Okie dokie. Back to public journaling. I moved to Dallas from Little Rock at the beginning of March this year (2016) to launch a startup. Two months before that I quit my job of two years in outside sales. Four months before that, I filed for divorce after three years in a relationship. Roughly two years before that I got laid off from my dead-end job. When I got married in 2013, I also came out to my family as an atheist and have had little to no communication with certain family members since then. And three years before that I graduated with my chemical engineering degree. Wow, did I ever think the world was my oyster in 2010. If anything was for certain, it was that future events are unpredictable.
So now that I effectively have a clean slate, I feel that my identity and purpose are open to revision. Insurance companies might term this a “qualifying event”. So I’m going to take it on and see what I can come up with.
For starters, I want to wipe from my slate all the bad shit that I’ve accumulated, while preserving the good. The bad stuff is like listening to music when I’m getting ready in the morning. I picked up this habit while married, and I never did it before. Without music pervading my thoughts in the morning, I’m free to think and reflect! The good stuff I’ve picked up include becoming more emotionally intelligent, lifting weights regularly, and meditating (sporadically). Many men and women I’ve spoken to about post-divorce life mention “getting themselves back”. I also feel that some of my drive and motivation was muffled and only now am I starting to get that back… which is doubly tough given the grieving process. The words of my therapist in Little Rock are ever present: “We normally recommend divorcees not make any big life changes within the first 12 months of divorce, like moving to a different city or starting a new job.” So here I am in a new city with a new job; well, no job that pays anyways, and I’m defining what it is… and I’m actually only officially divorced since March.
I’ve also been laying my life out in the open more since reading Brene Brown’s Daring Greatly. My Facebook posts are now public by default. I’m more open about my atheism with people, interjecting it into everyday conversation like it ain’t no thang. And while I prefer sobriety, I’ve lately been drinking more regularly, with increased frequency, and with increased volume. So I went to a SMART recovery meeting to get this shit under control. Not to control moderation, but to get back to a sober lifestyle. Brown calls this living wholeheartedly.
Those are my spewed thoughts. Nobody reads this, right?
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