Wednesday, July 5, 2006

The Best Thing in a Long Time—Maybe Ever. Week Sixteen

For the last four days, I’ve worked harder than I have in a very long time. And yet, it hasn’t seemed like hard work at all. What a trip, what a high (for all I know about getting high…)! I can’t remember, in my whole life, being this unreservedly thrilled about anything.

Nothing I’ve known or done compares to this. To having my own place. To being "the Proprietor." The owner. El hefe. The buck-stopper.

For years now, long and painful years, I’ve felt as if the best part of my life was behind me. Like I’d had my decade of prosperity, but that was then, and this is now. That it was all going to be downhill...from that place about a dozen years ago, when the slide began. When so many of the things I knew and loved started to be stripped from me, one after another after another.

I feel like Job. Like the guy who had everything, and then lost it. Suffered the tortures of the damned, was millimeters from cursing God and dying, but held on. Held on, because maybe he didn’t know what else to do.

Because once you’ve had goodness, once you’ve had fulfillment, once you’ve had "success," there’s a kind of accidental faith that keeps you going through the dark spots. You can’t stop nursing that tiny spark of hope in the deepest reaches of your mind. You had "it" once; so you know it exists. And if you had it once, you can have it again. That’s what has kept you putting one foot in front of the other, through the dry and the dull and the desperate; even when it seemed like there was nowhere to go.

It’s frightening, to love an experience this much. But I am nothing if not an inveterate cynic; I have no illusions that this could not all evaporate in an instant. I’ve lived through the rise and the fall. There’s no reason to believe I cannot fall again.

But feeling like this for even these few days will have made it worth the risk.

I’m Queen of the World!

10 comments:

  1. Stomping, whistling and cheering!  Lisa, I am so excited and happy for you.

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  2. Congratulations, Lisa!!!!!!  

    Tuck that feeling away for when the down times comes and maybe it will be easier to see them through.  I'm so thrilled for you that you've had such  a  great beginning.  I can already see you as a little old lady running your place, a legend that is beginning right now!

    http://searchthesea.blogspot.com/

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  3. :::bowing down before your queenliness:::
    You rock!!

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  4. Good for you!  Jae

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  5. You have arrived...and survived.  Enjoy!

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  6. Great entry!!  Hugs and hope you had a happy 4th!  I like being the owner also.  We have a small business and I have my Avon business and it's great.  Flexible.  Wonderful!
    Lisa

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  7. How joyful!! Hurray!! Terrific entry.

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  8. You're the tops, keep on dreaming.

    Jackie

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  9. Way to go, Lisa... I am soooo very happy for you.   So glad that you made that scary decision to go for it.  You are giving me the inspiration I need to make some similar changes in my life.   Thanks, my friend ... and all the best to you !  Tina

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  10. Bravo girl!  Keep flying high!  You've earned it!  Lisa

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