I am a bit lost this morning; my mind seems to be filled with confusion and I just can’t seem to stay focused. Today it’s a journey to the down side of my existence. First of all my father has not been doing to well and they have put him on some medications that he thinks are more harmful than helping him. I keep trying to talk to him but it’s been very difficult. I have never heard my father so irritable. He has congestive heart failure, which has created blood clots they are trying to prevent going to his brain and creating a stroke. The side effects from the drugs they gave him have made him miserable and he is very frustrated. I totally understand this myself after going through those feelings of my body rejecting itself doing chemotherapies several years back. There is a shock of memory coming back into my system as I can feel that overwhelming feeling of nausea flooding my mind of body again. I can feel myself crawling out of my skin in talking to my father and trying to calm him. The panic swells and I am aware of it and push it back into suppression. I keep telling him that he needs to communicate with his doctor, which he is reluctant to do. Why do we have these perceptions that doctors are so unapproachable? After all, we hire them they do not hire us. We know our bodies better than anyone else, what and how much it can and will tolerate. I know drugs are designed for the masses, but not all of us are the same and it must be tailored to match our needs. Therefore you must work with your doctor and develop a relationship of communication. First step is to educate our selves on what is happening within our selves. I have never just blindly put my trust in someone else. I must say I was a bit stressed all day yesterday thinking about my father and it was really having an impact on trying to create a video and staying focused. I talked to my father last night before I went to bed and he seems to have emotionally accepted and embrace what’s happening as opposing and fighting it. I breathed a sigh of relief.

Health is something so many of us take for granted. It is probably my greatest fear of aging, becoming incapacitated. My father is twenty-four years older than me and twenty-four years is not that far away for me to become his age. I feel my own health sometimes slipping out of control, a little extra fat here, a lingering soreness in the joints there. The red flags of concern are raised that I really must take better care of myself, but it somehow becomes harder to do, and often at this age more difficult to engage. Last year I did an exercise program called P90X and it whipped my body, mind and spirit into shape. It was a blast to do, but it was very consuming and as I got busy with this project at the beginning of this year, have let it slip away. Today I feel active and vital and take relatively good care of my health. In many ways I feel at the prime of my life, to be fifty this year, most everything is coming together for me. I am finally reaching for this photography dream and it is astonishing. The culmination of my life is being explored through my images. The story of my youth flashes within the flicker of my monitor. I was photographing a kid a while back who thought I was being a bit too serious. I told him that this is a gift he may not appreciate now, but he will someday. He came back several days later wowed by what we had accomplished and being able to see himself in this sort of light. My friendships and acquaintances are amazing. I see how lucky I am to have lived such an extraordinary life. I still have so much more to cram in. I think this awareness of health is good; there are things we can do to help ourselves maintain that balance. Today I am going to try to maintain my own sense of balance and move forward through today.