When life gives you lemons, find someone with vodka and have a party.
Or something like that.
Sometimes no matter how hard we plan, no matter how hard we work, life throws something new at us and we have to backtrack, or start all over, or at a minimum, repair the damage.
That’s Life.
What’s Life? It’s a magazine…
Sorry…old joke.
You don’t have to be very old to understand that life doesn’t always turn out the way you planned.
I’ve said this before. By now I was supposed to be thin and rich. I’ll just have to settle for devastatingly handsome.
Remember, this is my blog. We live in my reality.
Thirty-five years ago when I graduated from Asbury College (now Asbury University) I didn’t know what was ahead. In fact, I had no definite plans.
Don’t get me wrong. I had options.
It’s just that none of them worked out the way I thought they would.
I didn’t know at that point that I would end up in politics in a career that kept me in Washington, DC for eight years. A career where I got to travel the country. A career where I got to plan events at foreign embassies and the White House.
A career that ended almost as abruptly as it began.
Like I said, it was politics.
I didn’t know that ten years after I graduated I would be diagnosed with cancer and have to undergo what could have been considered emergency surgery. I’ve told the story, the doctor wanted to operate as soon as possible. Or that I would go through treatments, feeling like crap and months of depression.
I didn’t know if or when I’d get married. That one took a while but it turned out the right way and I’ve spent 29 wonderful years with my life partner and we have two wonderful boys who have challenges and dreams of their own.
Not to go into great detail, but I’m helping one of those boys work through some of those challenges even as I type this.
I could go on about the things that I didn’t know thirty-five years ago.
I could go on about the choices I made, good and bad, along the way.
But what I do instead is remember those things and count them as life experiences for the stories I want to tell in my books.
At each of those points in my life I’ve had to rethink things. I’ve had to regroup and make decisions about moving forward.
In fact, each of us has to do that ever.
Every choice we make will have consequences.
The choice not to get up and go to the gym. Or the choice to have that donut just because it’s there.
The choice to return a phone call or email. Or the choice to reach out to a friend
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