cycle

One era comes to an end today and another begins. It's nothing dramatic, simply a change of scene, a change of style. The morning job has placed me on its work-from-home program, along with several other people from my department at the office. Overall, it is a positive transition. I no longer have to drag my sleep-deprived self out of bed at 5:15 a.m. My shift still begins at 7:00, but because I can avoid the too-early subway commute, I get an extra hour of sleep. No more of that hike to the train while the rest of the world still slumbers or is just awakening. I also leave behind an extant artifact of my past now relegated to the archives of my personal history.

I will miss many of my coworkers. These are solid people. Good people. Chance and circumstance caused our lives to cross. People come, they go, and some stay. There are instances when a few become friends. I will definitely see these friends again (and again) and they will remain a part of my life. I admit I have my foibles and peculiarities, as do we all. I do have self-esteem and confidence to spare. But I don't like to lose. I can be temperamental and impatient, brash and cocky. I can speak before I think. But I am generous, compassionate, irrepressible, and loyal. And when I make a friend - a true friend - I consider it to be planted and unbreakable. If there ever was a Leo... it's me. That's one reason why when someone wrongs me, it cuts so deeply that it is hard to forget and even more difficult to forgive. However, another one of my positive qualities is my ability to, eventually, forgive. It can be a long and thorny path to navigate, but I find my way. Clarity arrives. Acrimony, spite, and a destructive desire for retribution are abated, extracted, eliminated. I do not want that burden. I only want peace, but too frequently, the collision and conflict of thoughts and perceived needs obfuscate my vision and I lose the direction to some degree of inner harmony. I see it through. The inner moral compass guides me back. Oh, how it can be a long journey to the end of the night.

So, the journey continues as I embark on a new era, of sorts. And what are our lives if not a minuscule series of eras that dovetail into each other, creating the entirety of our existence? One experience meshes into the next, and if we're fortunate, we learn from the past, whether that past was rife with mistake or triumph. I move forward through this curious, often quaint, sometimes painful, and occasionally glorious life.

We traverse the circle and we take the cycle to its end.