My New Year Begins

I really love this picture; it's one of my best friends from one of my newer lives and one of the best (and few remaining) from one of my older ones. That's Robert and Stephanie (the names if not the stories should be familiar to readers of this blog) here in Nashville in early December, 2006. Robert just gave up his legal career for now and is heading down the Atlantic coast in a sailboat, believe it or not. Rarely do your friends from different lives become friends, if infrequent ones, and it's always somehow satisfying when it happens.

I had some interesting summing up of some of my lives at the end of 2006. Among other friends, I saw two old friends from those aforementioned previous lives; Robert, and my old friend Jim Lydecker, whom I hadn't seen in nineteen years. Readers will recognize he's the one I found on the internet, and whose writings and musings are not only accessible at points throughout this blog, but have filled in some of the gaps in my understanding of what exactly is going on with this civilization of ours. Robert and Jim both passed through Nashville for a night or two on their ways somewhere else, but it's always nice at the end of a year to have present physical reminders of some of the better aspects of the places and people you've been. It also really points out the differences between those places and where you are, and maybe helps you see where you need to go.

I've never really spelled out my little secret formula for being who I really like to be, as opposed to who I really am sometime, and this isn't the place for it, but when one ingredient is missing, it really leaves a chunk out of me. A couple of days after my birthday, I stepped on a tack that went right through the sole of my shoe and into the sole of my foot, and although I hobbled quite well and didn't get infected, it put the end to my working out for a few weeks, which got extended into a couple of months with the holidays and their consequent (though not inevitable) degradation of lifestyle. Anyway, I'd picked this week to pull myself out of my holiday slump and the last missing piece was the return of my exercise program.

Step aerobics. You heard it here. An odd and dying art, but one that helped pull me out of my really big slump in 1986 and helped make me the better parts of who I am today. And you can't do it with a hole in the bottom of your foot. Anyway, my program resumed last night and this morning I am reborn. Sore, of course, but that's part of it. I could feel toxics rushing from my body like Republicans scurrying from enlightenment. I slept like a baby last night and got up and hour early this morning just because I felt so good. I wanted to write you this blog so I could show you what good friends I have. I have very good intentions at this time.

So we'll see. There's always a chance for things to go wrong. But for right now, everything's right. My New Year has begun, a little delayed. I hope yours is a good one, too. Make hay while the sun shines; the darkness is a-comin'.