It’s been over a month since my last blog post.  During that time I’d been working on a post that, while started with good intentions, got too buried within its own subject matter.  Work and family was more of the focus over the last five weeks, and some personal issues kept shattering my focus on the material I had set out to create.  In the end, I decided to table the post and just write something here more “stream of consciousness”.

Lately, it’s been one day at a time for me.  Life got quite a bit smaller after losing both my cat and my girlfriend of 2 ½ years simultaneously.  Other issues happened at about the same time both personally and professionally that, all taken together, knocked me down several rungs of the ladder.  If I truly believed in luck, I would have concluded that I’ve had nothing but a bad run of it since New Year’s Day.  So I make it through each day by sticking with my recently developed routines and dealing with each day’s challenges as they come.

I resist the temptation to bemoan my situation on social media.  I posted about both Hamilton’s passing and the breakup of my relationship on Facebook, and really appreciated the sympathy and great comments I received from both.  But it’s really easy to be seduced by that – just because people express support after a moment of loss or grief does not mean they are subscribing to your “woe is me” newsletter.  I think most of us grow weary of posts from people who sob or rant online every time a perceived injustice happens in their lives.  On the flip side, I see posts regularly from FB friends that genuinely have significantly worse days than I, and it feels really inappropriate to talk about my petty little issues.  So I keeps my personal trials to myself, and maybe perhaps a little on here (without all the weeping).

As I said previously, I’m keeping to a daily routine to keep the chaos at bay and to keep pushing forward.  I forced myself on perhaps the strictest diet I’ve ever been on, coupled with an exercise routine that drags me out of bed at 4:30am for a couple of hours.  My youthful metabolism isn’t the furnace it once was, apparently, so less delicious food and a lot more sweating.

I have also slowly been trying to get back out into the world again.  I’m coming off of a relationship that required constant travel and lots of time away from town.  I actually enjoyed the trips there, because it felt like I was leaving most of my issues behind and I could let my guard down.  However, it also meant that the few other connections I had withered away.  So now it’s almost like starting over.  It feels a bit like being lost in a crowd without a security blanket.  Life buzzing all around me, and yet I go unnoticed.  Attempts at greetings are returned with cold glances.  Unwanted, unneeded, unnecessary.  All of the horrible parts of dealing with the anxiety are in play once again.  I know it’s all in my head, but it’s difficult to counteract over four decades of programming.

I think a lot about where I am in life: what I’ve accomplished vs. what I have not accomplished, who I am vs. who I want to be.  While I don’t have what you would call a “bucket list”, I do (did?) have several goals I had hoped to achieve by now.  Should I start reconsidering – and revising them?

I also ponder the relationships I’ve had over time, why they ultimately failed, and what I can expect from the next one.  What do I want at this stage of my life?  Have my expectations changed?  Should I ever marry?  Do I want children?  Should that even be considered at this point?

I lie before myself like a giant 1,000 piece puzzle without a picture of what it’s supposed to look like when it’s finished.