A new school year is right around the corner and there are so many things to look forward to.  This will be the final round of classes and maybe I will be moving forward-  I hope to start something new and exciting.  I’m not sure, but I’m just tired of finding stuff that will only occupy my time.  I will work on things to make sure that maybe my life can move forward.  I wish that there were was some kind of life book that would tell me where to go from there.  I have no idea and I guess I feel a little bit lost, but I still move forward. I guess I can’t really stop and hide under my bed, though I wish I could..lol.  The summer kind of just slowly moved by, but overall it was great- had some fun.  The new class breakdown I’m not sure about right now and I still have to pass “verification” so you know that maybe its all up in the air.  I’m not sure why I always feel like that.  Like everything is just floating up in the air.  I have no control and the ride at times can be boring and slow.  I think I will work out of my box, lose some weight just to feel better- overall just try something “new” or as new as I can manage.  I do feel like I’m working towards a goal, but I have no idea what that is.  I’m all over the map tonight…my feelings feel high and low.  I feel tired, but not sleepy.  It is late…it is 2:00am and I’m alone with the glow of this computer screen straining my eyes.  I guess everything is great.  I feel good.  I don’t feel young though, I feel so tired and old.  It will be a new day tomorrow, but the same problems will still plague my mind.  It will still not make sense…though there is something so important in my future that I hope I don’t screw it up.  That would be nice…to not only be successful, but feel great about it.

“Where are all the empty feelings that grow from knowledge and day dreaming?”

Welcome to a new life.  It has been sitting here waiting for you and there are no directions or rules- just be you.  Did you come with problems and issues from your past life?  It doesn’t matter where you came from or what you did- that is what a new life means- just to exist.  You won’t remember your old life or have any feelings that could detour your new beginning.  Its a new time and place- a hope for a new day.  Why must we start over?  It is essential to remember that every moment of each second in your past life has created who you are now.  You can’t be that same person.  You must live again a new.  Maybe the outcome will be different or maybe it will be the same.  There are no guarantees.  We can say that you will be happy in the start as every idea is fresh and new. Don’t you want this life so fresh and new?  You will live a dream- a dream for you- created by you.  What do you mean that you have family and loved ones?  You can create your own new relationships and feelings.  Yes, a life of freedom which is exciting-  Nothing matters more than you being happy.  Nothing matters more than you feeling great.  We offer this new life with little cost.  The cost to you is practically free.  Don’t you want to come?  Don’t you want this new life so shiny and new?

There is a time when you don’t have to feel anything whether it be happiness or sadness.  The clock is stopped and minutes to the end of a day are no longer counting down.  The air is dead and the light dim.  When you feel absolutely nothing there are no memories, thoughts, or ideas running raptly through your mind.  Though you may be empty there is no pain or fear of an unknown future or fading past.  What it is- is hard to explain.  What you feel is not something tangible or real.  I suspect that the moments before are hectic and loud with music and sound rampaging through the air in momentous abundance.  After though there is nothing.  An empty space to fill the void left by all the bombastic noise.  These moments may happen when you least expect them.  They just occur like a solar flare lighting up the sky in a rampant violent burst of light- then quickly fizzle.  In these moments you may think to yourself how can I handle a “nothing” that I have never felt before.  We don’t always understand the meaning of silence.  Being alone with nothing to keep your mind occupied.  As the morning sun beats heavily down on your car and you get in exhausted from the heat- it can happen then.  You sit in your car and the noise, the feelings- everything just goes away. Time stops and you are no longer tied to the binding of your natural life.  You are more than your surroundings..you are more than your understanding.  You are in a word, nothing.  As quickly as it came it will go.  Your life will flood with all the familiar as your thoughts fill your head.  As if it had never occurd.  As if it never mattered.  Yes, that is what it feels like- like nothing and everything.  When time just stops.

The last few days I have spent time reading a friend’s blog and they are doing some amazing work. I have found that their words speak so much truth and while they are not in the best of circumstances they still find time to joke and laugh about the life they are living. Rachel and Tristan have been working in Swaziland Africa for the last year teaching HIV prevention and general education to children of their community. Of course there are plenty of anecdotes about daily life and the pure horrors of living in a third world country, but I was most impacted by how they feel that at times that they may not be making much of an impact. I believe that is where the truth lies, when you can look beyond yourself to see the larger picture and imagine a world where maybe you are not making a huge impact. I couldn’t imagine living in such a place or trying to teach people who are always fearful of death from disease and poverty. This is the type of work the requires a lot of strength both emotional and physical. I can only read the sentence “Walked 10 miles in 115 degree heat” and have no idea what that feels like. They have done a great thing for society and the world in general even if they only help one person at a time. I feel more wrapped up in their stories because they are truthful and very human. I don’t think anyone should miss out on this little treasure of a blog about a couple doing amazing work on the other side of the globe.

Please follow the Link to read their blog:

Rachel & Tristan in Swaziland

To Read Part One:  Away

Part Two: Home

He kept trying to focus as people walked with urgency and sense of abandonment talking into their cell phones without a care in the world. He looked at his sneakers torn and frayed. He kept wondering if he would remember her. If she were important enough to remember. He was ten when she left. He had spent the entire day wondering about her. He imagined her in the plane just sitting near a window looking at an endless sky. She would not be as he remembered. He thinks of a mother so young and sweet- full of life with joy in her eyes. He is fourteen today and the day seemed bigger than his age, more important as questions to his future loomed in the distance.

He secretly unloved her a little more each night as thoughts of a fake mother’s care would haunt him. “Why do I not feel anything?” he would whisper before falling asleep. He had always been troubled with these thoughts since she left. In a way to escape he would skip class and walk through the mall with his girlfriend Becky and tell her stories of how he could beat up any guy and that his father was in prison for killing a man. None of this was true, but he didn’t care for Becky, she was in a way just someone to date as an excuse to have someone to talk to. Her blond hair fell medium length, she was just pretty enough to get a guys attention, but a life of constant let down made her cold. He could tell her anything and she wouldn’t care. They would go behind the old gym building during math class to smoke cheap cigarettes and talk of dreams about leaving “this” place. When he was younger, around eleven he had a worn picture of his mom that he kept in a shoe box under his bed. He lost his temper one summer and set the box on fire in the woods behind his “host” family’s house.

He sat on the bench with his head down thinking about all those times he wanted a mother. He had idealistic pictures of mothers from tv who seemed only to exist to love their children. These images ate away at his heart like a slow moving plague that constantly fractured the very foundation of his soul. His heart felt black, his life was in quiet peril from too much pain of memories that may or may not have ever been. He wondered if there would be answers to his questions and if she could make him feel better by just saying “Sorry”, but as these thoughts crept into his mind there was a languish in the amount of time he sat on this bench. What could his mother of done that was so bad that she would abandon him at ten and never look back? There was a frenzy in the air as people pulled and pushed luggage across linoleum floors. He was waiting just waiting for a person who he once loved and remembered. He thinks about being six and running down the hall falling down and scrapping his knee. She ran down the hall and picked him up and kissed his knee, “Mommy is here and I love you very much” she would say smiling. Getting up from the bench he looked up from his worn shoes and saw her coming off the plane with tears in her eyes…as he had done when he was six he smiled and said to himself, “I love you too”.

To Be Continued…

I have been searching through endless internet directories to see what kind of possible good  career could be out there. Once you field through endless spam jobs that include working from home and making 300.00 a week by just being yourself, you find very little in the way of actual career fulfillment. Though there are a few gems hidden here and there and I did find some things to get excited about. First there is a really high profile internship job for Verizon Communications event planning. I could get paid to throw some great networking and launch parties in major cities as a way of promoting a brand. That would be perfect, but I imagine the “coveted” internship spot will be attacked by any college graduate within a hundred mile radius. There is also Manager of show promotion and mixed media lab being brought up by the Mystery Theater in the downtown. That would be a perfect job to get into the door with and maybe even have a chance to grow. It’s the kind of job that can go from one thing to the next each week and mixed media is something I would love to do. Everything else especially when you look in the marketing field can get rather jumbled from “Sales Call” listings which is not really the essence of marketing to rather dumb marketing tricks like holding a sign up in front of cash express for six hours a day. I feel like you have to have talent just to get through job listings to make sure you are applying to things that could possibly help out your future. It all feels rather pointless to an extent…you are really good at something and now you have to wait for others to see that you are good at it. I wish I could just post some of my ideas and maybe something would come from that, but where is the competition in that? Life is about surviving and surviving is partially about luck and those who thrive are the ones that see opportunity where no one else could imagine it, but am I that person?

In truth there was so little to be said. She had gotten off the plane with a sense of worry. She wondered if she would ever get to see her son again. He would be turning 14 in three days and she had not spoken to him in over three years. She had a feeling that he would not remember her or have a distorted memory of her as her absence probably made him cold and bitter. She would look for the warmth in his eyes and maybe that he would be okay. The day felt long. The plane ride felt infinite as thoughts of grand disappointment filled her head. She knew that he would yell at her and tell her that he never loved her and that she was a horrible mother. This understandably made her feel bad, but it also made her feel like she was being unfairly judged. He didn’t know the sacrifices she gave up to give him a good life. How could he be so angry at her and have this disdain for her memory. Maybe she could explain everything to him. She could look deep into herself and tell the truth. There would be a reason to give him hope. He didn’t have to be a statistic of another kid without a mother. She could feel the tears begin to fall down her face. She could feel the weight of every decision she has ever made on her shoulders. It was painful. Incredibly painful. How could she of been so careless with his feelings…not even a phone call. She was walking down the terminal hallway with its multi colored bright lights and empty modern lines. She thought of memories that she never shared with him. She began this journey five hundred miles away and now she would be seeing him. Would there be a smile or just a look of disappointment. She walked past a crowd of people and there he sat looking at her. She said “Maybe it will be alright.”

Part Two:  Home

As you are pushed away from everything familiar you begin to feel the days grow.  They grow in unexpected ways.  In some ways they are the same with the sun rising in the morning and falling to the other end of the world at night.  So much about this feeling is contributed to our sense of complacency.  At some level we love to find ourselves living the same pattern day after day.  On rare occasion as you get older you find that your days grow in unexpected ways.  Before you know it there are times when pure joy can fill your heart and other times where you think there is no way out of the despair.  It is in those moments when you grow as a person.  Getting up in the morning taking your shower, deciding what to wear, and letting the dog out does not allow you to grow.  It is necessary because life is about doing things that we have been taught over and over again. On your way to work you may find someone in need and you help them.  In an unexpected way you have just grown- your day all of a sudden has meaning.  Is that what is means to live a life with meaning? No, I don’t believe it matters in the least.  Fate possibly brought you to this point and you now have to make a decision that can really impact your life or not.  I think to live a life with meaning you must go and find important causes that fulfill your spirit.  I’m not sure what it means…I have never understood what it means, but I think that meaning pushes change that creates substance.  All this as the day continues to grow…

The last few days have been busy and incredibly boring all at the same time, but something happened.  One day I found out about the freedom of happiness.  That feeling that comes around every once in a while that makes life so much better and yet so fleeting that you don’t ever remember what it actually feels like.  Its like that first time you figured out that life really isn't made up of your dreams, but more of how well you can force your way through to success.  You can be sitting there upset and unfocused and in a split second feel “Open”.  Like nothing matters more than what you feel in that moment.  It doesn't last of course as feelings of self doubt and crippling fear slowly enter your mind again and your lost in whatever mundane task you were doing in the first place.  The “Freedom” comes from allowing yourself to feel open to the happiness and trying to duplicate it as much as possible.  You want to feel happy and not like some unsuccessful plague on society.  Yet there is nothing that triggers what will make you happy, you just are and then you are not.  Lately I have felt a lot better because the feeling of just being open and free seems to just seep in.  Like standing in an open field where nothing can really harm you- where your feelings don’t have to make sense- where you no longer feel like a failure.  The world is tough and sometimes you just need happiness to flood your life, if just for a few moments.