Day # 2 of a Year Without News - Good Morning

Amazing what you can accomplish when your mind and schedule are cleared. Amazing what the devil will throw at you when you are on the right path. I absorbed absolutely no news yesterday. I have no idea what's "happening in the world." However, I am awake, alive, and the sun is coming up. Life goes on with or without us, so we must go on with or without "life."

What kind of life would it be if we allowed it to be guided by people who don't know us or care for us and only see us as a demographic blip on a screen? As one more point in the ratings? I can tell you what kind of life it would be because it's the one I lived - Until now.

Yesterday, I worked on a document for a friend. He is putting together a business plan and I helped write certain sections. I read chapter two of "The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People," and before going to bed I decided to reacquaint myself with my literary hero, Ernest Hemingway, and started reading "A Farewell to Arms."

Abby asked me last night how my first day without news was. I told her I felt great. I was not in need of comfort but was willing to accept if she offered any. (Nudge nudge wink wink say no more!)

I used to doubt the power of addiction. I always believed anyone who was an addict was simply weak or lacked the will power to drop whatever habit was crippling them. Life has taught me (through the experiences and suffering of people close to me) that this simply isn't so. Addiction is real. However, it has also taught me that the first step toward being cured is not just admitting you have a problem, but deciding that you are going to solve the problem.

Until you decide you are going to kick the addiction, whatever it may be, you will not be able to do so. Desire and will to win are everything. Without them, you will lose and you will lose huge!

I hope I don't seem overly dramatic here. I am talking about changing a habit. I have no chemical dependency, no mental dependency. (Maybe a little, but the word for that is "habit".) I will suffer no withdrawal to speak of. It will not get worse before it gets better. No, it will only get better for me. I will take the same amount of energy I wasted and refocus it. Rather than feeling what politicians and news directors want me to feel, I will feel better. I will feel whole.

This morning, I watched a video of Art Williams, retired champion football coach, businessman, motivational speaker. His message was not elegant, but it was simple and true. It boiled down to:

Eliminate the words "I can't" from your vocabulary, and just "Do It." Whatever "it" is. You have to do it. Nothing will happen until you do.

Today, I have clients to go see and a meeting at 4:00 PM. This will take up some of my day. I think I'll listen to Wayne Dyer in the car and maybe some Hemingway.

I have "The Snows of Kilimanjaro" read by Charlton Heston on CD. I haven't listened to it in a while. It's a great story about regret. I never want to be like the protagonist, Harry, laying on a cot under a tree in Africa, waiting to die and knowing that there was so much left undone. It's what Melville called the horror of the half-lived life.

I want to be a man in full and live a life in full. I want to look back at the end and know that I didn't miss a thing... except skydiving. I have absolutely no desire to go skydiving.

See you tomorrow.

Adolfo