grouchyolhippie

Well, here is my first journal entry, and I don’t know if it will be read by anyone, but it still feels good to express some thoughts I’ve been having in writing to validate my recent feelings.

The last month has tested my metal with what life has thrown my way. First, my beloved mother had a minor stroke, which in turn led to not one, but two, major open heart surgeries. Second, was the loss of a job for a company I really worked hard for… just to have that company toss me aside like a bag of rubbish, without ever acknowledging all that I had done for the company during my 3 years with them.

The timing could not have been worse, as it left me unable to fly out to see my mother before her surgery, due to the enormous difference in money between a paycheck and my unemployment benefits. And like most folks these days, there just isn’t enough left over when you are working to sock any of it away for that rainy day.

Yet, as I sit here today, I realize many good things have come from all of this. First, my mother at eighty years old, sailed through a heart valve replacement and a bypass, and now that she is back home, sounds more energized and happy than I have heard her in a long time. My beautiful and wondrous wife finally nailed down a job in her field after so many years of trying to persevere. Not only a job, but a career opportunity in an exciting and constructive field that makes her very happy. It’s not easy getting a job as a microbiologist these days, with all the government funding for these fields being diverted into senseless wars that are fought only to make the rich man richer.

I am much more alive today, because of these recent hardships. I have a much more heightened sense of what is really important in life, like the relationships and love we share for those that are close to us. I feel so happy that my mother is still with us, and even better than she was before. I feel so happy to see my wife finally getting a chance to get paid for her passion, one for which she worked so hard for, and for so many years. I feel happy, and so fortunate, that I have these wonderful people in my life to share my life with. I feel happy to have found some time to be able to express myself through both my art and my words, things I never seemed to be able to find time for when I was working so hard to be the ‘company man”.

As for the job loss… It was meant to be, as I was obviously pouring too much of myself into this all-absorbing entity that gave me nothing in return. And I know now that it is not my loss, but rather my previous employers loss.

I am happy today, because destiny has taken some control over my life, and put me back on the path of what is important to me. I am happy today, that my blurred vision of what I thought was important, has been clarified to make me realize what really is important. Not that I did not know what was importatant before, but life has a way of making you forget while it throws piles of bulls**t into your path. I am happy today to have reclaimed the happiness that I have been ranting about in the last few paragraphs, and to realize that, all-in-all… Life Is Good.