The early Christians had a group called the Gnostics who believed in a "here and now" religious reality and most of the Eastern Religions incorporate this concept. The Death and the Resurrection are a powerful story: the person you are today must die before the person you want to become can be born. Simplistic, but expected from someone like the Sole Proprietor who's religious teachings came from Carlos Castaneda and the more seriously constructed samurai movie epics. Watch The Seven Samurai or The Samurai Trilogy and take notes. Or, if Samurai movies aren't your bag, the Sole Proprietor can recommend one or two Oprah episodes that will make adequate substitutes.

Now that he's started off with the required course of religious bull (his, not yours), he'd like to recount some things he has to be thankful for at his advanced age of 555, oops!, 55 going on 56.

He was self employed in Napa for a long time, some nine years, as a Novell network reseller. It was a struggle for a number of reasons: not much money; not much talent; an internal bleeding condition that no one seemed to be able to find that made him tired and want to sleep; a fondness for computers, but no real desire to be a consultant or one man reseller shop. No girl friend, but he had a couple of good friends and that was all right, but essentially a solo trip, a loner living among the grapes. Sour grapes.

The problem is you get in a rut, a depression really that doesn't allow you to step back and see what's happening with your life. He needed to make a change, but used all the standard stories about why he couldn't: not then certainly, he needed money to move (move where?), perhaps later, much later, or not. Better not.

Piffle and poof!

Today the bleeding has stopped. They still don't know what it was except it wasn't cancer because if it were he'd already be dead. They've also corrected a sleep apnea problem (you snore, yes, but you also repeatedly stop breathing which makes you crazy and more likely to die) that has increased his energy ten fold and allowed him to, well not focus for long periods of time exactly, but to focus very precisely for short periods of time and that's good. He's happy with that.

Similarly he's pretty happy with his work. That hasn't always been true. Maybe its never been true, but he likes this web site bit. He's a more nuts and bolts techie at work, but they let him do a lot of web building and design for the internal network as well, and that's good. There's a lot to learn, but he's started. Like the CNE he forced himself to get some years back (kind of a drag, really, he's successfully avoided getting the MCSE since), he's been willing to learn the webmaster part. That's nice. The learning goes slowly, sometimes he fights it, but it is satisfying and he looks forward to the next day. That's good. He's thankful for that.

There are a few things you have to "let go", however, for this "be here now" stuff to work. You have to go with your gut and you have to let it unfold, take its own course like this journal thing. Why in God's name (personal or interstellar) should he be writing this journal? Who reads it? He let his family know about it earlier this month which probably doubled the number of readers he gets each day to eight*, and that will die down next month he has no doubt (at which time he will air some of the more scurrilous stories from the family history starting with the halibut series: naked romance in the hold of a fishing boat).

No little voices from the gut have whispered in his ear lately to can the job, screw the rent: join a web collective and hack long hours into the night. But it might. It decides and if it does, well, there goes the 401K. And the Nikons. They're nice, but they won't pay the rent.

And so today is Christmas. May whatever bug deep down in your gut bite you as well and take you to the things you love and need. And if it tells you to throw it all up and quit your job and sell your Nikons and sleep in the car deep in the heart of Texas? Well, better you than he says the Sole Proprietor. Still, who knows, there, under the Texas stars in the back of your car, glancing to the right: the Sole Proprietor in his trusty '78 Toyota sleeping (without snoring) into the night.