Two Ends Make the Middle

So having stated that I will write every day, at least something, I haven't for the last several days. 
I find that I don't so much have writers block as they call it as I have NOTHING to write.  Mostly, I find myself still going to extremes.  Either my brain tells me that I don't have time to put any of the many, many words in my head actually on paper, or what ever you want to call writing here, or it tells me that nothing of those many, many topics and ideas would be interesting outside my head, so I give up. 
I am tryin to remember that the advise I am trying to follow says it doesn't MATTER if it is interesting to anyone else, and time really isn't an issue because I can control how many words I put down, I just need to write.  As for topic, there is a great big huge world out there to choose from each and every day and I am personally interested in nearly all of it to some degree or another. 

Deep down in my heart I am a sociologist and I really enjoy just watching the people around me (and now that the cyber world has made the whole WORLD my neighbor) and see how they react in various situations.  I am interested to see why each person tends to react somewhat differently to the very same situation. 

I've been listening to podcasts on the EntreLeadership website from Dave Ramsey and is crew to better learn how to do my life, and business.  In one of the sessions he was talking about meeting two different people at the height of the recession.  Short version is that both of them were landscapers in the Nashville area.  One of them came to Dave, distraught and downtrodden because he had lost his business to the recession.  People who were having to cut budgets because their income was being cut, cut out lawn services and he could no longer stay in business.  The second man came in a few days later bubbling and walking 6 inches off the ground because business couldn't be better.  This man was also a landscaper in the very same area.  His answer was that as everyone else got OUT of the business he picked up all the ones they were no longer there to serve and business couldn't have been BETTER. 

I then saw 2 videos yesterday.  One was about a mother who raised a single son.  There was no mention of a father in this video but it was the story of how she raised this boy, did everything for him, cooked, cleaned, washed his clothes, and as he grew up he got other interests and drifted away.  I also, personally, got the impression that there was more,  for some reason he saw his mother as less than worth his time.  As if she had done what she was supposed to do like a nanny or something and he could just almost fire her, so he went off to do his own life.  It showed her sitting at home alone waiting for him to come to see her again and it took prodding from someone outside his family world to push him to come home.  It was a Chinese video I believe as the mother was waiting to celebrate Chinese New Year.  It was a case of "The Cats in the Cradle"  from the mothers point of view from another land. 

The second video was also I believe Chinese.  It showed a father and his daughter.  Again, no mention of a mother.  It showed the father caring for his daughter, reading to her, helping her with school projects, taking her places, teaching her things, walking her to school and picking her up each day in his business suit.  But after he dropped her off at school he ran to work.  His work was ACTUALLY any job he could find, no matter how small it seems to us.  It was interview after interview trying to find a better job, and back to scrubbing dishes in a restaurant, washing windows, washing clothes, and then poof putting his suit back on to pick up his daughter from school and back to the "successful dad" who helped his daughter with school projects and studying and everything else in the evening.  The point of this video was that she had done a paper in her elementary school classroom telling about her dad.  Telling how wonderful and cool and handsome and smart he was, but he lied.  She said he lied because she KNEW how hard he was working to support them and keep them together and to provide for her.  She wanted him to KNOW that she knew and that she loved and respected him even MORE for how hard he was trying.  I am pretty sure that this girl will not go off on her own and not have time for her father when she becomes an adult. 

I constantly see the different sides of how people react to a family loss.  I know how I do it, and I see how others do it.  I wont even go in to that here as it is a doctoral dissertation in and of itself. 

I just simply watch how people choose to face their world every single day as they get out of bed and the differences in the very same situation is as varied as the people laying in their beds. 

I try not to judge right or wrong most of the time, I just try to observe the differences and see what I can take from each thing to better my own world.  Its the best thing to do because quite honestly, most people don't really WANT to know if there is a different, or better, or healthier way to deal with their world.  I am sure that there are several things I could do to make my world healthier but I, myself, have to decide each time if the pain in the beginning is going to be worth the outcome or not.  Sometimes, it is and some times it isn't. 

So today, I am going to continue to judge the EVENTS in my life to see what I can change for the better of myself and those I am in contact with, and what I need to leave alone. 

Happy Friday to anyone who DOES happen to read this.  I hope your weekend is what ever you make it. 

Change of focus

This last week I was listening to an Entreleadership Podcast with Seth Godin.  I have listened to several things by him in the last year,.  He is a really smart kinda guy and I always take something useful away from things I listen to him saying. 

One of the "take-aways" from this particular show was that he believes EVERYONE should have a blog and blog on it every day. 

He does not say that it is for vanity, or popularity each of us should write daily, but for a record of our own path in life.  If you write every day on some topic that is important to you in that moment, over a year, you see whats important to you in life. 

He also says that you will begin to see growth in yourself or at the least places where you NEED growth and you can address that. 

I have also been involved in a Bible study for the last few months that suggests the need for living a simpler life so that I can focus on my relationship with Christ which leads to more compassion for the world around me.  In this study, the author, Jen Hatmaker, points out any number of times where your thoughts are at, the level your belongings are at, where your check register says you spend money, is where the things that are truly important to YOU are at.   As I have really taken some time to sit back and analyze those things, I am not terribly happy with what I am finding.  This Bible study is only going to be the education part of some changes that I need to make.  This is going to be a very long process to adjust my thoughts and feelings of what I am called to be a part of, to mesh with the different thoughts and feelings of those in my closest inner circle. 

The way I am going to be able to make these things clear in my own head is by an on going conversation with myself, in my own head, but written here for my own personal accountability. 

The first challenge in living a quieter, simpler, less cluttered life is to make this time necessary instead of an afterthought. IF I have time to work on getting out the words that tend to stick in my head because it is very obvious to me that most of what goes on in my head is less than interesting to those around me., instead of it being necessary to my own journey, period.