Friday: New Year's Day 2016. Where Do We Go From Here? Updated 1/5 11:35 AM

HAPPY NEW YEAR!! It's a Friday, and I'm hoping you have the day off and are relaxing from whatever holiday celebrations you got your self into (and hopefully out of) last night!!! It's a special edition of Rants Midwest guy in the land of milk and honey. Yesss! It is special because we get to take a brief look back over what happened or didn't happen in 2015 decide if it was good, bad or other, and figure out what to look forward to this new year of 2016. The sun is out!!

Like most people in the world we want better things for our loved ones, friends, and maybe even ourselves. It feels like it was just yesterday that I was on a bridge over the Mississippi waiting for the fireworks to light up the sky only to find out after freezing my ass off while on the phone with my, then, significant other that the fireworks were on the other side of town and not on the riverfront anymore! WTH. Hahahaha. But, as I froze there a fire had started in the recesses of my being that I couldn't quite place until a few months later in essentially the same spot I'm sitting in right now as I compose this blog (Starbucks on 22nd & Hennepin); the time had come to prepare for a departure to California. The how and what factors emerged as I opened myself to it and my significant as we were attempting to work out some of our differences, the distance, and just the reality of life...all while running the longest distances (ever for her) I had run in nearly 10 years determining if I was gonna run the LA marathon.

Well, it all happened. The marathon, a lost love and family, a move to California in the process of it, and the search for a role that I presently occupy in one of the most exclusive communities in the world. I couldn't have seen it all happen or any of it if you had asked me this time last year, and what rekindled the urgency of taking action is likely the most intricate part of my being having been realized last March while sitting, again, in the same spot that I am now--family legacy. Nothing good can happen to you by just doing the same thing that is not helping you move forward, but taking a risk on yourself, and opening yourself up to new things and life at the risk of failure and ridicule may open the door for you into the unknown and the life and success you usually only read about. Your job, as well as mine, is to take a step of faith into the unknown and let go of things we think we need...that's when things can happen for you.

Sure, I feel I could've held on to what I was doing in the Homeland. I was comfortable, and growth was inevitable. I may have been able to just get by in a transitioning relationship and maybe have found one to fill that gap and stayed put lulled by the sunny skies that we covet so much in the Homeland in the Spring. Like the last week of my visit, it's usually clouded over,and when the sun comes out, it's like cotton candy at the Fair. Cloudy skies give us light but no direct sun, and where there is no sun, life cannot grow anew. Things just stay put...they get "maintained."

What did happen was some risk taking on the narrow belief there was hope for hope in a relationship that maybe could've been salvaged enough to find friendship was the better answer to the alternatives. I left my comfort zone. I left my job. I gave up my place to live and what I knew as "my social life" (not really that much of one in the grand scheme of it), and the familiar for a job that would help me make good on a promise I had made, find my way forward into what was my emergent future; I just didn't know it at the time. My personal losses were so loud that I couldn't hear the angels singing every step and move I took forward (with a bit of side stepping), and eventually more peace came to me about all of it.

What else happened?! Everything!! Everything that was supposed to happened, happened..and for reasons that only make sense to me now that I look back over the last year and then some. I've made some close friends. I have a great new job. I'm in the best physical shape of my life! I have enough...I also have a list of things I didn't do last year, and a number of things that I did worth talking about, but none of them matter compared to the most important of them--I dared greatly and let myself be vulnerable to the pursuit of a dream that I could have the life ( a normal life) I want to have win or lose.

Some of it didn't go as well as I had hoped, and I would give almost anything to bring healing between me and that person/part of my life. But, I can't do anything more about it now than grow in every way possible. I can understand more about myself and other people, and I can love them as they are while allowing for them to grow and evolve because I need the same in return. If want to grow and be better person, I have to mentally allow others to do the same, and in there somewhere we can find greater peace, more hope, and understanding. I say that acknowledging that I come from a part of the country where stoicism is valued and detachment is the vehicle we use to separate ourselves from our emotions and inner person from the world we have to navigate through.

Rather, I speak about a deeper kind of peace that we are invested in with 100% of our being because in it the ultimate expression of our person can be reached and be experienced...Dare Greatly!!! The Creator is waiting and the universe is cheering you forward! You just have to do your part and step forward and show up owning the moments we are given. The sun has not set on you forever if you can still breath, and now is a good time to take action. Thank you everyone for everything small and great. Spoken and unspoken. Happy New Year!! God bless America. #GetAdjustedToTheGoodLife #Whatsmissinginthispicture #Californiadreaming #MnMan