These are the words that echo in the back of my mind as I embarked on the beginning of my journey. Again I was unhappy and displeased with life and the way it was unfolding enough to get caught up in the whimsical notions of going back to the oil field, attending school, and making lots and lots of money. In trying to figure out my direction, and my place in it I asked many of my positive friends to help in figuring out the Hero's journey, even if that meant simply believing in me and my first few steps along the path.

What sparked the journey in the first place was the fact that I was already having problems reading the magic and Karma to life and putting my own back into it. I was reminded that the world was a different place and that we were not the same because of it. There was no returning to the life I knew in 2018. After being discouraged with work and my working conditions I was prompted to go back to the oil field, and immediately got caught up in the idea of money and dumping off my problems. This time I had planned on going back at a much higher level, but would still be putting my life on hold for a certain period of time. I started to put out into the universe ideas and notions and started to watch reality react and begin to manifest into a job in the oil field and into greater lines of thinking and a deeper sense of being.

I asked a friend to believe in me and my hero's journey, to put positive waves of thinking and positive Karma out into the universe for me.  My friend welcomed me with warm vibes and keep me in her prayers in manifesting that reality.

My best friend told me that I should know that you eventually become married to the job, where it becomes a love-hate relationship.

My brother asked me if I saw this course of action getting me any closer to my dreams, or was I fooling myself into thinking that I was getting somewhere, and being something simply because I was making large sums of money.

Another one of my dear friends told me their story about being fired and going back to their place of graduation in hopes of getting a job.  The response she got was the advice she gave to me, "are you coming back here because it is easy, if you are then you are potentially doing things for the wrong reasons.  If you're making an impact on the people there don't you think that your talents and energy are where they are supposed to be?”

I was amazed when I told one friend of my plans, and their overwhelming support and desire to help out and to do everything in their power to aid me on my journey. I was amazed when he told me that I was the smartest friend he had.  That made me think to myself what am I doing?

When I went down to my coffee shop family to discuss life, my plans, and my philosophy about everything I was welcomed as a family member, that my presence would be missed, and that I needed to stay in touch regardless of what happened.

I even took time out of my day to go down to the river to put forth my thoughts out into the world and allow for the stillness to speak and to listen. The morning was warm, and crisp, without a breath of wind. My coffee was still hot and nearly full making for a morning worth writing home about.

Then in the last-minute debacle between me, my brother, and his girlfriend lines were drawn and decisions were made to scrap the entire project. Sometimes the universe conspires to create the answer aside from my own desires.  All I am left to do is take the answer the universe provided and run with it, as its truth is universal and tangible beyond my own doing. The one idea that encompassed my entire thinking was a line from a speech that keep getting played over and over in my head.  "Why does Rice play Texas? Because it is hard." The idea of doing something hard best measures our abilities and our shortcomings. I was taking the easy route thinking that throwing money at my problems and ambitions would best further me and my ambitions. 

I would gladly make a deal with the devil but I will never do business nor include a witch in my doings.

Fully convincing myself that the oil field was not the answer was no easy task but it was the right decision non the less.  Sometimes the hardest answers are oftentimes the most difficult things to take on board let alone fully understand. With one phone call, I forever changed my life and set out on a course that would forever alter my life.  I declined the job, and as I did so I had a heavy feeling weigh over me.  Inside I felt like I wanted to cry, sick with the feeling of wanting to throw up, and the desire to just outright die. This decision didn't just impact my dreams but every aspect of my life compelled me to be an entirely different person altogether. There would be some who would join me in the journey and there would be others who would be left at the station, and some still left behind altogether.

I think of the biblical verse that argues the idea of when I was a child I spoke of childish things and I did childish things. I have to leave behind a life and a sense of being and begin a new sense of being altogether. I know I will have my skeptics and my disbelievers along with many other people in my life, but I also know that I will have just as many people in my life to believe in me and be a part of everything that I am and am about.

For so long I have been surrounded by people with negative thinking and a negative way of being that has severely impacted me and has left a running theme of negativity in my own life.  These people have cast a cloud of haze and gray over everything and everyone that they have come into contact with and encountered.  often times we are fooled into thinking of something else, believing in a positive tomorrow because every now and then we get those glimpses of sun rays and the clouds parting. 

The intermission was a period of time of self-reflection and regrouping, and properly processing everything that I have been through and had to make sense of or at least accept in order to move on. I spent a great deal acknowledging the unfolding reality and questioned whether there was anything I could do about it. Maybe I was paralyzed with doubt and fear of what to do and where to turn. People crying out to abandon ship did not help matters only reinforced the negative aspects. And, being made fun of did not help to build a positive version of myself, a version that was ready to face the unknown and uncertainty.

Chapter one was about finding direction and laying down real plans, but most importantly scrapping the negative thoughts and leaving behind those who did not share the same hope for tomorrow that I do.

If chapter one was "The hero Journeys begins," then the second chapter is "The work that is to be done."

There is no doubt that the metamorphosis will be one of great internal conflict and even greater adversity meet along the way of transforming into the person that makes and know the dreams dreamed a reality.  The only way in which I will wear egg on my face is if I stop here just short of the goal, if I give up and rollover.  The only way I lose is if I stop believing in myself if I stop trying, and if I stop dreaming.

Monday begins classes again for the summer, along with all my other lofty ambitions. You be assured I will be working harder than I ever have before. I owe it to myself to make for a reality that is everything and so much more.