Storytime... (KISS)

...the twisted little way I have of writing...

Friday, September 24, 2010

drafting

Who am I?
I am the kind of person who gives what I have to help others, even if it is the last of what is mine. I am kind, gentle, stern when I have to be. I have principals and a sense of honour. I am the kind of person who sets my mind to something and gets fixated until I accomplish. Unfortunately I sometimes have fixated on that overwhelming feeling that accompanies a failure.I am now also the kind of person who, when I realize I have a shortcoming, I take steps to overcome it. I used to meditate when I was a child as part of martial arts classes. I've a new mantra I share with myself daily now: Try, fail, try again, fail better. I will never stop doing better now, despite what failures rock my enitre microcosim.
What am I?
I am a reformed criminal. It's difficult living in the shadow of such a recent mistake. I already know where I went wrong and am already determined to change my life for the better.I am frustruated because having a record now excludes me from many of the things I had wanted to do with my life for the next several long years. It has become even more difficult, worse in a recession, to find a basic and menial job with which to finance basic needs and a desire to return to academia. I am misguided, but was moreso. I used to think life was difficult, I have found it can always get more difficult and often will for no reason. Every day I remind myself how lucky I am to have the support I have needed to pick myself up, change for the better and make strides towards the improvement of my situation.I am now a productive member of society holding down two jobs. One as a referee or judge at a local sports facility, it is honing my sense of reason and allowing me to view my own life with a bit more productive scrutiny. The other one a result of recent volunteer work I have been dedicated to. I have a third; seasonal job, beginning shortly which can provide me with productive work through May or April. A fourth job of a similar nature I believe I have lined up but I'm not one to count my chickens.I am a volunteer for several causes, some big, some small, all dear to me. When I had started to run with a more questionable crowd it was under the pretense that I was following the only work I could find. While I was able to make an honest living, enough to pay my bills, problems arose with the company I would keep. Now I volunteer to set up what can be described as pop-up businesses and thereby help to provide gainful employment, even if temporarily, for those in need.
When?
The turning point, I believe, came when I was in jail. I looked around at the kind of people I was now and forever going to be cast into the same classification with. I realized there are some poeple in this world who are far from the version of civilized I had once felt I'd known. I had role-models in think-tanks who I wanted to be just like someday. I'd briefly forgotten the lessons they taught me when they died and the catty squabbling over a meaningless remote control to the tv, reminded me that I musn't give up on becoming a better person.There are however, some people for whom (I can imagine) a swift and prolonged removal from society would do both a bit of good. I dare say I am not that kind of case.There was a time however, that I would think on the roof and meals associated with incarceration. I do believe I was wavering into bad society at that time.I no longer take for granted the utter satisfaction of work, self-worth, and earning for myself a stable enough living to provide food shelter and save for furthering my education.
Where am I?
I am however caught at another juncture in my life. I do have health issues which have been with me since childhood as well as new ones which had been brought to my attention approximately five years ago. With regards to my asthma, I never think about it anymore, unless I go twelve hours without my medication. It is like the billboard says, a fish out of water. But while in college there was the discovery of some cervical growth. The word cancer was wispered at best. It was deemed benign and I have had no problems. However with a thinner and thereby more vulnerable cervix and a new-found plan to spend the next five to fifteen years getting my life on track I decided to take precautions and had an IUD put in. The pain associated with monthly hormonal and muscular changes has increased to crippling levels and in conjunction with my doctors, we are striving to come to a solution that is congruous.I have not, nor will I give up on making strides towards the person and the life I want to be and have. I have met with obstacles in the past year. It has been difficult to say no to once valued friends and exclude from my life persons I had valued, but I have not wavered in my dedication to personal and situational improvement.
How?
It has been with great difficulty that I have made changes to who I speak with, where I turn to, and what I believe in. Nothing woth doing seems ever to be easy. But I am doing better and with purpose and reason.I don't have a clear view of the what exactly the future will hold for me. but unlike i'd lived in the past, with carpe diem always at my ear, I at least have an idea and a goal set by which to guide myself into the great unknown with confidence, fortitude and perserverence.What I want to be understood here is what happened, happened. And whatever one's interpretation of that may be; it was a mistake and a deeply regrettable one at that. What matters now is that where I was in my life was not and is not where I am going with my life. While where I am now is neither, it is not where I was and it is on the way to becoming the role model I wanted to have when my life had taken its turn for the worse.

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