Friday, December 21

Today I am in Chicago. I have officially finished my project in Atlanta - yee haw! Right now I am sitting in my apartment with the kitty cats at my feet. We're watching "Planes, Trains, and Automobiles," one of the funniest holiday moves of all time. Today has been a great day: I slept until I woke up, did a bit of work, ran some errands, shopped a little, took care of some administrative stuff that I previously hadn't had time to do, and otherwise just hung out on the couch. Tomorrow I am flying to Maryland to spend Christmas at my mom's. I am really looking forward to it this year more than ever, mainly because I feel like I really earned a chance to relax and enjoy time with my family. Nothing feels better like a good amount of time off after you worked really hard to accomplish something.

It's been a weird year. In some ways, I feel like I really grew and figured out more about what I don't want to do - but I can't say I've figured out a whole lot about what I do want to do. One thing that I've talked about for, oh, 37 years, is trying to launch some sort of musical enterprise. I believe there is no better place to do this than Chicago, because there are so many places to see live music. I had this idea last week to start a band that plays songs from the 60s and 70s that aren't that commonly heard....Etta James, Aretha Franklin b-sides, Sam Cooke, etc. We'll see how this progresses....so far I have a good track record of actually doing stuff that I write in this blog and I don't want to ruin it.

Speaking of things that I've talked about in this blog, I ran 12 miles last weekend. Man....that was one of the hardest things I've done in a while. This is in prep for my Cabo Half Marathon on January 19. We are running a 10k tomorrow and then 13 miles on Saturday the 29th - I'm already stressing about that.

Something rather unusual happened to me the other day. A bit of background....lately I keep hearing these stories of people who ditched big, corpo careers to follow their passion. I'm not sure if these stories are finding me or if I'm just more attuned to them, but it feels a bit like someone is trying to tell me something. So on Tuesday morning I'm on a flight to Atlanta, and as we're about to land the woman next to me says, "I could be wrong but there's an energy about you that says you're in pharmaceutical sales." I said, "Well, I am in a type of sales but it's not selling pharmaceuticals." I then told her a bit about my job, and asked her what she does. She said, I swear, "I help people figure out what they are supposed to be doing with their lives and then get in a position to make it happen." Can you believe that??? Turns out she's in business for herself as a "life coach" of sorts, helping people make the transition from a job they hate to one they love. She's doing extremely well for herself and seemed so content and friendly. If that's not a huge neon sign telling me to get my shit together and figure out what I want to do with my life, I don't know what is. Funny thing was, not only was I supposed to be on a flight the night before that I decided to reschedule, but she was supposed to be sitting in the row behind me. Fate is a funny thing. Stay tuned.