2021-01-10 — Banished Blues

Hola, folkses. 😊

Happy Sunday. 😊 Hope it’s been filled with opportunities to choose growth. 😊

Cory texted me this morning and challenged me to have a blues free Sunday. Well, Cory, good news: We banished the blues today. Two weeks in a row. 😊

Wahoo. 😁

I slept in. Did family study with my mama. Did some personal meditation, and then I decided to fire up my keyboard and play a little. For kicks and giggles, I thought I’d plug my microphone in to see if just maybe I could get the microphone to work with the keyboard. Historically, I’d never actually been able to get them both to work at the same time in my system, but the mic magically started working with my keyboard today!! So I thoroughly enjoyed actually being able to hear my vocals while playing the piano. 😊 My heart smiled. 😊

Later, though, when I went to plug in the headphones so I would be less intrusive to the other housemates, I not only did the headphones not work, but the act of plugging the headphones in annoyed the system, so the mic stopped working, too. 😕

I couldn’t get it to work again, but it was so joyful to actually be able to play the keyboard and be able to hear my vocals at the same time.

😊

Loved loved loved it.

After that, it was lunch, Zoom church, and then helping my nephew finish putting up the shed he was working on. I also showed him the new trail I’d roughed in through the woods.

After that, it was the monthly hill family meeting. I really do love that meeting. It’s so wonderful to see family come together in the common cause of taking care of the homestead. It’s just soooooo cool. I hope to be able to be able to be part of something like that with my own wife and children some day.

Gotta be careful right there though. Those thoughts are the ones that Sunday blues are built on. 😶 Gosh I’d give anything for that opportunity now.

Enough of that. 🙃

No. Blues. For. Me.

I choose joy and peace and love and light and looking outward for how I can lift the world instead of looking inward.

After the family meeting, I returned the AC job vehicle to the customer temporarily, realizing that I forgot a trim piece that goes underneath that I might need to remove the bumper to put back on. 😶

That bumper was a beast, so cross your fingers that there’s some possible way of getting it in without having to take that bumper off again.

I brought my Civic up to Liz to borrow since Mike’s car is at the shop. I guess he took her Suburban, so she’ll use it instead of Mike.

We have an absolutely slammed day tomorrow with work. It’s completely jam packed loaded loaded loaded. It’s 9:35, and I’m gonna head to bed, though to be honest, I’m probably gonna try to get that microphone to work one last time. 🙃

#1. I’m grateful for beautiful music.

#2. I’m grateful I now actually have a family assignment to play in the creek. Those of you who know me well know that playing in creeks is one of my favorite past times. So… the deck that goes out over the creek is in disrepair from the erosion digging the bank back. So… my job is to divert the water away from that side of the stream, and excavate the stream bed enough to to hit the bedrock and still have it be dry on that side so we can work down there on dry river bed and pour new pilons (or whatever you call them) to support the deck.

Fun. 😊 My heart smiles again. 😊

#3. I’m grateful to have been able to really make some progress lately in my porn addiction. I’ve been able to hold onto the reality that I really am in regular danger. I’ve been able to hold onto the reality that I can’t let even the tiniest trigger go unnoticed or unacknowledged to others. I need help in my accountability if I’m going to beat this, and I’m grateful both my mom and Cory who are messaging me during the day asking me if I’m choosing what I want most over what I want now. It’s such a good opportunity to focus in and assess myself every couple of hours or so.

#4. I’m grateful that I’ve been able to banish the thoughts that would drag me down, and I’ve been able to stay away from the things that often trigger my slides into heartache and self pity. It’s not been easy. And it’s weird… the little voice that tries to tell you that you deserve to feel that? Right. Yeah… I deserve to feel depressed (not as in I’m bad and should be punished deserve, but deserve as in I have the right to it, as if it were happiness “I have a right to feel this way!” So weird.

#5. I’m grateful to be ready for bed earlier than I’ve been getting to bed. Tomorrow, as I think I mentioned, is going to be a madhouse. I think we already had a full day tomorrow with what was leftover and what came in on Saturday. And Monday will quite possibly be a madhouse in and of itself, so… gonna be fun, folks. Maybe we can break some records. 🙃 I don’t think I’ve ever had a 10 billable hour day on my own. That’s probably crazy talk, but that would be a pretty awesome day if I could do that. We’ll see.

Alllllllrighty then. My lovelies, thanks, for everything. 😊

Thought of the Day: My friends, love is better than anger. Hope is better than fear. Optimism is better than despair. So let us be loving, hopeful and optimistic. And we’ll change the world. Jack Layton

Amen. 😊

Lift the World.

~ stephen

p.s. 28 days sober. I choose love today. Love, not selfishness. That is the deepest desire of my heart. If all I leave this life with is a selfless heart, I will be as wealthy as it is possible to be.