Brambles.

My heart is brambles, barbed wire, landmines. There are days when everything is sunshine, days where I casually skip through the landmines with a grenade held gingerly between my front teeth, eyes closed, missing detonator after detonator.

Then there are days when I swing my feet to the floor and immediately hear the unmistakable click of landmine, prepping to explode. I hear the blast, I feel myself being ripped limb from limb and yet I am still expected to get up, put on a smile and put on a show. I'm fine. I'm fine. I'm fine.

The truth is, I'm never fine. Even in my most pristine, flexible, death-defying moments I am still perched on the edge of oblivion. The specter of anxiety and depression looms directly behind me, breathing smoke and brimstone down my neck.

But I fight on. I breathe through it, even on the days the smoke chokes my lungs. Sometimes I look in the mirror and don't recognize my own face, don't recognize the look in my eyes and the person staring back at me. On those days, I smile. I nod at her and move forward. She knows.

Meditation practice.

Meditation is hard, you guys!

It's amazing how doing something as simple as sitting in one place for ten minutes can completely test one's patience. As an adult with ADD, sometimes the most simple tasks become exponentially more difficult.

And what could be more simple than sitting, focusing on the breath and clearing my thoughts?

Apparently, everything!

It is unbelievable how many times a mind can wander... and where it will go! I'm not quite sure if my brain just vibrates at a higher level, bouncing thoughts back and forth at an extreme frequency, or if it is a weird self preservation instinct. Regardless of why, one week into an attempt at a daily meditation practice, I am still having an infuriatingly difficult time just. sitting. still.

Thinking. Thinking. Thinking.

Our whole lives are full of the stuff.

What's for breakfast? Am I going to be late to work? Does my boss like me? Do I like me? Should I gym or should I relax after work? Does my butt look big in these pants?

It's simply instinctual. And we're so used to it that silence is deafening.

Enthusiasm.

I miss my youthful enthusiasm. I'm not quite sure I can pinpoint exactly when it left me, floating away from me like a dandelion seed on the wind. It was suddenly just gone, vacated the premises.

I'm sure that it was the result of a variety of factors. Growing up is a tough process, full of bills and disappointments and responsibilities. It tends to beat the fun out of you with an invisible bat, one you can't see or hear or feel.

But, opposed to what it may seem, this isn't meant to be a depressing or sad post. It's one about hope, the hope that I'm on the path to regain some of that childhood sense of excitement I may have lost.

I'm 33, but I'm not quite sure how old I'm supposed to feel. Despite paying all (most) of my bills on time, I would rather sit on my couch with a good book or giggle with my friends than do something productive. I've lost touch with a lot of them over the last few years, mainly due to a serious bout of depression than rendered me slightly overweight and anxious and withdrawn.

Now, I can feel the thaw coming. I'm appreciating things more. I'm wanting to work on myself, my body, my health. I want to socialize, to get out of the house (sometimes).

It's nice to feel want although, as a Buddhist, I know I should work on being liberated from it as well. I'm just happy to feel it for now.

1/1/2015.

Last night was the first New Year's Eve in a long time that I chose to stay in, don comfy pajama pants and celebrate quietly with my wife. To be fair, it was also the first year that I've had a wife (yay)! It was amazing... relaxing, less worry about all the other drunk drivers on the road, more snuggles with the warm and furry ones that are most important to me (minus my mini-me who was with her father seeing Blue Man Group in Chicago).

Today was much the same. I, of course, made big resolutions. I want to lose 50#, but mostly get healthier. I want to do more yoga and meditate more. I want to write more (chiggity checking that off my list for the day). Overall, my goals are to clear out the nonsense on focus on breaking down my life to its barest, most basic essentials... love, peace and security.

Yes, I want to buy a house at some point. I'm working on my credit score and we've created a budget. But the things that are the most important to me are making sure I'm taking care of my temple. We only get one and I have definitely not been treating it right (to the tune of a 20# weight gain since the summer - mostly after getting my gallbladder out and being able to eat food again).

I'm going to be writing most days so be warned. :)

Here's to hoping your New Year's Eve and 2015 in general is MAGIC.

165.2#

After a crazy year of ups and downs with my health, I weighed in today at 165.2#. This means I have officially gained 10# since my gallbladder surgery in September and am 7# away from where I started two years ago.

Instead of choosing frustration, I'm choosing action. It isn't just because my wife and I are going on a cruise in January, it isn't because I want to look better in jeans... I want to FEEL better. I know that my food choices and lack of activity can be most linked to laziness and comfort. I need to get off my ass, use the gym membership we're paying for, eat food that actually nourishes me instead of making me feel sluggish and make positive changes FOR ME.

I feel like I have a good shot at it this time.

Even though I have changed into pajamas, my clothes still smell like bonfire. It's imbued into my hair, my skin, my fingernails... and, although I could shower again, I like it that way.

Tonight might very well be the last birthday bonfire I have with my grandparents.

We've been doing them as long as I can remember, since I was a child. I grew up around that bonfire, went from eating hot dogs to veggie dogs and back again (and since back to veggie dogs!). I matured, came out of the closet, got married, got divorced, had a kid... and every year I knew I could go back to that place and have one thing in my life be stable.

It's difficult to admit that my grandparents are getting older because it's even harder to admit that I am. When my grandmother said that this may be the last bonfire because it's too difficult for them to set up and haul around everything needed to prepare ahead of time, it made me sick to my stomach. I understand and respect it... they have earned it... but it still makes me sad.

Writer's block.

It's been awhile. Too long, in fact. I can't even remember the last time I sat down to write and flex my muscles. 

This makes it hard to pick the habit back up. I've started a few entries only to immediately erase them. My mind doesn't seem to be working with the written word as easily as it used to. 

Obviously, I'm devastated. Logically I understand that writing is a muscle, that it can atrophy without use. But to sit down in front of the computer and have it be so completely blank, that flashing cursor laughing in my face, is difficult to say the least. 

It's not that I don't have much to say; it's just that I can't seem to find a way to say it.