WoW came out Nov 2004. Unless you were playing beta…

Saludos desde la ciudad de México!!

I have one question for you – as you went through changes, did you ever feel guilty or selfish? I struggle with that sometimes, because the life I have now is a good one, and wanting to change it (I’ll be moving away and leaving great friends and so many good things I feel fortunate to have behind), sometimes feels like I’m saying it’s not “good enough”. Not sure if that makes sense. Just curious

In such an unaffected way your speech teaches, inspires, and confirms universal truths within my spirit. What a gift you have given those of us who have read it!

This will be one of those affirming, nutrient-rich, cherished reads I can revisit with the certainty I’ll learn or remember some valuable nugget I didn’t want to forget.

Well done, thank you for sharing it with us.

♥JSH

PS
JD, after reading some comments, I believe you have convicted some people’s spirits…

Sheesh. I didn’t think it was necessary to pick apart each item I didn’t agree with, as so many of your more critical readers did. I saw a number of really great points and some human things I identified with. Not every single thing, but many.

I was really sad for those who had such negative commentary for someone who so openly offered his experience. You know you nay-sayers, it isn’t a requirement you agree – but why such asperity?

Come on people, take the good out of it – why do you have to point out and dissect each inconsistency? Methinks perhaps those are the very things you hate about yourself!

By the way, I’m sure that you don’t know this, but JD was also a Mennonite in his teen years. Are you as angry at him as you are with me? I don’t apologize to anybody that I have found happiness deep within the bonds of family and home. I am left with nothing but pity for you. So sorry.

I agree that I now worry that my spouse of 18 years will decide that he isn’t really ‘happy’. Weird how we have translated J.D.’s philosophies into our own language over the years and now many of us are definitely not understanding this path…

Therefore the examples used are *exactly* what JD considers sameness in a negative context and how we, as a society, resist change.

I therefore, even while understanding EVERY large society/institution/construct resists change to one degree or another, take exception to the examples as presented and don’t consider it nitpicking to call him out on, IMO, the poorly chosen examples he’s using to make a major point.

JD’s examples strongly imply people who are married to each other for many years settled for less, that people who may enjoy a job they’re committed to weren’t good enough or smart enought to reach for more, and that buildings that are old are no longer serving any purpose.

Change for the sake of change is chaos, and no better than stagnation.

However, while I’ve been reading this site for perhaps about 2-3 years, you seem to contradict yourself as to your own happiness. For years prior to the divorce, you discussed how strong your relationship was (generally in response to certain comments)–but now you mention that even before you created GRS, you were realizing there were significant problems with your marriage. You also talked about how happy you were when you made changes that you discussed in your GRS blog and how happy you’ve been. But now you say you’ve been unhappy during all this time, up until a year ago. It would be one thing if you simply didn’t discuss your marriage and your happiness, but it seems weird reading that these have been long-standing problems, when that is contrary to what you wrote 2 years ago. I can’t tell if you didn’t realize you’ve been unhappy with life and with marriage (and if so, how do you know you’re happy now since you thought you were happy then). Or is it that you wrote that things were fine and you were happy as to both, when they were not fine, which seems to lose some credibility. Or is this what happens in a midlife crisis–a general confusion as to such matters?

I think of the story about a man who had his dream job, for which he was well-paid. He loved his job, he was very happy with his pay, he was very happy with life. Then, one day, he saw a co-employee’s paycheck, which was more than his paycheck. He became so unhappy that he eventually quit. But his job had not changed and he had been happy with his pay–until he thought he was not paid as well as another. Happiness is in our control, but often is a matter of perspective and choosing how we view our circumstances . . .

Reading this article has made me realize that I’ve gotten comfortable and complacent lately. I haven’t been saying ‘yes’ as often or sought out new opportunities. I realize that I still have a vague idea of what my ‘big rocks’ so that’ll be one of my goals going forward.

I have reinvented myself twice in my life. Both of them major reinvetions; one when I left the Mennonite faith at 26 years old, the other when I started my own business at 48 years old, after being a stay at home wife and mother for 19 years. But, unlike JD, I didn’t throw away the baby with the bath water.

JD, I will take you up on that lunch offer. I work Tuesdays and Thursdays in the summer. When are you free?

I would hate to think in seven years from now my life is meaningless because I don’t have a husband and maybe children. Would like to be remarried? Yes! Is it realistic? Only time will tell and if it doesn’t happen my life isn’t less meaningful.

We all have our path. You are on yours, JD is on his and I am on mine. There are many different roads we can choose from and doesn’t have to be the one those you chose.

You should call me or write me. Let’s have lunch and we can chat about life. Seriously!

And yes, you hit it pretty close. I have a ton of Amish relatives and I was raised in a very conservative Mennonite group. As an adult, I no longer embrace the faith, but I do hold it’s values dear to my heart.

You can puke all you want, but that doesn’t change the fact that this world is craving close knit family ties and long term relationships; those things that keep us rooted and grounded. People, like JD, are running and running…pursuing happiness, but never truly finding it. If they stop running they will find that it was at their doorstep all along.

I did garner one new thought, for which I am grateful to you and your readers. I’m an unreconstructable introvert, even though I have always been able to manage social situations with great ease. I finally figured out how to put myself out there in “performance” situations without succumbing to knee-knocking terror, probably too late in the game, but. . . c’est la guerre. I truly LIKE being alone. The comments about needing to recharge and actually getting very cranky, even vicious, at being disturbed are so dead on they cracked me up. THAT is something I am not at all interested in changing. What puzzles me is why so many people I know– including family, for pete’s sake — seem to have a need to point it out to me over and over again, as if it were a fault. IMO, the joke’s on them. What they fail to realize is that my ability to be alone with myself is the source of my well-honed sense of humor. Instead of being an old coot, I’m an old hoot. Fo’ sho’.

But, having said that, I feel like most of this post is unrealistic for people like me. It is so self centered, so focused on ME. A lot of us have children and spouses that need huge doses of our attention, as well they should.

Relationships take work. Dating lots of different women does not take work.

To stay consistent takes work. To continually be changing used to be called shiftless. It used to be a sign of unhappiness. You are tryng to give it a twist to make it look like change is desired above “sameness.” Countries have traditions because people the world over find stability in sameness.

I’m sorry but I don’t read this post and see a happy man. I read this and see a man that is searching for happiness. You are changing everything to find instant happiness. Deep and lasting happiness is not found in life’s frantic rush. It’s not found in all the focus on me, me me!

Happiness is found around the familial hearth. Happiness is found in meaningful, long term relationships. Happiness is found in the fresh cinnamon rolls your wife always makes on Saturday morning. Happiness is found in hanging Grandma’s Christmas ornaments on the tree. Happiness is coming home at the end of a hard day and knowing that the “same” arms that hugged you 20 years ago, are waiting to hug you today. Happiness is found in a baby’s raaspberry kisses.

You’re missing it! What you are calling happiness is equivalent to 13 year old puppy love. Both are fleeting and neither of them are the real thing.

Love you forever,
Your cousin,
Tammy

Speaking of playgrounds – have you ever read “The Internet is a Playground?”
http://27bslash6.com/missy.html
http://27bslash6.com/p2p2.html

Like this one: http://karenhancock.wordpress.com/2010/09/22/introverts-different-brain-pathways-and-neurotransmitters/

“…it takes introverts longer than extroverts to refill their energy well when it’s been emptied, because their nerve receptor sites are slow to re-uptake the neurotransmitter. So we need more time to recover and get tired more easily.”