A New Year

I hear around me, in the last couple of days and today: ” I am SO READY to get this year over with” “I am SO OVER this year” “So glad it’s a new year”  Ok, I can understand maybe it wasn’t the greatest calendar year for you. 

My calendar reloves around my narcotics clean date, which is also at my birthday at 3/19.

2012 was a good year for me, so I am not filled with regret or a longing for the year to end, but am confidant with the prospect of a new year beginning.

2012 brought about the reemergence of my photography through my affiliation with Townsquare Media – St. Cloud. I am shooting more events with them than I have ever before in my career. Some I have no emotional attachment to, and am able to produce quality imagery, which is just developing my professionalism. I am developing a network here in The Twin Cities as well as nationally and I have no idea where any of it will lead, I try to keep moving forward.

I have had new people come into my life, most have been enriching, some need to be moved along. All have taught me something. Some I would like to hold onto for ever, others…well, there’s the curb!

I have traveled to new destinations and have frequented the places that always bring me a renewed energy.

Oh, but I have had my “sucky moments” as well. 

I still hold some in too high of expectations. And this is a defect for me…to hold expectations over anyone.

And my self-imposed “darkness” has crippled me more than a few times…I guess in ways, it always will. It’s part of my existence..in my DNA I suppose, to have bouts of darkness. As always, the key is how do I deal with the darkness? do  I feed it?  Either with gallons of alcohol and countless little baggies of narcotics or even worse, with more fuel of negative thought.

I have come to understand that these bouts of darkness are natural..and if i wait a space of time, they will pass.

And as I have also learned, the bouts are cyclical and usually lunar.

Last night, instead of going to bed at my usual time, I mixed up one of my workout blends and went to The Rollerdome to skate in the New Year. I skated 30 miles as the clock ticked down to midnight. I was up well into the early morning (1:30am) after skating; and slept late into the morning (8:15am) all of which is a drastic change in my sleep cycle.

When I think of how many nights I was up all night, how many mornings I woke up drunk and or hung over…this clean life is something I really like. I have a choice today and it is continue a living a life free of alcohol and drugs. To be clear headed when life’s moments present themselves and be available to feel their enrichment to the fullest.

It is rather freeing to take the weight of 12/31 to 1/1 off my shoulders. More importantly, by living a life with out intoxicants, the thoughts that propelled me into chemical induced neurosis no longer dictate a calendar flipping as an reason to hurl my body and mind into choas.

Who know what the next 12 months holds? Seriously, for anyone.