And So It Begins

Here I am.

I was diagnosed with Squamous Cell Carcinoma back in August of this year.  So I started a blog to journal my battle with cancer.  However along the way I discovered that having a positive attitude played a major role in overcoming cancer.  So I've been trying to cultivate a more positive attitude.  However I have found this to be a huge battle, maybe even larger than the one I'm facing with cancer.

Now I personally see myself as a positive, optimistic person.  At least that's how I start most days.  But what happens is that the people I come in contact with start to bring me down.

Before I go any further I need to clear up some things.  This blog is mostly for myself.  Where I can hash out thoughts and reflect in a mirror.  So at times it will be ugly, harsh and maybe even nasty.  I will be making statement regardless of their truth as a means of coming to an end.  There will be statements which I know are not from a particularly true or positive point of view.  But what they are are perspectives of what I see from where I'm standing at the moment.  This will be a journey between light and darkness, truth and falsity, positivity and negativity.

I am not a professional writer trying to teach anyone anything.  As a matter of fact I always got horrible grades in English, what they call Language Arts or whatever it's called now.  I don't write to be witty, entertaining or educational.  I write the best I can.  My goal is to communicate as concise as possible, to convey my thoughts and I try my best not to write atrociously.  I will do my best to write clearly, spell correctly, not sound repetitive and use words with the correct meaning.  That I give to the reader, because I assume that someday, someone will read it and I don't want them to stop out of frustration of this being completely unreadable.

So, ya, I start my day all happy and positive and I can usually make it out the door without a negative thought, but rarely do I make it down the block without someone raining on my parade.  And yes, I realize that is all me and quite frankly pretty childish.  But this is what I'm wrestling with.

Personally I see myself as a positive, loving, caring, generous, helpful, happy person.  But what I let people and the world turn me into is a negative, hateful, scared, greedy, angry, resentful, sad little man.  Now some of this is rooted in my childhood which I'm sure we'll delve into deeper.  But, briefly, I have trust issues, anger issues and abandonment issues.  I observe everything I perceive through those lenses where by they become distorted and twisted and bend the light into darkness.

So I have some goals.  I need to explore what caused me to have and embrace those issues.  Once I understand why I have them I need to try to change or eliminate them.  I need to develop techniques or tools that help me to though my mental garden and remove the weeds and replace them with flowers.

To do this I have looked for books and other resources to help me along this path.  Now I'm not saying they're not out there but I haven't, as of yet, found anything to aid me with this.  I need to reprogram my attitude, re-hone my lenses to change my perception from interpreting something as negative to something that's positive.  I believe journaling as the means to that end as it has helped me reflect in the past.  And only by looking at yourself in the mirror can you see who you are to change what you will become.  And so it begins.