I woke this morning and felt a shift, I felt as if I both woke and Awakened. Yes, I awakened this morning rose up from bed, opened my eyes, poured coffee and stretched … perhaps not necessarily in that order. Probably most of us follow a similar pattern; this morning though I felt something shift as I said, I Awakened, it was a feeling of both wide-eyed wakefulness and discontent.

Perhaps we should all AWAKEN.

I opened my eyes this morning and said to myself what can I do to extend myself? How can I enforce upon myself more than simply doing the same-old-same-old and thus obviously getting the same results. I want more from this year. I want my passions to mean something, even if it means putting me out there in the public eye.

Shit do I mean that?

That is one hell of a risk. That could mean loss of income, loss of the protective wall I have drawn about myself. That could mean loss of anonymity, which I retain some bit of to keep my blogging life walled off from my professional life.

Dearly Beloved has said to me sometimes, “You need to go into politics.”

I laugh hysterically at this suggestion and explain with calm certainty why this is such a terrible idea:

1. My past is checkered and in politics nothing is private
2. I have a terrible, terrible inability to contain myself. I would, like John Boehner apparently did recently, simply tell some people to F*ck off rather than continue to entertain their boneheaded and idiotic ideas.
3. It is very costly these days to run a campaign, even locally. I do not have the requisite ‘azz kissing’, ‘baby kissing’, ‘begging’, ‘making promises I have no intention of keeping’, ‘lying through my teeth while smiling at you’ required to raise the money needed for a campaign and I am incapable of being nice to people who want to buy unreasonable promises.
4. He, along with every other member of my family, would be the target of media investigation and smearing. I would not do this to my loved ones. It takes a very special sort of sociopath to not give a tinker damn who gets hurt on your race to the brass balls of power.

I don’t really want to be a politician. I don’t really like many of the people who wake up one day and say to themselves, “I want to make my life’s work Politics, I want to be a complete Azzhat, screw everyone I have ever
known and anyone I might ever know in the future”. This is not to say all politicians start out as nefarious grub worms; they sure do end up that way 99% of the time.

Maybe it is something in the water.

I want more. I want my survival of crappy life circumstances to mean more. I want to do some good in the world and know it means something. As my sister Red (bless her wonderful observational skills)  pointed out, writing this blog is sometimes counter-productive. Whether pulling back the curtain on my history or stomping through the muck of our political landscape, I have a captive audience for my rages and ranting’s, one that mostly likes me and won’t spank me to hard even when I am on a tear.

My other audience is even more captive, hell they wear Orange jumpsuits issued by the State of Texas. While I like to think I reach some of them that my words do more than rest on the side of their head until they return to their units for count, I don’t know and I will never know. It is part of what of what is bothering me this year, the not knowing; do I do good with these treks into my personal wilderness, this pulling back of curtain of what it means to be a victim so offenders can learn empathy?

I awaken and question my purpose. It isn’t enough anymore just to fling my words to the page for you to read and us to talk about. Though this is a part of me I do not wish to abandon, I have found myself in this endeavor and I have found you.

I awaken; I question my commitment to Victim Impact and realize this is important. It isn’t just important to me, it is an important program and if even one person’s life changes that is enough; it has to be.

I awaken; I realize my life feels different not less, not more just different today from yesterday. I want something more, more heft; more texture maybe something more scratchy. Perhaps I am finally coming into my own. What does that mean? Coming into my own, where have I been?

Well, I woke up this morning at 3:22AM. I wasn’t altogether happy about the time but I wasn’t going back to sleep either. I grabbed a cuppa and considered what I have been thinking about for days, awakening.

I leave you with this wonderful song a friend sent to me a couple of days ago of Maya Angelo’s poem Phenomenal Woman, I have listened to it at least 50 times since she sent it. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.