Birthday luggage ~

I remember when I turned 18 my grandmother that lived with us, we called her Grammy, bought me a birthday present. She bought me a cheap set of suitcases. They were stylish for the day, but this was before suitcases had to have wheels and all that.



Three or four of them nested inside of each other and they were all mostly hard-sided, embedded but not as hard as we think of hard-sided luggage now. And then there was a soft-sided fake leather bag inside the last smallest suitcase.



It was a nice set of luggage, but I didn't understand. And she smiled and she said, "oh, this is for when you leave." I hadn't even thought about leaving the house. I hadn't planned on leaving at all because I was going to go to college.



And it just struck me as odd that somebody in my house would give me a gift to help me leave. Over the years, I've thought about it and I remember the story. that she would tell and that my mother would finally tell after we found out her secrets about how they left.



Usually in the middle of the night and usually to get away from something or someone. Grammy and granddaddy would leave because they had run out of money and they were two months behind in rent and they couldn't pay their bills.



But she told me that initially she left home because of her crazy brother or cousin something and other mean people in her family. Apparently her stepmother was extremely mean to her and the rest of her family was it mean to her even though they passed her around to give her a place to stay.



My mother left home to get away from her mother and stepfather. She married a guy right out of high school but I never knew that until I turned 17 and I saw something in her yearbook that triggered a couple of questions.



It was a really bad thing and she left him and went with my dad after meeting him in a bar in New Mexico. My dad was a bartender there but he stayed in a room close by or in the back of the bar that never was clear.



I don't buy people luggage as gifts unless they ask specifically for it. I don't want to give the impression that I think they should move on. Which was the distinct impression that I got. I didn't move out of the house that I grew up in until I was 20-ish and that was to move into the little one bedroom house that my grandparents had built for my aunt and then uncle.



My dad negotiated something with grandpa so that I could stay in that little house while I went to college. Now I own that little house and it's amazing.



But I don't buy people luggage. I don't want them to go.



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#history

Thank you for my freedom ~

So, it's fascinating. I have been told repeatedly that I should always have high expectations. Expect the best, but prepare for the worst. My experience has been that when I have expectations that are not met, I tend to be extremely disappointed.



When I get disappointed, it usually comes out as anger. And when I get angry, other people really don't like me. It's fascinating because as I go through a meditation app that I use daily, it keeps trying to teach me not to have expectations.



And yet, when I have proposed not having expectations to my wife and others, the idea is poo-pooed, and I'm told you always have to have expectations. So I'm slowly learning not to have expectations, to avoid disappointment by not really looking forward to things, not wanting a certain outcome.



It's kind of hollow, because when I do this, I don't care. And it becomes obvious that I don't care, which is sometimes even worse. I'm going through something right now where I have had to lower my expectations to zero, because I have been disappointed on multiple occasions by this person.



My disappointment has come out as anger and sadness, and has eaten up way too much of my thought cycles. What I'm learning to do is to turn that disappointment and flip it on its head and thank God for my freedom.



When one of the thoughts hops in and I start to go down that path of being disappointed, the communication didn't occur, or something didn't happen. I say a prayer of thanksgiving. Thank you God for my freedom.



It's working, but it is a work in progress. I like the being thankful part. But I still don't like being disappointed. To the point of betrayal of trust. What a life.



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Learning to play again ~

A friend of mine was talking to me and said, you're learning to play again. After retiring from a very rewarding career, I've been working through my list of things that I wanted to accomplish but didn't really feel like I had time before.





It's been amazing! I've been doing things that have been on my list and going through things that haven't moved for 20 years and really enjoying it. I attached a trailer hitch to my mower so I can use trailer hitch things with it.



I've organized stuff to where I can actually find things now in the basement and out in the yard.



When he said that you're learning to play again something clicked inside of me. When I was a kid I always enjoyed playing and there was always time to read and grab a couple of toys and do things and go outside and run and play.



But as an adult I didn't really think that way. It was always rush here and what's the next thing on the calendar and what did I miss and who do I need to apologize to for getting upset. It's nice to just look at a day and not really have anything specific other than the things that I want to do on it.



Go for a walk, workout in the basement while I'm doing my lessons. It is funny meditating while doing a speed bag. It's actually very relaxing and rewarding and I'm sore afterwards. My play is a lot different than it was when I was a kid.



But it's still a lot of fun.



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Time to be ready ~

In my profession, it was important for things to happen at specific times. There were rules and guidance and deadlines and artificial time horizons for everything. And if you missed a deadline, there were consequences.



We had to re-coordinate. You had to get a new release time. You missed out on an opportunity. All sorts of things. So at home, when we would be getting ready or we would decide that we would go and do something, and my wife and I agreed on a departure time, I would tend to be ready five minutes before that departure time and have to wait.



Sometimes quite a long time. It led to many arguments and much frustration. But I finally came up with a question that helps me at least. Because when I ask somebody, "What time do you want to leave?", and they say "1 pm", I expect wheels to be rolling at 1 pm.



I feel so strongly about it that I actually started leaving my kids at home when I was driving them to school. I would tell them, I need you to be ready, and we're leaving at 8 .45 in the morning, or 7 .45 in the morning.



and they would be late and they would be late they would be late and I would yell at them and I would discuss it at the dinner table and we would punish because they were late. Finally I just started leaving and all of a sudden they were on time because there was an actual true in-the-real-world consequence to their being late.watching!



I couldn't really do that with my wife. I could, but I think it would create a lot more stress. And so, what I came up with is, instead of asking what time do you want to leave, if it's really not important to me whether we're on time or not, I ask her, what time do you want me ready?



And then if I agree to that time, I'm ready five minutes before that time and I wait. A simple change in mindset from an artificial deadline to what time do you want me ready? It helps a lot.





#strategy #mindset #adjust #harmony

You are contagious ~

I recently watched a TED Talk about how our emotions and attitudes are contagious.



I remember one time at the beach when a storm was coming in quickly we were trying to get our awning and other belongings gathered up and take them to the car. A little girl close by started screaming and her fear set me and my whole family on edge while we tried to get in before the rain and lightening reached us. Her emotions were very contagious!



Check out the TED Talk at

https://youtu.be/cef35Fk7YD8



#us

No L ~

One of my favorite stories from when I was working was when I was a support staff specialist. I got the position because I was good with computers and my facility was implementing a lot of computers and setting up networking and all that.



We had the network running okay but it was not great and it was not consistent. Consistent enough to put it out there so that we could put everybody's email boxes on a network drive. We called it the L drive because that was the letter of the drive and windows that we had mapped it to.



But not consistent enough so that when people would move from computer to computer they sometimes had difficulties because the L drive did not map correctly. The email program was looking for a specific location and specific mail file on the L drive and if the L drive mapped incorrectly it didn't find it and would throw an error.



One week in July we were having lots of network difficulties and all the people that moved from computer to computer because of their changing assignments throughout the day and week were very frustrated.



So, I and the other guy that did this sort of thing for our people. We're running around helping people with their computers all day long. We were mapping the L drive all day long. So I started humming Christmas tunes because everybody was so grumpy.



It's the middle of July and I'm humming Christmas tunes. And finally one of my friends who was always happy except for that day said, Why are you humming Christmas songs? It's the middle of the summer in July.



It's not time for Christmas songs. And I said sure it is. I said it feels like the holiday season. We're I said no L. No L means it's Christmas time. So since you don't have an L drive it's no L. Oh I took such razzing for that but it was so much fun to spend that week humming Christmas songs.



And after everybody knew it they would groan when they would hear me. Beautiful.

European trip experience ~

I remember my wife and my trip to Europe. We went to Europe with a group of hearing impaired people. We flew to London and then got on a motor coach and rode around. Then we took a ferry across the English Channel to France and got on a motor coach and drove around Western Europe.



This was in 1995 and it was a great trip. My wife enjoyed interpreting and I enjoyed playing with my gadgets and trying to understand the sign language and enjoying the sights of Europe. It was amazing!



One of my most anticipated things was listening to radio in the different countries. Remember that this was 1995 and so I had to carry a camcorder and a camera and videotape and batteries rechargeable but still big batteries and film.



So I took my Walkman AM/FM radio with me. I didn't bring the cassette Walkman because it was too big. And I was excited because the Walkman AM/FM radio was small and digital. Of course I had some extra batteries for it too.



The trip was awesome, but this thing that I anticipated of listening to radio in England and France and Germany and Switzerland and Italy didn't work out the way that I wanted it to. I learned the hard way that in America radio stations tend to be on odd numbers, and in Europe, at least at the time, radio stations used even numbers.



Because of that my little portable Walkman AM/FM radio was made for America and only dialed in odd numbered radio channels. So every radio station that I listened to in Europe was fuzzy and on the edge and not clear at all because I couldn't dial in 104.6, I had to dial in 104.7 or 104.5.



I still enjoyed listening to the radio stations when I could and it was funny because there was a hot dance song that I kept hearing over and over it was called "The Color Inside". I'd listen to it in our room on the radio they provided since it could dial in the actual frequency and I'd listen to my fuzzy versions on my Walkman but it was a lot of fun and listened to that song. When I got home I tried to find it, but because the ease of the internet had not arrived in 1995 I couldn't find the song.



As far as I know the song was not popular in America. Many years later I searched the internet, found it, and listened to it. It was as good as I remembered it! I found multiple versions of it and I enjoy it to this day.



You can listen to The Color Inside at https://youtu.be/nRULkAGIOd8?si=qJ1BYPWxyKwDai2u



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#music #song