Monday, January 17, 2011

"So Now Sweet Sixteen's Turned Thirty One"~Bob Segar

Change that 31 to 40 and that’s me. In 1994 I was 23, recently honorably discharged from the Navy. I was full of ambition training for softball, found work waiting tables, Mobile Disc Jockey (picture) and a beer cart girl with an ass so perfect you could bounce a quarter off of it. I had just moved to Wisconsin and I was waiting for my freshman year of college to start. No signs of my upcoming battle with Scleroderma and Sarcoidosis except for that tingling in my fingers, which was only a nuisance back then.



Fast forward to 2010, I’m walking on a treadmill because it hurts to run. I’m not fat, but my ass is no longer in its prime (and that’s being VERY kind). I start daydreaming about what had happened to that hot chick I used to be. My hands once beautiful and played Stairway to Heaven on my guitar, were now fist like because of their contracted tendons. I became sad about loosing that, but I think as we grow older, all of us long for the beauty of our youth.

As I grieved for the hot chick, I started thinking about how as hot as I was- how underdeveloped my brain was as age 23. My walk on stubled on one of those “If had I knon then what I know now” moments. I kept plugging away at the treadmill and then I had an idea. What if the hot chick wasn’t gone? Maybe I had just become so terrified by what had happened to my young body I just shriveled up inside in a futile escape attempt from the shell that was once my strong body. I suddenly realized I have been going about this all wrong. I had been working so hard on the outside; I forgot to take care of what was inside. I’m not saying I should just take a meditative pose and stay there. I’ve just decided to start working from the inside out, rather than the outside in. I have to accept myself as a work in progress, not incapable. I have obstacles, but I have to forgive myself when they cannot be overcome. I need to start hiking in the foothills rather than trying to conquer Mount Everest.

So maybe you can't bounce a quarter off my ass, but I'm still the hot chick from the inside out. We all have an inner hot chick (or dude), you just have to remember to look.

Blazing Flare-Ups