Thoughts About Life – Page 5

Life is Resistance

No matter what, the will to fight is ingrained in each of us.

When a child is born, they are usually not a passive bundle being pushed out of the womb. Not only do they struggle and fight for life, but the struggle itself helps the baby’s circulatory system work better. My spouse, who has midwifed fourteen births, says that the baby always fights for life. We are born fighting, and the fighting helps us live.

This also happens to butterflies. If you were to cut open a chrysalis to help the butterfly get out, the creature would not be able to fly. Their body would be large, their wings poor, shriveled things. Only through the struggle of getting out on their own do they gain the ability to fly. The squeezing of the small opening pushes the blood and fluids out of their body and into their wings, which expand during emergence, and harden shortly after.

Chicks struggle to peck their way out of the shell with nothing but their own strength and an egg tooth. Everything depends on this tiny battle. From the first moment of consciousness, the fight is on. Then, it continues in the struggle for food, territory, and breeding partners.

As humans, a lack of struggle weakens us. No weight lifter in the world got strong without lifting heavy things! There are no quick, easy answers. Everything requires effort. Handouts and welfare require effort too – but this time the effort is spent by the workers who pay for the welfare. The old saying is trite but true: There is no such thing as a free lunch. This is true in society, in nature, and everywhere else.

Life, all of life, is a war to be won with deadly consequences for failure. If we don’t fight disease, it takes over. If we don’t fight depression, it kills us. If we don’t continue to learn and grow, we slowly die. Though it might seem so, I am not being morbid – instead I am celebrating the toughness we all have inside. Many of us may not realize it’s there, but it is!

Even in birth, there is no safe space. Every day our bodies are resisting pathogens, bacteria, viruses, fungi. The moment our bodies die, they stop resisting, and the pathogens win. We rot. The very fact that we are still alive means we are winning the fight for one more day.

What will we do with our victory?

via Daily Prompt: Resist

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/resist/

I’m hopeful in spite of everything…

Thoughts About Life

This year some bad things have happened, quite a few of them, really. We’ve lost beloved performers, we’ve heard some truly odious lies told by politicians, and the national media has done its usual job to try and twist our perceptions outside the realm of reality.

Some good things have happened as well. For me, I have had some personal successes, and kept chipping away at a couple personal challenges that have galled me for years. We as internet users continue to reap the benefits of parallel communication so we can get an idea of what’s really going on, no matter what the media might say. I have improved my art and this blog and I’ve published two books and two short stories this year. I’ve also dipped my toes back into traditional media and had one of my drawings published in a magazine, so that’s a great thing to remember for me.

It’s been a mixed bag but there’s hope. Some friends of mine have revealed to me that they are terrified of what’s going to happen because Hillary didn’t win – to me there’s a glimmer of hope because she didn’t. I didn’t like her opponent that much, but when you get past the media lies he’s not quite the ogre everyone seems to think he is. So I have a little room for hope in politics. At least our current Anointed One won’t have the chance to catapult the US into World War 3 and make energy so expensive no one can afford it.

I take my hope in small doses. For another example, right now I make $2.79 above minimum wage. Come the new year, I’ll be making $0.79 above the minimum wage, and I’ll have to deal with higher prices and such as businesses find ways to pay their employees up to that rate. I work at the lowest paid call center in the city. But, there’s hope! Because I moved to a place that’s cheaper to live in, has lower utility bills, and has the most awesome landlord I’ve ever even heard of. I feel bad for all the families who will have to tighten their belts even more, but at least I, personally, will have hope, even as I watch my dollar grow weaker.

My books are starting to make a little money, so there’s a glimmer of hope there too. I’ll keep on writing, and drawing, taking pictures and doing what I do, and who knows? Maybe my audience will find me. Hope springs eternal. The important thing is, if you want to have hope, never give up, no matter what you do. If you stop, you can always start again.

As Winston Churchill said,

“Success is not final, failure is not fatal, it is the courage to continue that counts.”

via Daily Prompt: Hopeful

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/hopeful/

Finding a Place called Home

Thoughts About Life

From early teenhood, I yearned for the desert.

I wanted heat, dryness, cacti all around, sweeping vistas, sand dunes nearby.

Though I loved beaches, forests and water, I wanted something decidedly other – and made half baked plans to move someday during late night talks with my father.

I lived the first thirty years of my life in a coastal environment. Webs grew between my toes. I watched the state bird, the slug, crawl by. The state flower seemed to be mold. The green was pretty – all that green – that grew everywhere, including on the rubber work of too-long parked trucks, window sills, and under beds. I couldn’t smell the rain though it was everywhere.

Tragedy hit. The American economic downturn forced people out of their jobs, skyrocketed the prices of gas, and outsourcing was rampant. I lost my first house, a 110 year old place that I’d thought would be home.

We went on the road, my partner and I, packing everything we owned into a Hyundai Elantra. We lived rough in Nevada for a month and a half. Finally, the decision was made to head south, for frost was forming on our pillow and it was bitterly cold in the Blackrock Desert.

We moved south. Driving into Arizona, I felt an odd sense of welcome as I glimpsed my first redrock. I began to feel at home.

We camped in a backyard, I got another job, eventually an apartment. It was beautiful. It was nearly home. Hard work happened. Lots of it.

After six and a half years we found another place – a little rowhouse, in a quiet neighborhood filled with pine trees and eucalyptus, still with a view of the Catalinas that I love so well. There’s cactus and heat, there’s sunshine all year, I don’t miss the damp at all. There’s monsoons in the summer and I finally know the smell of rain.

We found our home.

via Discover Challenge: Finding Your Place

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/discover-challenges/finding-your-place/

Anticipation Grows Again

Thoughts About Life

Anticipation is definitely something I’ve felt around this time of year. And who has more anticipation than a young child? When I was little, Christmas was one of my favorite days. I’d count down to it, plan my present giving strategy, maybe practice my lines for the yearly pageant. I’d lay awake nights watching the beautiful Christmas lights on the tree through a myopic fog that made them look glowing and mysterious, rather like this photo.

Growing older, I’ve tried to learn to uncouple anticipation from expectation, and thus, disappointment. Oddly, I’ve found a small glow of anticipation for the holiday season again. It’s only been made possible by studiously ignoring all the glitz in the stores, the over inflated artificial hype. That’s easier since my TV turns on only occasionally and I haven’t watched even one movie in quite a few months. Commercials are my bane and I avoid them, the only ones I hear are from the radio.

With the reduction of the pressure of commercialism, I find that there is still a soft little place in my heart that I can leave open to anticipation. I think about finding something nice to do for one of my coworkers, who seems rather lost and unloved. I quietly plan a cookie baking day, so I can invite my neighbor over, so she, my spouse and I can bake cookies and I can teach her to bake bread. The plan is to distribute small packages of cookies to all my close neighbors. I think, “maybe a few strings of lights to celebrate the Winter Solstice would be nice.”

Slowly, gently, anticipation grows again. The holidays start to be about people I care about and doing nice things for others, as well as enjoying good food and fun times. I remember being that kid who used to look at the Christmas tree through a half open door.

via Daily Prompt: Anticipation

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/anticipation/

Convincing one cat to eat with relish

Thoughts About Life

It can be pretty hard to convince my cat to eat.

She has this habit of liking a food, eating happily for a few days to a few weeks, then deciding she hates it.

Lately, this even happened with her favorite type of treats!

Mixing a little Meow Mix kibble with a bit of water seems to be the best thing that she’ll reliably eat but that she eventually get tired of that too.

Interspersing this with Sheba pate seems to have the best effect but not even that is a guarantee.

We’ve tried so many things! All kinds of Friskies, even the odd flavors like cod with cheese and bacon. Meat only foods. Grain free foods. Organic foods. Broths. Bisques. Purees. Bits. We’ve tried it in a blender because we know she has trouble with her teeth. We’ve tried it in single use cans so it’s not too cold to smell. We’ve tried withholding food for a short time to let her get hungry. Not for more than part of a day, of course – it’s bad for cats to fast.

In the final analysis – what do I catch her eating, with relish, almost every time?

A lettuce leaf.

Silly cat.

via Daily Prompt: Relish

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/relish/

Sincere Pumpkins

Thoughts About Life

Does anyone remember Linus and his sincere pumpkin patch from A Charlie Brown Halloween? It also showed up in the Peanuts strip sometimes.

I loved Peanuts, especially Snoopy’s antics, and the older I get the more I like Linus. He’s so thoughtful, and, well, sincere. He’s what I think of when I think of the word sincere, as a matter of fact.

For anyone who didn’t watch the show or read the old comic, Linus was a little boy who always walked around with his ratty old security blanket. He had this personal myth that on Halloween night, The Great Pumpkin would rise out of the sincerest pumpkin patch around and bring candy to all the children.

My question is, how do you measure sincerity in a pumpkin patch? Is it the quality of the soil, the love of the gardener, the care by which the pumpkins are turned, the size and ripeness of the fruit? If I had a pumpkin patch, I think mine might be very sincere. I’m a little to old to sit all night waiting in it, but I can still recall the chidlike wonder of hoping for something that was completely impossible.

As I think of Linus and his blanket, his quiet belief in things impossible, and his massive knowledge of classic literature, I feel myself grow a little gentler, more patient, and more willing to understand others.

I find that thinking about the question is more valuable than finding the answer.

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/sincere/

Photo by Lenore Plassman

via Daily Prompt: Sincere

Versatile Blogger Award

Thoughts About Life

It’s been an amazing day for me. Last night I was unexpectedly awarded this, and this morning I found another kind blogger had awarded me the Sunshine Blogger Award too! I want to give them both the attention they are due, so I’m acknowledging both in separate posts.

Thank you very much, Anne J, for giving me this award. I really appreciate the support you have given me and I think your blog is awesome. You are a great photographer. Readers, her blog really is great – you can find it here, at Food-Travel-Tour.

My Answers to the questions:

Why I started blogging

I’d wanted to blog for a while but I could never really think of anything to say. Then a site called Bubblews came along, and at the beginning it paid people a penny a view, like, and comment. I made about a hundred dollars from that site, over a couple of years, and eventually things went downhill and the place closed their doors. However, the promise of a small payout kept me writing, two or three little posts a day, and that got me into the habit.

Then I started a personal blog – mostly with the posts I’d saved from there. It was pretty forgettable, really. But I learned and it grew. I’m still learning. I found my question that needed to be answered, put some focus into the blog. I’m going to keep on making it better until blogging goes the way of the dodo bird.

Seven random facts about myself

I once took my notes in an art history class with a bamboo dip pen and bottled ink.

I soloed an airplane before I drove a car by myself.

I lived for a month and a half in the Nevada desert, in a tent, with my partner and two cats.

I really like hummus on dry ramen block.

I wrote an entire novel between calls at a call center, then published it.

I started reading at two.

I didn’t start watching TV till I was six.

Nominees:

The blogs I have chosen for recognition all have something valuable to offer. They are a varied offering, and each blogger has shown versatility in their approach. I’ve found valuable information, instruction or amusement in each one. If any don’t like awards or find that they are too annoying or cluttering, please feel free to ignore this nomination, but I hope you accept my sincere admiration.

Cooking With A Wallflower

Drawing Back the Curtain

Art Is Not For Sissies

All Thee Above

Thoughts With A Dildo In Hand (Happy Anniversary!)

The Year(s) of Living Non-Judgmentally

Memoir Notes

Cale’s Mom

Rules for the Versatile Blogger Award:

Thank and link to the blogger who nominated you.
State why you started blogging.
State 7 random facts about yourself.
Display the award badge in the post.
Nominate between 10-15 people.

A tale of attempted murder – at work!

Thoughts About Life

Or, “The Hammerslayer strikes again.”

No-one official wants to talk about this story, though it’s absolutely true, and it took quite a bit to uncover the details. It seems there was a murderer working at my job for a short time and she almost killed again.

I’m going to share the events here, but not the names and such. I’ll give enough clues so that an enterprising person could dig them up but I don’t want to reveal much in case there’s an ongoing investigation. If someone, such as the press wants to talk to me, they can feel free to send me an email in private.

When I was little, I thought detectives were cool and always wanted a real, live mystery to solve. I never did though, so I was mostly left polishing my proverbial magnifying lens. After thirty years or so, I finally got a real one. I’m friends with the security officer who watches the parking lots at work. One evening, she told me “hey, I heard the Hammer slayer got out of jail and killed her husband!” or something very close to that. She let me know she didn’t have all the details yet, but the cops had definitely been there, on a recent Saturday, and somebody had been hurt. She didn’t know much more, but she wanted to look into it.

Wow! I thought. A killer working at my very own place of employment? Who got out of jail only to strike again? It was too good.

I started digging. I questioned my coworkers, the other security officer who had been on duty that day, checked news sites, checked police records. I found precious little. I managed to gather a bit though. From the security officer who saw it, I found that there was a car accident that happened near my job, on September 3 of this year. Police, fire, and ambulance were there, and it happened around 3:30 in the afternoon.

Later investigation showed no damage to the street, curb, or bridge it happened on, indicating that the collision had to be between two objects on the road, not a car and something on the side of the road.

I also learned that the Hammer slayer was a real person in Tucson – who had been convicted and sentenced to 16 years in prison, about 17 years ago. She had killed the pregnant female friend of her husband out of suspicion that he had been cheating with her. She had, of course, used nothing but a hammer.

Tonight, I heard the full story, from a supervisor who works in my department – and who also knows people who saw the incident, and has close ties to others involved.

It turned out that the Hammer slayer had indeed been released from prison. She’d somehow been hired here, despite her record. She was luckily in another department. Ironically enough, she had been working customer service for a major home improvement store! She’d also remarried, to a man half her age who at one point worked where I do, as well. Eventually he quit or was fired, and was caught trying to get into the building a week or so before the incident. I spoke to the guy who tried to block him from coming in, then got him thrown out.

Finally the whole story came together. On September third, just a few weeks ago, this Hammer slayer person allegedly crashed into her husband’s car right near work. Evidently she thought he’d been cheating on her. There were multiple witnesses. She was arrested on the spot and her husband escaped with a broken leg. Currently, this woman is now in jail and awaiting trial. Human Resources and management are still trying to figure out how she was hired in the first place. They suspect she used false information when applying.

As a final twist on this strange tale, it turns out that the Hammer slayer, during the time she was at my workplace, was on the team of a supervisor who had had actually bought the house the murder happened in!

I notice with interest that no news agency has picked up this story and I still can’t find anything in public police records. This tale is too odd not to be told, and so I share it with you. Somewhere inside, a small detective is rather satisfied with herself.

(Note: though I’m confident that the information I’ve uncovered is true, I must report it as hearsay, because I don’t have physical evidence and because the police haven’t yet publicized the reports.)

Your Dream Hobby

Personal Growth, Thoughts About Life

Is there a hobby that you’ve always wanted to try but never thought you could do it? Something you want to do but don’t think you have the time, space, or money for?

Sometimes it’s fun to think about what we’d do if we could do anything. Then, at least, we can possibly think of something else to do, that scratches the same itch but isn’t quite so tough to get into.

Some “dream hobbies” are simply impossible. Like orbital skydiving if you’re already 85. Some seem impossible but aren’t, really. For example, Teddy Roosevelt was once told by his doctor that his heart was too weak for vigorous exercise so he ought to take it easy. Instead of taking a desk job like he was advised, he climbed the Matterhorn soon after. Now, if you have legitimate medical reasons not to do something then that’s understandable, but sometimes those reasons aren’t quite as immutable as we think.

However, this article is about fantastically impossible hobbies that are just fun to think about. Mine is falconry. I’d love to learn the ways of raptors, fly them, befriend them. Maybe do some education in schools, or get a job chasing off birds at an airport. Another “dream hobby” is raising Akhal Teke horses.

What would make me follow those goals? Enough land to do them in!

Do you have a cherished dream that you know won’t happen? What would it take to make it happen?

Is there another, lesser form of that dream that you could do?

Daily Prompt: Youth – Do You Feel Young?

Art of Womanhood, Personal Growth, Thoughts About Life

via Daily Prompt: Youth

I’ve heard it said that you’re only as young as you feel. There’s how you feel in your body, of course. Do you feel creaky? Limber? Pained? Strong? Since starting to exercise again, I feel younger physically than I did a year ago. Even six months ago, I felt sluggish and my back hurt most of the time. Amazing how much difference even twenty pounds can make. Even though I’m still in the obese range, my blood pressure is lower, my back doesn’t hurt as much, and I feel younger. It makes me want to lose more and become stronger. Exercise helps me shed my premature age.

Youth is a mental state as well. You can be naturally young due to age, you can freeze in time at a certain point, perhaps sixteen or twenty, and not age from there. You can be eighty and enjoy a second childhood – whether from dementia or enlightenment. I aim for a conscious maturity, though I never want to devolve into ossification. I stay active, mentally and physically. I want to be like the willow, strong and supple throughout my life.

How old do you feel?

How old do you want to feel?