“The next message you need is always right where you are.” Ram Dass 

Well, if you have been following me for any amount of time, you will know there are certain milestones I simply can’t ignore.True to form, this story will come out the morning of December 31, 2023. So many of us, myself included, use this moment as some kind of frozen point in time, perched on an imaginary vantage point, looking back at the year just ending, painting a flawless picture of the year to come. 

I know so many of us make promises to ourselves that in this next year, things will be different, usually imagining them to be better than they have been. To me, the bitch is, what’s next is right now. The passage of time doesn’t have a damn thing to do with it. By waiting, all you do is waste time you don’t have to waste. 

I am a little more than a year from 80 and if you think I think i have time, you got the wrong guy. Really, that is where I am right now and I am trying to figure out a way to explain it to you, because it is about the both of us. Frankly, I don’t give a shit how old you are, because age is no excuse for delaying tomorrow, it is right now.

So, I want to tell you a story, what a shock! Before I get going, I want to make clear I am no poster child for what I want to share. I am you. The things I want to share have been earned the hard way, falling on my face more times than I can count. Wherever you are, I have been there in some way. 

For the past ten years, I have gone to work, six days a week, pretty much following a self-imposed clock of being early or late, etc. It has served as a spiritual and emotional anesthetic, numbing me to myself. I have allowed myself to get engaged in the most mundane shit imaginable and I am not talking about the nuts and bolts of the business itself, which I have taken seriously, probably too seriously.

Why am I telling you this now? I have been writing in the past few stories about change, change in myriad ways and how it has been impacting my entire life. This coming moment, that split second between two years is where I am precariously perching this story, my last one to you and we’ll get to that in a minute.

I have made light hearted reference to cutting off my long hair and coming clean about smoking pot and finally stopping. The pot business is a purely personal matter, absent even a fleck of judgment. My trip to Alaska played a huge part in feeling both the need for change and the certainty it was coming at me, like a velvet freight train.

I cut that six day a week junkie, choke hold and have physically freed up three days, which is huge for me. In no way do I feel any less a sense of responsibility, but I have unlocked the prison doors and the freedom is indescribable, truly indescribable. There are now days when I don’t give a shit about the clock. It reminds me of my time in Santa Fe, NM, after having broken free from NYC’s death grip of 40 years. It was like becoming best friends with the guy I always wanted to be.

This is where we get into what can happen when you jump off the fucken cliff and you don’t think about looking down, because you believe you are going to land just like my life idol, Fred Astaire.You get to experience a grace you never had the balls to ever imagine, but you jumped and that is where I am as I write this to you, my dear friends.

I have fallen in love. This is probably my last shot and there is no way I’m going to fuck it up. I’m going to tell you why. Being in love is completely about the other person. What a goddamn revelation for me. I don’t know what the hell else could possibly happen to me after all these years and I am still standing. My heart feels like a gift I can completely give to another. I also think it is the most misunderstood state of being. You can learn a lot about yourself you have shielded your heart from. When the armor is dropped, the picture isn’t always pretty and you carry it into the embrace, too. Love is about all of you, even the stuff you have been afraid to share.

I have a writing opportunity that I have been dreaming about for years. My debt to this island is immeasurable. I have gotten to experience heaven without my feet ever leaving this land. I am going to will it to happen and it will.

I have entered the last act of a fabulous story and I am in no hurry for it to end, but I understand. To be given one more shot at love is something I had buried with the passage of time. The possibility of using my words to have a positive impact on the future of this island and to be afforded an opportunity to do it in this voice is more than I can ask for.

I also don’t know what else I can tell you each week. I put the first word on the screen on October 31, 2011 and I really didn’t think I had the courage to try it the following day. Well, I did. I did it back then because I wanted my nearly three year old grandson to know about his grandfather’s life. I had a special love for that little boy that somehow made me think I could find a voice to share it all in a book. I know I found it then and it hasn’t changed after 432 stories and 416,699 words on this blog. We ain’t even talking about the numbers in the memoir I wrote before all this, beginning on that Halloween night. It feels like enough.

On top of all that, I can’t write and ignore the world we are living in and I simply don’t want to get sucked into that emotional quicksand. It would turn joy into a job.

After this week, I am finally going back to read what I have written all these years and share them with you each week. They will be new to both of us.

Thank you and Bless you.

I AM WRITING THIS SUNDAY MORNING, JUST BEFORE SENDING THIS OUT. I REMEMBER MONTHS AGO, I MADE A BIG DEAL ABOUT QUITTING POT AND THEN QUIETLY RESUMED. WHILE I AM SERIOUS ABOUT BEING DONE WITH THIS WRITING I’VE BEEN DOING FOR SO LONG, NEXT WEEK I COULD DECIDE I WANT TO DO SOME MORE. FRANKLY, I HOPE NOT, BECAUSE IT REALLY FEELS LIKE ENOUGH. WHEN I TOLD MY GRANDSON, HE ASKED IF I WAS GOING TO AT LEAST KEEP JOURNALING AND I SAID NO. I DON’T THINK I WILL EVER STOP WRITING UNTIL I STOP BREATHING, BUT THIS FORM WAS STARTING TO FEEL LIKE WORK AND THAT’S NOT GOOD FOR EITHER OF US.

https://www.buzzsprout.com/1292459/episodes/14221627-what-s-next