So, where have I been?
I woke up New Years Day and felt like my every single aspect of my life was a complete and total failure. I'd never, in all my years, has such an overwhelming sense of absolute dissatisfaction over everything I was doing, top to bottom.
My career was in the toilet. I'd yo-yo'd back to the same company again, where I rarely do anything even vaguely interesting or creative and have no real future at. It's a dead-end. My spirituality had vanished again. I was feeling completely unplugged from the universe yet one more time. Wallowing in the same negative emotions and thought patterns I'd worked so hard to extricate myself from. My social life was in an endless loop. Going to the same places with the same people and doing the same things week in and week out. Never trying anything new. My dating life was a fabulous disaster. I'd dated more women in the previous year than I probably had in my entire life up to that point, but still had nothing to show for it but a long string of failures. I rang in another New Year alone. I could go on and on… but you get the idea.
I hated myself, and everything I'd allowed myself to become. Again.
So I decided that everything had to change. All of it. And I needed time to figure out how to do that, so I shut out the rest of the world and worked and re-discovering myself. Poking around those dark and sticky corners of my brain once again. Learning how to be comfortable in my own skin.
I'm not there yet, but I'm moving forward.
My first choice was what to do about my career. The first step towards fixing it was pretty clear: Quit my current job and relocate away from Cleveland to a better job market. Doing so, however, would put most everything else on hold. This was a commitment of time and money that wouldn't leave room for much else for a while. I'm pretty sure I'm not at a point where I'm ready to throw myself into my job so totally and completely, so I've opted for a different path.
Instead, I'm toughing things out at the current job. The money is good, and I have a decent amount of flexibility with my schedule. Add these two things together and it gives my a good opportunity to get out and do some new things. Climb a mountain. Finish up the net label. Exercise more. Meditate regularly again. Hike across Nepal. Go on another retreat. Whatever. All those things I've wanted to do, or thought about doing, but never made enough, or even any, effort towards.
I've plugged myself back into the universe. At very least, I sit down for a few moments every morning and make my daily offerings. I'm twisting my brain back around so that it's facing the right way again. I've not taken any monastic vows or anything, but I have been living by those precepts. Not drinking. Not eating meat. Thinking right thoughts. Sworn off of dating. (Though I'm not doing so good with that one so far.)
I've started to put together a solid plan to take a mountain climbing expedition this winter (sometime before march.) I've got a new friend who's an experienced mountaineer to get advice from, and my plan has been deemed solid, so I'm going forward with it. I've even gotten myself into a fairly regular exercise routine to toughen myself up for the experience.
There's more, but this is rambling on too long as it is.
I'm probably still going to be mostly off-line for a while. I'm enjoying being out of that rut and breaking free from that loop, and I'm afraid that going back to some of those same routines will cause me to fall right back into it again. So I'm still floating around out here, outside the circle, for a while longer.
(I've still been using this blog while it was off-line, as the number of posts made since the first of the year will attest. I could still use and view the site, just no one else could.)