Category: Happy

Joe Diffie passed away recently from the coronavirus.  His made a lot of country music for a long time.  I stumbled across his music sometime in my youth.  So much of his music had a fun twist to it.  That seems to fit me well.  I enjoyed the humor to his music.  I am grateful he made so much fun music for us to enjoy. 

Music can speak to so many sides of us.  I can enjoy the darkness of Metallica.  I can enjoy instrumental music.  For me Joe Diffie’s music spoke to my humorous side.  I think it’s wonderful to create some art that just makes people smile.  Making music that makes people smile, well that is a legacy worth having and something we can all aspire to with our own art.

Our society is facing the most trying time we have during my lifetime.  Coronavirus is wreaking havoc.  The United States government is becoming more corrupt and dysfunctional by the moment.  The speed of our technological innovation is sitting there as a potential problem as well.  These are just the perils that come to mind at the moment, we face many more.  Even against these challenges we see the glimmers of hope.  There are good people doing good things to fight against these evil forces.  There better ways of living out there, and we might find them.  It is wonderous how adaptable and imaginative that we can be.  I am grateful for the adaptiveness and imagination of the forces of good.

As societies and individuals, we can overcome so many things.  We are faced with great adversities right now, but we can come out on the other side.  The options of peace, joy, and abundance are available to us.  We must however choose these things.  Some of these choices are rather easy, some are harder, but we can make them.  Within us is this ability and imagination to choose many beautiful things. 

My Twitter and Instagram feeds are full of these choices.  People are helping their neighbors and checking in on each other.  People are getting out and being fit and healthy by taking walks, jogging and bicycling.  There are a lot of people out there with the ability to make protective equipment for medical professionals, and they are doing it.  These are all beautiful things, and we are doing them amid uncertainty, chaos, and fear.

Chaos, uncertainty, and fear rarely last forever.  Life will likely get back to something resembling “normal” at some point.  The choices we make then matter a lot. We can choose to keep doing the beautiful things we have started during this virus scare.  We can use our adaptiveness to make things better so maybe this won’t happen again.  We have a lot of choices ahead of us.  I am grateful we at least have a choice and ability to adapt and overcome.

The coronavirus is likely to pass in some time, most pandemics do.  We still have many other challenges that will remain.  If we can adapt and quarantine and overcome this virus, we have within us the strength to do many things.  We can reshape economies to show dignity and respect for all people.  Governments can be held accountable and corruption snuffed out.  As a people what happens to us is partly what we allow to happen to us.  We can choose a beautiful life for ourselves, and a beautiful society for our neighbors.  Our resourcefulness and imaginations hold all the answers.  We have found the answers before and we can find them again.  For these things I am grateful and because of them I have hope.

I break daily from the toils of my labor for lunch and refreshment.  This refreshment is of the mind, body, and spirit.  My lunch routine has grown beyond just eating, its about fueling everything.  Every day I seek to get strong in all things.  I am grateful I have forged this pursuit into a daily lunchtime habit.

My lunch routine is simple.  I drive to the park and park off by myself.  I then proceed to spend some time reading the Bible and in prayer.  I then eat some food from a cooler in my van.  Then I go for a walk, either listening to education podcasts, or in silence.  That is my routine, and it seems as though it makes me stronger in all ways.  I have spent time thinking about each part and dialing it in. 

I go to the park and park way off by myself to do these things.  I don’t want distractions and I want quiet to do these things.  This is my space for doing these things, I feel as though its good to have a space for all things.  This is my space for lunch.

Reading the Bible and praying is all about taking my faith more seriously.  I have not taken my faith as seriously as I should in the past.  So I built this into my lunch habits so that I was at least doing something every day.  A little time talking to God is good, I don’t always pray that long, but this habit keeps me doing it daily.  The same goes for reading the Bible at lunch.  I read whatever I feel like, I just want to make sure I’m touching the Bible daily.  This little bit helps me stay more centered on God, it is just the start of what I should be doing, but it’s a start.

Eating lunch, well eating lunch is pretty simple.  I eat simple foods that fuel me, and that’s it.  My lunch’s tend to be nutritional, and stay focused that way.  I eat a lot of garbage but not at lunch.  Lunch is to fuel performance.

After eating I go for a walk that lasts anywhere from 10 to 60 minutes.  I just walk as far as I feel like.  This gives me some base of exercise.  I seem to think better after getting the blood flowing a bit.  Depending on the day I will either listen to a podcast or walk in silence.

Podcasts I listen to while walking are for expanding my knowledge.  I listen to podcasts about an array of subjects, some business podcasts, some writing podcasts, and some lifting ones.  These seem to be about exposing myself to more ideas and concepts.  I don’t know that I learn a lot of deep things from these podcasts, but exposure is the first step in deeper learning.  Somedays I just walk in silence though.

I think quiet is important, and super important if we are trying to think at our peak capabilities.  Long quiet walks are my best thinking times and where my so many of my ideas come from.  The more I walk the more ideas I have.  I could warrant spending most of the day walking to be honest. 

This might be rambling, but its what I do 6 days a week, Sundays look a bit different.  I have experimented with it and shifted different things in and out of this routine.  It does a good job of helping me address things that are important to me but maybe not urgent.  I am grateful this whole routine is autopilot and taking care of some of these important and non-urgent things.  It helps me keep stepping forward in a lot of ways, it is an easy pace, but I know I keep moving forward with these things daily.

I have taken the last couple days off from work.  I have done next to nothing other than eat and lay around the house watching tv and streams of strongman events.  I am a meathead so I like watching people lift heaving things up and put them down.  20 years ago I would have had to have waited until Christmas Day World’s Strongest Man Marathons on ESPN to see anything like this.  I’m grateful for livestreams and the fact that all sorts of stuff can be watched live.

Watching something live is a special kind of magic.  Combine a livestream of an event with all the buzz on social media and you are a part of an event.  Livestreams are so awesome and I just celebrate all the cool things the let us watch.

Beauty and wonder is abundant.  I find it so many places.

Amish cheese, it just tastes better fresh from the farm.

The hamburgers from the local meat processing plant are the same way.  They just taste meatier.

Blueberries from the farm are the same way.  Fresh has a quality all its own.

A good new song has this same quality.

A new movie trailer too.

Connecting with a new friend for the first time too.

I am just grateful to recognize this awesomeness.

Some days I work.  Some days I am lazy.  I am no different than any other man.  I do the normal things a man does.  Sometimes I feast.  When I feast, sometimes I feast on meatballs.  I am grateful for the feast of meatballs.

I make my own meatballs.  They are nothing special but they are my meatballs.  My meatballs taste good to me.  I have learned how to make them just the way I like.  I am a wise man for dialing in these meatballs.  Be like me, dial in your meatballs.

Much of our existences are a result of our opinions, reactions, and our thoughts.  They shape how we see the world.  These things influence how we experience anything that happens.  Two people can be in the exact same situation but experience it differently.   How we experience things is a free and open experience.  We get to choose how we experience the world.  I am grateful we get to choose the lens through which we view life.

The more we can choose this lens, the more peaceful and positive we can be.  How we view the world doesn’t change the world, but it can change our experience.  It does no good to choose a negative lens, it does not change the facts.  If I am going to experience a thing, I want to experience it as positively as possible.  I am grateful I get this choice, we all get this choice.

This morning I spent about an hour on Twitter ranting about gloves.  Yes the piece of clothing that goes on your hands.  I don’t know that I was all that clever or insightful about gloves, but yes I tweeted about them for a good long time.  It was a rant, a rambling, and once it started in my mind I let myself go with it.  I tend to let myself go with these things a bit more these days than I used to.  I am grateful that I indulge in ranting.

Ranting and being silly is fun.  My brain does it automatically at times.  I see something, and then it starts.  If it is a fun or goofy rant, well then I let my brain keep going with it.  I think it sparks creativity and its fun.  Some people don’t indulge in this behavior, but I do.

I think we need to all do better to indulge in the right indulgences.  We can’t worry about looking cool, we just got to run with things if we want the benefits.  Moderation is lame, and we all know it.  So today I rant about gloves.  This is how I expand my mind.  Now that the rant is complete, I feel more energetic.  I feel more creative as well.  This little side adventure about gloves, well that has me all fired up.  Now its time to move onto the main adventure of the day.

I have Celiac Disease.  This means my diet is limited.  There are many things I have not eaten in the last 7 years since going on a gluten-free diet.  This is not a big deal to me, but I did give up eating a lot of foods I liked.  With the addition of an air fryer to our kitchen, there has been a comeback of sorts happening.  I am very grateful for having access to an air fryer, and the return of the Buffalo Wing to my diet.

Air frying makes it easy to fry a wing without using any flour.  Add some Buffalo sauce and I have Buffalo wings again.  This is really cool to get this back in my life.  This is something I didn’t even know or realize I had missed a little bit.  Getting this back into my diet is a small thing and not a big deal, but it makes me happy.

Small things can make us happy.  Buffalo Wings are one of those things.  Chicken wings are cheap, so is the Buffalo Sauce I add to the wings, but they taste so good.  Cheap easy things that spread around some happiness, those are things we need to seek out.  They are everywhere, and we should spread them and lean into them a bit more.  I might be grateful for Buffalo Wings, but I am also grateful for the reminder that life can be a bit simple if we let it be.

It is hard to know the future.  It is best not to get too wrapped up in an unknown future.  We can prepare best we can.  I have not always prepared the best.  I have sought to remedy that though.  I am grateful for everything I have set into motion to create a better future.

The last couple years have been very hard for me.  I however have been working in silence on a lot of stuff.  I have written a book that should release soon.  I have started research and experiments for another book or podcast or whatever it becomes.  I daily take steps deeper into a fitness world that is brings me unending joy.  I have been busy, mostly I have been putting things into motion. 

None of my projects will likely bring me much return on investment in the immediate future.  I have set in motion things though that should return to me many good things.  There have been times in my life when I had no such things in motion.  This was unwise.  I feel I have gained wisdom and always want things to be set into motion.  Some things will return with gain, some things will not.  It is merely my job to start motion.

That is what I am really most grateful for when it comes to putting things into motion.  The fact that I am creating motion and attacking the future.  I don’t know what will happen, but action creates.  I am happy I can say that I am working towards almost all my life goals on a consistent basis.  I will have fought the good fight regardless of results, I will have taken my shots, and I can smile about that.