WHATs, WHYs & WHY NOTs!

Happy Monday pals! Hope you’re all set for turkey day in like 69 hours. Me? I’m thinking it’s gonna go 1 of 2 ways. I’m either gonna be thankful for a comfy bed & an excellent pillow & just freaking hibernate all day OR if I can wrangle a few ZZZs this week, the weatherman is promising Thursday to be the nicest day of the week so I may just venture out where the buffalo roam for some hiking trail therapy!

For those who’ve been following along, you may be wondering what’s the deal with the ZZZs??? We had that problem licked a month or 2 ago. Well, the day job has had me traveling some lately which has unfortunately resurrected a serious case of demons of the past from my former life. Back when I worked for a German machine tool builder I was on the road across all of north America & much of western Europe, 70%-80% of the time from 04-07 & during that time there were MANY days that I’d be functioning on 2-3 hours sleep due to installing technology at 1 customer during the days while programming processes nights for others, often several time zones away. So, given that lifestyle, it didn’t take me long to find the edge of sanity but during that time I also met on online acquaintance that made me laugh & shared a lot of great times with me, keeping me sane by giving me something in life to cherish & look forward to other than a bazillion random 0s & 1s. That acquaintance eventually came to acquire the nickname Sugar Bear so these recent travels, visiting machine shops around the region, evaluating processes & staying in random hotels, has released the dogs of personal swirl warfare & has uncaged my demons of the past I thought I had nearly / recently conquered. Been running on 2-3 hours sleep per night for the past few weeks again & it’s finally catching up with me. Had plans of hitting it long & hard at the side job this weekend but at only 9 hours in on Saturday, at the end of a run, I had the choice to either setup the next job or punch out & call it a day. Just considering the decision was an actual effort & when I realized I was actually so dang tired that it was a mental & physical effort just to breathe I decided to call it done. Knocked out a decent LBWO & another 8 hours at work Sunday & when I headed for the rack Sunday night I fell back into the summertime’s habit out of necessity, downing a couple Excedrin PMs, a couple Benadryl & a fist full of melatonin for good measure. Actually got 6 straight hours of sleep last night & knocked out a pretty good UBWO this AM so things are leveling back off.

So what’s all this got to do with WHATs, WHYs & WHY NOTS? Those of you who’ve followed along may recall my soul was completely twisted up, from Valentine’s weekend on, for months trying to figure out WHAT I did, or didn’t do, that blew things up that weekend until I had a seriously painful realization in July that there was a deeper issue in the WHY I couldn’t find out WHAT the problem was & somehow that painful awakening actually brought a bizarre form of semi-closure, realizing that if why I needed to know what had gone wrong apparently wasn’t important…the what itself really no longer mattered. Well, given these past few days, battling for a foothold on insomnia island, I’ve finally come to another conclusion, along with input from a few near & dear pals. What I HAVE TO focus on in order to move forward is neither the what or the why but strictly the WHY NOT! Why not allow myself to live a life worth waking up to? Why not figure out how to move on & not allow the ache in my soul to dominate my every waking moment. Why not allow myself to find a path back to happiness, which according to one awesome pal is strictly an internal journey but that’s an entire discussion all its own. So, WHY NOT?!?!?

Work hard, train hard, play hard & love deeply pals. NOTHING short of a 4.0 is any longer acceptable.