After the blog I posted last week I did a significant amount of thinking on it and soul searching, if you will. In that post, I came to the realization that there were things within myself I needed to understand and embrace whether they were good or bad. I had initially intended to have a relaxing weekend where I would partner up with a bottle of scotch and do a little more writing. Instead, I ended up doing a ton of running around and helping other people out yet I was still left feeling very self-satisfied but I had no explanation as to why.
The more I began to answer that 'why' the more the irony set in. Over the past few weeks I have been coming to terms with understanding what aspects of 'me' make me 'me', if that makes sense. Since my son was born almost two years ago I have worked at being a father every day. Up until this past fall, I also spent a significant amount of time trying to be a better husband, ultimately to no avail. With all the effort exerted there, I forgot that I am also a son, brother, uncle, cousin, nephew and a friend. This weekend I was humbly reminded of all six of those.
I set out with the idea of sitting alone this weekend and attempting to gather shreds if identity within myself and to gain a better internal understanding. I was delivered a weekend not of that but of helping other people and reconnecting with old friends and have gathered more of that self-identity than had I only spent that time alone.
I have spent most of my 2013 thinking of ways to focus on or reconcile myself internally but feel I've made more gains this weekend by hardly focusing on myself at all. I have spent time pondering ways to capture and understand identity internally and gained great insight with external measures. Adding to the efforts of trying to be a better father, these past few weeks and especially this past weekend I feel I have made a genuine effort at becoming a more thoughtful son, a closer brother, an uncle to look up to, a cousin that can be leaned on, a nephew that can be depended on and a great friend who can be there and this has brought more of a sense of what I am than any solitary action, thought or poem I could have written.
In my New Year's Day post when I started this blog, I did not specifically bullet point 'reconnecting with my family and good people' but have been working to do that. Spending more time with my family and re-establishing great friendships that I've allowed to wilt a bit over the years has been one of the most invigorating and rewarding experiences of my life to date. I set out to do that because I geneuinely care about those people and wanted them back in my life. The fufillment, sense of identity and satisfaction that I have gotten from that choice is simply overwhelming and I cannot thank those family members and those close friends of mine enough for welcoming me back with open arms.
I know that I have a long way to go but I really feel that not only did I pull down a major 'win' for myself this weekend but I did it with the help of those that I love the most and am happily indebted to them for it; I eagerly await the next moment I can pay it back again.
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