Working notes: Jump Starting things when things go south

These are difficult times. We can choose to struggle on each day and do whatever it takes just to get through the day. Or we can choose to allow ourselves to get beaten down by the challenges we face. Life never presents us with a level playing field and fairness is never guaranteed. We really have only one viable option: to soldier on each day, no matter how crappy a day it may be. 

Note to myself: Broadway or Bust... forgetting about having the dream when I was younger.... forgetting how it felt to stand on the stage for the first time and feeling for the first time that there were great possibilities for me in my life.

Note: About why it is so important to surround myself with people who are not just good, but are very good and very talented... forces me to up my own game and never settling for what is easy or what I can just get away with. And never forgetting that I am only as good as I am today. 

Note: About already knowing that in whatever I do, I cannot just do what it takes to get my. And never start out at 50% working towards 100%. Rather that I need to start out at 100% or higher and see how much more and how much better I can be than that today. And then start from the higher benchmark when I start out tomorrow. 

Rediscovered these things in the last few days. Since before I fell a few months ago and even before, I have lived in a downward spiral. I have stopped doing things that I really enjoyed and which gave me a sense of joy in my life. I had stopped writing or ushering at the theater. I had stopped trying to get new accounts. I had not read much. I was sleeping too much and could not force myself out of the house. I have been mildly depressed and i have not felt good inside. There is no joy in just treading water every day.

I am now 66. I probably have many more years to live, although there are no guarantees that that will be the case. But I am surely not dead yet and it is time to do something proactive about my present state of mind. 

At minimum, I have to think about the things that I cannot do or which are not feasible for me to do today. Instead, I need to inventory my skill sets and the positive aspects of my personality and figure out what I can utilize to turn things around... and what my options are. One of the other things I forgot is that when I write, I can work through a problem. And also that even in the worst of times, we are presented with amazing opportunities that will jump start our lives once more. And that the trick to getting on in a positive way with our lives is to open our eyes and look around. If we do, we will see something that we missed or that no one else is seeing, and when we do see that something, for us the good times start up again for us.

Allowing ourselves to fall into a funk clouds our minds and causes us to suffer from a mental fog. And to forget the important things that we have learned along the way. As with all things human, to clear the mental fog, it will start with a decision to something proactive, even if it is only a small step in the right direction.

Oh, yes... there is that other thing that I forgot. If today has been really awful, just go to bed and get up tomorrow. Hopefully, tomorrow will be a better and if we are very lucky, we will begin to string together one good day after another. And when we do that, we are alive again and on our way to whatever comes next.