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I am so pleased. I never anticipated that things would be so easy. It is hard to believe. All this time. All this effort. What a positive outcome! This is exhilarating!

And it is temporary. This will pass, one way or another. It is a leaf blowing in the wind of life.

No point in getting too complacent. This, too, will pass…

I am frustrated. I never anticipated that things would get this far. It is hard to believe. All this time. All this effort. And for what? This is frustrating.

And it is temporary. This will pass, one way or another. It is a leave blowing in the wind of life.

No need to worry. This will pass.

Out there, somewhere, you will find something that is close to perfect. Believe me, you can find it. You just have to search.

Searching is often difficult for us because it requires us to be active, not passive, and step outside our places of safety. It’s not necessary to go out and search, either. If you are truly happy, truly at peace, then perhaps searching is not prudent or even constructive.

When the opposite is true, however, then we owe ourselves a good search. Even when we are selling ourselves short or enduring humiliation or subjecting ourselves to unjust treatment, the urge to sit still, to compromise, is so incredibly strong. The default is to not act. We have to overcome the default, though, and strive to realize our true potential. We do this by searching.

Search. You will find.

What if you just need a nudge, a little encouragement, to get you moving in the right direction?

Surely, your career is worth more than meaningless obedience and mindless compliance?

Perhaps a nudge is all any of us need to begin the process of redefining who we are and what we bring to the work we do.

No guarantees, of course, but maybe all it takes is a nudge.

What about tomorrow? I’ll tell you “what” about tomorrow…

…it will suck as much as today did.

…you’ll be as miserable as you were today.

…you’ll hate your job all the same.

…your marriage will be the same dead, empty joke you always feared it would be.

…you’ll feel like more of a loser than you did today.

…you’ll hate what you see even more.

…your kids will resent you just a little but more.

…your life will be a disappointment. Just like it was when you woke up this morning.

Nothing will be different tomorrow. Absolutely nothing. You’ll just be one day closer to death.

Unless, of course, you get out of bed on the other side. That simple choice can be the first in a series of different choices that can lead to you redefining the rest of your life. It starts that simply.

Like I told my friend, the Buddhist monk, the other day: it’s simply life, and life simply is.

He’d say there is no choice, just destiny. I say get out the “wrong side” all the same.

The big question facing me as I prepare to go to sleep once again is what do I do with tomorrow.

What about tomorrow?

What else is there to say? That’s deep enough a question for me.

What about tomorrow?

It occurs to me that being 40 means that it’s a slow, inexorable nosedive into the abyss known as “old age”.

At least that’s what I hear. All the dudes who are older than I am tell me so.

I say, “Screw you guys. I’m still climbing uphill.”

Of course, that would explain why my legs burn a little more quickly walking up several flights of stairs. I’m walking uphill now.

Is it age or is it expectations? At which point does the mind lose the battle over the matter? After all, decay and death are built into the system. They have to be. Without death, there would be no renewal and no means of preventing the complete exhaustion of resources. The balance requires all organisms to return their gooey, fleshy parts to the greater collective that is Life on Earth for reuse.

I’m not quite ready to return my parts, thank you very much. They’re still gently used, so I’ll be hanging on to them for quite some time.

Today at Chuck E. Cheese, I was reminded that parents go to great lengths to make their children happy. Children are essentially easy to please.

The lesson: listen to your audience because the path to happiness is seldom as complicated as we think it is.

I’ve learned a lot from these white doors.

Painting them was not as hard as I’d imagined. The result is far better than I expected. Hanging them back up was easy enough. Installing the new knobs was no big deal.

But then they wouldn’t close. What the…? Why the…? How the…?

Nothing lined up.

Nothing hit the right way.

Nothing went smoothly.

Paint started chipping. Screws starting slipping. Holes started losing their thread. Did I mention that a newly-installed closet rod and shelf ripped right out of the wall because of the weight right in the middle of all the door drama? Yeah, that happened, too.

But, in the end, I got the doors shutting smoothly, quietly.

The lesson is that nothing is simple and nothing is so difficult that time, patience, and determination cannot help. As I reminded my friend the former Buddhist monk the other day, life simply is. We judge it and label it. Hard. Easy. Sweet. Bitter. These words are simply our subjective, momentary take on what is.

Life simply is. Live it. Love it. Get up, and do it all over again.

On the first day, the sweat and ache of a day of hard, physical labor is supremely gratifying. Adrenaline and strain leave he muscles weary yet oddly invigorated. Arms and legs are heavy. Abs tremble slightly when flexed. A hot shower serves to heighten the feeling and alleviate the tightness.

This is how our ancestors lived, hundreds of years before the Industrial Revolution created this idea that all men and women must find jobs and labor primarily so that others might become rich. Our ancestors, salt of the earth, laboring for their very survival…

The next day, it just hurts. You press on. There’s a mountain of crap to do and just a few days during which to do them before you have to go back to laboring for those guys getting rich.

10 day into it, you pretty much just want to sleep. Or maybe slip into a wee coma for a spell. It doesn’t matter which just so long as the pain goes away.

Moving has taught me this: the salt of the earth work their collective ass off. Nobody was happier to see those movers carrying the REALLY heavy stuff around than I was.

At 40, I don’t know how many of these kinds of moves I have left in me.