Knowing the fall-out I may face, I’ll admit it – I miss the fall and winter nights but only because I miss the time I had to write and to read blogs. The summer months are unforgiving when it comes to spare time. I miss the words that used to come so easily and I miss being able to read the words of those I follow.
My imagination used to be ready and waiting as soon as I sat in front of the laptop but recently my muse has been accused of taking vacation and enjoying the summer weather along with the many guests at the resort where I work. The time I used to have to read the many blogs I follow seems to be non-existent and the pond of creativity I had the benefit of floating on is now a dry well of sand and I am stuck making angels in the dust.
But in those moments of creative drought, I have the good fortune of interacting with many smiling faces so all happiness is not lost. The forecast for my upcoming day off looks promising for a day on the couch, laptop in position and hopefully a few creative thoughts will drop like the rain that is supposed to fall on Monday.
In May of 2014, I bought a young Birch tree and planted it in my mom’s memory. The tree is just outside of my living room window and, recently, my brother, sister-in-law and my nephews came over to place the river rocks around the tree that we collected at her celebration of life. Each rock contains a word or two that was written by friends and family to share their memories of our mom.
I have been faithfully watering the tree each day and trying to make sure it thrives in its new home. Last year I had noticed some of the leaves were beginning to yellow. Upon closer examination, I also discovered the tree had become home to a bug that I have never seen before and this particular creature loves to devour the greenery and skeletonize the foliage. Had these pests been named John, Paul, George or Ringo I may have been a little more forgiving, but these Japanese Beetles waged a war that I had sworn to win.
(image credit: walterspropertyservices.com)
I diligently tended to my tree at least three times a day to pick these creatures off, one by one, to rid the poor tree of this unnecessary destruction. Google and the garden center staff seemed to agree that this is the most effective way to eradicate these pesky bugs. I only hoped that I could put an end to them before they put an end to my tree.
My tree blossomed beautifully again this spring but the creatures are back with a vengeance. If anyone is going to Japan in the near future, save some room in your luggage. I would love to send these iridescent insects packing!!
I have never been one to define myself by my generation but the more time I spend just existing in each day the more I realize how profoundly different my perspective is on what this world owes me compared to the twenty-somethings of this new generation.
When I was in my twenties, and even now, I never for one moment thought the world owed me anything. It was up to me to put in the work to earn my place on this revolving planet and prove to everyone that I deserved my spot here. And I have continued my journey in that paragon of reality. But so many of the generation of today feel a sense of entitlement and hope to gain the greatest amount of accolades with the least amount of effort. They seem to expect everything for nothing.
The thought process plagues me and I spend countless hours wondering where this ideology began. Where did they acquire this sense of entitlement? How is it they can feel so exempt from basic human nature as to not strive for achievement and the resounding sense of accomplishment that follows without putting in the work? They have become a generation of people willing to rest on the laurels of others and take the credit for the blood, sweat and tears that they have not emitted. They live in the pampered dog world – not the dog eat dog – world and it makes me fear for their longevity in the authenticity of being a member of the human race.
A sense of attainment is based on hard work. You get back what you put forth. That dog eat dog world promotes the attitude of “survival of the fittest” and those who are deemed fit are those who actually compete. If you are sitting on the sidelines and simply relishing in the victory of the team without playing, you are winning by default.
There are some members of this younger generation who have made it out from under the blades of “helicopter parenting” and are becoming successful adults who are willing to work hard and take responsibility for their own success. But the vast number I have encountered rely heavily on others to do the work for them. A word to the not-so-wise, if your mom calls to get you a summer job your resume will find itself at the bottom of the pile.
To those particular slackers, I say – participate in the outcome of your own journey. You can only blame other people for so long for any supposed limitations before you are forced to subject yourself to a heaping dose of introspection. The only limit in your life is the amount of effort you are willing to put forth to strive for personal success. Life isn’t easy, but the satisfaction achieved when you are successful is well worth the energy exerted to create that success.
Hey twenty-somethings – reality is calling….it wants you to join us.
Stealthily, they weave among the crowds, always maintaining their position slightly below the radar to avoid drawing attention to themselves. They seamlessly blend into their surroundings, appropriately smiling and nodding when they deem a response is necessary, but never actively participate in the live conversation swirling around them. They are the oblivious – they are the relatively small number of people who just – don’t – get it.
By any standards, they would most likely maintain a moderate intelligence quotient, function well at a full-time job and perhaps even procreate to pass the torch of their DNA on to the latest members of the human gene pool. However, in what may well be a fleeting moment of idiocy, they lose their grasp on true logic.
There are websites dedicated to this phenomenon and the stories are, not only hilarious but, astounding. One of my true favorites, which may be a complete fallacy, or not, is a group of friends walking along a beach when one friend cries out “look at that dead bird” and his friend looks up in the sky and says, “where?”. They do walk among us.
This post was not inspired by the nameless, faceless many who have undoubtedly experienced this factual anomaly, but by a phone call to a radio station in Fargo, ND that I had long since forgotten, until now. If this whole call was fabricated, congratulations to the people who thought up this gem. If was an actual call (and apparently it was authenticated as an actual call) this woman truly believes she has the answer to a safety issue for drivers. Please be advised Fargo, ND – she walks among you. (although her name may have been changed to protect the idiot)
After being ignored by local television stations and newspapers, a woman took her cause to her local radio station. In a very decisive and articulate argument, she was very concerned and somewhat shocked that the government transportation agencies would choose such heavily trafficked areas to post the standard issue deer crossing signs. She firmly believes that, after obtaining their passing grades from primary school, the deer would have the wherewithal to comprehend the meaning of the sign and change their crossing patterns to coincide with the location of said signs.
In a moment in which she seems irretrievably misguided, and there were several, she had not only convinced herself but tried to convince the world at large that the deer would heed the wishes of the transportation agency and only cross at the location of the signs. Since she has been involved in three vehicular incidents with these highly educated creatures, her argument to move the deer crossing signs closer to a school zone frightens me immensely. How many children will she hit before the government has to relocate the school children crossing signs to a near-by freeway?
Please listen to the following and weigh in…..do you think this call is real and, if so, has she changed her name and moved to a state where the deer are just as clueless as she is?
The hotel in my brain had been open but every room, on every floor, seemed to be empty. I got home from another 13-hour work day yesterday, opened the laptop and stared blankly at the screen. The lobby in my hotel was lifeless, the elevator was stuck on the ground floor and there was no movement in the confines of my cranium. The hotel in my head, for all intents and purposes, was closed for business. The hamster on the wheel of creativity was dead.
After a much-needed ten hours of sleep, the elevator is faintly humming once again. The front desk staff are present and smiling and the bellman is waiting patiently to assist me with my words. The neon vacancy sign still hums but the ideas are slowly coming to check in and the hotel is back in business. I’m hoping after a few coffee breaks the writing staff will be comfortably ensconced in their suites, ready to work, and the writing hotel will soon be sold out.
I have enjoyed the interaction with other people over the last five days but I will eagerly anticipate the required maintenance being finished at the hotel in my brain so I can hop on the elevator when I get home and reach the penthouse of idioms upon my return.
The vacancy sign of inspiration is flickering because the ideas have begun to occupy the rooms in the recesses of my brain. I’m hoping by tonight the prolific hotel in my mind will be sold out.
It is not often (or ever) that I have put a load of pure crap into a subject line but there is a first for everything. Let’s dispel a myth. The truth really is you only die once, you live every day. And there are those, like me, who believe you live more than one lifetime.
Living is done on per diem basis and can only be defined by how much life you put into your life. We all think that life is about spending countless hours finding ourselves but, really, life is about creating ourselves. Each day we wake up and we yawn. We pull ourselves from the cocoon of covers we have created during the night and we stretch. We take a deep breath to start a fresh day with a fresh outlook. This is not our one shot to live. This is our chance to wipe clean the slate of the previous day and draw a unique plan for a new day. It is our constant do-over. The thought of only living once is a complete fallacy.
Life is an amazing gift. To look at it as a one shot deal is sad. We are afforded countless days to live. We are given a blank canvas to create our own masterpiece and, as we tread through our days, we add the colors in which we find true happiness. We paint the shapes that give us structure. We create the lines that separate the things we wish to keep at a distance and we pencil in the shades to mask the things we wish to avoid. We also have the ability to erase the things that we thought would fit into our portrait but those things just didn’t seem to blend into the bigger picture.
The beauty of our life’s canvas is that it can be recreated. An intrinsic piece of art can always be remastered and designed to portray the life that we want it to convey. The Mona Lisa, had anyone wanted her to, could have had a completely different smile. Our opus is our own. No other person has the power to tell us that our life must follow a set trajectory.
Use the spectrum of color and live your life. Live it every day and live it to the fullest, but live that way because you want to. Believe that your life is your canvas and change the lines whenever you feel the need. Erase the colors and start with a new palette and, while you are splashing those pigments to create a new spectral portrait, laugh in the face of those who think you only live once.
Was I guilty of ageism? Perhaps. But when the senior’s euchre tournament bus tour arrived at the lodge on that fateful Sunday, I was genuinely dreading the three days that would follow. I made an egregious error in judgement.
Admittedly, the tour had not begun well for the 42 participants but the fault was not ours. A slight hiccup in their agenda had caused them to arrive an hour and a half early and we were thoroughly unprepared for the sudden onset of walkers, luggage and upset elders. We did our best to scramble and be as accommodating as possible. I made a witty speech welcoming them on behalf of the owners and staff and my words were met with sullen stares and moderate contempt. It was a bumpy start.
Once we regained control, our momentum increased and we began to get everyone settled into their rooms. I had entered first and once Betty and Rose reached those three stairs Betty took the lead. Once she was at the top, Rose began to follow. Betty reached for the door frame and found nothing but a handful of air. As I turned to look behind me, Betty, doing her best impression of a tree being felled in the forest, fell straight backwards and took Rose out, using her as a cushion for the fall. The two ladies I had escorted to their room had just fallen and couldn’t get up. Thankfully we got them into an upright and relatively stable position and, after many unqualified examinations, we deemed they were medically stable.
The group’s first dinner was an interesting event. Still unsure of their surroundings, many uttered complaints that hung in the air like angry cartoon balloons. There were threats of husbands being called to retrieve them the following morning and the night was punctuated by another woman being hit in the head by a heartily kicked-open kitchen door. In the span of six hours, we had potentially concussed three women.
But then something changed. Over the course of the following 60 hours, attitude and understanding rapidly evolved on both sides. We understood the nature of their initial frustration and they understood the nature of our good will and hospitality. By the end of their three night stay, I was calling them all by their first name and I was truly sad to see them climb the stairs to get back on the bus. There were many hugs and talks of seeing them again next year. I will admit that I was close to tears saying goodbye to these lovely souls.
Perhaps it was the sideways glances I got from Rose that reminded me so much of my mom. Maybe it was that bond of parenthood I have been missing since my mom and dad passed. Whatever the reason, I will be ready and willing to welcome that next bus tour with open arms and use this enlightening experience as a lesson for the future.
I have had a small epiphany today. I call it small because to most it would be a normal occurrence but to me it was evidence of the changing of a tide within myself.
When it comes to life-changing events I have always faced them head on. I react without much thought, relying only on intuition. I don’t allow myself to wallow in the horrible circumstance, instead I am always looking for the next logical step. I give myself pause to reflect after the dust has settled but, during the crisis, I am continually thinking ahead and moving forward, never giving a second thought to the cause but always striving for the solution.
But when it comes to the finer, more minute details of life I tend to fester and over-think the little things. I replay the scene in my head over and over and, after a multitude of scenarios have been beaten into submission in my over-active imagination, I am eventually able to put the proverbial pencil to paper and draw the logical conclusion.
Until that moment of clarity, my mind is a churning mess. I analyse, over-analyse, recreate the scene in a way it never happened. I create dialogues in my head that never occurred and have myself convinced that this miniscule event has become epic in proportion to actual reality.
Personal growth is a journey taken one step at a time and today I took another step. It was a small thing in the grand scheme of my life but one that I normally would have allowed to gnaw on my subconscious until my brain hurt. Instead of allowing the situation to spiral out of control in my alternate reality, I diffused the ticking time bomb before the digital clock even began counting down the seconds. The drama was over before it began and I understood what it meant to take the high road.
(image credit: 5feet20.com)
Perhaps wisdom does really come with age. Or perhaps I am just tired of spending so much time creating scenarios in my head that never existed in the first place. Regardless of the reason, I am glad I was able to teeter on the precipice of discomfort and take a step forward that was foreign to me. That one small step in my day was a giant step on the path of my life.
polysyllabic profundities 