Hola! And happy Thursday to all y’all. 😊
Let’s see… today… was another day of battling the negative. Sore throat is still hanging in there, though that hasn’t really bothered me at all.
Let’s see… I slept in again, getting up only for family study. Then I got triggered. I don’t even remember by what. Oh! I think maybe it was the scantily-clad women in the pictures in my travel deals email.
Or was that yesterday?
I don’t remember.
Anyway, I went back to bed for a while. Got up, studied a bit, and then spent a really long time looking for the keys for the Ford van I bought, since the new computer came for it.
Not being able to find the keys was super frustrating. I didn’t handle it very well, with it eating up maybe an hour of my “day off.” Finally, after I’d completely lost my cool, I found the keys on the ground just outside one of the barns. Looks like they must have fallen out of my pocket climbing into my truck the day we brought the van back.
I really need to learn get a handle on my life. 🙃 I have so many things pressing on me, and I’m early perpetually overwhelmed, so stupid little things like not being able to find my keys for an hour send me up a tree.
Anyway… I installed the new computer that came for the Ford, but… no dice. Same problem. 😕 Not sure what the deal is. Don’t know that I have the time or emotional energy to figure it out either. David has already spent four hours trying to figure it out, and the computer was his best guess. This might be yet another one where I just cut my losses and move on. Goodness, it’s been hard to find a decently priced work van. They’re so blasted expensive. I don’t want to pay regular price for one, and… I’m actively planning to stop doing this as my job, so that makes it even more distasteful to go buy a van.
I really just need to suck it up, buy one, and then be fine selling it when I’m done. I’ll probably get most of my money back for it when I sell it. They hold their value extremely well.
Probably the nicest thing about the day was that I managed to finish cutting the rough trail the rest of the way on the other side of the ravine. It took a long time just to plan that one because there really weren’t very good routes other then a long straight path, but it’s more… I don’t know… enjoyable? to walk a winding path, than to see a long one stretching out into the distance. Gratefully, I was able to find a way to make it wind just enough that you can’t see the trail too far ahead, and the trail still has a good flow to it.
Yay. 😊
I spent probably at least 2 hours, maybe three on that, doing the last of it by cell phone light. I also cut up the trees that I’d felled across the other trails, so now they’re not in the way. There is so much dead wood all over the place. It’s pretty crazy. But I’m going to start cutting logs into sections and lining the trails, and I think I’m actually going to put wood chips down through the whole network of trails. That should help with the upkeep and the erosion. It’s almost going to feel like a park. 🙃
I’m excited to get it to the point that everyone can walk on it comfortably. Right now it’s walkable and pretty decent, but a lot of places are just roughed in–still have to watch for rocks and whatnot so you don’t trip.
Lots of progress, though.
I’ve made lots of good progress cutting the vines, too. Those darn things have killed/damaged so many trees. It’s amazing. I love the woods. I really do.
Home.
Woods. Streams. Small rivers. Waterfalls. Small lakes. Zero man-made noises. Zero man-made constructions except my trails and the dams I enjoy making. 😁
Love me my natural world. I have this feeling like I’m gonna spend most of the rest of my adult life busy with people in communities and cities. Maybe I need to soak up as much as I can of this natural wonderland before all that comes to pass, if indeed it does come to pass.
#1. I’m grateful to be clean another day. I’ve had some days lately where I’ve struggled to be positive at times, where I’ve been fighting off the creeping negative as well as porn triggers. Yet… here I am. I think today is 25 days. Not a ton, but it’s progress, given that I was only making it 7-10 or so for a while there.
Love. Not selfishness. Love. Love. Love.
#2. I’m grateful to have made progress on the walking trails.
#3. I’m grateful that though the fender I bought for my miracle Civic is the wrong gray (I knew that before I bought it), it’s close enough to look at least ok, and it wails over the mangled fender I was dealing with before. I’ll try and get that actually put on in the next day or so. I fit it in place, but I haven’t bolted it down at all, so it’s just sitting there.
#4. I’m grateful to be gaining some weight back. I’m not sure how I’m doing it, but I certainly am eating a lot. I think I’m about 175, which is right around where is good an healthy for me, I think. 175-180, with my build and current muscle mass. So… that’s nice to have arrested the freefall. I’m still not full veggie yet because I’m still eating down regular chili. I’ve made a massive dent in that stuff, though. Not too long before those will be gone.
#5. I’m grateful to be free of the news. I admit, it’s hard to come home after a long day and not want to just pull up the news and veg in front of it for a while, but it drags me down more than it lifts me. I don’t want to have my head buried in the sand, but nor do I want to be fed the steady diet of twisted propaganda from the right and left “news” outlets.
Sorry, hope that’s not offensive at all.
Given what all has been going on lately, I’m even more grateful to be free of it and to have had the strength to avoid it when I’ve been strongly drawn to it.
Thought of the Day: “We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.
Additional thought… of my own. I’m grateful that we are each more than what others might have ascribed us to be, more than the box we might have been put in. Many of the people I quote with these thoughts of the day are people who also espoused ideologies that I disagree with, some of them quite strongly. But it’s important to me that no person be labeled by the parts of their philosophies that I disagree with, but that we join together and focus on where we agree (which I believe generally significantly outweighs where we do not). I want to celebrate these beautiful truths (I see them as truths) and give thanks to those who had the wisdom to see and share them. The things that they might have believed that I might disagree with? Whatever. We can deal with those things reasonably if they come up. But I’ll celebrate the beauty and light wherever it comes from, for I believe that the vast majority of us have plenty to share of both.
Loves and hugs to all y’all.
Lift the World.
~ stephen
Lift the World 