Ending The Year with Intention

Here I am sitting on my couch in December of 2023. Another year come and gone. Highlights and low lights and more behind me and a whole future of tomorrows ahead of us all.

Like many, I wonder what the future holds.

Unlike many, I think I know what I no longer want it to hold.

I want it to hold less uncertainty. Less self-doubt and recriminations. Less fear.

The last 2 years have been full of personal loss, life changes and other emotional turmoil. I've been so hard on myself in ways and have done everything I can to be a better person, to do more things to make me a better me.

Yeah. Sounds selfish. And it is.

But I want to be a better man. A better father. Better partner. Better wrestler / writer / author.

The trick is, I've been trying to do all of those things at once. And its not easy.

So... the time is now to narrow my focus for a bit. to streamline my online presence. to focus in on the areas that I find the most fulfillment. the areas that I will be the most committed to. 

Because those are the paths that will bring me joy. 

And with joy, will come its own reward.

I'm gonna do my best to be more diligent with my posting. To ignore the noise and to focus on what matters.

At the end of the day, that's all any of us can do.

Stay Tuned for more

Please check the links along the side for my Books and PWTees page. I appreciate all the eyeballs and attention you give me. 

AK

Power of the Light Side

So our friends over at the ForceCenter Podcast have put out a call for those of us within the community to share their thoughts and ideas of how Star Wars has brought the Light Side into our lives. Or how it has  elevated our understanding of things in life via the space fantasy / melodramatic metaphors we find from the stories told in a galaxy far, far away.

Given the things happening in my life right now, it's probably not surprising this is what's on my mind:

Sometime in the winter of 1983 my dad surprised me one evening and said "We're going to go to the movies." While I'd certainly watched movies with Dad before hand - usually whatever happened to be playing on one of the 5 channels available to us over the Winnipeg airwave rebroadcasts -  this was a special thing. We were going out to the theatres! A special trip, just me and my dad to the (locally) famous Metropolitan Theatre in the heart of downtown.

Turns out (spoiler alert), it was a double feature of Star Wars and the Empire Strikes Back. 

Watching on the big screen the adventures, the fun, the fear and the tragedy of those first 2 life-changing movies not only left an indelible mark on the way I look at the world, but created a real bond between myself and my dad. 

It's not an uncommon thing for sons to have trouble connecting with their parents, clearly. My father's upbringing was rougher than mine from a different era. And while he always treated me fairly and with love, I often grew up feeling like he and I were different. That we were interested in different things and didn't have very much in common.

Turns out - naturally - that as I gained life experience of my own that obviously we are very similar. We have shared interests, ideas, perspectives and are undeniably bonded in ways that go beyond our love of "westerns in space that tell family dramas in a succinct, spiritual format."

As such, being able to introduce my dad to the Mandalorian while I was recovering from a minor procedure took me back to being (almost) 7 years old. Watching his eyes light up and his smile broaden as Din Djarin and IG-11 mowed down that town of Child Rustlers in the most sci-fi realization of a classic western shootout I've ever seen committed to digital film was simply magical. Seeing him relive his own childhood in that moment, seeing his mind expand and his imagination awaken because of Star Wars rekindled the bond between us that honestly never left, but ebbed and flowed over time as everything does. 

That afternoon with him was one of the best times of my life.

As I write this my father is nearing the end of his time with us. No bacta tank or teched out mod will be able to keep him from passing on into the Force. But through the tears I am smiling. Because we are meant to grow beyond the paths they lay for us, as my daughter one day will do to me. Obviously there are many other important things that Dad gave and taught me beyond our oftentimes silly space shows, but being able to revisit something he'd shared with me that meant so much to the both of us ... well, it's just another way of knowing that "No one's ever really gone."

Thank you for reading. If my words today have moved you in any way please consider supporting a local Cancer Care Charity of your choosing. For example the good people at the Canadian Cancer Society are doing tremendous work in difficult times to provide help to as many suffering people as possible.

#MTFBWY

AK

Revelations About the Dark Side

This is a variation on something I wrote after a prompt from the team over at the ForceCentre Podcast. Much obliged to Joseph, Ken and Jennifer for all the great Star Wars content to keep my ears filled with fun and insightful chats on long assed days of non wrestling / writing work.

Enjoy

***

Without getting into too many lurid details, I recently had an object lesson into the purifying power of Anger.

After first being presented with a series of facts a swell of pure, righteous anger seemed to fill my consciousness. An anger that was so powerful I carried it with me for several days. This is the kind of anger where everything else in my life served as a reminder of the thing that was fueling this level of vitriol. 

I carried in into my writing, my workouts and more.

After a time I was thankfully given more information to the source of my anger, was able to find context and some understanding for why the incident in question occurred the way it did. And as such I was finally was able to release the anger and start anew.

Which was when I realized something awful.

I MISSED the anger.

Not the gut churning, hyper aggressive and waspish attitude parts. But the purity of it. The certainty that my anger was just and righteous. That the reason I was so damned angry had a purpose that would eventually be revealed where I could unleash it all in a fury of lightning strikes and rage.

I also missed the anger because it left behind a sense of shame.

Shame at myself for enjoying the rage. For enjoying the wrong headed sense of certainty in the emotion. Shame for realizing how wrong I was to have let myself get into that state and in refusing to search out other sources of information or knowledge that could have dispelled my anger and actually made a positive difference in my life.

As such, I have realized that this is the True Power of the Dark Side.

Because it is quicker to join you in a fight, it feeds upon the baser instincts within your soul; The Dark Side stokes ones’ anger until it is all you can see. It blinds you to other options, avenues of thought and pathways you could very easily take. And anytime you think you’ve gone too far in your anger, the Dark Side fills you with Shame. After all, if you are capable of all these horrible thoughts and actions and you might not be justified – what kind of a person would that make you?

We are One with the Force When we are Calm and allow it to flow through us in spirit and body. This is the path of the Force and the Way of the Jedi

***

Be sure to visit the links and add the ForceCenter Podcast to your feed if you like having fun, in depth and positive discussions from a Galaxy Far, Far Away. 

And I'll talk more about my Book 4 Layout Progress tomorrow. And yes, I have been working on it today as well. But I thought this would be more fun to share is all :)

AK