Month: January 2024

Be still, and know that I am God.

“Be still” I try to be still but my mind and body betray me. My mind is a constant train wreck, there are always multiple streams of thought competing for limited resources. This is great during the work day when I have multiple issues to deal with but at the beginning of the day or the end, when I need calm it does not come there is always the clamor. Then my body betrays me as well, aches and pains to start with, then the ever-present “essential tremor”, (an interesting bit of trivia is that there are two types of tremors that are not associated with specific medical conditions such as Parkinson’s’ disease, the essential and familial, the familial is an inherited tremor and the essential is just a crap shoot of birth.) Needless to say, being still is not something I have much success in.

“And know that I am God” is a very simple statement and yet such a deep well of thought. I stumble over this, and the thoughts that fill my mind feel like they block out the voice of God. God could be trying to talk to me right now and the constant clamor between my ears defy my ability to hear. If I cannot hear God, how then do I discern what God wants me to be doing with my life? I am not ashamed to admit a certain amount of envy of those who hear and understand the voice of God. I wonder could that be part of the problem, I covet what others have and I feel like an outsider when they discuss their relationship with God.

So all in all it is a conundrum of an existential crisis that I battle with every day. At the end of the day, it is probably just me overthinking every aspect of my life, the enigma that I juggle each day, well one of the enigmas that I juggle.

I have started strength training, I figured now that I am fifty it would be a good time to take some of my health a bit more seriously. The hard parts are staying motivated, getting up early to work out before my day starts, and the pain. I know it did not happen overnight, putting on weight and getting out of shape; just as I know that I cannot get back in shape overnight. Oh but the pain, my legs are in bad enough shape without all of the muscle aches I am now feeling and I am sure in the morning they will feel so much better after I add more weight to my lifts.

The sad part is how weak I have gotten over the years of working in front of a computer and the posture issues I am dealing with. I am contemplating expanding my workout to corrective exercises and stretching to fix some of the imbalances that I have going on. The trick is though I do not want to set myself back by over-training or causing any new injuries, it is hard enough to work through my existing issues such as nerve damage, bad knees, and top-to-bottom back issues with arthritis and scoliocis. It is all good though I just have to take it one day at a time, 5 lbs more each time, unless I hit a plateau, and then a few workouts pushing the same weight until it gets easier and I can move on. The upside is the weights I am lifting are normal for a beginner and a novice so I am happy with that.

Am I manic or coming down, it is so hard to tell. I have so many things running around in my head at night as my medicines wear off that I am not sure whether I am coming or going. I am paralyzed by indecision or lack of discipline. Or is it just a lack of planning, I want to learn multiple things but I am overwhelmed by the many different directions and starting points from which to choose.

This is the most difficult part of self-study whether you are off-kilter or completely together, deciding on a course of study. I have decided that I am going to start my art training by finishing an online course that I purchased several years ago, it is a 3-month course of study I just have to commit myself to working on it daily for at least an hour. My guitar lessons will center around warmup exercises and then work on playing Blues guitar until I master it then I will reevaluate the next step. Then of course there is the personal development training I am pursuing to sharpen my skills for my day job.

Now the hard part, working all of this into my schedule and ensuring my responsibilities are also planned for as cooking, dishes, laundry, etc do not do themselves. No one ever said life would be easy. So each day I will strive to make progress on my goals.

Blank pages, how much potential they hold.
Upon them new worlds can bloom, stories unfold,
art can come into existence, new theorems can be born,
philosophies, musings, questions, and answers.

Blank pages, how much fear they hold.
Great yawning caverns, holding the author or artist at bay,
taunting the possessor, dare you touch me with marks or words,
knowing that once they take that first step the spell is broken.

Blank pages, how mesmerizing to stare at before you.
Each sheet is naked, daring to be clothed in words, symbols, and shapes.
What of the person looking upon them, what will they put onto those pages?
Joy, love, peace, perhaps. Or something darker.

It is in the darkness of my mind,
that you illuminate my dreams.
My thoughts lay everywhere,
piles of scribbled scraps deteriorating.
Maybe in and amongst the piles
there is a thought worth sharing.
Mostly they are the ravings,
of an unsettled mind crying out.

It is in the darkness of my mind,
that you illuminate my desires.
Too many failed pursuits
wheels spinning in the mud.
Cold and lonely, hiding in the dark
desires left along the road.
Mostly they are the desires of a young man
tossed aside to make room for reality.

It is in the darkness of my mind,
that you illuminate my love.
Most say love comes from the heart,
but it is the mind that builds connections.
Without connections and common ground,
love is just an infatuation built on sand.
Mostly love is an intimate familiarity,
it is two souls intertwined illuminating each other.

Work-life balance is my personal goal for the year, I write this while sitting next to a book that will help me with work as well as a book to help my spiritual growth. I ponder whether that is balance, reading a non-work related book for every book I read to improve my skillset for work. I guess these would be considered “New Year’s resolutions” as I am working on multiple goals to help balance the scales between work and home.

Here are the goals I have set for myself
1. Work on my spirituality through prayer, meditation, reading, and self-reflection
2. To write more every week, I may have to break out a book that walks through writing every day and helps with creative thinking.
3. To draw every day to get to the point where I can create art worth selling. Who doesn’t like another stream of income?
4. To learn either a new song or scale on the guitar each week.
5. Lifting weights consistently and building up my strength. I am sticking with the big 3 for now Squat, Bench press, and Dead lift. I know progress is not a linear increase but will include many plateaus and resets and I am ok with that.
6. Read more, I have quite a few books on my bookshelves as well as in Kindle that I want to get through.

So, that is my plan to attempt to balance the scales and also to improve my life in a positive way. I expect that some of my writings will find their way here as this is my outlet for me to express my thoughts.

When a politician peddles lies that an election was stolen from him, incites insurrection, and still has a chance of being president again. When Senators and Representatives are too afraid to stand up to their party without fear of death threats against them and their families. When this has now become the new normal civil discourse has been replaced by wholesale hatred and accusations of being traitors for disagreeing with the opposition. The party of “don’t tread on me” has no qualms of treading on the rights of others who are different from them.

With all of these anti-American, anti-Constitution, fear-mongers trying to cement their hold on power by purging voter roles, gerrymandering districts to dilute the power of non-whites, and changing laws so that electors can usurp the will of the majority of voters and play kingmaker on their own terms. We have truly lost our way in this Democratic Republic, each day takes us closer to the possibility that we will fall into oblivion. It is heartbreaking that the next election could spark a new civil war as the pompous ass of a former president is already crying wolf that the election will be “stolen” again and his base is in lockstep with him. Just sad.

Plain old Blue Bell Homemade Vanilla, Chocolate chip cookie dough, Peppermint bark. Or Dairy Queen Blizzards, Sonic Blasts. Maybe just a milkshake or a Frosty from Wendy’s. I have a weakness for Ice cream and when I stress eat, ice cream is my go to. The problem is I am stress eating way too much, and my anxiety medicine can only help so much. I realized this week that the cravings are similar to the cravings I have for cigarettes despite having quit 15 years ago. So I have determined that now I have to quit eating ice cream, especially when a half gallon is 9 dollars and I can get through that in 2 days or even 1 when I am really stressed.

I know this seems like a pretty insignificant addiction however, it makes me nervous to have the same type of cravings. The lack of self-control I exhibit is unnerving. So I will have to go cold turkey to break the habit. If it isn’t one thing it’s another, God never promised life would be without trials and tribulations.

That is how I feel today, lost and wandering along under bleak skies, threatening to unleash a torrent of rain to flood the earth beneath my feet. When the sky does open up, I struggle through the mud carrying my burdens, I feel I must keep them dry and not let them down into the mud. Deep in my heart, I know that I must lay my burdens down before they drag me down into the depths, I just do not know how or where to start. Instead of crying out to the Lord, I move on in silence not wishing to burden the Lord with the baggage I carry.

It feels like a lifetime ago that I was able to pour my heart and soul into my writing. I have been worried about how others would perceive the writings I place on my blog, part of that was rooted in long-standing desires to be accepted as I am but flooded with memories of rejection early in life. I was the person in school who just didn’t ever fit into any of the cliques, I walked on my path which was not necessarily the best path. I learned to build up walls around my emotions and thoughts. I got so good at building walls and bearing my pain in silence that it became second nature. Even today I just slip new pains, emotions, and frustrations into the walls and slap the spackling over with a smooth motion.

The problem with haphazardly built walls is you have to keep repairing them so they don’t fall. I look around at the walls I have built and know they cannot continue to stand, I fear the day the walls completely crumble especially since I have been battling anxiety daily for months. I know the different life circumstances that are driving my anxieties and the fear that all the walls will collapse and I will have an emotional breakdown. It is not a good position to be in as anxieties pile up on top of each other and anxiety leads to more anxiety.

How long can a person bottle up grief, pain, heartache, disappointment? How does one unburden their soul completely? Some people make it seem so easy to dump all of their problems and move on but that isn’t me, I feel like I must bear the burdens of my soul into eternity. I have to hold it together because I have a family to support, and obligations to meet and so I must keep a handle on my anxieties and prop up my walls, I can collapse and rest when I die even though I know that is an unhealthy way to go through life.