Nothing actually happens instantly.  You just realize that it happens in an instant.  I broke last night, but I didn’t realize that I had been breaking for a while now.  The guy who always thought he could build anything, fix anything, save the world and foster peace and understanding had become the guy who sees everything incomplete, unrepairable, civilization that was dying and only killing itself with evil. The guy who wanted to suck the marrow out of every experience in life, who never wanted to specialize because it might mean passing up on some other new experience, had become the cautious, timid, cheap, recluse who just complained.   I even joked that I had become the “get off my grass” guy.   It made me sad and I leaked that sadness and negativity onto everyone around me.  With the last vestiges of thinking that I was still that old guy clinging to the belief that I was a visionary, I finally broke.

And I rolled around on the floor in a ball, a giant singularity of a hole in my heart, crying uncontrollably.  No that is not a metaphor.  Because that’s what it is to break.  I had failed me.  I lost to myself.  I don’t care who you are, think back over your life and if you say you haven’t come face to face with this wall then one of two things is true.  1) You are lying to save face or 2) You haven’t put yourself out there to embrace life.  I’m all done with the lying part.

Coach Divine talks about recognizing our negative emotions, interdicting and turning them into positive ones, which I wrote about on my birthday a few months ago.  It seems that I should have been doing this well before 44.  This chapter in my life is no exception and as coach says, I need to build this as a habit, which was definitely not the case before.  That ends today.

I didn’t sleep much last night, and don’t think I didn’t recognize the poetic irony of waking up to the pouring rain (and not just because the bus isn’t waterproof…yet).  But this morning I got my wits back and realized the “broken” part.  After some deep breathing I came up with the opposite target mind-state which is “hope”.  And paging through my notes I found a few corollary positive statements…

“One life in one day”

“Find a way or make one”

So I am putting everyone in my life on notice.  I am not drifting back to the way I was.  That is not me, and I am not letting you poison who I am and what I believe with your negativity.  I don’t want to hear about Hillary did this, or Obama is destroying that, or Trump is a xxxxx.  I didn’t watch the debate and I don’t care who said what.  I’m done with the politics of hate.  Let this be a guide about the cynicism of your social graph too, I will block it.  Write something positive.  Stop sharing stupid fake crap that someone else handed you.  Be your own mind, be original and make it productive or at least positive.

I’ve lost enough succumbing to my own pessimism, and while I started this process at 20X and my birthday, the ship was turning too slowly.  Today is a new day.  Hooyah