Friday, June 13, 2008

when is it?

When is "Talk Like A Pirate Day" this year? September something or other?

Wednesday, June 4, 2008

6/04: Day 10 (a gift to myself, and those in my past, if they choose to accept it)

6/04: Day 10 (a gift to myself, and those in my past, if they choose to accept it)

All things are (like poetry) subjective, open to personal interpretation. And all things have value, even if only to us.

My job, to most, is a crappy job. Admittedly, even to me at first, it was a crappy pointless job. But I've come to enjoy it, a lot. I adore my bosses. And I am, honestly, honored to know that they have such implicit trust in me to take care of something that is so deeply important to them.

No, I'm not going to get rich by any means. Not financially anyway. But my life has been enriched by having these people in my life, by having these experiences with them. That sounds silly to a lot of people reading this, I know it does. But to me, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, and each of us can choose how much, or how little, to take away from the opportunities in our lives. The choice is ours. I choose to appreciate everything.

Even, in retrospect, most of the negative situations I've experienced.

And I'm sure that eventually, I will even come to be thankful for the negatives that I currently still harbor resentments and bad feelings about. Maybe, if I try hard enough, I will even find some sort of silver lining surrounding the deaths of my children. It is just a point of getting myself into the right place mentally to examine things objectively enough to find the lessons I'm supposed to learn.

But the other side of this philosophy is realizing that sometimes, those interactions were not for me... that those lessons may not be mine to learn, but that I am simply, unwittingly, sometimes a part of someone else's opportunity, some one else's lesson.

So today I am making a heart felt attempt to find those lessons, to be grateful for the things I've been through, for the sake of who they have made me, and let go of them so that the other people involved can learn, if they so choose, from those experiences we have shared.

I feel that it is important, in order to allow that to happen, for me to put aside my resentments, and forgive those that I feel have wronged me. I am starting right now to think of them in terms of, not how they negatively impacted me, but how I may have, hopefully, positively impacted them.

Monday, June 2, 2008

What do I want?

As you know, I recently signed up for the 29 days of giving challenge at 29gifts.org. I filled out my profile... name, location, why did you join, what do you want... wait... what do I want!? Seemed a little odd, it's a giving challenge, what does that have to do with what I want? It made me think of all those times my mother would tell me that according to the bible you receive tenfold (or is it 100? I can't remember anymore) what you give to the church, and how often I heard people say that they tithed in hopes of receiving something in return... It seems however that the basic concept is that we actually receive when we give, that the giving, in a way, IS receiving... anyway. It's a question I've pondered for a week now. What do I want?

Money enough to pay the bills without such a struggle. Enough to get every one's glasses and have enough left over to replace my own worn out eye-shredding contacts that I've worn FAR longer than their 2 week shelf life.

A little house with a round porch and a bay window looking out onto the ocean.

My children to be happy well adjusted adults who define success in terms of personal growth and generosity...

Cheap gas, super models that aren't so damned bony, world peace...

No.

What I really want is to waste ink.

To put pen to paper and listen to the shuffle of the heel of my hand as it dances across the expanse of an empty notebook. To rip out one sheet and see the residuals of yesterday's words on tomorrow's page. Blogging seems so impermanent. Sure, if my computer crashes today, my blog will remain. But what happens if Google is the next lucky recipient of one special delivery jet airliner? We are a nation of people that have learned to accept that all things are disposable. That nothing is ever lasting - we've finally come to realize that even the planet on which we live will not be around forever. What will be left of us in 50 or 100 years when blogging fades like all fads do, when the Internet has gone the way of 8 tracks and 16mm film? When Cds and DVDs are as outdated as the floppy discs we saved school reports to in grammar school? When we die, our grandchildren will not rifle through our bedside stand and find scraps of wisdom scribbled on napkins and memo books. There will be no shoe box filled with our poetry on the top shelf of our closet, no journals filled with daily observations under our beds.

Yes, what I want to do is waste ink on crappy poetry and crappier prose. I want to scribble nonsense on napkins and leave it as my legacy. I want to record me in writing, if for no better reason than egotism. I just want to waste ink.