Home Sweet Home

My focus on life is on choice and experience. It is not possible to turn the page on the past, but it is possible to move forward to a better life. You just need to take a chance.

The example here is from seven years ago, when I was leaving the west coast of Canada and returning to my roots in the east coast. I was on my way to university at the ripe age of 29 years old. I was leaving a lifestyle of drugs, booze, women and snowboarding. I was leaving a life of irresponsibility and diving straight into a potentially bright new future.

I have gone through several pseudo-editors over the years. None were able to commit to my work. I can either focus on the loss or keep my eyes forward. The time is right to be my own editor. The time is right to share with my readers. It is only fitting that the following post is from a time in my life when I was returning to my home. Just in time for when I am leaving it again.

Here you go. May you enjoy an excerpt from my memoir: Soul to Squeeze.

We all have moments in our lives that we build upon until the moment arrives. We base our days around when it will happen and daydream about what the moment will be like. The days pass. The moment grows closer and closer. Our anticipation rises. Our thoughts race forward in time.

Then, suddenly, we are in that moment. It happens so fast that we desperately want to release the jam on the fast forward button of motion that is life. We watch as the moment slides by us and then passes us by like a stranger on a busy street corner. It is all we can do to keep our heads high and wait for our next moment to arrive.

But what about the moments in between? Do we not live in between those times? Is our life nothing more than a transition from one big moment to the next big moment in between our mundane days of existence? How do we collect our moments and develop our future? How do we build upon our days and make each collection the rest of our lives instead of one fraction of it? Instead of looking forward to something that comes and goes like the precious breath we draw in and out?

Up to this point in my life, my existence was based on moments of anticipation. Moments of a better existence. Moments of anything more than what I had at that present time and place. But, slowly and surely, my outlook changes. Instead of keeping my eyes planted solely on the distant future, I fixate on my present course. Slowly and surely, I place one moment in front of the other, no matter how mundane or monotonous, and find that adding each moment to the next is the only way to design the future. To achieve the full potential of my destiny.

I focus on my days now. Focus on making each one better than the last. Each morning I wake up is a reason to smile. Each morning I wake up is a reason to live. Each day I wake up is a reason to learn. I watch as the days grow into something more than just a trivial passing of time. For, in reality, there is no such thing as a trivial passing of time. My days collect into something more. Something to push me forward. Something that I can almost taste but still have to wait to touch.

Each morning replaces each night. I center my thoughts on the idea of what happens with the collection of my days. I realize that the collection of my days eventually becomes the phases in my life. Phases of knowledge that becomes wisdom with the aid of time. Phases of experiences that teach me how to learn from my mistakes. Phases of new life that spurs tangible growth through the hard times.

I think about the phases in my life - the moments that come and go. Not the phases of puppy love or of drug use. But real phases in my lifetime. The extra push from behind that demands I make something better of myself…that I don’t let life pass me by because it is the only one I get.

I don't see my life as a moment in time but as a collection of days that guide me down the path of resistance. A guide that recognizes the signs standing firmly in the ground along the road side. I recognize the guide for what it is: an understanding that these days I live will eventually catch up to what waits patiently for me on the road ahead.

I am entering into the very first phase of my life. For so many years, I shuffled through my years and stumbled in the dark because I was terrified of the light. Then, one day, my path suddenly became true and just. It became a reason to make myself into the person I always knew was possible. Listen closely. That same message is hidden in your own moments in life.

So, here I am. More than seven years later. In a couple of days, I will reach another anniversary in life. It marks more than the date I jumped off a three storey railing and fell 50 feet to the hard ground below; fracturing my skull and shattering my lower back. It also marks three years of being clean.

Life is so fragile. Embrace it while you still can. Change yourself. Change your world. Change your life.

Until we meet again, my friends. Until we meet again.

"Waking up dead inside my head would never, never do, there is no med. No medicine to take. I've had a chance to be insane, asylum from the falling rain. I've had a chance to break." - Anthony Kiedis of the Red Hot Chili Peppers