Universal Alignment

A lot has happened since I got back from Costa Rica.  As I was coming to grip with how to take life a little bit easier, this shit went down in Bangkok.

“How Did Thailand Come to This?” indeed.  (And this report is pretty accurate and surprisingly unbiased.)

My family home is literally in the war zone.  I mean, they had been since the Red Shirts camped out not 200 meters down the street.  Everyone is safe now, but my dad and brother, my uncle and his family, and our family maid were more or less held hostage by all of the activities all around.

My brother did take a heroic run to take an elderly neighbor with a heart condition to the hospital and returned home with food and supplies to stock up.  And he did it again the day after the city was ablaze, to take my dad with a severely painful “stuck shoulder” to the doctor.  Ah, calcific tendonitis, calcification of the tendons in the shoulder! You know just when to reveal yourself!

I didn’t realize I’ve inherited my mom’s ability to worry too much.

Hellooo anxiety!  Thanks for visiting.

I’m sure the level of angst I had since last Tuesday was multiplied by each mile away from Bangkok.  And that inadvertently made me shut down and mentally run away again.

Ask Brandon what I’ve been doing these past few evenings. That’s right. I sat in front of the TV and didn’t move.  The good ol’ self defense mechanism when things got too much for me to handle, I just ran away into TV Land.

As things seem to be returning to normal in my hometown, I came across another fork in the road of life.

But making the decision on which direction to take wasn’t a problem.  It seems things have been decided for me already.

Those who have read “The Alchemist” know this well: “When a person really desires something, all the universe conspires to help that person to realize his dream.”

So many things happened to so many aspects of my life these past few weeks.

First, a few weeks ago, Brandon and I were deciding what to do for Memorial Day weekend.  Do we stay? Do we go?

Do you want to go to Monterey to re-do our disastrous first romantic getaway or go to Hearst Castle?  How about Joshua Tree before it gets hot?  We couldn’t decide but we know for sure we didn’t want to be in town.

Then I saw posts from our friends in Portland.  And I was reminded that we told them we’d going to visit them this year. Why not now?

Cheech’s dad is visiting but he’s leaving tomorrow morning, leaving him enough time to clean up and be our host.  Matt and Traci are lined up for dinner on Saturday night, and Rachel for Sunday breakfast.

And then just last week, another universal alignment.

Did you know that I’ve always wanted to do archery?  I don’t recall having shot any arrows when I was in Thailand, but I sure as heck ran to the booth the first time we went to Renaissance Faire. I was in love with the long bow.  But I didn’t quite find time or resources to explore further or take it up.

Then I started to go to shooting range with Brandon and his colleagues.  As much as I like to shoot firearms, I don’t really care for the noise.  I’d prefer something quite as deadly but a lot quieter.  We’re back to the archery conversation. And again, it didn’t go anywhere.

And then, out of the clear blue sky, Brandon’s coworker posted something on Facebook about his daughter doing archery class. He found out a new range has recently opened in Los Alamitos.  He was telling me as we got in the car to go get dinner.  But he suddenly changed his mind about where to eat and we ended up at Pasties…which is down the road from the Archery Outpost.

We popped in and I already felt right at home.  We chatted with the friendly staff, and got the tour of the place and a bit of the history of this family business.

This comes in the heel of my decision to step further back from my involvement with Thrill the World Los Angeles.

The universe couldn’t have been clearer about its plan for me.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.