YOU HAVE TO CHOOSE IT! EVERYDAY!

Barbara Ward-Finneran

What enables us to go from what we are today to who we want to be tomorrow?

All the options that exist in today's tech savvy and fast moving world along with all the decisions and choices open to us each moment don’t necessarily give you a sum of happiness and optimism at the end of the day.  How has the simplicity of that beautiful aspiration been lost along the way? Multitudes of options seemingly make life overwhelming, not easier.  Wouldn’t it seem like many choices would make life easier.  Rather the opposite is at times blindingly apparent.  With choice comes responsibility.  UGH!  Therein lies the problem.  Do you become trapped in not choosing rather then risk the wrong one?  

Although not easy to admit out loud, or in this case, write and read typed out, I’ve been making choices by default.  By spinning my wheels. YUCK!  I despise that - yet I have been lost in a cycle of it.  By not keeping your eyes on the prize and focusing on the outcomes you desire, you let life happen to you, instead of creating the life you crave and deserve.  I know better.  I do better.  So, WHY?  Why am I, why have I been floundering in a pool of potential?  

I’ve been putting in some time soul searching for that "AH-HA answer".  It’s not a black and white issue, so there isn’t a simple answer, but a spectrum of shades and tints to investigate.  Layers to peel away, acknowledge, and feel before you can escape the torture of life in the gray and once again look through those technicolor glasses.  I know I have those glasses!  Hell, I usually blind people when I put ‘em on. They have been just out of reach - like that lip gloss that you know is in the black hole of your purse.  Reach in feel around, pull stuff out, you know it’s 'freaking' in there.  Yet there is no getting your hands on it till later when you can get somewhere and do the “great purse dump” in a safe place with decent lighting.  

Seems my mind and heart have needed a “great purse dump”.  Yet like when looking for that lip gloss, sometimes you choose to forget about it, rather then finish the task of searching for it, or finding the time, energy, and place needed for the “dump”.  You use (choose the safety of) the chap stick that you have pulled out ten times instead or just go without.  

Time Waits For No One

Tony Walker

If you read my posts or my comments on my friend's posts, you probably by now know that I have a prosthetic leg.


Losing my leg to cancer taught me many lessons. The biggest lesson of all was realizing that we are NOT on this planet to be "9 to 5 zombies" going through the daily routine of going to a job you hate day in & day out. Plus the job I had didn't want me anymore. They saw me as damaged goods or as a liability. They supposedly were going to give me an office job but that offer never happened. So out the door I went.


With the thought in mind that no one was going to hire this man of damaged goods, I decided to make something happen for myself. My side job, running my comedy group, was now going to become my full time job. Performing comedy is what I was meant to do. I love every freaking second of it & I do it well.


While the company has made tremendous strides, so far it has not made me full time money. I have plenty of full time work with writing, directing, casting, advertising, booking, & setting up the shows, it still has not given me full time money. I think it eventually get there but unfortunately I have run out of time & money. Between the comedy group & my wife's job we knew it would be a struggle at first but I was confident the comedy group would succeed before we ran out of money. We've come close but we're not there & the money has run out. We are out of options. I am facing getting a "real job" again.
I am devastated. I know with some more time I can make this work. But time is something I don't have. Jagger & Richards said it best-"Time Waits For No One." I came so close to realizing my dream... now it's about to disappear. There is no way I can do it all while working a full time job. I would never see my family. My future with the comedy group is in jeopardy & I feel like a failure.


My question to you is... have any of you ever been in this position? If so what did you do? Where do you draw the magical line of pursuing a dream career & doing what you gotta do? Do you think of your family first or what this will do to you? I'm so confused!