Slow it down, slow it down, slower still, there, I remember now, 1999... ahhh!

Goodness gracious, things have been going at a helluva pace and it all needs to just slow down for a bit. It's Saturday morning and I had to get up at 5:00 a.m. to get my kid on the way to a Boy Scout trip up in the White Mountains. Do you get it? Boston with insane amounts of snow, dark, 5:00 a.m., 18 degrees with wind chill making it feel like 3. Saturday morning. A week ago I was in Vegas at CES. It was not 3. It was 55 and all the natives were whining about how "cold" it was. Got a great laugh out of that.

Anyway, I get him on his way, and believe you me, it's a battle with all this snow, piles and piles of it on every corner, so you can barely make a turn because you can't SEE beyond a 5 foot pile of snow on many corners as you creep into an intersection and cars are parked so far into the street, because there is so much snow at the curb ... what curb? ... you can't even see a curb. And people can't walk on sidewalks or wait for buses on sidewalks because there's so damned much snow, there are NO SIDEWALKS, so they are walking in the streets too. It's crazy. It's a battle out there, everything's always a fight, no taking it easy.

So I get back, take my layers of wool and fleece and sheepskin and all of it off and finally get back into bed and fall asleep.

And something unbelieveable happened.

I still don't quite know what it was, but I want more. I had a dream which was euphoric, just joyful and wonderful and full of love and light and fun and hell, it was something LSDful and drug-induced (not that I've experienced either really) but imagine a dream where you are awash in hopefulness and happiness and satisfaction, way way beyond, "everything's gonna be alright" and when I slowly woke up, I really had that, "I wanna go back there!" feeling.

And it occurred to me, life has been really TOUGH for so many people for the last few years. I've been lucky to be working and surrounded by family and friends, but you can't feel completely happy and good when you see others suffering, losing jobs, worrying endlessly about money, anxious about their futures, all of it.

And I was thinking of the dream, trying to isolate the feeling, that sunny day feeling of well-being, and when we all were feeling that way. When did we last feel that way? So much darkness has come along between 2001 and 2011.

So I had to think back ... slowly, try to feel that sense of sunny optimism, and when it was happening. I would say it was way back in 1996 - 1999 that things felt solid, prosperous, unthreatened, light and airy. Happy! Hopeful! Just plain FUN! So that's my next big thing ... to bring back that feeling. I have my work cut out for me, I'm afraid, but it's high time. Help me out. Let's do it.