I’ve been thinking a lot lately about my life and my current situation.  I’ve worked at the same company for 17 years.  I’ve lived in the same house for 7 and half years.  If it weren’t for a mechanical failure, I might have driven the same car for almost 9 years.  To say that I’ve “settled” is an understatement.  And yet, if you look at some of my past posts, you know that I’m eager to move into something different, somewhere different.  And, today, this song came on and I immediately recognized in the lyrics how I’ve felt for some time now.  Time is ticking.  Staying comfortable and “settled” ignores the sand as it slowly slips from the top chamber into the bottom chamber of the hourglass.  In fact, staying comfortable is akin to knocking the hourglass over so time stands still. And before you know it, you’re laying in a bed, looking back over a long, boring life and wondering why you let time stand still.

So, this post is my wake up alarm.  I’m standing the hourglass back up.  Looking time square in the face and telling it, “Bring it, I’m ready!”  What am I saying, exactly?  Well, I’m not going to be complacent any longer. I’m standing up and taking charge. I may move slowly at first, but I pledge to make progress.  Each post will be a marker on the road for me.  Why?  Because creating content, finding my voice and, hopefully, building an audience will be one way I fight the march of time.  So, I’m now “out there” and hopefully, you’ll come along.  Encourage me.  Bitchslap me.  Laugh with me.  Whatever, just know your attention helps me keep going.  What will you get in return?  Things to ponder.  Things that make you smile or laugh.  Good advice and bad advice.  As I like to say, “I’m not a doctor and I DIDN’T stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night!” but that doesn’t mean you won’t find things to amuse or inform.

So, dear reader, do you know what time it is for you?  I’d love to know.  Share with me?  Cool.

I could have gone with my iPhone or my Macbook.  I could wax rhapsodic about either device.  The phone has become almost an extension of my soul, I use it for so much.  And, the elegance and utility of both devices certainly gives lift to my desire to break out of my corporate “box” and  strike out on my own.

However, I think the gift that has given me the most this year is not something tangible.  My gift that has kept on giving is to live my life simply.  To make do with less and to live in a smaller space.  This life style change won’t happen all at once.  It will take some time to implement.  But, my goal is to have a smaller home and fewer possessions.  The goal is to free up time for what is important to me.

So, on this day of giving, celebrate with family and friends.

Enjoy and be thankful for what you have.

May you all be blessed with good friends, good family, good health and good cheer!!!

Peace to you all.

• 1 broken HVAC heater at the onset of winter
• 1 casual comment about said broken heater and the impending freezing weather to two Twitter friends
• 2 weeks of Tweets and emails between myself, my two Twitter friends and THEIR Twitter friends about some kind of online campaign to “rescue” me from the cold
• 13 people that answered the “call” to “rescue” me from the cold
• The realization that, in spite of what the media wants us to believe, people DO want help each other out of the spirit of goodwill and “family” that we all long for in this fast paced, online world we live in today.

How do you express your sincerest gratitude to folks that have offered to help you out? How do you thank someone that you’ve never met in person? Folks that you have only exchanged tweets and/or emails with? And, even folks that you have NOT met, but rather, are friends of someone you have exchanged tweets with. Obviously, there is Twitter or email and even Facebook. And yet, these all seem to me to be horribly inadequate methods of thanking someone.

Mirjam Spronk (aka @QualityLMiriam on Twitter) is definitely my unsung hero for 2009.  Standing up and offering her time and expertise, from the other side of the world, means more to me than I can possibly express.  This post simply CAN’T convey my gratitude and thankfulness to her. She is definitely a true and real friend. 

And, if it weren’t for my conversations about the Squirrel Nut Zippers with Joi Murugavell (aka @joidesign on Twitter), none of this would have happened.  Therefore, Joi is my second unsung hero for 2009 and another true and real friend. With luck, I will give them both thanks in person someday.

I would add the other 11 people that contacted Mirjam to help out, but sadly, I mostly just have their email addresses, so at this time, I will just say that they deserve “Unsung hero” status too!  However, they are in my thoughts and deserving of the hero status as much as Mirjam and Joi.

However, I think I will take a different approach and simply state that the word that best describes my year is “thankful”. I have come to realize that I truly have a LOT to be thankful for. I have awesome friends, both old and new. I’m thankful for having an amazing daughter. I’m thankful to have kept my job in both a down economy and after some company issues which resulted in layoffs for the first time. Mostly, I”m simply thankful for a good life and positive circumstances.

I’m going to leave it at that. A simple post to say that I’m thankful for everything.

Peace!

For me, the hands down winner for this topic was the day I conquered my fear of jumping off of something high by swinging on a rope swing over the Duck River during a kayaking trip with friends. Actually, I covered this exact topic back in July, shortly after the experience.

You see, I have always had a fear of heights and a fear of jumping off of even relatively low places.  I can’t place where these fears came from, but they do exist and have caused me, at various times, to avoid certain activities or going certain places.  For instance, I was in a tour of the World Trade Center many years back and the observation deck in the one tower had movie theather style seats in rows right up against the glass where you could just sit and look out over Manhatten in all directions.  Now, I could look out the windows, but I couldn’t get close to the seats.  Oddly, however, I can sit next to the window on an airplane and look down at the ground as we fly along at 35,000 feet with no problems.

Anyhow, back to the rope swing.  The tree on which the rope was affixed was laying over on it’s side.  The main trunk of the tree was over a foot thick out over the river and two feet thick near the bank where the tree had been standing in the past.  One of it’s main branches was sticking up at a high angle, thus making a prefect spot from which to attach the rope.  And, as luck would have it, the depth of the river where the tree lay jutting over the river was such that we could swim and not touch bottom if we were treading water.  Plenty deep enough to land in without worry of striking the bottom, etc.

Now, on this trip, there were six of us.  It was a warm summer day and we had stopped to have lunch and enjoy the cool water.  Now, as we continued on the “float” we came upon this tree and the rather thick rope which had been left attached to the tree for anyone who happened to pass.  Keith, our fearless leader, decided he was going to try the swing.  And, sure enough, he sailed out over the river before letting go of the rope and basically cannon-balling into the river.  This prompted my friends Joe and David to attempt the swing along with one of the two ladies on the trip – Julia.  They all had fine form and landed with grand splashes in the river.

It looked like a LOT of fun so I decided that I must try this, even as the fear of leaping off and falling all started to knot up my stomach.  But, having just recent read a blog post about facing your fears, which I mentioned yesterday in fact, I knew I HAD to try and face these fears and try the swing anyway.  As Leo said, “Feel the fear, and do it anyway!”  And so, I clambered out of my kayak and onto the fallen tree trunk and made my way out to where the rope hung down to the water.  And, standing there, holding the rope and fighting an internal battle of wills (one voice screaming “DON’T DO IT” and the other voice screaming “JUST DO IT”) and with plenty of “encouragement” from my friends, I finally took the plunge and leapt off the tree trunk.  It wasn’t graceful or pretty.  It was, more or less, just a semi controlled fall into the river, but for me a triumph!  I don’t know if you can see this, since it is posted on Facebook, but my friend Julia even captured my triumph on video.  I even tried it a second time and managed to improve my form ever so slightly.  All in all, it was an exhilarating experience and something I highly recommend to anyone.  When confronted with a rope swing, the best course of action is to jump.

What I figured out, was that leaps of faith are often necessary if you ever want to grow as a person.  Sure, you can get hurt, but staying safe will always ensure that you won’t achieve any real growth.  Its only when we step out on a limb and test how far we can go that we discover that we can go a LOT farther than we ever thought possible.