I'm sitting here bright and early on a Saturday morning...after a night of a strong and powerful thunderstorms that included all the drama of roaring black clouds, bright bursts of lightening and short power outages.

Looking out over my green lawn and how refreshed and renewed it looks. Swing open the patio door step out take a big deep breath. Ahhhh just love this feeling. Then I step out into the lawn...and there it is...muddy gushy soggy!!!! Ewwww!!! Immediately I am reminded refreshed and renewed can still have a muddy messy surprise.

So I find myself diving into something new. There I have admitted it to myself...with you as a witness. You try to go into this new thing wide eyed and open minded. Try not to let bad business ventures discourage us from a new venture, try not to let past bad relationships affect our new ones. Yet you can't help but ask yourself, "am I being played for a sucker"?

I wonder... where does the doubt come from?

For me this is tough because I have always had the Vegas ideology about the past. What happened there stays there. But can we really leave behind all that baggage? Can we really just move on?

Even "wise" sayings are conflicted on this very matter. There's a sayin "dwell in your past you'll rob your future." Then there's the "if you don't know where you've been, how can you know where you're going?"

So here I am. I have to find that balance between giving this new opportunity a complete unadulterated beginning and learning from my past that there are patterns and warning signs to which I need to be attuned.