2020-09-13 — Steady As She Goes

Holar mon family and friendlies,

Happy Sunday 😊

So… remember how I made some promises last night about making progress today? Well… guess what…

😎

That’s right. I did. Yay 😊

Feels good. I got up at 5:33 (close enough for me), got all my dailies done. Did my 5×5, and I even started a new gospel study/scholarship blog that I’m building with some of my bestestestest friends.

We’ve only just started the blog/resource page, so there’s nothing on it really–just a skeleton framework, but hopefully it’ll be good. The hope is to create resources for people to utilize in challenging situations. For example, meditations and topic studies that are specifically designed to help people cope with life’s challenges, such as when you’re feeling discouraged, angry, depressed, afraid, etc. Or when you’re dealing with divorce, loss of a loved one, etc.

Anyway, that’s the hope–something useful for people to turn to to help them through the hard times. It’ll probably be pretty fluid for a little while we get our bearings and figure out what we’re doing, but hopefully we’ll zero in and make some useful materials for people out there to help them through the challenges of life.

So… yeah… the house looks pretty decently clean. After finding a young brown recluse in my bed and another baby I killed yesterday by the door that leads to the garage, I’m sort of on a small, and completely undedicated but somewhat active mission to remove their feeding source (other bugs). So I did some vaccuuming up of dead bugs in window sills and whatnot. Hopefully, that’ll help.

Oh! We’re now at the time of year that I can leave the windows open at night to let the house cool down. Normally we keep it at 74 during the day, but I shut off the AC for the year yesterday. It’s currently 74 after cooling down to 65 this morning. I’m about to open up the windows again for the night. Save money. Fresh air inside. Nice.

…

Windows open. 😊

Let’s see. So… I had the night thing again last night. Bad. Not sure what’s up. I was a little discouraged, but motored past it. I gave a worthy effort effort before going to bed to try to greatly reduce the likelihood it would happen, and it was a terrible one, so… whatever. I’ll keep giving a worthy effort, and that’s all I can do. The rest is up to God, as far as I’m concerned. As long as I can look myself in the eyes and say I gave a worthy effort, that’s I’ll I’m gonna require of myself.

What else… I had some great conversations today with a couple of my friends (the same ones I’m doing the new blog with). Good stuff. I got pretty pumped today. 😊

Thanks, to everyone and your encouraging suggestions about my goals. I like the idea of of keeping track of both the running streak and the percentage of victorious days. Maybe even keep some records. I was always a stats geek 😁.

Didn’t end up doing church today at Liz’s because Abbs got exposed to Covid (no symptoms I don’t think, just precautionary quartantine). So I stayed home and studied on my own. I listened to the entire Book of Matthew and the first 8 or so chapters of Mark. I’m gonna pull out Jared’s gospels harmony book that he published not too long ago. That should be cool.

Well… it’s 9:46, and I’m going to call it a night with some gratitude, prayer, meditation, and sleep.

#1. I’m grateful for the beautiful cooler weather.

#2. I’m grateful for a world full of little critters. If WordPress were better about making it easy to post pictures, I’d add more pictures. Sweet looking praying mantis today.

#3. I’m grateful that I was able to get my mom’s car started today. First time it’s been running in about 6 months. It wasn’t very happy at all for the first several minutes, but it seemed to even out eventually.

#4. I’m grateful for the blessing of having work and the means to take care of myself, help others, and prepare for the future.

#5. I’m grateful for the opportunity face challenges and hardships and pain and suffering an sorrow and all the hard things. It’s my opinion/belief that our joys can only be as deep as our sorrows/pains. (not that we go searching for ways to cause ourselves pain… just… that breath of air feels amazing when you’ve had to hold your breath for a minute and a half. The positive feeling increases in proportion, I think, to the suffering.

Anyway, loves and hugs to you wonderful people. You’re awesome, you know that!?!? Oh! By way of accountability

Journal	Sugar Free	No TV/Movie	Swearing	Porn Free	Up at 5:30	Exercise	5X5	Dailies
169	161	134	97	4	1	NA	1	1

Lift the World.

~ stephen