Guest in Jest #48 This is My Truth Now

This comes from Jay at This is My Truth Now

Guest in Jest… what a series, right? Linda and I have been talking about what I could share on her magnificent blog for close to a year. I must have sent over 10 or 12 posts, but she rejected them ALL. Well, that’s not quite true… I intended to send over 10 or 12 posts, but then I got distracted with book launches, the 365 Daily Challenge, and my (ab)normal life… and then well, I kinda didn’t get a post to her. So she MIGHT have rejected them if I ACTUALLY sent anything. Then I saw she was threatening to cancel Guest in Jest because she was running out of participants. Now THAT’S when I got my ass in gear as (1) I adore this series on her blog, (2) Linda is awesome, and (3) I do love a deadline; it motivates me like nothing else. All you have to do is say “There’s no way you can do X by such and such a date,” and I’m like, “What did you say? Are you serious? I can do anything. I’ll do it,” until afterward when I find out what I’ve committed myself to and begin thinking, “What is wrong with me? How do I get out of this? Put a piece of electrical tape over my mouth in the future and shock me with a taser so I learn for once.”

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Phew… I got the intro to my Guest in Jest post out of the way. It’s always hard for a writer to figure out how to open with the perfect first lines. I spent days aching over them for both of my books, Father Figure and Watching Glass Shatter… in the end, I kept both of the original ideas (some small tweaks) but I wasted so much time trying to come up with them rather than let the words flow for the story and go back to fix the first line. When Linda and I talked about topics, she basically forced me to choose one of my former 365 posts, QuestMaxGoaly (Day 88) because she knew it would make things difficult for me. This woman likes to torture me, I tell ya. The whole point of that day’s post was:  to question how to achieve the maximum goals throughout your life, searching for a fair balance across all the things which bring you happiness and showcase the best you possible

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I rarely make up words, but I did that day because I wasn’t awake or brilliant enough to come up a real one… and yet, the whole point of the 365 Daily Challenge was exactly what Day 88 was all about… how to be happy and get a lot done at the same time. So… Day 88 was June 8, 2017. By the time Linda actually posts this, it will probably be 1 year since that was published. What’s changed since then? Everything and nothing.

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To start with, Linda and I both lost a dog (Levi and Ryder) who meant the absolute world to us. Though it was probably one of the worst times in either of our lives, we were there for each other and that made it feel just a little bit easier to move on. Greta’s come into Linda’s life in the last month, and she’s quite a sweetheart. I suppose I should let everyone know that I’ve learned I’m ready to bring another dog into my life and will be adopting one in June when I return from vacation. I can’t wait to share pictures with everyone… maybe even ship the little squirt off to Maine so Greta and Walter can teach him or her to behave properly. Cuz I can see from all the pics and posts, Linda’s got two perfectly angelic pups. Right?

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Okay, let me get back to this QuestMaxGoaly post from last year… By the way, have you ever regretted a choice you made in the past? Some people regret who they married. Others wish they could have chosen a different career. Right now, I’m regretting a few things… agreeing to let Linda choose the topic for my Guest in Jest. Making up words like QuestMaxGoaly. And not keeping enough notes to properly compare the differences over the last year. Anyone got a time machine?

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So, in that post, I talked about how I wanted to do things a little differently. For instance, stop worrying about how clean the apartment was. At the end of my life, do I really want to say “Hey, you there who tells me if I was a good human or not, isn’t it AMAZING how well I dusted my bookshelves? Come on, I dare you to tell me my toilet wasn’t the most scrubbed piece of porcelain out there?” I can successfully say I have stopped the crazy cleaning… almost to the point that a friend came over one night and pointed out it was the first time he’d ever seen something out of place in my apartment. {In case you’re wondering what that was, I’d left a few magazines on the coffee table and I had 2 coffee cups sitting in the sink still — Isn’t it scary cool how much I learned in the last year?}

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I’m still rambling… in that post last year, I ended with this question:  “So… the real question back out to you: Do you ever take time to think about how to order the things in your life and the time in your day to ensure you are accomplishing everything you want to, e.g. weeding out the things that just waste your time, choosing you over what everyone expects you to do, changing the stuff that you realize doesn’t belong being there?”

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My response one year later:

• Yes. I’m so much better at it than I was last year, but there’s still work to do. The difference now… is that I don’t see the path as a straight line where you start at Mark X and end at Mark Y. The journey is a circle now… sometimes you take an exit ramp and get off for a while, but you keep going around and around spreading out further and further so you are happier and more focused. Other times, you’re driving that damned clover leaf on and off the same circle to the point you get dizzy and want to vomit. Basically, I’m trying to say now there’s grey in my life, not just black and white. And I’m okay with those times. Just not cleaning up afterward.

This <<Insert appropriate expletive >> just got too real so let me get back to the JEST part. My new advice to everyone: “It’s life, dude or dudette. Stop worrying. Be happy. Do good things. Be kind to others. Fall on your ass a few times cause you’re human and you are here to learn and have fun, too.” My advice to myself: “Hey, Jay, when you go get your haircut tomorrow, maybe it’s time to shave it all off or color it something different. Then send a picture of the new hairdo to Linda so she can torture you even more.”

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That said, before I run over my time here on mainepaperpusher’s secret quicksand trap of a blog (all meant in a good way because every day we stop by to read something, we get stuck forever because it’s so much fun!), I want to thank my host for being FANTASTIC and FUNNY and FUNKY and FABULOUS and every other F word out there. {Don’t take that in the wrong way… I’m a nice guy most days}. Linda’s emails or comments show up always at the right time to make my day. Even though she likes torturing me, I tend to only have people in my life who do that… so she fits in perfectly. HUGS!