Nehemiah Wyant's Web Home

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.

I try and spend time being grateful for the things in my life.  I have spent a lot of time writing about gratitude.  The things I am grateful for are varied.  Sometimes the things I am grateful for are things I don’t have.  I don’t have cancer, I am grateful for that.  One thing that I am grateful that I longer have are expectations.  I am grateful I at least try to have no expectations of others.

For the most part I no long have expectations of people.  Outside of my parents and brother, I don’t have many people I expect much out of.  I used to have expectations of people.  I no longer see any point to that.  

In my mind having expectations of people are nothing but trouble.  When we expect things of our friends, or even strangers we are putting so much of our bias and our attitudes onto them.  This is not fair.   We know very little of what their journey is like, they do not deserve the burden of our expectations.  I simply realize people will behave as they will behave, and it has nothing to do with me.  An expectation of a person sets my brain up for things, things I don’t need.

An expectation is an opportunity for disappointment.  I expect nothing out of our political leaders in this country.  They never disappoint me.  Without expectation there cannot be disappointment.  I just see no point in it.  Having expectation allows for disappointment, but at the same time does it offer any benefit?  I can’t think of much benefit to expectation.  Our actions and responses to the actions of others need not be colored by expectation.  I view this as a more peaceful simpler path of thinking.

I say all this without any negativity towards anyone else.  It has not really changed how I interact with people much.  I simply realize they will act as they will act and it has little to do with whatever narrative is in my head.  I think expectations are partially about narrative.  They narrative we tell ourselves really colors things.  I try and treat things as they are and not as I would like them to be.  I think that is sane.  I don’t think it’s a commentary on another person.  I don’t view other people in a negative light, I just don’t see it to be wise to expect anything of other people.

Thinking we know how people will behave and expecting something is a trap.  We don’t know what is going on their heads.  We know very little about other people’s lives, even people we see every day.  We must also remember that our place in other people’s lives may be far larger or far smaller than we realize.  They might not fulfill an expectation because we are not even on their radar.  Without knowing much about these people and their values, we really can’t create a valid narrative of expectation if we tried.

So much of life is about narrative.  The narrative in our head guides us.  I try and control that.  Part of that is not expecting things and just reacting to what is.  It makes sense to me, and helps give me peace.  I am just grateful I am doing my best to give up the burden of expectations.

Today I have awoken to a beautiful day.  There is peace and tranquility in the land of Indiana.  Last night the forces of good combatted the forces of evil and good won yet again.  The Mighty Purdue Boilermakers have defeated the Evil Indiana Hoosiers in a game of…. BASKETBALL!!!!!!!!  I watched this game before a large big screen tv, bowl of popcorn in lap with yells of jubilation.  Tonight was a good night, and it will make today a good day.  I am grateful that the Purdue Boilermakers have defeated the Indiana Hoosiers.

Gratefulness might not be the right word for Purdue defeating Indiana in a basketball game.  I am glad Purdue won the game, I am a Purdue fan after all.  I am grateful that sports let us be a little tribal and silly.  I think sports wakes up some primal stuff that is stored in our souls.  I think this is a good thing.  Primal things let us feel alive.

Sports are full of surprise and pushing the human limits.  These are both important to me.  It’s good to push ourselves and see others push themselves.  Few of us push ourselves enough.  Surprises are also just so much fun, and sports offer us so many of those.  This is some base human level stuff here, and sports brings it out. 

In a world of digital and pretend, sports are still real.  One team or person squares off against another person or team, then something real happens.  We need a lot more real in this world.  I’m grateful spots gets a little bit of that, along with a lot of fun.

I remember sitting down to watch tv not long ago.  I checked the listings and did not find much that was interesting to me.  For whatever reason I decided I would watch a few minutes of the movie Aladdin.  I had watched the movie as a child.  As I watched I got sucked in by Robin Williams and I watched the whole movie.  The jokes were landing a lot different this time around.  I ended the night thinking I was glad I had revisited this movie.  Revisiting allows the old to become new again.  I am grateful for all the things we can revisit in our lives.

There are so many things in our lives to revisit.  Good movies, tv shows, songs, and restaurants all beg to be revisited.  Sometimes continuing to revisit things makes us like them more.  The more I watch Star Wars movies the more I like them.  I think we should always try and repeat and revisit the good things in life. 

Revisiting anything that teaches us a lesson is useful.  The thing about revisiting thing from our past is that we get to look on those things with new eyes.  This lets us learn new things from the old things.  We can also end up relearning the old lessons we forgot.  I’m just glad we get to go back to so many things.