2012 and 2013

I looked at my last post in 2011.  It said it had been one of the toughest years for me, ever, but that I was still happy, still healthy, and I would be better in 2012.

I was a little off.

2012 was harder.  Those of you who know me personally know the longer version of what happened in the first three months of the year.  For those who don’t, here’s the short version:

My father gets pneumonia

My father has a major heart attack, codes, and is revived.

My mother, who is battling cancer, decides it’s time for hospice

My mother falls, and is diagnosed with a brain embolism.

My mother spends about a month in patient at Gilchrest, dies.

My sister and I deliver the news to my father, who is days away from being discharged from cardiac rehab.

My father gets out of cardiac rehab.

There’s more to it, the longer version goes in to detail about trips to the ER with low blood sugar and visits from urologists who may or may not have been smoking pot in the parking lot (dude!  let’s see what we can do with this tube!)

But through it all, my family and friends hung in there with me (us), keeping humor and fun integrated appropriately into something that tested me greatly.  I also can’t say enough good things about my employer, Coca-Cola.  I got the time and support I needed, with just the right amount of pressure to distract me.  I just read there’s VP opening in the organization, and they couldn’t do better than the guy I reported to.

You’ll notice there’s a change there, to past tense.  I left Coke in July.  Not because of them, but because it was time for me to do my own thing and join my wife in the real estate business.  So I did live up to my promise to my self to do better in 2013, because I took my life back.

Unfortunately, that didn’t translate perfectly, but nothing ever does.

I got to go to Japan and Italy this year, both were trips of a lifetime.  I completely own my work life balance now.  I didn’t get my training on track.

Later in the year, I had to face the possibility that I’m not invincible.  Which I find unacceptable.  Invictus.

Good enough?  For some.

But I can’t wait to get better in 2013.  2013 will be about balance and success.  It will also be about getting stronger and competing.  And it will be about re-energizing ideas that lied dormant.

Invictus

Out of the night that covers me,

Black as the Pit from pole to pole,

I thank whatever gods may be

For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance

I have not winced nor cried aloud.

Under the bludgeonings of chance

My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears

Looms but the Horror of the shade,

And yet the menace of the years

Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,

How charged with punishments the scroll.

I am the master of my fate:

I am the captain of my soul.