A couple of business collaborations ended over a three-year span.  One ended well having run its course, just a few months prior to the music stopping.  The later fell to the circumstances, making it time to pick up and try again.  I had seen glimpses of ‘the writing on the wall’ for quite a while in my handwriting (this is an example of where stubbornness isn’t always a quality) and knew that I needed to cause the latest change and jump into the pile of challenges that it takes, to move on.  My human battery would not hold a charge and I sensed that this change should be done while I still had my four-legged assistant, before I would not be able to rise out of bed, let alone to the occasion.  It was time to recycle my crippled career, in a new direction, with a new group, one more time.  Sarrah was eleven and half years old at this time with most of her life in the past and the dark cloud that all animal people are aware of, but try to ignore, was getting closer.

A working week alone with Sarrah at the Beach House in the late winter of Two Thousand Ten gave me time to do many things, one of which was to finally embrace this conclusion and scrounge up the energy required to get on with it.  While there I did some of the things that ease my mind, forms of what I suppose are mediation.  We walked many miles on the beach, through the dunes and down the roads.  The weather cooperated so I rode my motorcycle daily, around the community and the rural roads.  Most importantly, I simply sat in the sunshine with my best friend and watched her nap. At each day’s end, we walked to the beach to watch the sun disappear into the ocean.  Every evening I watched my favorite movie, “The World’s Fastest Indian”.  This was my first lone stay at the Beach House.  The quiet time alone was good for me and I feel fortunate that Sarrah was with me for this experience.

Shortly after returning, I met with another group who had expressed an interest in me, made ‘The Change’ and began the next chapter of my tired, working life story.  Around this time a movie titled “The Weary Kind” came out along with a soundtrack of the same name by Ryan Bingham that felt like a fitting battle song for the times (especially the lyrics “Somehow this don’t feel like home, anymore” and “Pick up your crazy heart and give it one more try”), Sarrah and I listened to this tune every morning as we rallied to fight on another day.