I was going to call this post A Small Slice of Serenity in the Snow, but going crazy with the alliteration is annoying enough to make even the most bored of souls turn away and read something else. And the "serenity" has now been ruined by advertising by forcing the association with incontinence products.

Another thing I want to avoid in this blog is a concept I have to take from George Carlin. A few years back an email was making the forwarding circuit that basically waxed reminiscent of the old days, your long-gone youth, how your hair used to be nice, but now it's not, etc. You got the email. Unfortunately, it cited the author as George Carlin, and this was untrue. On his website, Mr. Carlin corrected the world that he did not write, what he called, that "sappy piece of shit." Now, when I write about important issues that just may have a note or two of longing, nostalgia or anything of the like, I put it through the "sappy piece of shit" meter. Thank you, George Carlin. You are missed for many, many reasons.

Writing about what is important to you and personally revealing is not easy for a number of reasons. Placing your feelings out in the world, even one as seemingly impersonal and anonymous as cyber space, is never easy. What I find most difficult is just the language itself. Trying to avoid the SPOS meter can sometimes be difficult. But I am going to do my best, so here it goes.

In late 2006 I sat one bleak Saturday afternoon alone in the apartment I shared with my husband. I looked out at a gray landscape of buildings before the famous skyline of a big city. I'm so unhappy, I thought. If I don't do something about this now, I'll be like this for the rest of my life.

The rest of my life part bugged me even more than the unhappy part. I was starting to realize that your life is made up of a series of habits and collectively these habits make your expereinces what they are. I suffered from awful anxiety, the kind that manifests itself physically. I would come home from work feeling like someone was placing a big hand against my chest and pushing. I was dealing with this by drinking a lot of alchohol, which in turn made the anxiety even worse. I didn't want to get help because I thought that I could solve all my problems myself. After all, wasn't it weak not to be able to? But I realized that the weakness was in not asking anyone for a hand out of the mess my mind and body were becoming. Anger, anxiety, resentment, hoplessness and profound sadness were all becoming daily emotions that were taking their toll on me. There had to be a way out of it.

That day in 2006 was the real beginning for me of a major shift that brought a sense of purpose and peace to my life. What I hope to accomplish in this blog is a chronicle of that tranformation then and now, as it is still happening.