July Joy

I'm writing after a small layoff.  Over a year has past since I lost a close a friend, my loyal buddy Duke, and most hurtfully my grandmother.  I write in a political climate that is roaring with white privilege, saturated with bigotry, and the gradual wear and tear of prejudice.  This all seems like dilemmas I would have passionately bit into.  I no longer feel this social angst.  Not to say I am pain free, and to surely declare that I am filling with joy.  I'm writing with a full heart.

I am writing rejuvenated.  As life appears to be entering its second half for me, I recognize that pain is not an absolute enemy.  I am painful in this moment and still joyful, as if mastering some form of emotional active recovery, still emoting intensely yet at a pace, a tempo that allows for deep inhales of joy.  I look forward to the new ways life will invite me to grown through pain.  I also know paradoxically I need to learn to celebrate with the momentum of joy.

Where life seemed to be like an uphill climb, I'm now learning to keep my self from spilling over too, as the joyful bursts of painlessness bring an exciting pace that pulls me downhill, times feeling out of control.  Since pain is constant, yet its intensity variable, I describe myself as pain-ing, and suffer-ing.  This is a choice that seemed like the only option for an impressionable man navigating a divorce, single parenting, broken hearts, and emotional immaturity.  With that choice is another choice and those are not the only options because I feel capable of joy-ing, celebrate-ing, and navigating foreign plans.  I miss you "my grandma".  Duke, you'd likely snap at our new little guy Mikko.  He listens like you.