engineer the lifestyle of my choosing

project this week: haul ass out of bed in AM and get moving.

I seem to have gotten the handle on the drinking. Couple of beers on the weekend is all.

Finances need work.

and – jack and his lady are at last in the final stages of the adoption process. It’s been three years since we began the application proceedings. We applied, waited. Took the classes, waited. Had a back-ground check, waited. Now it’s the visits. First of five was on Thursday. One a week for the next five weeks – then we wait for a child.

Being as everything happens for a reason, I am confident that in the end we will have waited exactly the right amount of time.

Man’s main task in life is to give birth to himself, to become what he potentially is.

Fucking A.

And a Russian-built Ural motorcycle would be cool too. One with a sidecar and the engagable 2WD for snow and muck.

god – house is a sty. Must clean house now! Before she comes home from yoga…

I have the strangest sence that we have been here before…

yes, the life style of my choosing will have more space for books. In the living room. Big shelves that fill one wall…

jaCk has never cared for books in the living room, not ones on shelves anyway. It’s OK if your reading ‘one at the time, but storing ‘em there has always been against jacK’s rules of decorating

Intellectual props he calls books in the living room – as if people just put their copy of ‘Herodotus, The Histories’ where itcan be seen by others inorder to fool the visitor into thinking one reads more than Harry Potter and catalogs…

But hey, I do hava a copy of ‘The Histories’ and other books with snob-appeal and what’s more I like them and I’m running out of closet space, and I don’t have that many guests over anyway.

(sigh)

afraid it’s so, the usually irascable and intiminable jack has been laid low (well, lower than usual) by a trick of psychology…

_{There will be those who say intiminable is not a word, jack though asures me it is indeed, even though a search of online dictionaries does not yield results. If anyone could corroborate the existence of said word – intiminable, it would be keenly appreciated.}

‘been feeling kind of down lately. Job, finances, the complete lack of a routine and access to my usual outlets, other things have conspired to take the wind from my sails. I may be suffering from a mid-life crisis.

Don’t get me wrong – I’m not looking for a rogaine prescription or to cheat on me lady with a teenaged Hooters waitress but I am feeling fat, stressed and underwhelmed.

I have missed so much and the time of youth remaining to me shrinks beneath the weight of age ahead of me.

How did it come to this? How did I let the things for which I had so much passion take a position second to the needs of mere existence?

Being present in an ‘enlightened’ sense is not merely concentrating on the immeadiate need. That is slavery.

Marcus Aurelius wrote that what has transpired prior to this moment has transpired and should be left in the past. What we do from this point on is within our control.

Think of yourself as dead. Now take what is left of your life and do it right.

Life has a way of going in a direction you would not have chosen had you been paying closer attention at the time.

I would not have deliberatly chosen to bust my balls at a dead-end job for low pay and less thanks. Give up my free-time, sacrifice my home life and my interests to work sixty-hours a week doing what I do.

I will redesign my life to rest on these pillars:

1. A harmonious and enjoyable home life.

2. Fiscal soundness.

3. A strong, clean and healthy body.

4. Integrity, dignity and calm.

5. work-life balance.

6. managed relations with those who I interact with from necessity rather than by selection.