I have to finally move forward with some professional development that involves some sort of schooling or certification. I love to learn, I cannot stand academia. This will mean more stress for me. 

The good news though is that the monsoons are finally here in the Valley of The Sun. After threats from meteorologists all weekend, we were hammered by 15 minutes of hard, sideways ran and hours of that rain smell. As someone who has a very depressed sense of smell and can acutely smell rain, I love it.  Rain rejuvenates me.

I suppose to summarize, I am tired of waiting. Waiting for a car settlement. Waiting for a new vehicle. Waiting to start some type of schooling. Waiting for my sons health to decide what to do. Waiting for my daughter to talk. Waiting for my body to decide its fully healed or not. The one thing I don't have to wait for is the support I get from Mistress. And that means a lot.