Rise From The Ashes - An Older And Wiser Warrior

"Dont it always seem to go
That you dont know what youve got
Till its gone"

Big Yellow Taxi - Joni Mitchell 1970

For 7 days, I was unable to participate in the greatest forum in
the world...The Warrior Forum.

At first, I didn't know how I'd take being away.

By day 6...I really missed it and could only think of how lucky
I was that my banishment was permanent.

Make no mistake about it...my banning was well deserved
and maybe even long overdue. Some would say I should
have been tossed out on my ear a long time ago.

So what does this all mean for me now?

Well, it's made me look at things from a whole different
perspective. It also made me realize so many things that
I don't normally think about. I won't go into all of them
here because I'd only bore you to tears.

But ultimately, what this experience has done is made me
older and wiser. I won't make any bold declarations of what I
will and won't do coming back. Nobody listens to, nor believes
those things anyway. I'm just going to lead by example.

Some will follow, some won't. I have no control over that. The
only thing I can control is what I do and don't do.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to contributing to this forum
again (it's probably what I missed the most) and I hope that
I can do that in a way that adds value to the forum and not in
a way that takes away.

Today, as I am posting this, it is July 4th. It would have been
my mother's 83rd birthday. It's my first one without her.

That sort of reality tends to put a lot of things into perspective.