I have lived a great deal of my life in angst, fear, and doubt.  In many ways it has crippled my capacity to actually see myself for who I was and what I was becoming.  Somehow I feel so many of the choices I made in my youth have not prepared me for what is to come in the upcoming years.  We are currently dealing with Glenn’s Mother’s health declining and having to move her into assisted living.  It brings fear of my own aging and possible decline into sight.  As gay men we have no heirs to help us through our aging process.  I guess my greatest fear is somehow becoming incapacitated and not being able to take care of myself.  I once heard the actress Jessica Tandy say “the only thing we really have in our lives in our health” and she lived and worked to her 90’s.  It is now 5 years since I was diagnosed with Lymphoma and I have survived.  In a sense it has made me more aware of my on mortality in those 5 years I have accomplished more then the rest of my years combined driven I believe mostly by fear and doubt.  In a sense this year has really been about stability and pushing beyond all conceivable boundaries.  I have felt more of a vitality this year then I have felt in the past 49 years I have lived.  So why does it take us so long to actually find out who we are and now at that point of accomplishment and discovery am I opening new possibilities to feed that anxiety.  I should be on top of the world at this moment but somehow I feel I am not and it’s creating a great melancholy within me.  I know I need to live in the moment learn to celebrate what is currently before me.  I have been given or created my own gift of discovery and this year has been remarkable beyond anything I could ever have imagined.  How do I recognize and glorify the achievements?   Am I a person destined to not be content or happy no matter the circumstances?  Being an artist adds an intensity to this doubt, it always has.  Perhaps because we are so truthful in our approach to life and everything becomes our mirror.  I have a friend who keeps asking me to hold the mirror up to myself and I am still reluctant because I am possibly still too afraid to see what that mirror will reveal.  I keep thinking the mirror is this blog and have tired to find the truth of myself within it.  But has it become a mask instead?  I somehow don’t think so.  I think it is the sum of what I have lived and become and the vitality of this years needs to outweigh, outshine all else.  In my minds eye I am still a youth and my body responds accordingly.  Many that meet me are astonished when they find out my actual age.  My next lesson needs to be to banish the insecurity and live in the vitality of the now?  Can I really come to the point of total acceptance of myself?  How do I get there?  Perhaps this is next years project.