Last day of 2014

Last day of 2014 but technically it's just another day that will bleed seamlessly into tomorrow as if days and weeks and years didn't matter.

For me it has been a year of vast changes that started off slowly and accelerated into September.  The slow changes revolved around getting rid of pretty much all of my belongings.  I tried to be serious about it, but I was lazy getting going on it.  A friend in Scotland and I talked about me coming over, and he kept chiding me that I had to get rid of the piano.  What I thought would be my 3 most difficult things (not for sentiment but for trouble) to get rid of were the car, the piano, and all the baking equipment/supplies.  The car died by itself in July, and I simply had a tow company come and take it away, and they even paid me for it.  The piano was next, and it was free, and a woman paid a professional mover to come get it.  The baking equipment sold at the last minute because I made an offer that the buyer couldn't refuse.  It just had to go.  Everything else was pretty easy to get rid of.  I either made lots of hauls of stuff on the bike or I borrowed a friend's car for a couple of trips to the thrift store.

And then it was down to leaving for Scotland on October 1 in a trip that right up to Heathrow seemed perfect - even getting bumped up to business class.  And then God shut the door at customs and I was hurled back to Los Angeles on the next available flight.  So many dreams shattered.  I was crushed, gutted.  But God had a very soft landing for me back here.  I stayed for 2 weeks with my friend, Jeanette, and then I packed all my bike gear and began what I thought would be a ride across the USA.  2 days into the ride, arriving at a friend's house about 10 miles east of downtown Los Angeles, however, I was offered an apartment for free through Feb. 2015.  No rent, no utilities.  I had to share it with the two cats that lived there, but they are Siamese and I'm not allergic, and i was more than grateful.  Of course, I had nothing but what was on the bike.  Gifts from the landlady, Gail, and her family, started pouring in.  Clothing, food, bedding.  Everything I needed was provided, including a little extra cash for odd jobs around the complex.  Gail's caveat:  just rest and recover.

I did rest and recover.  I shifted my entire life for a dream that was shattered, and I had an extremely soft landing of love and support.  I was able to finish a book I was writing and start another one with even more books of various subjects in mind.  Because besides being a cyclist, I am a writer.

Sometimes the pressures of life get to be overwhelming.  So much so that I couldn't write.  I couldn't write for years, and I knew from the time I was 13 that I was a writer.  I even have a MFA in screenwriting.  I think I have a PhD in depression, however.  Sometimes I have been overwhelmed by feelings that nothing was ever going to get better or change.

Getting rid of the trappings of daily life helped a lot.  Giving up everything helped a lot.  Having a new goal of bicycle touring  and freedom meant everything.  I know I was born to do more than just pay the bills and die, and when you're in a dead-end job with no future, you lose your hope.  It isn't as if I could say, "Oh, I'll just go get another job."  No, they're all dead-end to me at this point.  Mostly they are just dead... just a means to pay the never-ending same bills for which there will never be any ownership.  That's a living, but it's not a life.  I needed life, and all I'd had were years of living... and many years of just living at subsistence level.

I am not ashamed to be poor.  I am the financially poorest one of my siblings, but I have nothing to prove to anyone.  I have had some incredible adventures in my life, incredible times of God's provision.  Christmas time comes, however, and they want to pitch in for a more expensive gift for my parents, and I say that I need to just do my own thing at my rate.

Well, tomorrow, Jan. 1, training begins again.  Back on the bike.