I believed this for the longest time. That if people care enough, are good enough, try hard enough, avoid the Nazis, good things would come into their life. I had to. I was dealing with a lot of (metaphorical) Nazis.

And it is not that I don’t believe that goodness triumphs. If life is – as many believe – a crap shoot, it is far better to load the die on the side of goodness and optimism. “Do unto others as they would have them do unto you.”

I lived in relentless negativity and pessimism for the longest time. That sucked.

It wasn’t that I consciously chose to see the world that way. Life convinced me. And if I’m honest, my life had a lot of help in forming a negative worldview from my stupid choices and bad behavior. I should have realized I couldn’t have it both ways. I couldn’t be both a screaming a-hole AND be blissfully content and happy. It’s called consequences.

For the longest time, I played a precipitous game between feeling I totally lacked control over my life and an illusion that I had absolute control. I was not well prepared for life.

In fact, I didn’t really have the basics nailed down. Emotionally and physically absent parents who pretty much left me to figure out life on my own. I was not qualified.

My young life was a series of jagged stops and starts, highs and lows, genius and bonehead stupidity. I was offered so many great opportunities that I did not have the necessary skills or experience to hang on to. What child does?

It takes a magical amalgam of upbringing, genetics, personality, opportunity, and chutzpah to land on your feet and stay there. I know one thing for sure. At a point, it is essential to take personal responsibility for your life, aka your choices. At a point, no one (even you) is going to buy: “The Devil made me do it.”

I make these observations as I face a mountainous mess of my own making. Confined in life and options, I continued making a series, if not bad, then not brilliant choices about how to invest my time and energy.

I have rather more of what I don’t want in my life (debt, clutter, stress) than what I truly want and need (friends, happy outings and mini-ad\ventures, dinner parties, fine Swiss chocolate).

I have learned that you must build, not grab. For someone raised I was, it is very difficult not to take whatever comes along and takes what is offered, instead of sitting back and first considering: “Is this something I really want?”

If acknowledgment of a problem is the first step toward solving it, then I have arrived at that point at least. For a troubled kid awash in lack, I am now struggling to balance and find my center now that lack is no longer an issue.

I chuckle at our collective envy and wonder about people who – by any outside standard – “have it all.” That is a very subjective experience to begin with. “One man’s junk is another man’s treasure.” But this is also true even if you “have it made.” Life is going to teach you lessons – whether you are a prince or a pauper, a sinner or a saint.

It is only once your outside reality begins to line up with your inside reality that life becomes easier, even and balanced. From my present stocktaking vantage point, my biggest task these days will be to eliminate what I don’t want to make room for more of what I do. Out with the old and in with the new.

At least that is how it goes in theory. I’ll let you know how I do with that.

The target has been set. Now I just have to make a plan to reach it. And stick with it.

Wish me luck.