"Well. Here I am" - Juble Early (Firefly)

This is the first day of the rest of your life...I mean, technically they all are, but rarely so dramatically.  Today I woke up and turned off my reoccurring alarm clock setting.  Ideally for the last time ever, but realistically for the immediate foreseeable future.  I'm sitting here in my staged house, on a couch so uncomfortable it feels like it's punching my butt in its face, desperately hoping someone gives me some small fraction of what I believe my beloved home is worth.  If all had gone according to plan this place would have sold for way more than I'm now asking and I'd already be a Colorado resident by today.  They say life is what happens while you're making other plans. 

I'd love to start that the beginning, "a very good place to start" as I understand it from The Sound of Music, but in a major life decision where does one pinpoint the place it starts?  Have you seen the movie Inception?  If you've not seen Inception stop what you're doing (reading this blog apparently) and go watch Inception immediately.  It has little to nothing to do with the point I'm making, but still, and you're welcome.

If not the starting point than certainly an important catalyst was the following meme posted on the Facebook feed of one of my niece-in-laws (is that a thing?), Amanda Fox Gibbons on January 8th of 2018:

I can't be sure that was the inception of what would later become a specific plan and action to leave a job I enjoyed at a company I love surrounded by friends and family in Seattle.  There was already plenty of malaise and garden variety discontent, but this meme put to words and image something that my mind could now cling to and consider concisely.

In the last handful of years I've turned, and past, 40, lost two parents, additional younger family members, and watched some of my siblings retire and move into their dream homes.  All the while working at a job I loved, but commuted through a graveyard daily to reach.  I arguably think about the temporarily of life more than a healthy well adjusted person my age should, or perhaps as I would contend, most of us don't think about it enough.  My friend Jeremy refers to it as "The Burden of Consciousness."  The gift, or curse, that we as humans are aware of the finite nature of our time and opportunity.  During these same years I'm embarrassed to say I made little to no progress on any of my passion projects, artistic pursuits, or any of my ambitions that make me uniquely me and might hopefully make the world a little better place.  I've just worked, paid bills, and tried not to die.

Given all the dramatic things that happened and simply my age on the arc of human life I can't help but wonder if I'm simply having a midlife crisis.  I don't own a car to sell and buy a less practical but sportier mode of transportation.  I don't have a wife or girlfriend to dump and acquire a younger, hotter model of.  I am all too aware that perhaps I'm giving up something great because I just don't know how else to act out against my own existential dread of non-existence.

Conversely, I hope and believe this to be a midlife catharsis.  As much as I was on a very safe and respectable path to make money, build prestige and reputation, and advance in a career, I wasn't accomplishing any of the dreams I have or utilizing any of my unique gifts or perspectives to make a positive impact, or even just an impact, on the world in which I live.  I don't want to wait until I'm old enough to retire (and probably hobbled and crippled from a lifetime of hard work and age) to start "living life."

I believe I have enough ideas and aspirations in me at this very moment to completely fill a long healthy life of pursuing them if I'm so lucky as to have one.  I also harbor no delusions that I won't come up with who knows how many more over the course of whatever time I have left.  Life is what happens when you're making other plans.

Well.  Here I am.