A new direction

It's been a long, long time since I've made an entry on this blog. Heck, almost five months.

Five months is a long, long time.
What's happened?

In that time, I've studied in accounting at night school, I've been attending krav maga lessons on and off, and went to my first funeral. It's ... wow, even when I think about it now, three months down the track, it's a powerful experience.

My aunt died of cancer in March, a withered, barely conscious husk. I think society, through its condoning of violence, has desensitised most people to the specter of death. You watch the news everyday, there's always news of murder this or soldiers fighting that, and you have to wonder what it's all in aid of. It's a surreal experience, having someone you knew die.

I suppose I have been lucky in the past that for all of the twenty two years that I have been alive on this Earth, I have only had to witness one death firsthand - my pet dog's, eating snail poison by accident. Compared to my aunt, that was mercifully quick. She was slowly dying, slowly decaying, over a long period of about seven or eight months, as the cancer slowly consumed her inside, organ by organ, until it metastasised to her bones and it was finally concluded as being terminal. I wasn't that close to her, but she was my cousins' mother, and I was relatively close to them. So I can say that she was someone that had been present in my life from the beginning ... and now, she's ... gone.
She has been for several months now.
I was one of the pallbearers at her funeral, carrying her coffin into the hearse from the Buddhist ceremony at the funeral home and then carrying it out of the hearse at the crematorium and taking it to the podium where the eulogies and final farewells would be given. Surprisingly enough, I didn't cry at the funeral, but I could feel the anguish inside, a tugging, a pulling, a ripping.
Life goes on, and we can't mourn forever. What's done is done.
When I think about that funeral, and the fact that the average human lifespan is about 20-30 thousand days, it really puts things into perspective.

I have been thinking about what I want to do with the rest of my life. One thing that would be the worst thing to happen would be to find that I am wasting away my life, wasting the days given to me by the universe, doing petty, stupid shit. I have found my passion - writing, and my purpose - to get those stories out so others can enjoy them. I am almost ready to start the actual writing on my first book.

That said, I want to change everything for the better as well.

So now, the typical New Year's Resolution thing.

I resolve to continue working on my book and stop procrastinating.
I resolve to stick to my diet.
I resolve to train as hard as I can.

If there is a wall, break it down.
If there is no road, I will pave it with my own hands.
That is the path that all great men walk.

It all changes here.
Today.
For today, this very moment, this instant in time, this is my point of power.
Right here, right now.