ugly cover

Posted on by September 12, 2014

book-ugly-american

I’ve been downloading all these free kindle books about business….and quitting your job….and entrepreneurship….and living in exotic locales after quitting your job….and getting money day after day through residual income.

I want to learn how to get something for doing nothing.

No….that’s not necessarily true.

I want to get something for an initial effort that I set up in a way that makes the money roll in for the rest of my life.

I want to start the ball rolling down the hill….and then get the money.

See? I have a plan.

The problem I have is that I really don’t know how to do any of it…yet.

I don’t even know what ball to push down the hill.

So, I get up in the morning and check the list…and download all these free books….like I’d have time to read any of them.

I think that what I’m hoping is that there will be some kind of secret hidden in one of these free books that will make me hop up and yell, “eureka!” ….or something.

This morning I noticed that I skip all the books that have ugly covers.

I need the flash of good design to attract me to something free.

I need a shiny lure.

But then I thought, “What if the secret to the universe was hiding behind something so plain as a cover that said something about….?” …..whatever.

I couldn’t get beyond the plain cover.

I couldn’t pull the plug and hit the button that said, “yeah….give me that free book….the ugly one….yeah, that’s the one…”

I couldn’t do it.

I had no interest in an ugly book.

AND THAT’S THE ONE WITH THE SECRET IN IT!!!!

All of my searching….all of my downloading….and I’m missing the boring but effective secret to the new rich method that would free me to live a life extraordinaire because I can’t get over how plain something looks.

This book downloading is just a distraction, anyway.

Why should I torment myself that somebody hid their secrets behind a deceptively boring cover?

I’m getting the feeling it’s not going to be in a little free book, anyway.

Maybe it’s just digging a ditch better than anyone else….and digging a whole lot of ditches….day after day….and then spending the money very wisely that you make digging the ditches….and saving what you can.

Maybe that’s the way to go.

Or….maybe it’s managing all the other ditch diggers…..setting them up with new ditch gigs and taking a little bit of a cut off the top?

Maybe it’s all about figuring out how to facilitate getting work for other people….and letting the millions roll in on the backs of the common working man?!

I could learn to sleep with myself if I was getting rich off the common man’s efforts.

I could learn to live with that.

I still can’t get beyond that ugly cover.

The truth may be in those pages….but I need something a little more attractive to make me want to pull the trigger.

I need some glitz before I’ll let someone teach me to be rich.

three things

Posted on by September 11, 2014

I enjoy this guy’s videos on YouTube.

Here’s a simple way to break a big task into little tasks before…it becomes a big task.

It’s a good way to look at something that I have a problem with.

I can be kind of a slob.

And, on the other hand, if you put one thing away wrong….it becomes a bottleneck that all of the other logs get to jam up against until you can’t even reach the one thing that might have ended up in the proper place if I’d taken a minute to DO IT RIGHT THE FIRST TIME.

Like I said….I could save a lot of time later if I was willing to spend a little bit of time to put things away correctly the first time.

these crickets

Posted on by September 10, 2014

Cricket15-20130607104410167175-940x628

My little niece came to stay with us at our house in the mountains.

I think that it was a different sort of experience for her.

At one point in the visit, after it had gotten dark and all the nighttime creatures had started to make their nighttime sounds, she said, concerned, “What is that sound?”

I told her it was the crickets (after running through a couple of possibilities).

I think she was a little nervous about something that sounded so strange and foreign to her little ears.

That was a bunch of years ago….my “little niece” is grown and married now.

Things change….and the crickets are still around.

It’s so quiet here….no traffic noises or people on the street….we’re far enough away from the highway that we don’t hear that traffic noise…but it’s not completely silent.

There is a lot of living going on outside…lots of insect and animal noise if you listen to it.

There is so much life going on “outside” of my own life.

I’m the one I notice.

Me…and the people around me.

The people I love….and the ones who bump into my life….I notice them.

These bugs outside….I only notice them when I stop to pay attention.

There is a lot that I don’t notice.

My niece was a little bit afraid of something so strange….maybe “concerned” is a better word.

Maybe she wasn’t afraid….just a little bit concerned about something that she’d never experienced before?

When I explained that it was just a bug…just a bug that couldn’t “get her”….that was enough to calm her down….take away the fear of the unknown.

I’m afraid of what I don’t know….but I’m getting old enough to realize the volume of things that I don’t know would leave me in a perpetual state of panic if I let it….so I’m not really all that afraid most of the time.

There’s just too much to be afraid of if I was going to choose to be afraid of the unknown.

There’s too much that I don’t know.

I think that I’m getting wiser….I know that I don’t know now.

Like Clint Eastwood said, “a man’s got to know his limitations.”

I know a lot of mine…but they don’t all cripple me.

These bugs are out there….living their noisy morning lives…and I’m in here, typing away.

Each of us has our place in time…each of us takes up a temporary chunk of space….moving through our lives in our own way.

The Bible says “look at the birds of the field….” …what’s the exact verse? I’ll google it….Matthew 6:25-27…….

25“For this reason I say to you, do not be worried about your life, as to what you will eat or what you will drink; nor for your body, as to what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? 26“Look at the birds of the air, that they do not sow, nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not worth much more than they? 27“And who of you by being worried can add a single hour to his life?

Don’t worry….these bugs are out there…no matter how we perceive them, they are out there.

I’m glad to hear them.

 

all the way to “e”

Posted on by September 9, 2014

GasCan_18

I don’t know what the game was.

I’m not sure what I was up to.

I used to like to take the gas gauge all the way down to “E” and then past….all the way down, like the vapors would protect me or something….like I was invincible and that my cheapness would have no consequences.

I wonder why I did that?

This was when gas was cheap and wages were low, too.

The thing about it all was that my weird habit carried over into my marriage.

I actually ran out of gas when Jenny and I were first married….down in Atlanta.

That shows a definite inability to plan ahead.

That’s pretty strange that I’d let it go so far.

I guess that old habits die hard.

It was a game….something I did whether I had the money for gas or not.

I think I thought that if I didn’t spend the money on gas that I could buy another book or cassette tape or…if I found a great deal, another guitar.

I didn’t need that stuff…I needed to put gas in the car so I wouldn’t have to make a hard walk with my young wife.

You don’t treat your wife like that.

It’s all pretty goofy.

There is something seductive about watching that gas needle dip lower and lower while you drive farther and farther away from the pump.

There’s something seductive about thinking that, even though the signs say otherwise, you are going to be the one who beats the odds…that you will be the solitary astronaut who makes it back to earth on nothing but vapors.

Of course, your passengers don’t share your enthusiasm for a weird adventure like that.

They just want to get back home without having to take a walk to rescue the situation.

I have a light that comes on when the gas gets low now.

It came on yesterday during the mail route, and I fell into the old habit pretty easily of wondering if I could make it through the rest of the route and then back to the PO in Saluda and then back up to Ingles to buy some cheap gas.

I think that I might have wondered if I could make it if I coasted down the biggest hills and didn’t accelerate too hard anywhere.

Then I stopped flying towards the sun…before my wax wings melted….and stopped and filled up the tank at the gas station that I was only a mile away from.

I stopped playing my weird “empty tank game”….and bought some gas.

I guess that maybe there’s not really any such thing as being “the one who beat the odds”.

You don’t beat the odds, really. You pay.

You might get good at hiding that the tank is empty….and if you never tell anyone else about your sick, twisted little game….your petrol russian roulette….no one will ever be the wiser until you have to make up an excuse when they ask why you’re walking…but….

you don’t “beat the odds”.

Somebody’s going to pay when you screw around with an empty tank….and think that you can just keep driving like nothing can touch you.

You need to get a bike.

“Running on Empty” Jackson Browne

the luck of the draw

Posted on by September 6, 2014

If I’d been born 20 years earlier, I might be crowing that Bill Haley and the Comets were the “real music”.

It’s just the luck of the draw that I’m not really into Bill Haley and the Comets.

It could have happened.

Here’s some videos from different people who were all making music about the same time.

What can I say? It’s not glitzy and nasty…like Miley or Nicki Minaj….but it’s good stuff.

I was fortunate to wake up to music when the music was so good.

hobbled

Posted on by September 5, 2014

hobble2

I started working out a little the other day.

“Little” is the best description I could come up with.

It’s not a full-on onslaught…..it’s just a few pushups…maybe a sit-up or two.

But it’s a start.

Movement of any kind….that’s not just opening a mailbox…is good for me.

It made me remember the few times I’ve been sick enough to want/need to stay in bed for a couple of days.

I’d lay there….feverish and immobile…and wait out whatever was keeping me down.

It wasn’t so much the sickness that I’m thinking about…it’s how it felt to finally be well enough to start moving.

It was like someone had finally taken the hobbles off and I could run again.

Maybe “not moving” makes me sick?

Maybe it just keeps me from feeling as good as I could…if I was moving I might feel better.

That’s the problem with comparisons and a long memory….I remember how it felt to be working out.

I remember that it felt pretty darn good to be active and sweat a little.

It’s a simple prescription for a “feel good life”.

Then I started thinking about hobbles.

In the case of a horse, someone else has to put on the hobbles.

A horse doesn’t have the manual dexterity to hobble himself.

He just wouldn’t do it, anyway.

Who would be crazy enough to want to approach immobility if you had a chance to run free all the days of your life?

Hmmmmmmm……who would be crazy enough to do something like that?

Maybe…..maybe….ME !!

Me and my opposable thumbs.

Who else would hobble a man?

Who else would keep him from running…free?

It’s funny how that works….you give yourself access to something that sparks a memory of the wind hitting your face a certain way…or watching a thunderstorm move across a ridge somewhere in another piece of your life….and, all of a sudden, you remember how different it feels with the hobbles you now wear……the ones you’d forgotten that you’d put on yourself.

You remember how different it feels to express even the smallest of freedoms and run to the end of your tether…the tether that you tied with the tightest knot you could manage to make.

The “smallest of freedoms”….that’s what you look for….that narrow unlocked window of opportunity that’s always open if you look for it.

There are a million and one….maybe a million and two…excuses for why we can’t do things….many of them totally legitimate….but there are so many things that we can do that we talk ourselves out of.

“Too old….too tired…too poor…too many responsibilities….” blah, blah, blah…on and on….talk, talk, talk.

There is always a chance to make things better.

There isn’t a reason in the world to keep that from happening.

Things can be even better than “really good”.

So…you do 10 pushups for a while….and then you graduate to a full workout…..and you realize that there never were any real “hobbles” to begin with.

I put these hobbles on…I can take them off.

I need to quit my whining and run.

 

monkey time

Posted on by September 4, 2014

This is funny because these babies have fur.

Our baby can tease animals….but it’s never quite as funny.

The teasing starts out well….pet, pet, pet….but the kitty fur is so soft….so nice to grab a handful.

That’s not so funny for kitty.

It’s the fur on the monkey that makes it funny.

Still….I’m glad that our children aren’t covered with fur.

Comedy isn’t worth being covered with fur.

zero to sixty in 38.5 minutes

Posted on by September 3, 2014

funny-car-Del-Worsham

I get up early to write a little on this blog before I get to go to work.

Did you notice how I exchanged “get to” for “have to”?

That’s just one of the things I can do to “psyche myself up”.

I was talking to someone and they asked, “How do you get up early and write that blog?! I can barely function in the morning….HOW DO YOU DO IT?”

I can barely function in the morning….some mornings.

I stumble around….have some juice, make some coffee.

The routine of it all is the only thing that carries me from stumblebum to repetitious super robot.

The routine is the only thing that gets me through.

But when that lady asked me that question, it made it all a little harder.

Until I knew that it might be something hard….to be able to engage my brain and click, click, click on the keyboard….I never gave it a second thought.

It was just something I did every day….no matter how fuzzy and partially awake I was.

Things didn’t get “hard” until I knew that they were supposed to be.

Until I knew that it was hard, I was as happy as a clam dancing around in my new emperor’s clothes…..and then that lady at the library spoke up and all of a sudden, I felt kind of exposed or something.

I think that the secret is to start out kind of slow and then just maintain.

Maybe I’m just a turtle without a clear path to the lettuce at the end of the race?

Maybe I’m just a turtle bumping up against the sides of the box?

DANGIT….I’M A MAAAAAAANNNNNNNNNN!!! I AIN’T NO STINKIN’ TURTLE.

So….if someone says, “Oh….that’s hard! I don’t see how you could do that! Why….I couldn’t even draw a straight line….”….I need to turn a deaf ear and just muddle on.

That’s one of the beauties of “not knowing”. If I don’t completely understand the process, sometimes it’s easier for me to “just do”….if nobody tells me “it’s hard”, I can just have some fun and get on with the task at hand.

Everybody stays busy at something…..maybe some people’s way of occupying themselves is to expend some energy describing how impossible “the dream” is going to be.

“That’s HARD!!!”

Pshaw.

Zero to sixty? How about “zero to 25?” Let the line of traffic pile up behind me….it’s early and I’m doing well to just get dressed so that I can “get to” go to work.

“Time in a Bottle” Jim Croce