Tag: thinking

Listing

Time to start listing, Banana.

I do well, you see, when I write things out, when I list out all that needs to be done… by when, with whom, for what, etc… When it’s all listed out, it’s like my brain can just rest and breathe for a bit and, inevitably, determine that it is all 100% doable and not that bad in the first place. However, if I don’t do the listing, then it becomes an experience, slowly and surely, of the to-dos becoming insurmountable.

So, let’s get these hiking boots and crampons ready, lady-girl-woman, and start writing down those lists!

You can do this! Woohoo!

Post-a-day 2022

Birthdays and bad days

I remember attending my childhood best friend’s birthday party at Skate Central, an indoor roller skating rink, own time when we were little. I had gotten her a Bop-It (probably a Bop-It Extreme). As is usual for my family – my mom is very good at thinking things through practically, and so trained us even as young children to do the same – we had taped the necessary batteries (the ones “not included” with the toy itself) to the present. Therefore, whenever the recipient – in this case, my best friend – wanted to get set up with playing with the toy, all the necessary tools were on hand. And no, it didn’t require any other tools, or we likely would have brought them along, too.

Anyway, that was the present that I was very excited to give to her. Someone else at the party also have her a Bop-It. The same kind, yes. That person did not include batteries in her gift-giving.

So, what happens? My friend and her mom take the batteries from my Bop-It and open up the other friend’s Bop-It to use. Mine will be given away at a later time to someone else, but the batteries were nonetheless useful.

…..

I am not sure that I can appropriately express how distraught and useless I felt at that moment. I only saw myself as useful in filling in where others had failed. I was no main focus in any way. I was merely there to fill in the gaps, as needed… to provide the batteries that no one ha smothered to remember or would consider again until they ran out of power and needed replacing. I was forgetful and a convenient helping hand. Nothing else.

Can you believe I got all that from a single event like that? Yes, it was ridiculous what they did. And yes, they did it without even thinking – they needed batteries to open this other one, and saw batteries on the first Bop-It – problem solved.

This is now something for me to contemplate and consider for a bit. I imagine I have some strong opinions about myself deep down because of that incident. It really hurt me at the time, and we human beings tend to do rash things when we are hurt unexpectedly.

Yeah…

By the way, I loved playing Bop-It Extreme as a kid. I would spend hours walking around – pacing around – my dad’s house upstairs, playing on my own. Everyone said the sound-only game was the hardest. (Psychologically speaking, it’s actually easier, but whatever…) Most people, even with practice, never made it far past the twenties and thirties. I grew accustomed to challenging myself with that one, and ended up with a ridiculous high score of around three hundred something. I averaged a hundred or so for any given play. And that started after only a matter of days of playing it. It was just very natural for me, and also quite fun. I truly enjoyed it, and I loved spending my time playing Bop-It Extreme.

My mom found my one from her house recently. I had gotten a second one, because I missed it when I wasn’t at my dad’s house, which was the majority of the time. When she found it, she replaced the batteries in preparation of showing it to me. I convinced her to play a few rounds with me in the multiplayer version, and we had a blast. When I did the solo player version, I ended up stopping because I wanted to get back to what I had been doing beforehand, not because I made an error. In other words, it was still easy peasy for me, and I was awesome at it.

I really loved playing Bop-It Extreme. 🙂

Post-a-day 2020

Change

I understand change, and I even support it fully, especially when it provides significant and likely necessary improvement upon what came before it.

This is intentional change that I mostly mean at the moment….

I dislike intentional change that makes things more difficult…. it just brings me to the question of, “What idiot thought this was a good idea?”, which leads to, “Or did he think at all?”

And that brings me around to my everlasting struggle of despising stupidity…

I can’t stand stupid people.

And I don’t mean uneducated.

I mean stupid.

People who just don’t think, and who don’t even realize that they aren’t thinking.

Just… ugh!

Post-a-day 2020

Some thoughts not wasted

One man’s trash is another man’s treasure, they always said.

This morning at breakfast, I was very bummed when I asked if my food could possibly be heated, since it was served cold (and just tasted terrible cold), and I was informed first that it could be, but then told that the plate was being re-made… so wasteful…

When it was re-served only slightly warm and significantly worse made, I didn’t dare say anything about it, and instead just wrapped it up to take home for one of us to eat later, after we could warm it ourselves.

Tonight, we had some king cake after dinner, and it was far too dry for me to be interested in eating it beyond a couple bites or so.

But no one wanted to take it home to finish, and none of us had anyone at home with whom to share it anyway.

So, I was curious when I crossed a kind-looking man on a street corner during my drive home.

I rolled down my window, called out, asking him if he wanted some cake, and was delighted to see his face light up, and to hear him answer with a genuine and surprised, emphatic, “Yes!”

I handed him the box of a more than 3/4 king cake, and wished him well as he thanked me.

It made me want to go back and spend some time with the man, and I even felt bad that I didn’t give him water to go with the cake.

(I mean, it isn’t painfully dry or anything – I just really only like king cake when it is super moist on the inside.)

I considered bringing him water, actually, but then saw the absurdity of it, and left it for now… I don’t exactly have the money to be driving back and forth, anyway.

I also found myself thinking about the safety level of going and spending time with him – I often want to do this with people, homeless people typically, but have learned not so nicely that there are often chemical imbalances that can provide an unsafe environment for me if I were to go spend time with the homeless people around town… not always, but often enough to make me reconsider most of the time…, which kind of bums me out… also, I’m afraid of being stuck with really bad smells, which then sends me into a whole ‘nother level of looking for what I could do to help, and then having to manage keeping myself safe…

Anyway, the whole thing reminded me of how one of the most valuable things we have to offer in life is our attention.

People always say “time”, but I think they really mean “attention”.

I can give you an hour my time, but never once pay attention to you, versus give you ten minutes of full attention, and I think the latter will win every time for being the most appreciated.

Sure, things like laying bricks would prefer the former, but when it comes to people-to-people interactions, it is or attention that we all most desire and most need… it is through our conscious attention that we share the most love with others, not just our showing up.

Like someone said after a dance thing the other weekend – he noticed that I kept to myself and didn’t really talk with many people, but that I took genuine interest, asked real questions, and waited for real answers whenever I talked with him… I spent a lot of time on the room, making little impact on anyone, but ten minutes of talking with him directly had a huge impact on him.

I’ve kind of gone off the initial idea here, but I guess that’s how ideas work, anyway, always linking us to different connections, one after another, always and forever…

Which makes me think of brain storming… what a storm it is… debris flying every which way, leaving it difficult to find the origins of certain things, they fly so fast at times, and cross so many turns and twists in the system of the brain, in the storm…

I guess the biggest difference between a brain’s storming and nature’s storming is that the former usually gives us solutions, and the latter often gives us problems… haha… that’s funny… I’m going to continue thinking on brain storming…

Post-a-day 2020

What to say…

I keep thinking about what to say, and, every time I set my mind loose to ponder ideas, I find myself a minute or two later singing some old song in my head…. actually, it is fluctuating back and forth between the song in the dance video I have now watched about thirty plus times and old songs that were playing where I was hanging out tonight…

So, yeah… that keeps happening, and I keep not having anything to say, aside from song lyrics…. 😛

I keep feeling like I am daydreaming in the middle of the night(!)… haha

Post-a-day 2020

Education

I feel that one of the most valuable things that school could give a student at the time of the education (that is, while in school) is relevance and immediate applicability.

As we have been reading various books on utopias and dystopias in one of my classes this semester, so much of it all has become relevant in my life within a very short time of its initial introduction.  

The struggle one character has with God in this book, and how she finds change to be inevitable (and, therefore, God), applies to my life the week following my reading of it… I can relate to her struggle immediately, and then the change comes up in conversation and contemplation regarding my relationships with people in my life.

I think teachers, schools, curriculum planners aim to have books students read in school to be relevant to the students’ lives, but they often fall short of the mark… they miss the applicability of the ideas and actions somehow, and only assume that this specific struggle must be applicable to all students of this age… and it often isn’t.

From English class, we need concepts, ideas, brainstormed theories that we can learn to apply to any part of life…

For history class, a historical context would be only an enhancement of our understanding of what’s going on right now, what people are discussing from the news, and why it seems to matter so much… we hardly do more than regurgitate facts, and rarely know much about what they really were like or why it mattered to people who lived it (and therefore why it might matter to us).

I today was learning of a book about a man struggling in Russia, and, as I heard the details, I knew it was around the 1920s…, because of the Russian refugees in season four of “Downton Abbey”… there was a story in which I could invest myself, and ideas to which I could relate and from which I could draw my own ideas and conclusions, and the history just kind of stuck with the affinity for the people in the story…

I interested myself with the French Revolution recently, because I discovered the wonder of the film “The Scarlett Pimpernel”… and I remember details about the revolution because of how they connect with the story of the film and its characters.

The actual history became relevant and immediately applicable for me, because of my investment in the film.

The same is so with my investment in “Downton Abbey”.

How could I possibly relate to the Russian refugees or to the French upper class, when I merely read some statements of facts, names, locations, dates, and a summed-up given political meaning to it all?

I guess that’s why I remember just about nothing from my history classes in school…

Perhaps it everybody needs this kind of education, but everyone certainly could benefit greatly from it, I dare say.

You know what I mean?

Post-a-day 2019

Better at the same

While showering tonight, I was thinking about – isn’t it great how some of our best thinkings come from shower time? – the idea of doing things better.  I feel that everyone seems to be concerned about doing this or that better than everyone else all the time.  And aren’t those people all just doing the same things?  Aren’t they all trying to do better at the same things that everyone else is doing?  I feel like I’m always looking at what everyone else is doing, and trying to figure out something to do that’s not that.  They’re all going this way, so I’m interested in going that way.  Like if everyone is concerned about picking and discussing their favorite dessert food, I’m over yonder, pondering what it’s like to be a tree, possibly even talking to one, asking it questions.  That might not be the best example, but I think it’s still a valid one – I’m always looking for something different, especially when it feels like everything is so the same.  Sure, I’m still thinking about doing better at what I do and being better at who I am.  But I’m usually looking to do that by doing something different… and isn’t that what innovation – and successful inventions – is all about?

I’m not so sure I’ve communicated what I’d wanted to communicate, but I’m really sleepy right now, so I kind of don’t mind (slash I can’t even really focus on the text to see if I spelled it all correctly, anyway, let alone to verify that it is all stellar-ly expressed).  Here’s to wishing you a happy, holy, healthy life, wherever, whenever, and whoever you may be.  Cheers  🙂

Post-a-day 2018

Africa

I’ve started singing lately in an unknown language that sounds African… it reminds me of Swahili at times, or Zulu or Sotho or Xhosa…, but also totally not those… no matter what, though, it always sounds African to me….

And it has me wonder if it is linked at all to that deep-seated longing I have to live with the lions in Africa (or something to that effect)… perhaps, as I was considering tonight, I was in Africa in a previous (or another) life, and perhaps that was when my mom was Indian, and we somehow met through that proximity, and agreed to have this life together…

Wouldn’t that be neat…?

P.S. If you aren’t aware, look up an audio pronunciation of the language name Xhosa… I first heard it spoken aloud in the audiobook of Nelson Mandela’s A Long Walk to Freedom, and I loved it almost instantly.

Post-a-day 2018

My brain on leave

You know that sort of delirium that is sometimes tied to illness?  The one where, mid-sentence, you have no idea what you were thinking, and aren’t even entirely certain that you were, in fact, talking.  Yeah, that one.  I’m totally living in that right now, with interspersed bouts of clarity and energy.  It’s definitely weird.  Kind of puts a troublesome damper on typing, even, let alone coming up with an idea for writing and then actually remembering it… Yeah.  Okay.

Post-a-day 2018

::Sigh…

Sometimes I wonder if it wouldn’t just be better to get a high-paying job in an office, and start saving up.  Then, after a couple or few years, start the process for adoption.  The only work so far that I have loved doing, without almost any question ever, is doing things with other people’s kids (nannying).  Maybe having a somewhat terrible corporate job in suits is worth it for having a kid…

I just don’t see myself happy each morning and each bedtime in a job like that, and that means bad sleep each night and a tough start to the day each morning.

I don’t know… sometimes I get depressive, and then desperate, and start calculating what ‘makes sense’ for life, as opposed to ‘listening to my heart’.  Come to think of it, I’m not sure I’ve even asked my heart what I/it want/wants to do with my life and time…

Now is as good a time as ever, I suppose.  🙂

 

P.S.  I’ve noticed that, whenever I get upset in the depressed, my life is going nowhere experience, I have an almost panicked desire to move to Europe, and it is most often France.  It’s not like I have any idea whatsoever what I would do there, or how that would solve any of my current issues.  Plus, it would create the issue of being away from almost everyone I know and love and who loves me, since most of them are in the US.  However, there’s just this feeling that arises that living in Europe somehow would just make everything okay, and in a good way (not just tolerable okay, but good okay).  Anyway, just something I noticed tonight.

Post-a-day 2018