Growing up all over again......

  So it's just another typical day in my head.  I'm getting that "look" from one of the managers at my new job and I'm hearing the echoes of my dad as he opines that I have the worth of a wilted prune.   Then I think about the words of a good friend; the ones who tells me to smile and think positive.   I think of my friend, who is younger than me by a few years, and I wonder what the hell he's doing hanging around such a cynical sort like me.  Actually, I wonder why the other people in my life are subjecting themselves to the agony of hanging around someone like me.  I don't mean this it in a suicide hot line kind of way.  I mean it in a funny ha ha, I'm trying to be an ironical son of a bitch kind of way.   My younger friend, the one I mentioned before,  is a ball of possibility and positivity, he makes me smile with his sense of youthful romanticism.  The other one of my friends is a success in every sense of the word and she's beautiful and rolling in dough with a job most people would kill for three thousand miles away on the opposite coast.  I do the math in my head and it doesn't compute I guess.  I'd like to say that those Joel Osteen tapes have allowed me to embrace the idea of God and a plan and.... fuck I still can't even say it without calling bullshit on myself.  Maybe it's just me, maybe it's that voice in my head; the one that guffaws when people say I'm intelligent.  Maybe it's that little voice in my head that makes me wonder why a beautiful woman with so much to offer would actually sleep with me in the first place.  Hell, she not only slept with me, she stuck around.  Maybe it's that little voice that makes me wonder what a guy with the world at his feet would be doing hanging around me.  Who would've ever thought I'd be riding in  a car listening to Joel Osteen tapes?  Who ever thought I'd ever consider possibly making a truce with God or whatever else is up there?  Maybe I'm evolving somehow and I don't know it.  Maybe I'm learning about the wonders of change.  Maybe I'm growing up all over again at age 36.  Maybe I'm finally surrounded by people who won't make me regret going all in.  Maybe the secret is in the details of clearing out the crap in my head.  Maybe the secret is to smile and think positive.  Maybe it's all about flipping my father the bird every time I hear him saying that I can't do anything.

  Maybe it's a new chapter of a new me; positive dogma and plenty of teeth and the inspiring fire and brimstone of a preacher who makes more than I make it in a lifetime.  Maybe it's like riding a roller coaster.  I should just sit down and enjoy the ride and embrace the drop.  I guess if the last few years have taught me anything, it's that you're never to old to learn and you're never to old to grow.