Get Your "Buts" Out of the Way...

Started thinking more about this and how it relates to the Law of Attraction after writing it this morning... Those additional thoughts are in red...

43 years ago, an 18 year old, audience member at a comedy club... Was thinking how great it would be to do stand-up comedy for a living...

That 18 year old with no direction also thought enlisting in the Navy would be a good idea... Three years later as a 21 year old he did... Turning 22 in boot camp... Law of Attraction???

36 years ago, he was aboard a submarine on a six-month West-Pac deployment... Reading Louie L’amour novels as fast as he could... Dreaming about getting out and disappearing into the mountains out west... Alone!!!

Sharing his thoughts of living alone in the mountains with a shipmate, one day.... The shipmate replied that it would never happen... To paraphrase him... “The world will suck you into the system”, he said...  

It did for more than 20 more years...

15 years ago, as a 46 year old, he finally found out how great it was to do stand-up comedy... Law of Attraction??? A dream fulfilled...

10 years ago, he left the "system" and a shitty stress filled, health destroying, career with a death sentence work schedule...

Pursuing comedy almost full time the next three years... Finding out comedy on-stage is great... While the business side of comedy sucked...

7 years ago, he made “the mistake” of returning to the “system” and his previous shitty stress filled, health destroying, career with a death sentence work schedule... Just like a bad relationship it wasn't any better than it was before... He was just older and even less willing to put up with the bullshit...

4 years ago, he left a shitty loveless hate filled 10 year relationship... Why it even started, let alone why it lasted that long is a subject left for a NEVER day... Who cares... He knows why... No need to share it here... He’s just thankful to be rid of it...

He would have been willing to die to escape the career and relationship mistakes...

While moving to Idaho had seemed like a mistake, it proved to play a big part in changing his life... NO, our hero did NOT turn Mormon... But looking back he is filled with gratitude and gratefulness for the REAL people who have become an important of his life...    

3 and a half years ago, he left the “system” and the stress filled health destroying career with the death sentence work schedule for the second time...

He was Overweight and Under happy... He had High Blood Pressure... High Cholesterol... And High Anger about it all...

Intending to chase his comedy dreams once again... He found something much better...

Alone with his dogs on the beach in California... Alone in the desert and mountains of California, Nevada, Utah, Idaho, Oregon, Washington, Montana, Wyoming, Arizona, Colorado and finally New Mexico... It dawned on him... What he had spoken to a shipmate 36 years prior had finally come to be manifested... He was alone... The Law of Attraction???

There was time to clear his head... Time to figure out who he was again before the “system” and bad relationships told him he was supposed to be someone else...

Today he is who he was again and he feels good... Happy and grateful...

Six weeks ago, he turned 61 years old... Today after just getting off the scale he is 35 pounds lighter and down to 17% BF... Happy and grateful to be... Happier than he has ever been... Healthier than he has been in a long time... No High Blood Pressure... No High Cholesterol... No High Anger...

And the Old Bastard just did 66 push-ups...

Have the last 3 and a half years always been easy??? No... But there was also time to meet some wonderful people who never asked him to be anything other than himself... People who extended helping hands to him while on his journey asking nothing in return...

Have they been worth it??? Absolutely...

If you want to change your life... Stop complaining about it... Get your "Buts" about why you can't change it out of the way...  Be grateful and CHANGE IT!!!

Into the Mountains I Went...

For whoever wants to save their life will lose it... Luke 9:24

November 2013... It was time to honor a decision made many years earlier... The peace I had made with a career I hated more than 10 years earlier had been stolen by chaos and drama... Chaos and drama I had opened my door and let in because I had taken my eyes off the prize... Now more than 2000 miles from that place of peace on the lake in NY...

Already rid of the people who lived for the chaos and drama which had stolen it... It was time to lose the chaos and drama they had left behind...

It was finally time to lose once and for all my life with a health robbing career and its death sentence schedule...

It was time to save my life...

It was time to lose my mind and save my soul...

It was time to chase my dream again... A dream I thought I wanted... A dream I had always had... A dream I had started to chase more than 10 years earlier... A dream that had helped make my peace with the career I hated... A dream that had been stolen with the peace it helped bring...  

But a dream I could not chase in good conscience while leaving my three boys behind... Loading them into my RV in August of 2014 and heading to the southern California coast where we’d try to chase it together was difficult... But looking back it was the start of finding something even better...

I won’t rehash the difficulties we faced... I’ll only say thank you to those who helped us through them...

Heading north again the summer of 2015 and spending two months alone with my boys in the mountains I began to find something far better than even the dream I had wanted since high school... I began to find my soul...

Now more than two years later... My soul and my peace has been found again... Peace far better than the peace I lost on the lake in NY... Found on the beaches, mountains, deserts and rivers of California, Idaho, Oregon, Washington, Montana, Wyoming, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, Colorado and finally New Mexico...

The boys with me for most of those travels are gone now... Gone but never forgotten... They’ll always be missed... They’ll always be loved...

It’s time to close another chapter... I’ve been to, traveled through, worked and lived in 48 of the 50 states... In less than 2 months I will add another to the list... The RV which has been my home almost exclusively since August of 2014 will be retired the end of April... While still sound enough to be parked and lived in... It needs significant work to keep it safely logging miles on the road...

It will be donated to Fiddler’s Green... A non-profit community in Tularosa, NM providing off the grid housing to homeless US Veteran’s... They are doing a great work and please if anyone would be interested in helping their cause contact me for more information...

Oklahoma... The 49^th of the 50 states I have been to, traveled through, worked and lived in will become the new home base... But the adventures will not end...

In many ways, different ones have only just begun... 

A newer RV will soon replace this one... The drama and chaos lost... My mind clear... My soul found... New travels and adventures await and best of all... I am ready and happy to say I won’t be taking them alone...

Stay tuned faithful readers... New adventures await...  

The Luckiest Man in the World

It’s so easy to forget who we really are when we start listening to who the world tells us we are supposed to be…

Thirty and one half years have passed since serving in the US Navy Submarine service for 9 years… Then trying to fit into the box the world said I should live in for the next 20 years… It might have been OK for a while… But it was living someone else’s truth and eventually regret and resentment take their toll…

After two failed marriages trying to fit into the box… And thinking I had finally found a happy place… Still inside the box but on the edge looking out… Though still working in an industry and career I had come to despise… I had freedom to pursue my places of refuge… The quiet home on the lake and the standup comedy stage…

In a scene right out of “On the Water Front.” I coulda been a contenda… A contenda for contentment… But like a boxer throwing a fight on a promise of a bigger payday…

The quiet home on the lake… The quiet… My favorite sound… The freedom to pursue a dream to step on stage and say whatever I felt like saying…

Like crabs in a box pulling the escaping crab back into the box… Wife number three… In the end the worst of the most dishonest of the three…

All the things professed as attraction points… Became points not to be respected… The peace and quiet replaced by constant noise and chaos… The freedom to step on stage and say what I wanted replaced by drama…

No longer attraction points… But points to be used against me… They were points to control… There were dreams to be stolen…

In typical narcissistic fashion… Caring more about what those outside the home thought and felt than what those (me) inside the home thought… Drama constantly played out for the world to see… In an effort to convince the rest of the world she was a dream to live with while stuffing potato chips and Good ‘n Plenty’s in her face…

The truth of not serving two masters proven… The happy place I had found for myself at the edge of the box the world said I should live in was gone… I was pulled back into the box… An even deeper box than the one I had climbed to the edge of… I am so happy I finally said no more… I would not live in the box the world tried to fit me in any longer…

Sadly, it hurt to lose the quiet home of the lake and yes… Pursuing the freedom of the stage again might always be an option… I willingly gave that up pursuing that to provide the best life possible for my boys… Yes, there’s been heartbreak along the way because sadly now they have all crossed the rainbow bridge… but they’ll never forgotten…

Another truth played out… “To find your life… You must lose your life.” In giving up pursuing the dream of a life on stage… I found something much better… Real freedom…

Selling everything I could not fit into my RV… Packing up my three dogs and the rest of my possessions… Travelling all over the wild west… Mountains… Desert… Oceans… Idaho, California… Washington… Oregon… Montana… Utah… Colorado… Arizona and now New Mexico… The Boys and I have had the whole wild west as our playground…

Ocean and Desert sunsets… Mountain streams… Campfires… Stars… Quiet and calm… No drama… No drama queens… No chaos… Sometimes days… Weeks and even months at a time with no human contact… Time only think… To feel… To listen… To hear what those who fill their lives with noise and chaos are afraid to hear… 

The freedom to go where we want… When we want… With who we want… Without those we don’t want… Without those who neither respect it or appreciate it…

It took three and a half years to finally wash it all out of me… And become me again… It wasn’t always easy and I will always be thankful for those that stood with me during some of the rough spots… But today there are… No boxes… No boundaries… The rest of my life… The best of my life…

Only the real me… My truth and those who understand, respect and share the same truth are granted a spot at the campfire… They know who they are…

Today it feels so good to say… Today I am the luckiest man in the world…  It’s going to be a great adventure… 

Simonizer...

“… My day has been too long. In the morning, I saw my sons happy and strong; and yet, before the night has come, have I lived to see the Last of the Moheathens.”

I’ve struggled to find words to write Simon his blog today… While painful to write blogs for Jack, Riley and JJ, the words came easily… Not so today and I guess it says a lot about who Simon was…

Never flashy… Simon was Mr. Steady… Predictable… Unassuming… Just always there… Far smarter than he was often given credit for… Often over shadowed by his older brothers…

Dependable… Loyal… And full of love for everyone… Asking for nothing but love in return… Well, maybe some cookies, too…

Full of the qualities that define a good dog… And I guess that is the best complement one can give a good dog… That and the tears we shed upon his passing…

Stroking his head on the way to the vet and whispering in his ear that it was okay to let go… He walked into the doctor’s office… Sat on the floor and as a smile crossed his face he breathed his last… No needles… Just the smile…

I would like to think he was smiling because his brothers Riley and JJ were there to meet him…

While Riley is chasing Fifi and JJ his slow rabbits… Simon has found the big box of biscuits in the sky…

We’ll ship his ashes home to Idaho this spring and he’ll be laid to rest to watch beautiful sunsets beside big brother Riley…  

We love you and we miss you, Simon… RIP precious boy…

  

A Man of Constant Quiet...

Funny... As I spend this Christmas Eve alone with Simon and the Damn Cat... The gusting desert wind is the only sound... The RV is rocking... Simon and the Damn Cat are sleeping like babies in a cradle... Peaceful quiet... Yet I never feel alone... Looking back I had the same peaceful quiet when I lived on Lake Ontario... It was all I ever wanted...

My mistake... Opening the door to someone who never respected my love for that quiet... Someone who needed to fill that quiet with the noise of constant drama and chaos...

Because she was afraid of what she'd hear in the quiet... Things she didn't want to hear...

It's ironic that the same noise of constant drama and chaos left everyone in it's wake feeling alone... It never really drowned out the sounds she didn't want to hear...

Never understanding those sounds she didn't want to hear came from deep inside her heart and mind... The noise of constant drama and chaos will never silence them...

The noise of constant drama and chaos only stole the peace of the people around her... 

Sadly, I can't help thinking that was the plan... Someone truly at peace doesn't feel the need to steal someone else's... 

I've found the peaceful quiet again... I like what I hear in the quiet... And I never feel alone...

Happy Thanksgiving

OK... Much to be thankful for not just today, tomorrow or the next day... Everyday!!!

The boys and I have been on quite an adventure the last few years... Some of it good... Some of it hard... I won't call the hard times bad... We learned from both... We've been blessed by both...

Simon and I are now the "Last of the Moheathens" on this adventure and we've got a lot more adventure to live... That fact alone is something to be extremely thankful for...

Simon, Baby Girl and I will chill beside a campfire tonight and be as grateful as any other night... Just maybe thankfully thinking a little deeper than normal... I hope everyone else takes some time to do the same...

Happy Thanksgiving!!!

Deep Desert Thoughts...

Known a few of these... The last being the worst... Why??? She hid it the best... Wanted everyone to think she was joy to live with... Took a while to see through the chaos...

Love Bombing

Love bombing is a term used to describe the typical initial stages of a relationship with a narcissistic personality where the narcissist goes all out to impress their target with flattery, holidays, promises of a future together having the target believe that they have met their perfect partner, their soulmate.

Mirroring

A narcissist will mirror what they see in you from your mannerisms to your dress sense, your behavior and your likes and dislikes. They basically become just like you. 

Machinist... Comedian... Trucker... 

Just sayin'... Did the research...