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1007 days ago
I'm not sure what it is this year but I seem to have lost my sense of self. I've pretty much always known what I've wanted in life, what drove me and what stopped me. Lately though I can't seem to get a read on what excites me anymore. One day turns into the next and I can't even muster up the energy to get excited enough to wander out to the mailbox. Even writing about this is hard because I don't know just what it is I need to write! Have you ever felt like the world took a sharp turn in the night and when you woke up you had no idea where you were? That's about how I feel. I grew up in the Midwest in an area too small to be designated anything. I lived next door to a farm. I rode a bike for summer excitement and waded in the creek on hot days with my friends. I was brought up saying 'please' and 'thank you' as well as 'yes, ma'am' and 'yes, sir' and never thought anything about it. There was no throwing the finger or putting your palm up in someone's ...
1026 days ago
Quiet. What is quiet? An order barked out when someone is tired of yelling over the noise of disinterested people carrying on their own discussions? The lack of noise echoing through your home from the nearby highway? A television or boombox that is mysteriously silent? What about the calm that spreads over your body when you finally come to that stage right before you drift off to sleep? Or how about that quiet that seeps into your soul when you've finally reached that point in your life when you no longer strive to be that superperson you always thought you wanted to be. Quiet is a word that many of us seem to crave but rarely find in our busy lives. Why is this? Could it be the ever present cell phones, computers, cars, schedules, and jobs that fill our hours with things to do and places to go? We have more labor saving devices that all the other generations combined, yet we have less quiet than ever. We have less quiet moments in which to use our free ...
1027 days ago
The whisper, a sound that brings more heated arguments to a close than the loudest roar. Have you ever tried to win an argument with someone who insists on believing that they can win simply by screaming at you? The more you try to talk over them to listen to you, the louder and more insistant they become. Fighting them on their level only makes them stronger. They feed on the discord. They figure that if they say it loud enough and long enough you will believe it, too. But the lowly little whisper, just above hearing level, makes them come down to your level. Ever try to maintain anger at a whisper? It's difficult as it takes so much attention to hear what is being said that your body starts to calm down, draining the anger from you. If you whisper to an opponent, you are letting the wind out of the windbag, so to speak. Whispers make you look at a person. It is harder to hear so you watch their face to help decode what is being said. If you maintain a ...
1031 days ago
Nothing is more frustrating these days than to remember a face and not remember the connection to it. I just sat here for several minutes trying to remember a woman that I worked with and I could even recall that her name was Barbara. But putting a place and time to her connection to me left me cursing this thing called 'fibro fog'. I doesn't help that I've lived in many places throughout my life and had to change jobs frequently. That is the life of a military wife, and then an ex-wife. I also worked in the same types of places in more than one town, which makes identifying the where and when harder. These days though I think it's more than just identifying the backdrops to our conversations. It is this confusing in and outs of what used to be called my mind that really gets to me. I open a window to look something up and by the time it opens, I've forgotten what I wanted to research! I sit chewing on it for a while and then go on to something else and bam! ...
1042 days ago
Letting go.... wow, the thoughts that inspires! Letting go of hopes, fears, hurts, dreams, and on and on. Yet when we let go, we sometimes find that we gain so much more than we released. I had someone hurt me very deeply once. I nursed that wound for a long time. Not outwardly but internally I managed to carry that pain for years. It wasn't until someone suggested that I forgive that person, let the pain go, that things started to change for me in my life. It sure wasn't easy. We had a long relationship that I blindly thought was fine, great even. When it ended I was devastated, to say the least. A gaping hole remained where once my heart beat. To forgive this person meant that I had to let go of the feelings tied to him. It also meant I had to first face all the feelings as I, one by one, let go of them. As I took inventory, I discovered a lot of negative feelings for myself for not seeing the problems that had been there all along. In the ...
