Striving For Fearlessness

I've been feeling sickly since yesterday. It doesn't seem like a cold, unless the the cough and sniffles are still to come. I just feel totally run-down and all I want to do is lay on the couch all day. While I never enjoy being sick, it's not too bad to have an excuse to do nothing. When I am not sick, I feel like this -



So being sick tunes that down to about 100 tabs. :-) But seriously, I over-think way too many things. I think it comes from from being afraid to make mistakes. If I make mistakes, bad things might happen, and then everything might go to shit. Logically, I know that we learn from mistakes, and all mistakes can't be avoided, and everyone makes mistakes, and blah blah blah. But we all know that logic seldom wins. Emotions rule, and they are fickle little buggers. So when I feel afraid to do something, or to not do something, that fear rules.

We have all heard sayings like, "The only thing to fear is fear itself." I don't know what those people did who only fear fear, but I sure as hell can't figure out how to do it. Maybe it comes from not having very many bad things happen to you. That way you have no fear because you don't know how bad things could be. Or maybe it comes from having so many bad things happen to you that you have no fear left because you have already experienced the worst.

Either way, I must be stuck somewhere in-between, because fear is a frequent visitor. I sure hope I can find my fearless side one day. It would be nice to have a sick day from fear and anxiety without actually being sick.

Missed the Boat

Being back at my retail job gives me oodles of spare time to do whatever my little heart desires. That's the problem. It's not that I can't think of things to do. Ask me right now and I could give you a list a mile long of things I COULD do. I could clean, do the dishes, wash the car, work in the yard for days on end, draw, paint, craft, cook, read, scrapbook, watch t.v., listen to music, go to the store, call someone, make a goal, exercise, plan a trip, look at funny videos on Youtube, and on, and on....... But do I feel motivated to do any of those things? No. Do I have a burning desire to do anything? Not really.

Maybe some people are born with the drive to make something out of their life, or maybe they somehow develop it over time. Either way, I seem to have missed the boat. I am ambivalent about almost anything, and if I try to develop a love for something I usually end up disliking it instead.

Take college for example. A lot of people go into it not totally sure what they want to major in. The general advice is usually to take a few introductory classes, and once you find something you like, you will want to learn more about it, and so you will take the more advanced classes. Not so with me. Sure I liked plenty of the introductory classes. But once I got to the higher-level classes, I quickly got overwhelmed, and learned to hate what I really liked previously.

I don't know where I am going with this other than to say, finding a purpose to your life is not as easy as it seems. The one thing I thought I always wanted will probably never happen, so I am stuck with no Plan B. When people ask me why I don't go back to school, I don't know what to say. How can I explain that no amount of soul searching thus far has produced a drive or a passion for anything? Should I just pick a career out of a hat and go for it? Do I need some kind of mood-altering drugs to make me excited and ambitious? I really don't like that idea since it is my opinion that most drugs do more harm than good. Well, at least I have plenty of time to wait for the ambition boat to come back around. Let's hope that it does.

Long and Tedious

The past few weeks I have been struggling to get a new pair of glasses. Struggling? Yes, struggling. You wouldn't think it would be too hard, and it never has been until this time.

I noticed my eyesight seemed a little worse a few months ago. (Probably from reading all those tax forms. But I also read in a magazine that as we age the muscles in our eyes get weaker, making it harder to adjust them. How depressing is that?) ANYWAY, I have accepted poor eyesight as a part of my life. Both of my parents wore glasses almost their entire lives, so I couldn't really expect to dodge that bullet.

I went through an anti-glasses phase where I would only wear contacts, but that ended abruptly when my contacts starting doing less "helping me see better", and starting doing more "making my eyes feel like they were on fire". I know there are now better contacts out there that don't hurt like hell, but I have become accustomed to the ease of glasses so much so, that when I am not wearing them, I almost feel naked.

That brings me back to my new glasses. I had grown very attached to my old glasses, so I wanted the new ones to be just as great. When you wear something on your face everyday of your life, nothing short of perfection will do.

Mike found a really nice eye doctor whose office is near our work. So I went there and got an exam and everything was great. But then I had to deal with the receptionists. They were friendly, of course, and one of them tried to help me pick out some new frames. But I quickly became overwhelmed when she kept piling frame after frame in front of me and asking me to narrow it down. I wanted to be very sure of something I would be wearing everyday, but I ended up just picking one because it felt rude not to buy from the place that did my exam.

Fast forward about four days, and my new glasses are ready to pick up. I pick them up, and right off the bat, I am not sure if they are right for me. Not to mention, the receptionist just handed them to me and didn't ask much about how they felt. Later that day, I discovered that they where not, in fact, transition lenses like they where supposed to be. So I decide since I am going to have to return them anyway, I might as well get some frames that I like better. I found some at Shopko that I was much more comfortable with, even though they seemed slightly crooked since I bought the floor model. I was confident, however, that the eye doctor could fix that.

The next Monday, Mike takes my glasses in to be exchanged and they assure him that they can get the right lenses and fix the crooked frames. They DO NOT give me any sort of compensation for screwing up the first pair. In fact, they charge an extra $71 for an anti-glare coating that I decided I wanted. "Oh well", I thought, "at least I will finally get what I want."

Fast forward TWO WEEKS. (No more fast service when they have to do it right.) My glasses are ready again and I pick them up, and I can immediately tell they have not been straightened, so I ask the receptionist about it and she says, "I assume they straightened them." "ASSUME?!" I think, "Why can't you fucking make sure you do what I ask for?" Still, I hold it in and try to ignore the feeling since the smiling receptionist and Mike both tell me that they look straight. Once again, the receptionist doesn't ask if they need to be adjusted. She just sends me on my merry way.

Later that day, I discover that my new glasses slide down my nose every time I look down, and I can't take it anymore. I burst into tears, put on my old, comfy glasses, and spent the rest of the day sulking and defeated.

I refused to wear my new glasses or to do anything about them until today, when I finally got out of my funk. I decided to make one last effort and bring them into Shopko to see if anything could be done. Low and behold, a sweet old lady working at the eye center spent about five minutes with my glasses, and they felt wonderful! I was on cloud nine, and the eye center lady might as well have been an angel. I am so relieved, I don't even care much if they look good on me. They FEEL good, and that makes me ecstatic.

Here are a few pictures to break up this long, and probably very boring, story.

My old glasses. (Still my first love.)


The first pair. (Not too bad, but not right for me.)


The final, and hopefully last, pair for a long time.


They will still take a little getting used to, but I am so glad the whole thing is over with. I will probably never return to that very nice eye doctor. Sorry, but your receptionists, and the place that makes your lenses, suck.

Tackling the Jungle

Spring is on its way yet again, and while I am super excited for the nice weather, I am not so excited about what the melting snow is uncovering in my yard. It's not that I have a horrible yard. I have seen much worse. It's just that when I look at my yard I feel like a tiny ant in a huge forest. It needs work. Lots of it.

If I had oodles of time or money, maybe I would have some idea of were to start. I could hire some people to get it to a manageable state, and then keep it up myself from there. But as it stands, I don't have money for that, and my own efforts amount to little more than picking up sticks or cutting off a small branch here and there. That's not going to cut it. I have whole trees that need to go. WHOLE TREES!

Trees seem so insignificant when they are small. You feel like a giant who can crush them at a whim. However, when they get bigger, how the tables turn. Tree can now not only crush you, but your house and car as well. You must bow to their every command, because getting rid of just one branch takes a truckload of heavy machinery. Tree wants to grow roots into your pipes and mess them all up? Tree does that. Tree desires to drop a truckload of leaves in your yard? No stopping tree. Tree wants to take over the entire yard? Tree is now king of the yard.

Trees aside, the lawn is more weeds than lawn. The ground it mostly hard as a rock. There is no secondary water. The pear trees drop hundred of nice squishy pears on the ground. One tree is infested with some sort of bugs. There are piles of debris left from the old owners. And to top it all off, I think we have gophers. I take it back. I do have a horrible yard.

On my days off from work, it is hard to get the motivation to tackle any part of the yard, because it all seems so hopeless. But perhaps if I take it one tiny step at a time, progress will be made. Lets just hope I can chop faster than the plants can grow.

Simple Thought

Work is getting slow at the tax forms job, which means more time for blog writing.....yay!......but a lot less money......boo! I guess life has its trade-offs. I get to be poor and you get to read my inspirational words. Wait a second. I think I got the short end of the stick.

I dislike the saying, "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger." It is totally false in every way. If you have a disease, does it make you stronger? I don't think so. If you get repeatedly punched in the head, does it make you stronger? No way. If you are verbally abused every day of your life, does it make you stronger. I'm thinking no. So why do people always say it? Do they mean, "What doesn't kill you makes you mentally stronger to be able to deal with difficult things more easily?" Maybe. But even that isn't always true. People can get beat down mentally as much as they can physically. A truer saying would be, "What doesn't kill you really sucks and will probably make your life miserable for a while, or even to the end."

I'm not saying all this because I think people should have a negative attitude or give up when life gets hard. I'm just saying that sayings don't usually help. They are over-simplified, overly-optimistic, sometimes false, ways of looking at the world. If you want to make someone feel better, don't give them sayings. Give them help, give them REAL words from your heart or a quote from a beloved author. Before you say it, quotes are not the same as sayings. Quotes can sometimes turn into sayings if they are too simplistic or over-used. But quotes usually have so much more depth and meaning and are more than one line. Quotes come from a thoughtful approach rather than carelessly dropping a one line saying.

All I want people to know is that humans are more complex than sayings allow. Most problems will not be solved with a simple saying. People seem to forget more and more to put thought into what they do. If anyone wanted some advice from me, I would urge them to talk less and think more.

People Kill People

Gun control is a really hot issue right now, so I thought I would put in my two cents about the matter and then people can go back to bitching and moaning about one thing or another. I believe, the less guns the better. See? Right there I lost all the radical gun rights activists and all the moderate ones are already fuming. Hear me out.....or don't. I don't really care. I believe less guns are better because guns make it really easy to kill. I'm sure that's what the gun rights people want, because they have a lot of fear about who or what may be lurking out there that they many need to kill. But I think guns make it TOO easy to kill.

Think about it. How many stories can you think of where someone was murdered, or accidentally injured or killed by a gun? I can think of quite a few. Now, think of stories you have heard where people where saved by guns. Police and military stories don't count, because they are not average citizens in average circumstances. I am drawing a blank. The truth is, if you own a gun, you are much more likely to be accidentally injured or killed by it than you are to be saved by it. And, yes, that includes people with gun training. Even people with training have accidents with guns.

The next point I would like to make is that the government will never take away all guns. I know that is hard for activists to believe, but think about it. What is the government? The people. What do the people want? To keep their guns. If you want to keep your gun, why would you worry that you would take it away from yourself? The government (meaning some of the people) only wants to make it a little harder for people to get guns. That means more background checks, more gun safety training, and more restriction on what kinds of guns you can get. That's all. Now that's not so bad is it?

Well the gun rights activists will point out that the government may somehow get too much power, and then we will all be ruled by an oppressive regime. I'm not too worried about that in America, because the people here would not stand for a government like that for long. There would be guns and fighting, yes. But then we would either restore our fair and democratic government, or there would be anarchy and we would have to protect ourselves from all kinds of terrorists and gangs and evil people who want to take our guns, our freedom, or our lives. In that case, having a gun will solve everything. Not. In an extreme, end of civilization and order scenario like that, I would be much more worried about surviving the elements than surviving the other human beings who want to kill me. Nature is a much more indiscriminate killer than people. I would be worried about learning how to survive off the land without electricity or running water or any modern conveniences. I would not be worried about getting a gun, that once out of bullets, would be useless to me.

On the internet I read a quote by gun activists that said, "If guns kill people, then do spoons make people fat?" Of course spoons don't make people fat. People make themselves fat. The same goes for guns. Guns don't kill people. People kill people. If there are more guns around, it only makes it easier for people to kill people.

Reminiscing

I just did a search for my blog, and I have to say it is kind of cool having my own web page pop up in the search results. I remember the days when web pages were a new thing and I remember thinking that I would never want one, let alone have one. How things have changed. I may only be 31, but it feels like I have been around a lot longer than that. Already, kids are growing up in a totally different world than what I grew up in. Kids today don't know what it's like to not have cell phones or cds and dvds. They couldn't imagine not having cable tv or the latest video games. They are totally surrounded by technology, and I wonder how they would adapt if all that where taken away.

I always thought I would never grow into one of those adults who says, "Back in my day......." But now I believe it is just something that happens to everyone that can't be avoided. I don't know if the past was necessarily better. Some things probably where, and some things probably weren't. But no matter what is in the past, it seems to have a powerful effect on people. It always wants to draw you back into it. Sometimes you remember the happy times and you are sad because they are over. Sometimes you remember the sad times and you can hardly bring yourself to get past the pain.

I have found that it is usually best to not dwell on the past, happy or sad. If you do, you will not fully live, because you will be neglecting the present for something that is already over and can never be again. I used to think about the past a lot before I realized this, and I think my life is better now that I don't let the past dominate my mind.

I have also come to realize in my years of living that change is a constant and cannot be avoided. This may seem obvious to most people, and I guess it is. But I used to spend hours and even days longing for things that where in the past. Once I accepted change, though, it really helped me let go of things that where already gone.

The past will always be a part of our lives as long as we can remember it. It is wise to learn from the past and even to reminisce about the past from time to time. But don't ever get stuck back there, or your life will move on without you.

(I think it is funny that I didn't start writing this post intending to write anything about the past. It just goes to show the tangents that my mind is always taking.)