2008...

As we approach the halfway point of 2008, I feel the need explain what a topsy-turvy roller-coaster this year has been for me.

For the first time in three years I am a single man. I don't always know how to feel about it because on one hand, the relationship I was in was not satisfying and the both of us were unhappy, so it is good in a sense that we are not in it anymore. However I am left with the lingering feeling of "If three years of hard-fought love couldn't make it, what will?"

I do know that this experience has not made me a total commitment-phobic. If anything, I find that I am actually more closely in tune to my own feelings now than I have been in a long time! While I am certainly not wanting to jump into another commitment right away, I am confident that when the time is right, I will know it.

Other than that, the summer has just begun and so far it has been exactly what I had hoped for! The Shape has played two summer concerts in the last two weeks and we have many more scheduled all summer long. Outside of that I have basically just been relaxing and having lots of fun with a select few of my closest friends. We have made a lot of plans for the next few months of summer and my only wish is that we actually follow through with them all. If we do, I'll end up having one of the coolest summers of my life, and maybe even accomplish a small goal of mine that I have been working on lately.

I do my best to be an optimist these days, although it's much easier said than done. I guess I am still a realist before anything else, but I will not deny a strong creative side of me that does contain fantasies and dreams that, in all likelihood, aren't going to play out the way I envision them in my head. Ultimately though, these last few months to me have been, and continue to be, a time of self discovery. I am learning a lot about myself and my friends, and have begun looking at life through an entirely different lense than ever before. More specifically, I have been easing off the constant pressure I used to place on myself to always be productive and always be striving forward and all those habits that still linger from the business days, and I have begun to try just being myself and letting go. I have begun focusing more on the power of love and open mindedness, creativity and passion, and how they all fit into my life. I have studied the roles of everyone I call a friend, and what their specific role in my life is as well as what my role in their life is.

I am nowhere near complete. Still very much a work in progress and I openly acknowledge all my flaws and I am working to accept the ones I cannot change and fix the ones I can. This blog will cease to be used strictly for psychology talk and will now take the form of a personal blog that will also feature psychology talk when I wish to talk about it.

Cheers to the start of a hopefully amazing summer!