I killed it today.

Well…”killed” it actually isn’t quite right – it wasn’t a case of herculean effort and a grand triumph. No, it was much more of the “slow and a steady wins the race” kind of success story. It *was* still a grand feat, however…I finished every hour of work right on time. I can’t even remember the last time I could make that claim. For reals.

Most of my day I spent thinking about my brother Russell. He died a nine years ago today…the baby of the family. Facebook has this “memories” function which most of the time I ignore…but I guess three years ago I’d found this MySpace photo of Russell, taken within weeks of him passing away, and I’d posted it. Facebook popped it up again, and it just felt appropriate to re-post it. It was just such a perfect photo for Russell in the phase of his life.

It was captioned on the photo with “Thinking of you”…posted for whomever online girlfriend he had at the time. He’s sitting with this little smirk on his face, and his hair tousled to cover one eye completely, trying to look so cool, but mostly just looking awkward and incredibly happy to be able to have a girl so send such a photo to. It’s the perfectly awkward teenage photo, and it’s very endearing despite the fact that teenage-dom did claim his life. I can’t help but see him as ANY teenager, all of us at that age…wondering if anyone will ever like us, and feeling everything very intensely a lot of the time. There are those of us who feel things too intensely during those vulnerable years, and take impulsive grand actions on those feelings…Russell was one of those who did. He acted out on his teenage feelings and never had the chance to take those actions back. Its very sad what happened to him…but that picture is not. That picture is me, too, and all of us. Excited, scared, self conscious, and teetering awkwardly between boyhood and manhood.

I talked with my dad, he sent me a song he’d written about losing a child, I heard from a multitude of people of Facebook who’d known Russell when we were all kids, and from some people who didn’t know I’d lost a brother. It’s always an emotional day…an emotional time of year for me, I realize know that I can track it, and sit down and think about it. My wedding anniversary, my birthday, and the anniversary of losing my brother, all within two weeks. That’s a lot, man 😛

Liz has been listening to this British composer Max Richter lately, and today I finally listened to his Recomposition of Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons” and it was absolutely incredible. It felt very apropos to the day and everything swirling around inside me. Props to the Ho for finding music that rocks my socks.

Tomorrow is another work day in which I intend to hit every single hour again on-goal and finish my day as early as I can. It helps for the off-days 🙂 I want to go play golf on Monday…that’s my reward, then, for finishing everything on-schedule. It’s a wonderful feeling, y’all. Wonderful.

Miss you Russell. I would have loved to have heard what you think about my novel, which I’m going to rewrite soon…