This is a stupid time of day and a stupid day of week, to write these words. I have crunched myself into a small and fleeting space of opportunity to create something to fill this page today. It was recently brought to my attention, that writing my blog on Thursday night, ( or late Friday morning) is silly. I work late on Thursdays, arrive early on Friday, and must again work till very early Saturday morning. So why do I squeeze these sentences into the small gap on Thursday nights. Am I really that dumb??

Probably. Yes, I must be. Or, I must be doing a thing that we all do, all the time, whether it is helpful or not. I am following a habit, I’m repeating a pattern. I am simply doing a thing, that I have done before. Possibly for the sole reason, that I have done it before, and nothing else.

Could there be other opportune times to write to you in my fully scheduled week? Sure. I sought proof to this theory this week, and attempted to write on at least two other occasions before now, my normal ‘blogging’ time. But, I did not complete the task. Possible? Yes. Proven? No.

I wait until this time of night, and late in my week, because it is what I usually do. I have formed a habit. I feel a real urgency at this time to do the writing. I can’t help but make it happen now. I have done it for years. Excuses fall away. The meandering mind slows down and even the loss of internet connection tonight hasn’t stopped me. My habit will continue, one way, or another this week, again.

I know habits are powerful. I know I enjoy some of mine. Like fully dressing myself before leaving the house. Or, gassing up my car, before I am stranded on the road. Or, paying for a meal, before leaving the restaurant I ate it in. These are good things, that I have chosen to do, over and over again, which now feel like second nature, instead of a choice I could make either way.

Some of my habits I hate. I have a habit of starting to dream and plan and create, then to wander off with things unfinished. I have a habit to let go, and release, moving forward instead of cultivating and practicing. I have a habit to fall to the urges of my flesh. I crave, and I gorge myself. Then I wish I hadn’t.

I can judge myself for these habitual things, the broken records of my life. I can see and negatively respond to actions taken again and again, when I claim to want a new path, fresh direction.

I have broken some habits. I have created new ones. Haven’t we all done that too? I am man enough to tell you that I have tried and failed, at some of these little personal endeavors. I won’t commit, in all the ways it would take, to really demand better of myself. I won’t put in the work, always.

I miss a girl. Her smile and her spunk and her strength of spirit, was overwhelming whenever I was around her. She could make me feel weak and silly and insecure. She was small, but mighty. Visiting my cousin was a habit too. I did it year after year after year. She lived 12 hours away. My first ever, big road trip, was to see her. I repeated it many times. I had a certain rhythm to my life back then, it always wound back around to being with her, with her sister, and the family in Ohio. I just did it, because I had done it before, and would always continue to do it again. I didn’t ever think, I wouldn’t be there again, next year, to live a repeat of the years before.

Things changed. We lost her. She lost her, I guess. I know sometimes I just lose it. I’ve detached from all logical thought, I’m angry and scared and out of my mind enraged. That’s a habit of mine too. I don’t know where she was that morning, five years ago today. The day a bunch of habits changed.

There are things that we say we will do, and never follow through. There are millions of thoughts that don’t seem to ever materialize in real life. I notice myself so grateful that my body doesn’t always follow the spastic and undulating emotions in my head. Too often they do, but luckily, not each and every one.

We all are creatures of habit. I’d bet that you can imagine things that you claim are part of your personality, things that you’d identify as patterns of your unique behavioral imprint. I would too. I can’t for the life of me, however, truly understand what separates the flow and mechanically repetitive action of habit, from radical and groundbreaking choice. Does such unique and counter-intuitive original motion really exist? Or does pattern just adjust and change over time, so ever slightly in its course that we don’t notice the shift until the gap seems a chasm from where we ‘were’ headed?

I can’t tell you exactly why I sit here, stone cold sober, for 853ish days, while typing out my thoughts in the middle of the night, while my wife sleeps soundly, my restaurant awaits in the morning, and my prayers are to my Lord and Savior instead of Lord Calvert. What happened to my old habits? What happened to my life? What happened with my cousin? Will I someday find out how deep this rabbit hole goes?

I loved a girl, a woman, a daughter, sister, mother, cousin and wife. I always will. I think of her almost every moment, of every day. I haven’t lost that habit at all. I have lost something though. Nothing has ever been the same, since that day 5 years ago. For all of us. Habits shattered. Lives scrambled.

The crazy part is this. I have made some wonderful new habits, that I wish I could really interact and share with her. But I’m different today. I hardly do that even now, with the family and friends I do have. I am at arm’s length now. I made that a habit too. Not here though. Here is the place where I engage. I dump it out, good, bad, boring or otherwise. I express myself here. I used to do that differently. I redirected it. I had to. It had to go somewhere. I must have made this my choice, in retrospect I suspect.

Megan, my sassy cousin Megan. I loved our days on the boat with you and your girls. I loved staying up late, and hanging out with you. I loved partying with you. I loved being with you. I loved the idea that I was on my way to see you, I didn’t want to leave when that time came. I had a thing for you. I was so entranced by you. I can hear your voice right now. I miss you. You personified so many things that I wished I could be. I see those things right now in Tera. I know you’re still here in so many ways. I hug you tonight. I cry too.

I want to let the world know that, sometimes we end up in places we could never imagine. I want to recognize that habits don’t stay repetitive forever. I think we do chose again today all those little things that we chose before, and sometimes we chose it slightly differently. Of course I struggle. I chose that too. Just habit I guess.

See you again in a dream tonight. I hope someday I can re-find lost worlds. I hope I could repair lost relationships and stretched family ties. I invite you to help me if you can. Lord knows, I wished I could have helped you, had you wanted my help.

We are all here, we are conscious and connected. Congratulations, we have a choice to make. We can continue today as days before, or we can make a slight adjustment. We can eventually get there, to a new place that only proves we’ve moved forward. No place in truth is better than the other. Someday, I speculate, we will find out, that we were always okay, always enveloped in love and blessings, at all times, never without, never lost. Even when that seemed absolutely, utterly, definitely, conclusively, impossible.

With love 🙂 to Melissa, Tristan, Tera and Jon

Sincerely,

Aaron Nichols

Grey hair fell into my lap today. There seemed to be as many of them, as there were brown ones. Talking with my ‘stylist’ about my ridiculously receded hairline and what she recommended to do with it, (other than to wear a hat), I felt comfortable, engaged. She’s a hair expert, I was asking hair questions. Simple enough, right?

Much later in the evening, I was holding a pool stick, and then broke the rack hard. Thud’clapping into the pockets they went. I haven’t played pool in years. Literally, years. But the little tricks and touches and cuts and banks came back. Just like riding a bicycle. Won three, lost one.

Earlier this week, I came across a television series on YouTube. It was released in 2002 on PBS and I remembered it vividly. Frontier House is an incredible 6 part ‘reality show’, in which the three families spend 4 and half months living in the past, 1883 to be exact. They lived like homesteaders staking their claim. Arriving in late spring to the Montana valley,  they built homes, grew their own food and prepared for winter. Amazing show. They did it as close to historically accurate as possible. I watched it originally when I was age 23, and loved it.

This week, in these moments I could literally feel and see and enact, the passage of time. In seeing those grey hairs, they were unmistakable. Too many to count, too many to dismiss. At 34, I may look older than I am, or would like to. Returning to a game that I played so many drunken nights. The quarters dropping into the side-by-side slots. Choosing a straight stick. I knew this game long ago. I felt the expanse of time shrink with each ball that dropped. These people playing ‘Little House on the Prairie’, but not. Playing it for real. Really starving, really working, really fighting for survival. I remember the 23 year-old-me-version of my thoughts of that show. I ached to be like them. I yearned to get outside and head west. To be a pioneer and struggle to survive, but be proud of the accomplishment of survival itself, against nature and odds…

Each of these things had a ‘ring’ a true-ness and golden-ness about my awareness of them. They had a resonance and tone of the cognition that I had been there before, or that I know where I am at, right now. I could ‘land’ within the context of my life, by experiencing the playback. I ‘got it’…

Hmm… such a wonderful feeling to ‘get it’. That is why I didn’t blink or shrink when asking my stylist about my embarrassing looking hair. She get’s it. She sees lots of hair. It’s okay to ask all the questions I want. And to demand that she be straight with me. If it needs buzzed… buzz it.

I loved to aim down the stick, and just feel the alignment and geometry was right. I knew it. I didn’t have to wonder. I could foresee the shot going in. I got it. Not every shot. But enough. That confidence was locked in. When I missed, it was rust, when I hit, it was that old honed skill re-awakened.

When I decided to re-watch all six episodes of Frontier House, on YouTube, I could feel that younger me, show back up. Each thought from the past was tangible. I knew that less mature, less experienced, more anxious and simpler mind still echoed as the show played on. I remember wishing I could do what they did. But I would have wanted to party. I would have wanted to have nights off from 1883. I wanted the pioneering part, but I still wanted to play like I was in college and out at the bars and running around. I didn’t want to just live in a cabin in the woods by myself. I wanted more action than that…

Now, I don’t mind all that grey hair, too much. My gal gave me a good cut. I don’t mind picking up the pool stick, to pass the last 30 minutes of the night, while a table of customers finishes their drinks. And I don’t mind, not living inside a PBS series based on the untamed frontier.

Truth is, in the last 10 years or so, I have done some pioneering. I am lucky enough to have traveled west, and have seen some things. I would love to see much more. I know now, that I am not the person today, that I always have been. I have transformed and grown, and stepped forward on this path. Maybe just as naturally as everyone does. Maybe just as violently beautiful and hideously graceful as everyone does. How should I know? I can only really speak for me.

I know that I watched another interview today, with Jack White and Conan O’Brien. It is a very raw and honest talk between two obvious friends. Two pioneers. Men who have created something in their respective worlds. They talk about how ‘it’ happens for them. They banter and acknowledge, real hard work, artistry, honesty, integrity and getting dirty.

To me, they ‘get it’. I think to the world at-large, it seems their results prove, that they ‘get it’. Something they are about, is something that connects with fans and followers and other artists too. They talk about mentors and study and dedication. They aren’t talking about being ‘busy’ and ‘just getting by’ and ‘living the dream’, just as a sarcastic reply. They don’t say, ‘same thing, different day.’ Nope.

I love to watch or read or hear about someone out there, who I think ‘get’s it’. In my opinion, these folks are few and far between. I really love the awareness that what someone else values, I value also. I want to know that I’m not alone in my thinking. My real thinking.

That must be what this place is about. A place to share some real thinking. The desperate hope is that someone, sometime, will read weirdforgood, and think ‘This guy get’s it. I connect with what he’s saying here. I understand where he’s coming from.’

The world can be a lonely place. It can feel competitive or repetitive or tense, in the pressure to keep up some certain unspoken version of ‘normal-ness’ that can appease a quick conversation about ‘how are you doing?’…

I want to sometimes know a different question, and I want to sometimes give a different answer, about ‘how are you really doing? In the way that I really care, and can really show up in a way that fosters possibility and fertilizes artistic creation. A collaboration of problem-solving, more than problem-sulking.

I need these moments to get the reality, that I am allowed to really enjoy life, right now, under these exact circumstances. Not in the future, when everything will be better, but right now. Exactly as it all is. Because I am like all other artists. I live with a gut-full of fire of anger and of contempt, it burns against what it is, and ignites creativity to make something new always. I will drive forward, ever forward, but sometimes it’s good to feel the calming waters of ‘now, everything is okay.’

Eight ball, corner pocket. Kerplunk.

Sincerely,

Aaron Nichols

All the possibility in the world is useless, if I don’t want to Do anything about it.

For a long time, I loved learning about new possibility. I found myself so intrigued and in awe of learning that the world was bigger than I thought it was. My mind loved the feeling of expansion when hearing someone shed light on universal truths, The Way, The Secret, or especially the words of Jesus, so profound and fresh to my ear.

I heard that life could be different, than I had ever thought it could be before. Amazing and adventurous, free and exciting! I loved hearing about how I could manifest or create the life I really really wanted! And that’s possibly the beginning of a great depression…

I  heard about a guy, who rented an tiny office space, and only furnished it with a small desk, a chair and an old laptop. He superglued shut the internet port, and used this tiny space to force himself to write, and write he did. Pumped out a lot of popular bestsellers if I remember right. He was wildly successful and wealthy with his work. He entrenched himself into this committed space, that was as distraction free as he could make it, and thrived. I don’t do that same thing myself.

Nope, I sit here at the computer, and click around and play online, I light candles and put on some tuning fork meditation CD in my headphones. I make an usual portrait of myself in Photoshop, to use on the facebook link to this post. I purposely jump around in distraction, until the time gets too late, or until I just go to bed, having procrastinated my night away. Yup. That’s what I do.

See, there are lots of examples, and systems and tools and seminars and books and experts that I have learned from on How. The Hows are everywhere. I know lots of information about ways of being that are elevated above and beyond the ways of being that I choose to create in the right now.

But I don’t use them.

I have a gym membership. At a gym, lots of awesome transformation is available to sculpt myself and rip myself and shred myself too. It’s all there. And I pay the membership cost each month. It’s mine for the taking. Yet I don’t go. Or haven’t gone lately. Or don’t want to go right now.

I sit in the chair in front of the computer instead.

I have skills and knowledge and resources and reason even, to create all kinds of things in my world. I could do lots of things. And I don’t. And, since I give that lack of creation, a negative judgement, I am depressed at my failure. Not only that, but since I am depressed about my own failings, I seem to be highly aware and sensitive to the failings of others. I can point them out a mile away.

I learned a few years ago, that some people practice and work hard and become something they once only dreamed of. I wanted to do that too. I thought I could. And now, today, as my life is almost completely different in every way than it was, those short years ago, I wonder if I have moved one inch at all?

Ha! not really.

One foul and angry man I can be. I’m a sinner still. I get on this soapbox weekly and waste my time whining about myself, instead of creating something great. For what? I don’t know, just so I can be even more exhausted on my possibly 16 hour work day tomorrow 🙂

I guess so. I can’t see it all right now. I can’t from here, exactly say where my life is going. I can’t say where this blog is going. I could, meaning I could create that outcome, and intentionally point myself, or this blog into some specific topic, or master some specific field and become THE authority on the HOW, of whatever I choose…

but chances are, I won’t.

Chances are, I will just distract myself again, and change plans or ideas, before mastering anything. I will buy the gym membership, then not go the gym.

Okay.

So long ago. When my mind was smaller, less expanded with ideas of possibility, in memory, there was more happy times?? Ignorance, was bliss?? Maybe so. Maybe just normal development of every human being, and yet since I question almost every thought of the millions of them, I have a topic to question here with you today?

If I can’t go back to ignorance. If I don’t want to get up and hit the gym, or write the book, or really truly let go of fears and commit myself to a specific pursuit, then my question is this: Can I find a way to be happy, within the present circumstances of drift? Can I learn to be happy, as I feel angst and contrast and desires that come and go? Can I learn that happiness is, this version of life, that I live right now? With the warm tensions and percolating frustrations that I experience all throughout the day? Can I let myself let go, and flow again, not judging my lacks, but seeing all the wonderful blessings of life around me?

A focus shift, without going to the great effort, to remind myself often, and early in the day. A life shift, again, but all about the wonderfulness right here, instead of the excitement of something – out there. What my friends I want to say today is this: My depression and malcontent, may be happiness, I just don’t know it.

I was squirming a little, as Dr. Waldron was gripping hard and pinching my inner and outer cheek, early Monday morning. He wiggled it as he pushed a needle-full of numbing solution into a nerve on my lower jaw line. He and Kitty worked swiftly and deftly to repair a cracked molar. It was a big filling, and there was drilling to do. As I lay in the discomfort and pressure and sounds of the mechanical diamond teeth, spinning and churning and grinding away my own real tooth, I became happy. I was looking up into the light. I saw two faces staring straight into my own. They were hurting me a bit. There is no way around that. It just isn’t fun to have a filling done. BUT, I loved the moment.

How amazing it is, that we are such a loving group of beings. Someone somewhere a long time ago, learned how to drill and fill and repair a very intimate and sensitive area, in the mouth of another person. Someone realized that they could create a service, in which you helped people avoid serious pain and problems, by causing a little pain and problem ahead of time. Someone thought, I could really help you. I would like to do that. I will do that.

How nice 🙂

I appreciated the help.

So, here I sit. I feel caught between principals. I feel caught between God’s virtues and the desires of the World. I feel caught between anger and depression and small moments of rest, and laziness.

I may just be experiencing some pains, that are necessary, in order to avoid bigger pains. I may be being drilled and filled, instead of being allowed to decay and rot until the nerve is exposed. I may have an immense, divine love, being performed right now, on my life.

I can be happy about that 🙂

Sincerely,

Aaron Nichols

It’s hard to shake the past sometimes… Or is it? I feel that tug, the pull of places and people and events once lived and now no more… What was the substance of an experience from many years ago? Where is it now? Can I really let go, like the simple sayings that seem to show up and promise to fix it all, in a flash?

I am no saint, my friend. Past stuff that I would rather never remember, is triggered. A mantra repeats subliminally, guiding me ever away from regretful moments. Yet some return regularly, sneaking in, snaking along in and out of my present moments.

A new year. It’s here again. Just as they have come before. Freshness, a blank slate. Resolutions, ha! It’s a day, right now, just like every one of them have been. Full of potential that can leak away by the minute. A ‘bad one’ that we want to just ‘get thru’.

I have worked with professionals on letting go of the past. I have dissected specific moments that I wanted to re-program in my mind. It has worked. It’s a neat thing. To verbalize a hurt, or a wound, over and over again, until it causes pain no more. Nothing, not even a flinch. It can be done.

My past is a thing that carries no matter. ‘It’ isn’t quantifiable in any real way as I move through my day. It is a backpack or trunk or semi-trailer-load of junk, that simply doesn’t exist anywhere but in my cavernous mind. Plenty of room for it there, although it seethes and pulses with exhausted heaves. It fogs my vision. I am talking about the past of today, and the past of years gone by. The moments I said things I wish I could take back. The times of opportunities wasted. This second. Where I’d rather be asleep. In the recent past, I can see where I ‘could have’ done so much more. I could have already finished my blog tonight. I regret, that I didn’t before. Dramatic idn’t it 🙂

Yeah so what. I do that stuff. I hang on to hurts and wish I would have been better earlier and all the while I miss the right now moments to improve and look on brighter sides. I miss the silver linings all around me. I know this too. So what. So this is what an experience of life is like. This is something that I can decide is bad, or decide is not bad. I usually choose the former, and carry my junk and suffer for it. Usually.

Then there are times when I don’t. Times in fact that order comes to all. Balance is achieved in the asymmetry. A perfect storm reveals the hidden meanings to all the heartaches. A spiritual self triumphs while the ego struggles within the boundaries of the world. This little moment exists in tandem to it all.

I truly ponder the nature of the experience of life. I feel so detached from it sometimes. Like a bad Youtube clip, where the audio doesn’t quite match the image, and it freezes and buffers, then jumps ahead after being unresponsive. Then again, the feeling can be so literal and connected, that each rotation of the clockwork cogs are noticed. The world and ourselves seem completely in synch, machined to mutually move together.

Caught in between is where I find myself at the beginning of this ‘so called’ new year. In this little moment, adolescence. The yearning for clarity and purpose and a place to fit, while the changes going on, are impossible to understand. Shifting from childlike joy, to something else, a transformation of self, is just tough, on me, on everyone around me.

Where then, does ‘the turn’ happen? That place where we run out of room to continue on any certain path, and we must do that scary thing, leaning downhill and free falling for a moment, before catching ourselves again, on a new vector, a fresh line. I guess it happens when it has to.

More ‘successful’ people than me, will tell you how they make goals and commitments and create a life path that they choose, well in advance of arriving there. I’ve played some with those concepts. I could write a whole blog post here about how this year, I will do X-Y and Z, and make big sweeping promises to myself, to you. I won’t.

Truth is, that like a lot of people. I don’t make a change, until the pain of staying the same, seems greater than the pain of trying something new. There, I’m normal again.

That ole junky load of baggage and historical rubbish is there to keep me on track then I guess. I do recreate in my mind constantly, a land in which exists all my failure and missteps and regrets. It holds a place on my mental world map, that I can steer clear, and learn to avoid. It’s helpful in that way. It’s a way I can love me, just a little more. Self-help.

But! While I have my eyes focused on where I don’t want to go again, I sure end up in some strange new places. This voyage has me lost in new worlds that are quite unfamiliar. Not in a good way either. At least my ego doesn’t like them.

Odysseus finally found his way back home. His journey was anything but swift. He would get closer to home, then swept again waaay out to a far off land. Many times he was at the mercy of the Gods, with no hope to save himself at all.

A good story will do that ya’ know.

The best always do.

Mine seems to mirror some of those epic journeys, and I recently I find those real dark times with the walls closing in…

What about yours? Can you see your way out, always, without a hint of fear or anxiety? I hope so, for your sake. I could probably see that you have it made and can always triumph at any time. Maybe you can see that for me too?

We can’t see ourselves as we can see others. We can’t quantify the weight of our baggage. We can work on becoming comfortable and quiet and brilliantly joyful, at the realization that it is all perfect, as it always has been, and it always will be…

right now.

And even that, will arrive in perfect and fleeting glimpses of magical moments. And then they’re gone…

Sincerely,

the former version of Aaron Nichols. the current version of Aaron Nichols, and the versions to come, of Aaron Nichols, in all their weirdness, broken-ness and beauty…

Happy 2014 🙂