Recently my life changed. The business I'd been in and around for most
of the last four decades changed. A lot like that happens in and around
tech. But this wasn't a simple transition. This was a
major shift, a break with the past, no longer
business as usual,
no longer the way we do things around here because that's the way
we've always done things around here.
I had to adapt financially, which I did. It was quite a challenge
actually, one which I found I enjoyed more than I realized I would.
Rather than making any purchase I wanted without question, I noticed I
was asking, more and more, "Is this purchase really necessary?". And in
the face of that new discrimination, I noticed something I had never
noticed before. I noticed how I often spend in the same
way I may eat icecream at midnight: to fill some hole. There's
no saying what that hole is. It's too swathed in pea
soup to articulate anyway. But that's why I (when I do, from
time to time) spend ... or eat icecream at midnight. If I curtail
spending like that, or eating icecream at midnight, I get to confront
the hole.
I also moved. I'd always wanted to live in, for want of a better word,
a wild environment. Now, in the
Cowboy Cottage,
I'm gladly dealing with dust in return for the severe scorched
earth
pastures of the brutal California summer, home to coyotes, horses,
cows, deer, squirrels, too many
bird species
to mention, jackrabbits, snakes, and the glorious natural alarm clock
of the sun breaking over the hills and pouring into my window. Here I
get to be cowboy writerpoet. This is
who I am
today. Coming from yesterday, this is whom I've morphed to
be. It's not really a change because I've changed myself
into something I already am.
Is it possible for me to change myself into something I'm not?
Smarter questions may be: should I? And if I did, what
point would there be? And for how long could I sustain it?
I'm clear I'm no longer going to change. I'll simply become whatever's
next for me to become. I can't change into someone I'm not. I can't
change into someone I'm not becoming anyway.
What if I were Zorro in a speedo? What if I were Casanova in a
habit? What if I were Clark Gable in a leotard? None of those work. The
contexts are inappropriate. They don't fit.
But what if I were
Romeo in black jeans?
Now that's
something ... That's a completely different proposition. I could be
Romeo in black jeans.
That's an entirely new possibility.
