God grant me serenity to accept the things I can not change

Scott woke up this morning feeling pretty good. The “Winter Blues “that has been plaguing him seemed to have taken the day off. It was a little cool out and the sun was shining. Susan had a list of chores to do for Scott. There were many things that needed to be done outside and inside the house. After breakfast and two cups of coffee Scott went outside and mounted the numbers outside that represented the house address. Great! He thought to himself. Got that done. It had been so difficult lately for him to get things done. It’s not that he was lazy, if it was up to him he would spend all day on the computer writing stories and learning more about cryptocurrency and the truth about the state of the world.

When he came back into the house after hanging the numbers he could hear music coming from the bathroom. This meant that Susan was in the shower. He felt an overwhelming compulsion to fire up the PC and see if he could get some writing in while Susan was occupied. He tried to wrestle down a feeling of guilt and he was worried that if she caught him she would be disappointed. The compulsion was so strong. It was as if he was possessed as he sat down in the chair. It seemed to take forever for the PC to boot up. He felt uncomfortable, as if he was committing some kind of crime.

Three weeks ago Susan thought that it would be a good idea for Scott to go get a job. He didn’t believe in a nine to five job. He thought it was analogous to modern slavery. He believed you could never make enough money to get ahead and every year you lost more and more buying power. He truly believed that there was a better way yet, no matter how hard he thought about he couldn’t figure out what that better way was. Scott had many skills and he thought that getting a job would be easy. He refined his resume and sent out applications. The waiting for a response was excruciatingly painful for him. He finally got some responses and went on some interviews. Once again the waiting was painful. He couldn’t understand why he did not get any call backs. He began to question himself. He became angry. He didn’t even want to get a job in the first place. He began to feel incapable of fulfilling his duty as a man in his relationship. Even though he knew this was ridiculous but, he couldn’t help the way he felt.

Today was different. He was offered two jobs yesterday and he would have to make a decision by the end of the day. He wondered if he should even take any of the Jobs. He wanted to make a living writing and helping people. If he took a job his time for this would be very limited. He felt as if he was selling out, giving up on his passion. Somewhere deep down inside he heard a little voice. It said “Why can’t you have a job and still write. You just need to establish some balance”. Of course the voice was right. It was always right. Scott was addicted to instant gratification. He wanted it all and he wanted it right now!

Life is a funny thing. We make plans and God laughs. Humans like routine, comfortability, and they like certainty. We like to believe we can control future events if we could only plan well enough. It doesn’t really work that way. I think we can just do the best we can in the moment. Try to be aware, open-minded, and honest as possible and just surrender our will. We put in the work, listen to the little voice inside and have faith that everything will work out the way it is supposed to
To be continued

All images are my photos. The top image was a birthday gift from my Niece. It currently hangs on the wall in my bedroom. The Sunset was from Myrtle Beach South Carolina.