Day 70 Bit by Bit

Over 2,000,000. Two million.  Over two million strokes to cross the Atlantic Ocean on a stand-up paddle board.  Over 4,000 miles.

Chris Bertish, is the first person to complete such a feat.  It was a huge goal.  He left Morocco December 6th, 2016 and ended up in Antigua on March 9th, 2017.

Over two million strokes across 4,000 plus miles in 93 days. Alone. On a paddle board.

Day 69 New Beginnings

Yesterday we hit a record high temperature and at the same time the radio stations and the weather forecasters were telling us to prepare for a blizzard.  The prediction wasn't anything new and folks

around here took it to heart.  Even the stores prepped. There was extra firewood and windshield wiper fluid to assist with the anticipated inclement weather conditions.

I had planned for this Friday off, so with all the dire warnings, I was glad to not have to deal with rush hour traffic and snowy/icy road conditions.  I=Only here could you go from motorcycle weather to snowmobiles in twelve hours!

As it turned out, I would have missed rush hour anyway.  The storm came in and along with it some pretty high winds. In the wee hours of the morning, 3:30 or so, the power went out.  It didn't come back on until about 8:00 am which would have put me a couple hours behind schedule if I hadn't taken the day to deal with a number of items.

Day 68 Small Things

Every once in a while I need to remind myself to be grateful.  Not for the large things, because those are so obvious.  No, I need to remind myself to be grateful for the little things in life that bless me.

For example, a young lady at work today received several phone calls while she was in a webinar meeting. After the meeting was over she informed us that she had received a phone call from the same number three times while she was in meeting.

She called the number back and asked for her phone number in the office to be placed on the "do not call list."  The male on the other end of the line hinted that he was with some legal agency and then laughed at my co-worker.

Bad mistake. 

Day 67 Beauty for Ashes

When I have to clean out the fireplace the last thing I think about being beautiful is the ashes. Beauty was the farthest from my mind when I changed dirty diapers. Wildfires have burned my state leaving ugly black mars on the mountainsides and valleys.

Several years ago, a fire burned part of the Mesa Verde National Park. Over 23,000 acres fell to flame. Two years later two more fires erupted. There have been twelve major fires since 1906, some far more devastating than others. 

We drove through the park some time after the last four fires that torched the pinyon pines and junipers.  Scorched trees stood ramrod straight in some areas, burn scars and soot staining one side of the tree. In other areas ground scrub was black. No grasses grew.  The fired damaged areas were desolate.

Day 66 Who Do I Believe?

You may remember the cartoon where the main character has an angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other. The main character is trying to make a decision and is getting "good" advice and "bad" advice. Sometimes in the cartoon the roles reverse and the advice is mixed up and comical.

Joyce Meyer wrote a book, Battlefield of the Mind, and I picked it up again last week.  One of the first lessons I learned, and was reminded of again is that we don't have to let "bad" or negative thoughts take up residence in our mind.  When we do that, we bring ourselves down and start a slide into depression.

We have a propensity to lie to ourselves a lot and when we do we lock ourselves in prison. We look in the mirror and for whatever reason we don't like what we see. We tell ourselves negative things like, "You won't amount to anything," or "You're ugly," or "You're fat," "You're lazy," "You're stupid," "You're not good enough."

Then when negative things do happen, like getting laid off, we use that to reinforce our belief. After all, the cosmos is backing up all those things with supporting action.

Day 65 Isolation

A long time ago, someone called me a "wordsmith."  At the time, I took it for a compliment, and it was intended as such.

Today, however, I don't feel like much of a wordsmith.  In fact, crafting words together into something with meaning seems as far away as Jupiter.  

Who am I kidding? What right do I have to call myself a writer, or anything having to do with smithing words together to make something meaningful and whole and intuitive and illuminating?

There are days when I feel like I am doing everything I can to just tread water. Days where I feel like I am occupying one tiny part of the world and the things I do make no difference in the lives of others.  It's almost like space and time and age and location don't exist, that it is all just some sort of dream world I've conjured in my mind, a place that my thoughts and spirit have gone to in order to escape.