Zander's Inside Voice

Big events over the past year, huh?

Well, Boy #3 had his first band concert playing trumpet about a year ago. Then he won second place for mental math category for his grade at the math-olympics. He had a great school year last year and this one has started out amazing too.

Boy#2 had a rough year last school year and has exploded with straight As this year, for the first time in high school. He seems to have his stuff together finally and he’s focused on college prep now. He wants to get a job badly and to drive and get going on these fun teenage years.

Girl has done well all around. She always brilliant with school and she’s gained so much more confidence at her new school this fall. She disappointed that she’s still too young to play an instrument and participate in the math-olympics.

Boy #1 has applied to college and is waiting to hear back in February. I am so proud of him because he will be taking two years off since he graduated. I was worried he wouldn’t go back and he finally found the motivation to get everything together and apply to his only choice for now.

My wife got a raise, did awesome stuff at work, and joined some boards. She’s always on fire and has written nine books! The ninth is coming out this March. She’s incredible. I can’t believe I get to be with her!!

For me, I have done a crap ton of therapy, rebuilt my relationships with my parents, fought my way through a ton of VA appointments, and successfully won my VA claim to get 100% right from the beginning. That came with so many awesome benefits and opportunities, plus the obvious money part. And mostly it’s just about doing something that everyone said I couldn’t do. So many people told me I should get help for it and that I wouldn’t do it as well as someone else trained to file these claims. I did it anyway. It took me a lot longer than it should have, but I won the first try. With no help. I didn’t have to lie or extend the truth. I was honest. And I won.

What has been the biggest “event” is me figuring out myself so much more than I ever have. It’s me learning to stop looking outside myself and learning to trust myself. It truly feels like everything has been leading me to this point in my life, where I know who I am and I know how to move forward from here. I know what I need to do for myself and how to weave that into what’s best for my wife and kids. It’s not all about me, and it’s not all about them. It’s about us together. It’s about learning how to make myself comfortable in every situation, not about how to make everyone else comfortable.

I can do anything and I really believe that most of the time now. It’s a strange feeling when I think about how I used to be. How I just couldn’t look inside myself and see who I was, who I’ve always been, and who I want to be. I was just trying to check off arbitrary boxes from someone else’s timeline. If I do these random things, I will be just like this other person who seems successful. But I wasn’t happy. I had no list. I had no future living that way. I see that now. I try not to dwell on the time I spent doing that because it’s substantial. It would be easier to look back and think that I have wasted so much time.

I choose to look forward so that I don’t waste any more time.