Why Should I Cry For You?

Trying to remain positive is the hardest thing right now. From the moment I wake up to when I lay my head on my lumpy pillow; I am struggling to stay optimistic. Today was a much better day. No reason at all why it should be. A lot of things went bad terrible wrong today, and yet I was in a better place. Maybe it was laying on my bed with the cats, or maybe it was talking to a lot of old friends on the phone, or maybe it was the way I slept on my arm. Who knows? What matters is that my attitude has taken a turn towards the affirmative. Gonna speak at the Westerville library again this week. That will be interesting. Spoke last night at the Columbus Adobe Users Group. I guess public speaking is part rehearsed performance, part knowledge, and part passion. I like speaking, but I’ve lost all interest in any kind of popularity or “fame“, whatever that really means.

Time to make a list of things I am grateful for again. I want to remember what I’m living for.

I am grateful that I have a home, and not just a place to stay, but a real home, as in a place that I made my own and feel comfortable in. So few people have their own space, something unique to themselves that represents their personality – because they struggle to get through day to day.

I’m grateful that I get to do for a living something I love. No matter how burned out I can get with the work, or how horrendous it feels when the muse leaves you; I still feel gratitude that I don’t work in an industry or have to do anything that makes me feel like my soul is being pulled through my nostrils with a fork.

I’m thankful for my friends, even the fleeting ones I meet for a brief time or the ones that have stuck by me my whole life. I’m not oblivious to how narcissistic I can be, or how low my tolerance for other people’s eccentricities. I want to acknowledge just how amazing (and I truly detest the overuse of that word in today’s nomenclature of language) people are in putting up with me. I’ve always been partial to surrogate families of friends. I cannot ignore that other people have supported me in every way my entire life.

Today it is particularly hard to try to find something positive about the last decade of my personal life. Things happen that utterly decimate my memory. It’s like a hurricane that wipes any fond memory from my brain. I guess I learned a lot about patience. I never loved cats, and now I cannot imagine my life without the boys. Maybe it wasn’t all bad.

I am a better man than I was 10 years ago. I’m just not the best man I can be yet.

“Sometimes I see your face, The stars seem to lose their place, Why should I cry for you?”
– Sting