Skip to main content

You have to do what you have to do

Tonight, I had plans to go to a music festival in Nelson County with some friends. It was going to cap off my week before a day tomorrow with my children.

But last night, just before I went to bed, I realized that I had mixed up my calendar and tomorrow's catering gig is tonight, not tomorrow.

I made a pledge about eight months ago that I would no longer work on Friday nights. I've recognized I can't just work and work and work, and then work some more. I need to figure out a way to relax. Fridays are good for that, and I've generally had a much happier life ever since.

Yet in about 10 minutes,  I'm going to go get suited up in black and I'll head to the Colonnade Club at the University of Virginia to work a rehearsal dinner. Then I'll race back to my desk to finish my work day, because I don't have the story I'm supposed to have yet.

I don't want to work tonight, and yet I have to, because I accepted an obligation, even though I made a mistake. I'll go in, because it helps my ex-wife with the children, and because I'll finish up and I'll be quite happy indeed.

Life is better than it was. I remained positive through a very dark period in my life, and I can take the joy available to me in any given moment. The sadness I have spoken so much has evaporated. Other forms of sadness will precipitate, but for now, I am grateful that I have found the strength within to withstand and to get myself to this place, to this forthcoming now in which I will find joy no matter what.

Life's like that. You do what you have to do, be at peace with it, and then maybe some form of happiness will find you, eventually.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Running as sense-making

It's going to be a stressful day. I got up at 7:00 AM to start work and I could sit here in front of my computer for the next 10 days and still not get it all done. Okay, that might be an exaggeration, but I'm prone to that awful habit when I'm under stress. I'm under stress at the moment as I try to balance work, my other work, and my need to run six miles or so every other day. In 14 minutes my feet will hit the street and I'll be off. No phone. No e-mail. Just me and my feet. I'm even going to skip the iPod today so I can hear the birds, and so I can concentrate on my surroundings. I don't know where I'm going to go. I know I'll leave the condo and will turn left up Commonwealth Drive. From there? I don't know for sure, but I can guarantee you the day will become a lot less stressful.
7 comments
Read more

What happens next after Facebook?

I just completed a long day at work in my new job. I worked on the Downtown Mall to get ready, and felt charged by the snow falling. It's winter now,  my favorite season, and I wanted to just watch it happening while I prepared two public comments I made at the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors meeting. I didn't want to put the above on Facebook, but that's the kind of status update I used to feel comfortable rattling off without any thought. When I joined the site, I was a reporter for Charlottesville Tomorrow. I think. I think that was back in 2008 or so? At the time, I had gotten so used to posting on this blog, which I consider public record. What I have written on this site since 2005 or so is a document of my life during that time.  I stopped posting here on a regular basis a long time ago. I would post items to Facebook, in part because I wanted a larger audience. I wanted to communicate to more people than I could reach here, and I wanted interaction.
4 comments
Read more

Video builds the radio guy

I'm watching the tail end of the debut of Max Headroom, one of those shows from the late 80's that seemed so amazingly different, refreshing. The premiere revolves around an advertising conspiracy that's killing people. When I was a kid, this seemed so futuristic and somehow important. A television show was critiquing television practices. Now, the irony comes in because I'm watching this show on Joost , which is a new service created by the makers of Skype and KaZaa. There's advertising, of course, but it seems so seamless, you hardly notice it. A friend of mine sent me an invite today, and there's a ton of content here that I can watch legally, as often as I want. And, the picture is pretty darned good, full-screen. Everything is changing, and changing fast. Steve Safran of Lost Remote was recently a guest on Coy Barefoot's show and continued preaching the gospel of convergence, and Joost is so far the best (legal) implementation I've seen. It lacks
6 comments
Read more