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4.24.2012

Get Your Arse Out of Walmart!

It's funny how we think we know so much about the town we live in, only to discover we knew nothing at all.

We had a lovely, full weekend. On Saturday morning, I got up early6:30!so that Nettl and I could hit our local farmers market. I've never been to one of these here in Stillwater. In fact, I've only been to two in my entire lifetime and those were in California. Why do they have to open so darned early? Anyway, we bought some beautiful salad greens, two batches of asparagus, and some locally grown, free-range, grass-fed beef. I cook so little meat anymore (maybe once or twice a week), I'm going to continue to get it from this rancher. Yes, it costs a little more, but at least I'm not feeding my family "pink slime", growth hormones, and plastic pellets...

4.20.2012

Brain is Fryed

I've been watching an awful lot of Stephen Fry lately. This is what I do when I don't feel well. I watch TV shows on Netflix. Not the usual kind of shows, though. I prefer what Netflix calls, "Understated" TV series" that are more often than not British. And if it's a really good one, I'll watch every episode of every series in two or three sittings...

4.12.2012

Throw the Sob Story on the Slush Pile

There are all kinds of things that detract us from accomplishing the things we want to do, gaining the success we desire, and even attempting the things we want to try. The worst and most insidious of these, I think, is our own sob story.We develop it and nurture it, then we bring it out as if to show people it's not our fault if we can't get off our butts and go for something that's important to us.

You know what I'm talking about. Those slights and injuries that others have inflicted on us. Parents, siblings, classmates, friends, spouses, life itself, and on and on. But the very worst are the bloody stigmata we carry around concerning our childhood. The need to cast blame holds us back more than anything else, yet we display these wounds to prove to ourselves and everyone just why we've failed, why we will continue to fail, and why we shouldn't even try.

It's always amazing to me how many successful and accomplished people rise up from nothing. Poverty, starvation, abuse, illness, and criticism only seem to fire their ambition and their self-esteem while the rest of us go on and on about how our mommy did this, or our daddy didn't do that... Sure, bad things happen to us, but it's what we do with those things that makes us winners or losers. But some people just seem to have an instinct for turning bad circumstances into fuel for success. Their secret is the ability to truly let go of their injuries.

Hanging onto these things doesn't make us victims, it make us martyrs, and martyrdom is a powerfully passive-aggressive, manipulative control weapon. It holds other people hostage, making them accountable for what we are afraid to do ourselves. But worse, it keeps us believing that things that happened in the past have the power to hold us back in the present. It's an excuse and a cop-out, and it's lazy. Let's let people off the hook and do what we want to do with our lives. Let's not continue to die for their sins.

4.09.2012

Simplify

I'm feeling rather minimalist lately. Seized with a craving for less clutter and more space, I began by bagging all of my cold weather clothing and taking it to the garage. I don't have much of a wardrobe, actually. I've never been a clothes horse; the odd new pair of jeans creep in when they're needed, but even at that I only ever have two pairs at any given time.

This need to simplify has taken other avenues to express itself, however. I've begun to write poetry again and this morning I spent over two hours "unfriending" 150+ people in Facebook. They weren't really friends though, just people who fell into one of two categories...