What you wish for

Not to long ago I wrote a post about turning 45 and feeling like I'm running short on time.  In that same post, I was commenting about how I shouldn't complain.  Good job, etc.  Not long after that I was talking to my wife about how my office wasn't getting support from our main headquarters and I remember saying that a few different things could happen.  We would be successful and they would be forced to support us or they would fire us.

Well guess what.  There was a third option.  We started being successful, and they called us and told us they were shutting the office down. 

Be careful what you put out there folks.  Of course my wife was not shocked.  At all.  She just said "Well you did put it out there"

So now what?  No idea.  I have plenty of options.  But I'm back to what do I want to do.  And I still really don't have an answer.  Luckily for me I have some time to sort it out.  It's not like they locked the door and  changed the keys on us.  I still have about a month and a half of work left before they formally close our office.

In my younger years I would probably have freaked out at this.  But I haven't.  Maybe it's because I'm confident in my ability to get work if I need it.  But I don't seem to have that gut wrenching fear of what will happen to us.

This just happened yesterday, so maybe it hasn't hit me yet.  But to be honest it feels pretty liberating.  Like I'm standing in a room and there's a million doors standing open.  I just have to walk through one and see where it takes me.  I could do a complete 180 on my career right now, and still be fine.

So once again, what's next?  No idea.  I have some opportunities I'm looking into, but nothing solid yet.  I guess I'll see what the universe brings to my door.  I know whatever it is, I'll have to work for it. 

I'll keep my eyes and my heart open.  My next great thing is coming next, I just need to recognize it when it gets here.

Change

I heard someone say, and I'm paraphrasing here, "If you want your life to change, then you have to let you life change."  That seems really obvious when you read it.  But practical application of that, at least for me, seems to be a little tricky.

I expanded on that thought a little more just for myself.  I added the following at the end.  "You can't fear change that you've asked for."

What that means, at least to me is, that fear is holding me back.  The "What ifs" are shackles.  What if it fails, what if it's stupid, what if I'm just being a jackass.

I'm absolutely positive that a multitude of opportunities have passed right on by me.  Some of them I realized were actually really good ideas and possibilities.  Do you know how many I've acted on?  Almost none.

I can sit here and say I wasn't ready.  I can sit here and say it wasn't the right opportunity.  Both of those are flat out lies.  The truth would be that I never really tried.  Whether I let the opportunities go because of fear, or laziness, or a multitude of other reasons, take your pick.

None of the excuses I make up matter.  I can say whatever I want to appease my conscience.  But the truth is I that I have had a multitude of opportunities and did nothing.  I could have put some effort into seeing if they could become a reality.  But I didn't.

You see, I got comfortable. I quit pushing myself.  I can blame fear, but why?  It's just another excuse.  The fact is, my brain routinely betrays me.  It thinks I'm doing just fine.  It's comfortable.

So now, I need to make a change.  I need to explore a few opportunities that have come my way.  I have to look at myself, and tell that part of my brain to shut up.  I need to go out and start pushing myself again. 

If I want change then I have to let change happen every time I get the opportunity.

Taking Sides

I was walking into the county building today when a lovely young lady asked me if she could sign me up to vote republican.  I kindly informed her that I was an independent, which she politely thanked me for my time and that was it.

Pretty much an unremarkable event in my life today.  But if I put it into perspective with the State of the Union address, then things change.  Now, as far as politics go, I do lean to the conservative side.  No doubt about that.

But why should I have to choose?  What is so beneficial from picking one side of the same coin?  Or the lesser of two evils, depending on which way you like better?  I shouldn't have to pick, and that's what pisses me off. 

I hate getting force fed garbage from both sides because that's what they think I want to hear.  I can think for myself, thank you.  And I sure as hell don't need your talking heads spoon feeding me information to get me riled up because I'm the voting base that will get someone re-elected.

Just mention that your might take something away, or give someone something, and people lose their damn mind.  Somehow we all turn into chicken little and start running around screaming at the sky.  It's especially bad when the news cycle is 24 hours a day.  (Lets not get into the fact that news outlets are for profit corporations that depend on ratings, not the truth.)

So what do I want.  Simple, I want to be able to elect someone who is willing to do the right thing.  Someone who is going to read the research, from reputable sources, and make decisions based on that.  Propose policies based on data that has been produced in a non partisan way.  Someone who can stand in front of me, have a conversation, and tell me I'm right or wrong, and clearly and coherently tell me why.

I want someone who can think.  Someone who's willing to change their views on a subject matter when the facts prove them wrong.  Someone who is willing to stand up in front of people and articulate why that change has happened.  Someone with a backbone, who isn't afraid to not get re-elected if comes down to it.

I'm fully aware that, right now, this is just a naive way of looking at our democracy.  I know that there is way to much money and power involved for me to make a difference.  But guess what, I'm still going to vote in the next election.  I'm going to read up on the candidates and I'm going to try to pick the best one.  Regardless of what party they are affiliated with.

And if we all did that together, then maybe, just maybe we could get things to change. 

Feeling good

I don't know if I mentioned that I cleaned up my diet and started trying to get a little more exercise in a previous post, but I started about 9 months ago.  All I did was change my diet, stopped eating junk food and sugar, and tried to get a little exercise in. 

I decided to do it when I had to get weighed for a physical.  I hadn't had one in a while, nor had I looked at my weight.  Now I knew that I was packing around some extra pounds, I could see it and feel it.  What I didn't know was that I was roughly the size of an NFL linebacker, without the bulging muscles. 

So I started with little things.  Don't eat out, and if you do don't eat fast food.  It wasn't as easy as I'm making it sound.  But I made myself get into a habit, and I started feeling a lot better.

During the whole thing I realized something important about myself.  That I should pay attention to how I feel, and nothing else.  During this whole time I avoided scales.  I relied solely on how I looked in the mirror and how I felt.  It's amazing what your body tells you once you get your diet cleaned up.  So, for 9 months I haven't even thought about a scale.

Until tonight.

The in-laws were weighing bags for a medical mission trip to Haiti.  I decided that now was the time.  I've been feeling pretty well for a while and people have been telling me I look better.  Which is true, I am definitely not as puffy anymore.  So I jumped on the scale.  I was down 23 pounds.

Not that it's that impressive.  People lose hundreds of pounds.  And to be hones I was a little disappointed.  I thought I was down more than that.  Then I remember....I only weigh 7 pounds more now than I did in High School.  Not to bad for 45 years old. 

I never set a weight goal for myself.  I didn't want to fall into the trap of reaching that goal and then falling back into old, bad, habits.  Especially when the first goal I set is what I need to keep.  Just work on being healthy.

So there it is...the secret.  After 45 years I learned to listen to what my body was telling me.  I have to wonder if we'd all be happier if we picked up that little bit of knowledge a lot earlier in life.

Higher Standard

I was thinking about the whole president and "Shithole" comment.  It seems like old new with everything else going on, but that seems to have stuck with me.  It's been difficult for me to be angry and offended by that.  Just last week I referred to a town I worked around as a "Shithole".  And that's inside the U.S.  What's funny is that I've traveled and worked quite a bit outside of the U.S. and I don't really recall every saying one of the places I stayed was a shithole.  Even though they were way worse than anywhere I've been in the U.S.  But I digress. 

Anyway, my train of thought has been coming around to "Why would I hold someone to a higher standard than I hold myself...."  Like I said, just last week I used the same exact language.  So it seems pretty hipocritical of me to say I'm really offended by the presidents remarks.

In comes my wife with the knowledge beatdown. 

So we are sitting at dinner talking about it, and I'm explaining what I'm thinking on the whole deal.  She looks at me and says simply "He doesn't represent you......He represents all of us."  Boom.

I couldn't argue with her logic.  The president represents all of us.  Whether you voted for him or not, whether you like him or despise him, it doesn't matter.  He is the president of our(emphasis on the OUR) country and he is what the rest of the world sees and hears.  

So, I should hold him to a higher standard.  I should expect him to represent myself, and everyone else, with every ounce of dignity and respect we have as a society.  We are all different, and we all value different things.  But I think we can agree on the fact that we're not assholes, not all of the time anyway.  And saying a country is a shithole isn't a very dignified way of describing a place that is home to somebody.  Especially when it's someplace he has never been.

So where does that leave me?  Do I just roll on through life being a hipocrite?  I hope not.  I hope I'm old enough, and humble enough, to realize that what I've been doing doesn't represent me as a person very well. If I expect that kind of behavior from people who do represent me then I guess I should expect if from myself.

Rose Colored Glasses

A friend of mine messaged me tonight and said she had read my blog on failure.  She said it go her thinking about thing in her own life.  The fact that she read it and sent me a message is just amazing.  It's really something special to have someone chat you up about something you wrote.

Anyway, back to the point.  I re-read that blog post and then read how she looked at it.  Her mind went in a different direction than what I had in my mind when I wrote it.  But, the second I looked at how she was interpreting it, the whole thing made perfect sense.  I completely understood where she was coming from.

Of course this got me thinking again.  But this time I started thinking about how every single one of us can look at something and come to an endless number of conclusions about it.  We've all put on a filter to see the world through.  I think we have to as humans, in order to keep our sanity.  It all has to be processed in some way that will make sense to us.

I don't know about the rest of you, but my life experiences are what I end up using for a filter.  Right or wrong, it's the way things are for me.  And I think it's that way for a lot of people.  The really crappy part is that you can't change an experience.  You can move past it, but you can't pretend it never happened. 

Is it ok  for me to judge things based on past experience?  Maybe, maybe not.  Do I do it anyway?  You bet I do.  And I think most of you do was well.  It's almost impossible not to.

So how do I go about changing my filter?  I don't know.  Exposure?  That would mean that I would need to be exposed to something similar to that situation in the past.  Which would mean I would need to seek out a similar situation now.  That doesn't make a bit of sense.

I don't know.  I think some of these things that tilt my views have, and will change with time.  I think I can be a little more conscious of when I'm letting those experiences effect me.

My brain is the one doing it of course.  The question is do I control my brain, or does my experiences?  I guess I'll put some effort into that and find out.

Friends

I made it through another week, and I think it was a good one.  I kept my resolutions about getting up, reading, and watching T.V.  I also learned a new dance step, which with my two left feet is a good day on any week.  I finally finished, and test the water delivery system I custom built for the 1955 travel trailer.  That alone was really exciting.

I had to make a call or two this weekend to a buddy of mine on plumbing questions.  I needed to pick his brain on a few questions I had.  I wanted to make sure I was doing things the right way.  Even though he was out of town, he picked the phone up and talked to me about it.  This is the same man who totally hooked me up with how to put the pecs pipe together.  Loaned me the tools and gave me a bunch of fittings to put it together. 

Another buddy of mine stopped by this weekend.  He mentored me through the installation of the black iron for the propane system.  He did the same thing as my plummer friend.  When I had a question, he answered the phone.  He took me down to the parts store and showed me what I was going to need.  He even pointed me in the right direction to determine what size of pipe I should install.  Oh, and he hooked me up with some gear he had stored as well.

The point here is, I have really good friends.  I have, and have had, a lot of friends throughout my life.  Some were really good friends, and some were more along the lines of acquaintances who were traveling in the same direction as me at that time.  It's funn, I see some of those people and we stop and have a quick conversation.  How are they doing, how's the family, etc.  Standard stuff.  That's how I know.  Nothing against them at all.  I love seeing them, and I'll be happy to see them the next time I run into them.

But I have really good friends.  You know, the kind where you can not see each other for a while, and pick right up where you left off.  Those people that you've shared something with.  They are far beyond acquaintances, more like family.  It's hard for me to explain, but if you have friends like this I don't really have to.  When I'm with these people I don't worry about what I might look or sound like.  I can just be.  It's liberating, relaxing and joyful, I don't know of any other way to say it.

I hope everyone has at least a few friends in their life like this.  If you don't, go find a few.  And to my friends, near and far.....I miss all of you and hope to see you soon. 

And to Dubs, Preston, and Boyd thanks for all your time, knowledge, and help.  Hopefully someday I can return the favor.  You can always count on me when you need me.