Time Cures/Changes/Complicates All

I am now one hundred percent healthy and am now able to actually type without the need to throw up every other vowel that comes from the 'puter. This post is simply an outlet. A need to complicate my life by looking back. A desire to find meaning by what has been. It's Scrooge's jaunt with the Ghost of Christmas past. It's Marty getting in the DeLorean. It's, ah, heck, it's a time to count my blessings, sigh about my close misses, and infer what is to be.

New Year's Eve, 1989. I'm playing cards with five of my best friends from high school...whom, none of which do I keep in touch with now. The topic of what the next decade would bring came up. I came upon the idea that ALL would change. I figured I would be married, have kids, basically be an adult.

In that decade, pretty much squat changed. I didn't get married...didn't have kids....I didn't do any of the grown up things that I felt would define my life. I spent it doing pretty much doing what I had done all of my life. Play video games, go to school, and wish my life away waiting on the next/first big thing in my life. From this decade, which should've been the best of my life, I learned that you should never assume anything. My expectations and my results didn't mesh.

New Year's Eve, 1999. I was in San Antonio, TX with a couple of dear friends and the wife to be of a dear friend. Fireworks flashed about in the Alamo-town. Moments of pure beauty that I never really notice usually, led me change what I wanted in life. Where as ten years before it was for all to change, from that moment I wanted all to remain the same. Even then I knew it was an immature goal, but it was something I desperately wanted.

It didn't happen. Everything changed...some for the best, some for the worst. Most, right in the middle. But, life hit in my third decade of life.

First of all, one out of those couple of friends in San Antonio that night less than two months later developed a rare form of lung cancer and died within six months. The other was married within six months. My younger sister married, was widowed, and then married again.

But, on the positive side, I got married, I had kids, I became an adult. (about fourteen years later than expected.) My desires, as always, were not well thought out and I was given blessings that I no right to ever consider. I became an uncle four times over (going on five.)

What have I learned from this? Life doesn't acknowledge expectations. Life moves at its own pace, sometimes slow and sometimes face. But, no matter what we resolve to do...no matteer what we plan to do...life has its own plan. So, my hopes for the next year? I suppose to live in the present, but acknowledge that my future is full of change and that I will need to roll with the punches.

But, until then, I will play with my little complications, enjoy life with SM, and drink a beer. Okay, maybe I'll play a video game or two.

I wish all a Happy New Year!!