December 28, 2018, Prescott-

It’s bitter cold, by local standards, today, and will be into tomorrow. So, our Drum Circle was canceled, illnesses are raging, here and elsewhere across the country (I’m feeling fine, but many friends are in a shaky condition), and my focus today is largely on catching up with journaling and cataloguing my photos from summer, on Flickr (No, still not done with that task; other things have taken precedence.)

I have taken stock of my feelings, attitudes and views of people, and shed a fair amount of remaining baggage from long ago.  It collectively had as much use to me as my appendix (which is fine, by the way), so packing it up and shipping it to the ether, after last night’s conversation, was a great relief, actually.

What is useful to me, what is not superfluous, are my ties to people, my inherent love and wanting to do what can actually help them do better for themselves.   Just living, caring, accomplishing, experiencing and belonging-those are really what matters.  Judging, fearing, projecting-those are meaningless, in the long run.

So, there  isn’t much “new”, on this menseversary  of turning  68, but as I go off for a seafood dinner and an hour of exercise afterwards, I feel renewed by letting go of the lead ballast.