I’ve learned a few things in my 30-plus years on this planet. Not *all* the things, but a few of them…enough to spin my head around at times. Very few things I’ve learned are more sobering than that life is short, and that everything they tell us about what we put into our bodies is true. All the stuff that adults told us as kids that would eventually kill us…well, it does.
I had a group of guys that I was close to in high school; we were a clique, a posse, a Wolfpack…of that group of friends, I am the only one left with both parents alive. A friend from that group just lost his mother today and I am now the only one of six of us to still have a mother and father still breathing. I’m barely into my thirties…it’s all very sobering indeed.
I was never a young man who felt like I was invincible. But I still was impossibly naive as I look back. Even though I believed the people who were telling me that things like smoking and drinking and drugs…all that would kill you…even though I believed all that, I was still totally ignorant of how the truth of such a warning actually feels when you see it happen or have had it happen to me. I suppose that’s what life experience is all about. You can’t possibly know until you get there.
So don’t do drugs kids, don’t smoke, watch how much you drink, and watch how much and what you eat. That shit really will come and kill you if you let it.
I’ve known loss in my life very accutely. I know what my old friend must be feeling. It happens, we lose someone in our life, and it’s like crossing a bridge and stepping foot on new soil on the other side and realizing that we can never go back. Everything is, and will always be, different now. I hope that new soil will be rich and fruitful for my friend. For all of my friends who have lost parents.
Today was a better day than yesterday. I sat down and I wrote out what I need to get done, and that helped with the psyche. I also thought a lot today about expectations…and how life really, for the most part, gives us what we EXPECT. And by “life gives us” I mean really that WE TAKE what we expect. And with that in mind…it’s up to us to expect what we WANT.
I expect to sell my book to a publisher. I expect to be a best-selling author. I expect to write for television. I expect to be able to afford a house here in LA and I expect to financially thrive with my wife. And I expect to be very happy and fulfilled by writing stories that make me excited and are filled with people that I love. I can *see* these things happening in my life…and if I am to make them come true, I must EXPECT that they will come true.
I’m not sure if writing about it tonight is really having quite the impact that the thought has had on my brain because it really is such a simple, and perhaps cliche, thing to write out…but it’s a major impact. If I’m not expecting to succeed, then how can I possibly maintain the energy that’s necessary to actually finish? So…I must expect to succeed.
Good night everyone. Lots of the thoughts tonight.