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Looking Back and Looking Ahead – Good things are happening!


My Journey So far…

My journey so far...The way we humans envision time is a funny thing.

When I start looking back I am often surprised at how much, or how little time has actually passed.

And, if you will pardon a wee bit of bluntness, I’m often surprised by the huge amount of CRAP that I’ve been through!

No wonder my face has some tread marks on it because life done run me over! Several times!

In the colorful vernacular of present times: Life be like — “Boy you done been Bitch Slapped!”

Life is getting Better! Way Better!

2016 is going to be a FABULOUS yearIf things keep going on their current trajectory, then 2016 is going to be an amazing, stupendous, exciting, fabulous year!

It may, indeed turn out to be the best year of my entire life.

Wow!

The truly amazing thing is that my focus has shifted.

I’m no longer focused on the “here and now” locked permanently into “survival mode;” I find that I am only looking “back” to measure how far I’ve come and/or to explain to friends when they ask me “where have you been hiding?”

My focus is firmly pointed toward the future.  A quick rundown of the exciting things that are happening:

  • I’m loosing weight! Yay!
    ..
  • As of this morning I weigh 294.6 — that is a total of 40.4 lbs lost from my highest weight of 335 lbs.
    ..
  • My health is improving on almost a daily basis. My stamina is up. I’m moving more.
    ..
  • I’ve started dancing again!
    • I am back in the studio practicing.
    • I’ve started teaching line dance again — lots of stuff happening there; more on that later in this post.
    • I’ve started an Instructor Training program at a local studio and as soon as I finish that program I’ll be put on staff teaching couples dancing, both Ballroom and Country — THIS IS FRIGGIN’ HUGE!
    • I’ve been put on staff at one dance event already for the coming dance year, 2016, and I’m likely to be put on staff at several others!
    • I’m planning on competing this year in Line Dance!
    • I’m beginning to choreograph line dances and will be competing in Line Dance Choreography this year.

Things are turning around.  But to understand just how wonderful and much of a positive change these and other events and happenings in my life are, I have to go back in time and fill you in on how awful things were… 

Long time readers of my blog will recognize bits and pieces of the story but you’ve probably not seen it laid out so concisely in one spot.

For my new readers, new “dance friends” I just made at Dallas Dance and at Worlds, and for my friends with whom I only recently reconnected…

…in the words of Bette Davis “Fasten your seat belts...”

And, uhmmm… you might want to hit “pause” and go grab a cup of coffee or soda and some snacks.

I never intend for my blog posts to be long. Stop laughing!  It is true!  I really do try to make them short, but somehow…  sigh

Oh, well, it may be long, but it is without a doubt entertaining…and informative… Now git…go grab that beverage…

…back?  Got your soda?  Cool… here we go:

The date my life changed…for the worse

Looking back on one’s life, even on recent events, is much like using a crystal ball to peer into the future: the images are very VERY foggy!

Some events are Read the rest of this entry

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Words, pictures, blogging, the hats we wear and the stories we tell…


I’ve been thinking…

The_Thinker_Musee_Rodin smallHey it has to happen every once in a while!

Seriously, I’ve been having this kind of firestorm going on in the back of my head when I eat, watch TV, fiddle on the net, exercise, plan for my return to the world of dance, sleep, tinkle…

Uhmmm was that TMI?  It has been going on for about two or three weeks now and it came to a head (kinda sorta) in yesterday’s blog post.

There is lots of debris flying around in that thought typhoon: stress about my finances, the challenges that lie ahead, the reality that the road is going to be tough, that my life is about to change yet again, uncertainty, angst.  Now toss in a new found political awareness and activism, frustration that the system, the environment, and so many factors seems rigged against people trying to better themselves.

A huge chunk of that inner thought tornado is the difficulty in conveying why when “I went to the grocery store and to my storage unit today” should be received by the listener with the same respect as someone saying “I just ran a marathon in record time.”  — more on that in a later post. For now, please accept it as one tiny line of paint to be included in a much larger painting.  A thread in a larger tapestry.

However, there is a center.  A “core” to that whirling maelstrom inside my brain.

In every case, somehow it all comes back around to WORDS!.

And how inadequate they sometimes are.  How easily they can be misunderstood and the meaning behind the words lost when they come from me to another person.

Words and the inadequacy of “words.” How they can either soar and convey with perfect clarity emotions and thoughts or they can plumment horribly and thud into the ground, like bricks falling from a workman’s scaffold, creating the most awful mess!

Arrrrrrrgggghhhhh!!!!!!!

Here, on this blog, on any blog, the words are both the solution and the problem.  How to use them?  Which ones to use? Do I write about this or that?  Share this bit or that bit?  If writing about that bit then “how?” In what way? Get the idea?

Let’s break it down a little; use those words to illustrate:

Here I am in Dallas, sitting in my room (which needs desperately to be neatened, dusted, and cleaned up).  Over in one corner is a shirt and a pair of pants that need to be thrown into the laundry hamper which is itself overflowing. On my futon are my pillows from last night, and the sheets from last night which really should have been neatly folded and put into the closet for the day, but weren’t.  The futon is still in it’s “inclined” night-time sleeping position instead of being moved to it’s upright “day-time” couch position.

Right next to my desk I have a stack of three boxes and a stack of two boxes.  These boxes are detritus from my storage unit which I’m slowly working through: sorting, selling on CraigsList, tossing in the trash OR giving away the enclosed “junk” and “stuff” to the local resale shop which benefits the LGBT community called “Out of the Closet.”  Watch for the return of my “online garage sale” as I work my way through that pile and the much larger pile-o-clutter that I need to get OUT of my house!

I have a half finished diet soda on my desk (which I really swore I would not be drinking any more of… …I should be switching to green tea instead).  My desk is as cluttered as my mind.  Lots of stuff left in mid project, bits of this and bits of that.

Yer basic slice-o-Tony’s Life in fifty words or less…

About those words…

Read the rest of this entry

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