Easter 2024 ~

 This Easter season I have been dwelling on the crucifixion and and resurrection of Jesus Christ quite a bit. My wife and I have gone through several short devotionals on the YouVersion Bible app (https://www.youversion.com/the-bible-app/) which have all been good in pointing us to different aspects of the stories in the Bible. One of the devotionals was even about how the different translations of the Bible use words that seem to work better than English to point to God's glory in everything that happened to Jesus in his last week before being crucified.

It's a hard story to buy, but without it Christianity makes no sense. With all the "new age" gurus selling ads to tell us about the "one consciousness" and how we are all just expressions of how our brains manifest us in this place we call "reality" there are a lot of alluring ideas as to what life is and how we can make the most of it.

But one of the guys that I occasionally listen to and more often read points out that the "bad" things that happen in and around our lives occur because we live in a "fallen world" and that these "bad" things are a result of sin tainting the world and twisting things. Sin in this case would be disobeying the Creator or "unseen God" that people seem to struggle with so much.

I recently finished a book by Michael Crichton called "Travels". In it he tells about his adventures in medical school and then his travels to experience things in his search for physical and spiritual relevance. The book is panned by most of the reviews I see but my big takeaway is that we should work to keep our sense of wonder and awe as we search and sift through the things of this world. At the end of the book he included a speech he was going to give to a bunch of skeptic scientists. In that speech he emphasizes that science takes as much faith as all the "spiritual" pursuits out there, including Christianity.

There's only one spiritual pursuit that has said plainly that there is only one way to get to live forever with the Creator. I've put my faith in Jesus as my Savior, and I hope you do, too. https://welcome.saddleback.com/sections/more/follow-jesus/

Youversion Bible app:
https://www.youversion.com/the-bible-app/

Erick Erickson's article:
https://open.substack.com/pub/ewerickson/p/suffering-through?r=3uvh3&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web

Michael Crichton's book Travels:
https://www.amazon.com/Travels-HardPress-ebook/dp/B07DTRZC3K/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&dib_tag=se&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.RiB-9pCgV4FXtg3r4DR7aovvT_7DEBoRbahrXvNN3e1OaOOLqyyS5fI5jU35hRIQTCM5XwX0f8uLQeHoVw-b33CEYWS5WE8JxlI2CXlwCguVQ6iZaqM8E9feFAeDBQM63so8lYULD1AUPfc25DuO54R0cSnNe6ANH8OwGCeJG0mD6KByZ439maHCw3gdlGOa22TC3bhOrMO_mnb8SnGJfJ74klfX9HQ13VtYHpkYV2U.4vsGTVluinNSguuqJDU8ZQECIfO_D9HbDnIMEEJD3Yk&qid=1711463896&sr=8-1

Follow Jesus:
https://welcome.saddleback.com/sections/more/follow-jesus/

Normalize toilet seats up ~

I'd like to propose a radical idea: Let's normalize keeping the toilet seats up in public restrooms.

Why would I propose such an outrageous thing? Because I find the public restrooms that I have to use while I am out sad and disgusting, as does most other people. Comedians joke about them. People complain about them. So let's do something about this crisis!

We have a couple of generations that have grown up in single-parent families where children were sent in to public restrooms being told "don't touch anything" and a lot of them took that training to heart, especially guys. They don't touch the seats and urinate all over them because the seat is down. Even worse many of them don't stand close enough to the bowl and they end up dripping lots on the floor in front of the toilet. Now everyone that uses that toilet has to stand further away so they don't get urine on their shoes, which then stinks everywhere they go, rubs in their vehicles, and on and on.

Being a man I don't normally go in a restroom marked as a woman's restroom, but I'm told that a lot of women "hover" over the seat because there is liquid and debris on the toilet seat and they don't want to get that on their bottoms. I understand the sentiment, but wouldn't this be solved if the seat was put up when not needed?

Worse is when men "hover" and get urine all over the floor as their poop slides off the toilet seat into the bowl. I'll stop there.

Better yet, if people practiced the "leave no trace" approach to being out and about they would clean up after themselves, but I've been laughed at many times when suggesting that people do this. Sad. (https://lnt.org/why/7-principles/)

So let's normalize leaving the seats up in public restrooms. Who's with me?

Always amazes me ~

One of the things I'm learning is that I'm always amazed when I actually do what I set out to do. Today's example:

I've wanted to create a breathing exercise timer reminder for a while. I wanted Genie to notify me and then I wanted to be able to tap the notification to start the timer without me having to open the clock app and set the timer to the amount of time I wanted to do my breathing exercise.

Seems silly, I know, but it's one of those automation things that I think will help me do breathing exercises like I've wanted to do for a couple of years now. Just 5 minutes, no big deal, but big benefits if I start doing them regularly.

I had set up a checklist in my lessons to do the Wim Hoff breathing exercise but I just don't do it. I tell myself it's too long, too intense, and that I'll just get interrupted so why even start? A sad but repeating theme in my life.

So I put a task on my calendar a few days ago to do this while I was sitting at Clayton State. My thinking was that while Sue is working I can concentrate without interruption and actually get it done.

I did it! It works the way I want, sending a notification on my phone that when I tap the notification it starts a timer named "Breathing exercise" set for 5 minutes. I can then start doing my breathing exercise and stop when the timer fires.

When it all worked the way I wanted it to it's like fireworks of happiness were going off in my brain! I guess that's the dopamine of accomplishment rushing through my system.

Love it!

Digital Blasphemy ~

One of the sites that I've looked at for wallpaper for a really long time is digital blasphemy. I've watched Ryan Bliss grow from a novice user of 3D modeling software to a master user and artist creating images in the digital realm that are amazing.

It scares me to think that he may try to drive an AI to start creating images because his images are already so amazing. But I've used his background wallpaper images since 1998 or so. I've joined his website.

I've downloaded his pictures. I've paid Patreon fees and I highly recommend that you follow him on social media or even just on his website. One of the funniest things is how he started.

He had bought a PC and he had 3D modeling software on there and had no idea what it did and he started working with it and fell in love. Now he's gone through multiple iterations with multiple versions of software and different companies to produce some of the most amazing art out on the internet.

Check out his story at https://digitalblasphemy.com

Shed was moved ~

I've witnessed some miracles in my life. People might say that it's silly to consider this a miracle but I still do.

When I was going to college I lived in a small one-bedroom home on my grandparents' property in Florida. There was a lake on the property, and the view of the lake from the field was always enjoyable. It was a small lake, but grandpa always said that it was spring-fed.

The little house had been built so that the sliding-glass doors in the back had a good view across the field of the lake. But people that had lived in the little house put a shed back there, and lots of trees and vines grew up and around the shed so that the view of the lake was almost completely blocked.

While I lived in the little house my grandmother would always comment about how she wished that I could have a better view of the lake. Looking back on it I think she might have been hinting really hard for me to do the work of cleaning the shed out and getting rid of it, but I was going to college 90 minutes away, working a lot hours, and seeing my girlfriend. So I just didn't make any time to do any cleaning or moving.

But I did pray about it. I prayed several times that the shed would be moved. I prayed for me to have a better view of the lake so Grandma would be happy. I prayed.

One afternoon a really big storm blew through while I was at work. Dad told me that the storm was terrible and that it had sounded like there was a tornado closeby. My parents and grandparents were often concerned about tornados because of the all the trailers on nearby property and they were concerned about what would happen if tornado touched down and destroyed the homes in the area.

When I got home after work that night I discovered that the shed was gone! Whatever else the storm had done the shed had been blown away completely. Grandpa said he had never seen anything like this. My dad said it was amazing.

But at some point I realized what I had prayed and that this was an answer to my prayer. A miracle had happened!
 

I love it when we can find evidence that God answers prayers. I firmly believe this was a case of answered prayer. Woohoo!

#thingsivewitnessed #prayer #miracle

Dart throwing ~

I love to throw darts while I'm working out. It started when I was in high school and when I started exercising on a somewhat regular basis. I needed an outlet and I wanted to be strong and my parents bought me a weight set and weight bench that we kept out in the garage.

We had an old dart board out there with darts so I rigged it up with a nail on an old exit door going out the side entrance of the garage. I would throw darts at it in between my sets. I wasn't very good so there were a lot of holes in the door and the frame around the door.

The walls were concrete so there weren't any holes in it. But I enjoyed throwing the darts. I learned to toss them in an arc rather than trying to turn them into bullets and throw them straight at the board. I got to where I could get the drop and get close to a bullseye pretty often. It was a lot of fun!

When I moved away I couldn't have a dart board at my apartment with my wife and that was hard. But when we got our house and we got everything set up, I did set up a dart board out in the garage.

I put it on a big piece of plywood and put cork board on the plywood so that I wouldn't have as many holes in the walls. I didn't get any holes in the walls of the garage there.

But I had a lot of fun flipping through Muscle and Fitness and then throwing some darts and then do a set of weights while my neighbor across the street watched me. (That's a different story.) When we moved to our new house, I put my weights in the basement and I didn't work out for a long time.

But as the kids got older, I started needing some alone time and wanted to get strong again. So I set up my weights and weight bench and I set up the dart board. It was actually a lot of fun. I have a lot of good memories throwing darts with the boys when they would come down and learn how I worked out.

I wasn't very good at teaching that and so they didn't stick around for very long. Plus it was boring for them. They thought I was down there doing heavy weights and I was just doing light weights. Plus me working out was often a quiet time to where I could get alone with my thoughts and puzzle through things.

Throwing darts at a dart board helped me think through a lot. And when I go to the basement to do any kind of exercise, I still tend to head for the dart board and throw the darts a couple of times. Fun!

Categorized days ~

One of the gurus that I have read online for several years posted something recently about not being able to maintain consistency in his actions. It was interesting and he noted the irony of saying that he was inconsistent on a blog that he had posted 24 more than 10 years every week.

I can understand where he is coming from. What I've learned over the years from his post is that he does things in spurts, sets aside a week to develop a theme and a bunch of posts around that theme, and then automates it so that those posts happen without him. So I understand the being inconsistent concern.

Having worked shift work most of my life I dealt with that every week. The shiftwork I did was not like so many other people's schedules, a set of days off with either straight days, straight evening shifts or swings, or straight mid shifts overnight. Or a shift with rotating days off that moved according to the calendar.

No, I called my shiftwork schedule the permanent jet lag schedule. First day back was a late evening shift, second day back was a little bit earlier but still an evening shift usually until 9 PM. Third day back could be another evening shift or could be a dayshift like 84 or 7 to 3. Fourth the back was an early dayshift, as early as six in the morning or seven in the morning. And then the last day was either another early morning shift or a midnight shift where I got off on my fourth day, went home and took a nap, and then went in and worked from 1030 until 630 the next morning. And then I was off for 2 1/2 days and started the whole thing over.

It took me so many years to finally just categorize my days as either a day shift, and evening shift, or a day off. And then to prioritize what I was gonna do depending on what type of day it was.

That helped me a lot!

The other thing that I did was instead of being focused on specific rituals I would just focus on keeping things going in the direction that I wanted them to go. Always choosing to climb the mountain instead of taking so many steps down on them and taking more steps back up. This helped me a lot and led to a much more stable consistency as my kids grew up and moved out of the house and as I got to the schedule that was much more consistent than I've ever had in my life.

Categorize the day and always choose higher. Simple on paper, very challenging to pull off. I still work at!

#shiftwork #us