2020-06-28 — Two For the Price of One

Hiya, folks. Happy Sunday. 😊

It’s five minutes to midnight, and I’m beat. I didn’t really do anything today. I sat around for most of the day, and I had hopes of getting to bed earlier than this and then getting up early and getting a jump on the week, but I dropped the ball again with my preparation, leaving getting Monday scheduled until far too late, and thus, it’s late, and I’m not properly prepared for tomorrow, and… well… I guess that’s the usual. 😶

Had I not written the Morning Meditation that I did, I probably would have been much better prepared, having tomorrow well organized and getting to bed on time, but I wrote the extra post, and it was my choice, and I get to deal with the consequences.

And y’all? Well, y’all get two posts for the price of one. 😎 Hopefully, they’re both of value to you in some way today.

Other than write that post, I tried to sleep in, and I guess I did a little, but I still woke up around 8 something, I think, so… not much catching up on sleep, but apparently, I didn’t need it? 😴

I spent much of the morning sitting in my recliner in front of my computer. For a little bit of the morning, I chatted on Facebook with a sister of mine, she getting to be on the receiving end of my passionate text dump about the phonetic stuff I’ve worked on for so long.

I also spent some time going back and digging up my old files–all the old work I did on it–dusting it off and getting re-acquainted with where I left off on the phonetic project.

Man, I put so much time into it!

I’m still waiting to hear back from my nephew if he’s interested or not in joining with me to get this going. It’s not really a big deal, though, if it doesn’t quite fit into what’s best for him right now. There’s enough good to do in the world that there’s no shortage of opportunities in a bazillion different areas for me to go poking my head into–such as the other things that I’ll continue to go forward on (the peace/unity/humanitarian stuff you’ve heard me ramble enough about already).

Anyway, I played the guitar or a bit. I watched some YouTube videos, both work related and more about things I was interested in, interviews with musicians, TV actors, etc. I listened to some songs on YouTube that had old memories attached to them, reminded me of people from my past.

At some point, I decided to do something I used to do all the time but have actually never done since I’ve been here: I followed the stream that runs through the property for a good long ways. I walked a tiny bit of it a few weeks ago or so, but I hadn’t explored really much at all, so I threw on my relatively new shoes, and said to heck with them, they’re getting wet today, and I just walked up the stream perhaps a half mile or mile and then down the stream perhaps a quarter mile, before finally heading home.

Like yesterday (and I finally got a picture attached to yesterday’s post 😊), it was peaceful and soul filling to walk the stream. And if you’ve read my Morning Meditation that I posted about the value of life, you’ll already know that the walk today was the catalyst to finally writing that thought piece.

Anyway, other than all that, it’s been a pretty quiet day. It’s 12:22 now, so I need to be off to bed. I’m a little disappointed in myself for the hour that it is and for once again not being properly prepared for Monday. I’m sure the fact that I’ve got a little bit of the Sunday blues like I do most Sundays isn’t helping.

And being really tired isn’t helping either.

Well, folks, time for a little bit of the daily gratitude to help get the brain more on track.

#1. I’m grateful to feel myself softening back more to the person I was a handful of years back. My callouses got a little thick over the last year and a half or so, but it’s nice to be softening back up, such as with where I’m headed to with my thoughts on the value of life.

#2. I’m grateful to have had beautiful connections with wonderful people over the years, some extremely strong connections, though brief, some long lasting over time. I miss my peeps from days gone by. 😊 I’m still connected with a few only a few of them, though I was close enough with others that I doubt there’d be much of a skipped beat to see them again–just pick up where we left off and catch each other up. Anyway, people are lovely. I love them, and there are some I want to get back and see sooner rather than later. One in DC, a handful in Utah… one in Virginia… Yep… wanna put more time into those relationships and re-establish some, see how they’re doing (like I mentioned I was going to do as one of the things I’d replace my TV/Movie habit with!

#3. I’m grateful to have been able to write that Morning Meditation post. It’s something I’ve thought about, as I mentioned in the post itself, only in little flashes here and there, but I could feel it was important, and I wanted to address it, and that thought piece was pretty much the first time I’d sat down and actually really pondered it, so it’s probably more of a thought dump than a cogent presentation of ideas, thoughts, etc. But I think it probably gets the gist of the message across for what is going on inside this little dude’s brain here in relation to the value of life and the living things on this planet.

#4. I’m grateful to have supportive family members. My mom’s been wonderful. There’s a particular part of my past that I’ve not been able to resolve, even still, even though years have passed and the writing would seem so clearly on the wall… I’m just not quite ready to let go, and my mom is willing to walk the road with me without judging, and I appreciate that. I’m trying to find my way. I’m trying to figure things out. I’m trying to move forward. I’m trying to let go, and some day, I will, unless things take a turn in a direction that now seems quite unlikely, but it’s hard. It’s easily been the hardest single experience of my life, and it’s lasted years and years now. Apparently, I still need more time to get over it.

#5. I’m grateful that I was able to find all my old files related to my Modern American project. I found the original dictionary, as well as the step-by-step process for converting the 134k word dictionary from current spelling to whatever symbols I choose. It won’t be perfect. There will be a lot of QCing necessary still, but it’s a massive piece of the project, and I’m glad I found all the old files.

#6. In addition to finding those, I think I might have also found the three years of journals that I thought I’d lost! I need to check for sure, but I don’t currently have a working word-processing program, so I can’t open up those old files easily right now.

Anyway, folks. It’s now 12:56. It’s amazing how long it can take just to write a simple journal entry. I’m not re-reading it to try to make it perfect: It just takes so loooooong!

Loves and hugs to all of you.

Lift the World.

~ stephen