Today is Thanksgiving in the U.S., and instead of spending time with my family, am stuck at the house alone, with just Puffy the Puppy to meander in the way keep me company for the weekend. And while I’m not to thrilled with the circumstances that are keeping me from enjoying fried turkey and pork spare ribs with my wife stealing food off my plate, I am actually thankful for a couple of days of quiet to get a few things done and to clear my head. Being dubbed a ‘serial starter,’ I have a lot of half-baked schemed floating around that are cluttering my head, my inbox, and my office. A day to clear out some of that mental clutter, and even get started on raking the yard, is actually blessing, despite the sacrifice of alone time on a family weekend.
Not only am I thankful for a crummy weekend leading to a semi-productive weekend, I’m thankful for the crummy year I have had. I pledged that 2008 was going to be my year, and then watched 11 months go by full of false starts, letdowns, and setbacks. But this has been a valuable year for lessons learned, and the price paid for most of those were just frustration and a little time lost. Not a lot of money and definitely no lives or relationships. In fact, some relationships were made stronger do to the strain of a lack of success, and some new ones where created that have the potential to outshine any other.
I am not thankful for the large loss of financial capital I had this year. I am thankful I lost less than most, and that I still have plenty of years to recover, even if my current projects don’t have much time to recover. I am thankful for the opportunities I didn’t get a chance to take, because it has allowed for plenty of opportunities that I am glad I didn’t miss.
And I give thanks to God for lining up all the opportunities and responsibilities that lie ahead that I truly don’t want. Only through them will I get to the opportunities and responsibilities that I actually want. I am especially thankful to have just enough wisdom to know they are all opportunities and responsibilities that I AM SUPPOSED TO HAVE.
I’m thankful to live in a country that gives everybody the day off to eat, and I’ve got to get to cooking. Happy Thanksgiving, America.
Welcome to my new blog. This is where I will chronicle the next phase of mis-adventures of my life. Thank you for staying on the ride, and for you newcomers to the inside of my mental mania, I will do my best to make sure the trip is both entertaining and educational.
Life In Fast Forward: The Blog is still a bit of a work in progress. Keep checking in for new posts and site updates.
About Blog
This blog supports some of the thoughts and interjections from the folks at Fast Forward Business Properties. Our ideas, things we test, and a few random thoughts will show up here.
Name: J. Cleveland Payne
Home: Little Rock, Arkansas, United States
About Me: News is my profession, so it only fits that I am a news junkie. I'm a radio show/segment producer for a news/talk radio station in Little Rock, Arkansas.
