I’m not a pessimist and I don’t sit around waiting for bad things to happen…but I don’t blind myself to the fact that bad /. unfortunate / sad things to happen and for some time now I’ve had this ominous feeling, like sludge backing up a drain, or  a dark stain squatting just over the horizon, that something’s coming.

If you’ve read / suffered through any of my previous ruminations you’ll know that I’m in a happy place. Life is great. I have 2 wonderful kids and a wife. I’ve been given a second to chance to live in a country that I love. All four limbs and five senses are in working order. I’ve got old friends I’ve reconnected with. Life is good, but I can’t shake the feeling.

If I do little else this year I want to learn how to live in the present – how to stop my mind getting stuck in the sidings and derailing, or shooting ahead of the tracks themselves…when really all that has any impact is the right now…so in all of this, the presence of this dark stranger is forcing me to lie on my own couch and bare myself to, um, myself.

Is it because I’ve got so little to complain about in life right now that I’m feeling that I should have. That things are too good? Because that’s a fairly, if not completely, pathetic world view and I don’t mind saying it. Does the absence of bad shit mean that bad shit must be coming, or that if I was swamped in bad shit already that it wouldn’t matter…so I wouldn’t be worried. And given I can’t do anything about this tonne of hurt that’s supposedly barreling my way, what the fuck am I giving it airtime for anyway…damn it!

Then I take a breath and the myself that’s on the couch rises slightly to one elbow and adjusts itself to a more comfortable position as posits thus…

Maybe it’s because you’re getting old? You’re finally becoming aware of the march of time and the effect of it’s dirty footprints on you and your friends? You’re no longer the bullet proof superheros you thought you were and that little sea of ‘pre-cancerous’ cells you just learned about in that latest Tim Ferriss podcast has got you spooked? If these are the reasons for the dark passenger you’re cruising with, then you’ve probably got good reason to have him there…but you still can’t do anything about it, so shake it.

You know what I find myself replying, to myself, you might just have nailed it. The fun may start at forty, but so does the dying. It’s just life. Your group is likely to thin slightly every couple of years from now – if you’re lucky you’re the one noticing the ‘thinning’…if not, no need to worry, because you can’t…worry that is, when you’re fertilizer for someone’s grass patch or favorite tree.

So just maybe this ominous feeling is just a result of becoming more aware, and now that I’m aware I need to become more present…because when all’s said and done what will be will be and why waste time worrying about it. Nuff said…now I’m worried about this post having gone live before it was done…oh well. From the schitzophrenic hip’s what you’re getting.