This Side of Hell

Journal Begins: August 31, 2023

This side of hell? Yeah. This side of Hell.

I cannot think of another word that best describes the multi-level range of my person that was left untouched and untortured in those depths and degrees of despair into which I had plunged soon after that short season following Shirli’s death on July 4, 2022. I refer to it as the season for taking care of the “tyranny of the urgent.” After that season, I crashed big time. Really big time. That place where I went defies what one can say to explain or describe the experience. 

Over the course of that dark journey, I chronicled through lyrics pieces and parts of that experience through songwriting and caressing these guitars. This is especially true of the Alvarez Bluesman that I consider Shirli bought for me after she died. I affectionately named the guitar “Doll Baby” … my pet-name for Shirli from the git-go.

One of the things about the past is that the past is ever with us. Our past is our personal frame of reference designed to take us back to our life’s experiences … both the good and bad of them … to not only allow us to revisit the joys and pains that make us who are today but also to guide us forward in our decision-making processes. All of the first first's are behind me. I'm moving ahead in the unfolding of this new life. Ahead is a world replete with "firsts". 

That said, in chronicling the unfolding of this different life that I am discovering, there will, quite naturally, be numerous reflections upon the past. Too, it seems that nostalgia has become embedded within my faculties. At this point in my aging, it appears that I have become, without me paying any attention to its arrival, quite nostalgic. Maybe that’s something that affects all of us when we realize where we are on life’s time spectrum. I don’t know if it is or is not. Maybe I’m just weird that way.

Well, maybe I’m just weird. Ah, what an epiphany! I’m good with it. Seriously though, I accepted this as a fact a LONG time ago.

In a similar vein, there is no significant intention of making these journaling’s a religious treatise. However, the life I have lived attempting to understand and do God’s will for my life is an integral part of who I am. I have to be who I am. I have to be the authentic person that I am. Looking back at what most would deem to be a really crazy life, I can clearly see where the Divine Hand was upon my life taking care of me and guiding me. The future is ahead of me and I know He will take care of me in the future just as He has in the past. I cannot help but to include entries associated with personal faith matters and general reflections on things.

I am, in a very real way, still working on figuring out this new life that I have been given to live. I cannot live in the past though the past is always with me. I have to live today, and tomorrow, and for all the morrow's that I have in front of me. I've been through some huge transistions since April of 2022. Truth is, I am still transitioning in the very early stages of this new life. How much wierder will I become as it unfolds? I guess I have to say, "Just watch and see."

Like my YouTube channel, my primary interest is not to gain attention when I publicize things. These days? I can care less about being popular and gaining notoriety. Yeah. We all need our strokes. And I do so appreciate the strokes when I get them. But this is not about strokes. It is about one day leaving pieces of “me” behind for my dear ones so they can know me as much more than an ancestor with a name.

This blogsite is a new one. I've not had time develop it. Bear with me.

David