A Due Update

Well, I've been busy. Haven't we all though?

I suppose I owe the few wonderful souls that take their time to read my writings a duly needed update. Some good, and some not as good. Never truly bad I suppose.

I've taken on a new job. Without going into a boring and mind-numbing level of detail, I'm doing marketing things for a marketing company. Fair enough, right? Good.

In addition, I've been trying to regulate my schedule; managing the self-care that goes underappreciated all too often with me, and the innate drive I have to push myself professionally. The battle that never ends. My wild and free days of roaming untamed may be slightly throttled, but never stopped. So do stay tuned.

I've also been working on my personal and relationship life (says every single (read lonely haha) person ever). Personal development and driving to be the champion, in the classical sense, is always something anyone, particularly a good man, should aim to become. Hell, my father did it for me as a wee lad. Why shouldn't I model myself in the same way?

But where I start in that development plan is the hardest part. Naturally, I resort to the things hammered into me like a square peg into the round hole of my head. Integrity, Honor, Discipline, and all those words stenciled, in yellow and chipped paint, on the floor or steps of any military training building. Overused as they may be, there's a reality to their power. But it has taken me more than strength to separate the good from the bad.

I've been prying hard. Like a firefighter wrenching a locked door open with the breaching claw to get to the vulnerable family inside, I've been using every ounce of my strength to remove the toxic, the useless, and the dead weight from me to get my core out safely. that core of what I know is right.

We've all either been there, or it's coming. Then, it comes time to cull the heard. Trim the fat. Purge one's unclean inner vessels. One of those things is the mold that has grown on the military habits that still linger in my inner fridge. That proverbial bread has sat in there too long, and it's time to get rid of the bad, and consume the good.

The military offers a lot of good. No question. Those yellow words, repeated ad nauseum at a volume considered undesirable in most neighborhoods, can empower, embolden, and drive a meek 18 year old boy to do a lot. However when the young and malleable man is opened and these are shoved into him, darker things often get in as well. It can take years of focus to get them out. For some, they never leave, and for others it takes their host with them into the Pale.

So without soul-shitting all over your hardwood floors, or heaven forbid the kitchen tile as my mother would shriek, I've been working on a few "personal projects" myself. Most of that, predictably so, takes me away from the computer. So again, for the few folks peering into my literary cell, thanks for checking back.

One of those projects is a personal relationship, which is about as comfortable as I am describing that for now. Succinctly, It's been the Merriam-Webster, and the Facebook relationship status, definition of "It's Complicated." It is the most soul splitting, and continues to be, a most intensive and righteous inquisition of my inner man that I have ever had. And to make it more fun, even the titling of the endeavor is complicated. Without digging into the details of that swampy battlefield where the psychological and emotional shadow war rages, I'll just leave it at that. Suffice it to say that the subliminal tactics, subtle jabs, and psychological chess game would make any CIA Psy-ops agent, at the very least, intrigued.

I'll have to move forward, which I continue to do with spear leveled, but shield held high. Things look bright, albeit with a cloudy sky. I've learned a few tricks along the way, and one of those is that I simply refuse to deal in certainties. They just don't exist. Will I eat lobiani this week? Almost certainly, but there's that small (while it's microscopically small) chance that I won't.

Anyone who has had to suffer the unholy wrath of a self-help class or anything similar, has heard the phrase, "you can't control everything around you", or some other variation of this bland and obnoxiously repeated obvious trope. I'll leave you with this instead. Somethings aren't controllable, but I'll bet something that influences the way that variable reacts is controllable. You do the math. Or engineering. Whatever.

Cheers.