Maybe It Is Time To Start Over

I made some more adjustments to the blog tonight that I think will improve how things work here but I don’t think anyone but me will notice the changes.

It took an hour longer than I expected it to which caused significant frustration because I knew there was a simple way to make the change I wanted but I couldn’t remember how to do it.

It felt like a moment where you search for a word but can’t identify it so you say it is on the tip of your tongue.

Eventually you come up with the word or in this case the setting and you figuratively kick yourself because it was so damn obvious.

For a moment I thought about shutting it all down and was likely heard muttering, maybe it is time to start over.

Thought about how much of the content here is worth saving and whether it would bother me if it all went away. Got a compliment about the partial tale of two liars and a few others recently but mostly it has been silent around here.

Made me wonder if I am making any sort of impression or impact on myself or anyone else.

Got me thinking about the Hebrew class I plan to start and some of the other courses I want to invest in.

Got me thinking about the extra exercise I am putting in and time. There is only so much of it in a day. Maybe it is time to hang the keyboard up again.

Invest In Yourself

Told my son the other day to remember the importance of investing in yourself. You can’t control what other people do or think. You can’t make them go away or stay. You can’t make them do anything.

But you have control over you. You have control over what you do, what you learn and how your respond. Invest in yourself. It will pay off.”

I believe in it. I believe in the value of always educating ourselves and recognizing we’re always growing.

So we ought to take the time to be the captains of our education and to whatever extent we can control, our destiny.

It is part of why I listen to books or podcasts in the car and upon the treadmill. It is part of why you can find me playing Words with friends, chess or other games that require thought.

It is part of why I challenge my beliefs and work on problem solving. I like having an active mind but I also like turning it off sometimes.

That is not always easy.

Sometimes it takes effort to shut it down especially when you have a very active imagination.

That imagination is why sometimes I find myself coming up with crazy thoughts and ideas about what people I haven’t spoken with are doing and or who they are doing it with.

If you could get inside my head at an airport or any other place with people you’ll see/hear me build out life stories about the people I see.

It is kind of goofy, but also kind of fun.

Sometimes in the dead of the night in between the cracks and creaks of the house I wonder if things happen for a reason. I wander outside and sit under a moonlit sky and let my thoughts run where they may and I listen.

And sometimes I find myself feeling like maybe there is something more speaking to me. It is a soft whisper that I can barely make out that suggests that maybe I pay more attention to this or that.

The problem is that trying to focus upon is a little bit like squeezing water in the palm of your hand. Squeeze too tightly and it slips out between your fingers leaving you with a damp trail that provides faint evidence that it was ever there. So I shrug my shoulders and try to apply logic to what I feel.

On the whiteboard that lives inside my head I prepare a list of things and ask if they could have come from coincidence or something more. Sometimes the answer is clearly yes and I think that nothing amazing or unusual has happened because XYZ could happen to anyone at any time.

Yet, every now and then I find that I am unable to just blow things off and I scratch my head because there aren’t explanations for what I experienced. So I have to ask if my mind sees what I want it to see or if maybe there is something more.

Maybe that is true and maybe it is not, doesn’t really matter because sometimes hard and very painful decisions must be made with the hope that things will work out.

That is the beauty of experience. When you have survived every hard day you know you’ll survive the next one and the one after.

And if you don’t well then whatever challenge you were working on will belong to someone else.

That is all I have got for you tonight, morning will come way too soon. See you around.