Can a Leopard Change its Spots?

........my current focus.  I fight change in so many ways, and yet I yearn for it.  History has revealed that "big" change has been a breeze for me.........but we all know that life is about the details and those I cling to like a life raft.  Go figure???

As I've been at writing my way through this misery thing for six months now, it is about time I embrace the change waving at me.  It feels almost poetic that April's season is "spring", representing new beginnings.  Coming from Canada, this was often the time when we finally bid a last farewell to the snow laden trees and sidewalks to make way for grassy knolls and the buds of forgotten trees.  Now, as a spoiled Californian I still celebrate spring but with less bravado due to the almost complete lack of winter.

Ah yes, I digress...... a trip down the rabbit hole.  So it would seem that what I have and am being offered is a series of "small" changes that will eventually add up to monumental changes in my life.  I recall the saying of eating an elephant one bite at a time.......well it would seem that my lesson is of changing a wee bit each and every day.  I used to glibly say that you're either growing or dying, and actually thought I understood what I was saying.  Was I mistaken!!!  This growing business is exhausting and challenging, and I can only hope and pray that I like the outcome.

Today's message says, one of the hardest lessons is letting go.  It seems my life has been a series of downsizings, the new buzzword.  I'm downsizing, carrying less baggage, whether that is guilt, anger, loss or some other now defunct item cluttering my life.  "Pack up your troubles in your old kit bag and smile, smile, smile", an old marching song from 1915.  As I lace up my boots can you hear me exclaim..........onward and upward.