Its coming soon, the first of January with all it's hoopla and resolutions.

I am not going to be emotionally connected to any hoopla, celebration or resolution. I have a bad feeling deep within my heart, love, tears, hope, and dreams waiting to shatter apart. Its looming over me like smog stained clouds, trapping me in a smoke stained room. It's smoke stained walls surround me with deadly resin, tar and nicotine, addictively drawing me into a bad dream that eventually becomes my own reality.  I want to fix it, make it all go away. It is not just emotional problems as it is entwined with financial difficulties that seem to amplify every note played wrong.

Is it better to stay in a troubled relationship, be it marriage, or living together, with the hope of change for the better although the one who wants to stay may have to do all the work, make all the sacrifice and compromise? Who is to say rather than a professional, and is that not just polemic?

I am not the only human with this dilemma going into the new year, so I'll fear not, and go forward with the hope of Christmas, keeping my innermost thoughts to myself.

Rather than dwell even for another second about problems, I would rather delve into the process of change. The time of change, resolution and goals are a constant process for me, always looking back at history to make tomorrow a better place for me, and those connected to me. Is that the way it is for all ye merry men and women?

Speaking of change, it was a bad year for business. Some changes made lat year were not good for business. I switched Churches for personal reasons and all the clients from that Church, including the Church itself quickly bailed except for two. I guess it was more important for that flock to stay with its own even though I stayed within the same denomination. It was sad for me to leave and honestly I made the choice because of my family who wanted to go to a closer Church. I served as the drummer for the main band & choir, and as the drummer for the youth band. I also served on a Ministry board, and as a member of an evangelical team spreading the Lord's word. Losing clients, some were friends, is just bad for business.

     Of all the clients only two remained. One is a great client who I think will remain loyal because they keep business separated from Religion, and the other client is hanging in there, like the little kitty on the tree branch picture.

And a little more change...Business plans change quickly when money runs out. A bad plan is mixing business & home finances even if it becomes an emergency. This is a small business we are talking about, make that a micro business, the kind of business built on a few dollars and the first client The business must sustain itself as it ultimately helps the family each and every month. Therefore, the separation of Business & Family finances has happened.

     There is some leaky plumbing in the financial department at our home, so this is an area of mandatory change. Not a resolution, but a project that must not fail because it is causing every other family issue to be magnified. This project has already been started though no apparent change is visible yet. There must be a pow-wow between the two chiefs of the family to get it straightened out. How can someone get any older and not get any wiser, do you feel me? I am not responsible for the leak, but am responsible for not plugging it up sooner. It's just a case of too little too late. It is also a case of blind love.

Some more change and some changes were never meant to be...

     No midlife crisis happened to me as I joined the Navy at 34 & 11 months. I was too busy trying to make something out of myself to let one happen. Then I got married and had a child, and one by way of marriage who I love very much but who is alienated to me because of her Dad. I have rules, he didn't, but even he is getting remarried soon, and so, the times they are a changing...

      On the other end of the marriage I see a midlife crisis unfolding in its floundering glory. Its not a call for help but more of a cry of escape because change is hard, and sometimes, someone wants no change at all. There lays await in the darkness of the unknown, a beast that can attack and kill us all with no good reason other than thoughtlessness, selfishness, thinking it is no fault, just a mere slip or fall. Two or more of the seven deadly sins plague the person hiding in the darkness, running in between the cracks, and filling their mouth with lies instead of easy, soul-flowing truthful words. All the jointly owned ambitions, dreams, goals and desire, have seemed to waste away because there is no money to fuel the fun, energy, passion, dreams, goals and ambitions with fire. Living here, in the here and now is like walking on cracked glass, waiting to fall, like the proverbial elephant walking on creaky floor boards.

My desire of wanting to sleep with her in the desert on any given night, with a billion stars all around, never came to fruition, and may never might.It depends on my greatest strengths and using them all with expert caution, gentleness beyond a normal man's ability, caring, compassion, and thoughtfulness sprinkled about with carefully designed periods of calming quiet, listening & stillness, while I entice her to help compose a playlist of lifesongs to remedy our blues away.

As we all know that the greatest of ambitions and plans are often disposed because we have not planned for variables unknown. Not that I need to plan like an engineer building a massive spanning bridge, but in a manner of speaking that is exactly what I am undertaking. I don't want to build that bridge half way across just to find out that I have wasted all my energy, time and resources in a bridge that won't meet the other side of the span.

Will the other workers from the other side take my ambitions, resources and most of my pride, take them and use them to build a new relationship, or escape tunnel out, far out, just out of my sight. Leaving me there, standing on a cold concrete span, reaching for something that was lost a long time ago, though I was caring, and praying for a normality that was never intended to be, I want to know now, is this me?