more normal than not

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.

 

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

Ah, Martin Sexton….sounds like you have a handle on “happy”.

Good for you.

I’m pretty happy most of the time….and that’s a good thing….but sometimes that Norwegian thing must kick in and I’m kind of morose.

Must be something genetic that might let me stare out into some raging fjord and withstand another hard winter….

it might just be the lack of sleep.

But most of the time, in spite of myself, I’m pretty happy….and when I’m not happy, I really try to fight my way back up to the surface.

It’s a funny thing that I’d expect to be happy….I don’t think that I remember anyone ever saying that happiness was a birthright or something that was supposed to be ever-present.

Sometimes we just muddle through….push through the deepest muck to get to the clear water on the other side.

I don’t know where we suspected that something was wrong if we weren’t happy 24/7.

We just aren’t happy “right now”….that’s no guarantee that it won’t swing back around again.

Listen to the lyrics of this song…..it’s a little roadmap….lots of simple pleasures that combine to let the happiness invade….a sneak attack that might stick around for a while if we don’t overthink things and get in our own way.

Happiness is always a good possibility.

I wrote a blog post about the site cabinporn.com a while back.

Now I get so much spam from French pornography sites that it’s a problem.

Of course, I failed French….so I can’t read any of them, but the site addresses lead me to believe that it’s all porn spam.

Sometimes, it doesn’t matter what language the people are speaking….you can tell that there is something kind of sneaky afoot.

Cabinporn is a collection of pictures like the one at the beginning of the post.

Here’s another good one….

What I was thinking last night was that all we really need is a hard-walled tent.

We need a place to park our heads for a good night’s sleep.

A hard-walled tent….or maybe a yurt….or a van….or a tipi.

We probably don’t need a really big house.

I do, though.

I need a place for the books….I need a place for my paper albatross.

I need a place for the tools.

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg….that’s just a small segment of the stuff that I have that I need a space for.

Everybody needs a place for their stuff…even the stuff they’ve collected so that they can live a “simple life”.

All this stuff needs a place….and then we need to fit ourselves into the picture, too.

This site, cabinporn.com, is full of great photos of small places (for the most part) that are pretty inspirational.

All over the world, people are building these shacks and cabins.

Maybe we need to build one up in Idaho one of these days?

It would be good to build one somewhere.

 

“Good Times” Jesse Colin Young

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKmsdP7cGoM

This is a clip from a tribute concert from 2001.

Joni Mitchell….holy smokes.

I heard an interview with David Crosby recently where he said that of all the songwriters from that period… when all these great artists were doing their best work….or most well-known work….all these artists….Jackson Browne….James Taylor….all of the other great artists during that time period when “singer-songwriter” was a big deal…that Joni Mitchell was the one who would be remembered as the finest of the bunch.

I think he said that she was the real genius….lyrically and musically.

That’s pretty high praise.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dF9aj1cX28w

This song breaks my heart.

I wonder how many times I’ve listened to this song?

Enough times to be rich from the nickels.

I’m rich in other ways…..what a great song.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmhaP7jTU4M

I could post videos of other people doing Joni songs all day long.

Why wouldn’t you want to sing a great song?

Even the great talents recognize something great.

And, last but nowhere close to least…..the real deal.

I don’t care how scratchy the LP was….I’d listen to Joni Mitchell anytime….