2021-12-02 — 🎶 Moving Right Along 🎶

Good morning, all you wonderful people you. 🙂

Morning Gratitude 😊:

1. I’m grateful to have had the courage this morning to push through and exercise when my body was screaming to stay sedentary and my heart and mind are in an absolute war with a powerful darkness that’s just hammering away at me.
2. I’m grateful to have had the courage to take that cold shower again this morning, to just discipline myself, overcome the desire to stay comfortable and warm, and to just do it.
3. I’m grateful for the mastery I’m gaining over both my mind and my body therethrough. I had more mastery over my body today during that cold shock than any day I’ve had to this point, I think, getting to the point, actually rather quickly, that my body was just… okay with the cold.
4. I’m grateful for the challenges I’m facing right now. The war in my mind is fierce right now. Often times, it’s consuming. I’m watching as one of my most powerful dreams… something I gave my whole heart for, trusted in, fought and fought for and sacrificed and sacrificed for… for many many years is coming to pass… but it’s not happening for me. All the hopes and dreams are coming to pass… sans… yours truly. And the voices in my mind just keep hammering away at me. Fleeting but existent thoughts of just wanting to die and have this pain all end; powerful discouragement as I look at myself and my reactions–jealousy, pain, selfishness, despair… These and other thoughts are hammering at me again and again. I can wallow, but that won’t change anything. I can be angry, but that won’t change anything. I can choose to feel about it however I want to. So… why would I choose anything other than gratitude and hope and optimism for the future? That’s easier said than done (for me personally). I’m struggling, internally stretching and contorting and wrestling with the darkness that’s thick and heavy, but I’m grateful for it. I’m building a mansion of love, with rooms filled with such attributes as gentleness, patience, generosity, and equanimity. And there’s only one way to build that mansion. I need the materials first, and these challenges… they are the materials with which the mansion is constructed–board by board, nail by nail. As much as this hurts, it is the way…the only way. Eyes on the horizon.
5. I’m grateful to be up at a quiet time of day to be able to think and meditate and ponder.
6. I’m grateful to know that more important than my to-do list is my become list. Obviously, that’s just semantics and one way out of a gazillion to organize and understand information, but I believe it relatively effectively articulates the meaning I’m trying to convey.
7. I’m grateful to have found Metta (also known as loving-kindness) meditation early this morning. I’d had meditation focused on loving others on my to-do list as my number one priority for today, and then I found that it’s a thing out there and has a name. 🙃

Today’s Priorities:

1. 1 hour of meditation focused on loving others (this will help in overcoming my most frequent daily) fears, if you were wondering what happened to my fear challenge.
2. Fear facing.
3. Tax work. Get ‘er done, son!

…

Evening now, 8:13. It’s been a good day. 😊 I believe I was 100% on my morning routine today for the first time in… a long time! I listened to a number of guided metta meditation videos, and they were pretty much exactly what I was thinking about doing, but they gave me structure and something to pattern after. I’ll use different phrases in many cases, as I don’t subscribe to some of their versions on what kinds of well wishing is actually positive, but it was really helpful, and it won’t take much at all to prepare my own version of metta meditation.

Really good stuff. I think this is going to be one of the most influential and life-changing things I’ve ever done–not to mention, it’s going to help significantly in my efforts to overcome fear.

Awesome.

I was decently happy today for much of the day, despite the challenges and the heavy pounding that was happening yesterday and earlier today. It’s much quieter now, but I know it’s on the doorstep, ready to come in with the tiniest cracking of the door.

I took it easy today, and it was a relatively easy day in addition. The morning found me fixing the dump cart (I created a new part out of a piece of plastic tubing that was leaning against the root cellar. Gratefully, it appears to be working. I also replaced the passenger front wheel on the mower and one of the missing deck wheels.

My first job was a no start that the customer left on the side of the road yesterday. I got there and immediately noticed that she’d left it in gear. Can’t start a car in gear. Won’t work. Won’t crank. Neutral safety switch makes it so a car with an automatic transmission can only start in park or neutral. She had it in drive. So I slid the shifter forward, and boom, fired right up. 🙃

Love easy jobs.

Second job was another no start. Battery was completely drained. I jumped it with my box, told her to take the battery to get charged because anything below like 10.5 or 11 volts, and I don’t like putting that strain on the alternator. They’re designed to keep good batteries charged, not to charge up discharged batteries. That’s what I understand, anyway.

So that was another easy one.

From there, I went to the junk yard and pulled a radiator support off of a Town & Country there for my Grand Caravan. I believe they use the same part. Cross your fingers. That was good to get that. It’ll take a little bit to get it replaced on this new one, but it’ll be good. Then the hood will be able to close. 😊 Right now it’s just the trash runner, a bungee holding the hood closed because the top support is out.

My last job was a window regulator/motor assembly for a 2014 Chevy Cruze (terrible cars, just terrible, in my opinion). It all went relatively decently, until I went to test the new part. It worked, but it seemed to labor quite a bit, so much so that the sensor that’s designed to keep people from getting there appendages pinched was kicking in and auto rolling the window back down. It would try to go up, sometimes almost to the top, sometimes only an inch, and then it would go right back down.

Lovely.

I fought with it for probably 45 minutes or longer before I finally gave up and said I was going to come back another day with a different brand and replace it again under warranty.

Came home and busted out a bunch more tax work. Cross your fingers, I’ve already done a lot with 2020, so I’m hoping it’ll take much less time than 2019 did. But… crossing fingers.

Daily Accountability

• Bed last night at 8:30: 9 o’clock again, I think.
• Up at 3:30: 😎 I’m really doing well with this. It’s been almost 7 weeks now, I think. The only blip was the day I forgot to set the alarm. I haven’t let anything convince me to roll back over, and just keep sleeping in. I’m feeling good about that. It’s hard to get up. Low sleep, and on discouraging days, low motivation. But I have enough to keep doing it.
• 5x5s: 😎
• Exercise: 😎 Wahoo! It wasn’t a lot. I think 15 minutes? But it was something.
• Cold shower: 😎😎😎 As stated earlier.
• Meditation: 😎
• Breakfast: 😎
• NP Work: 😎
• Tax Work: 😎
• Lunch: 😎
• Work done by 6: 😎
• Dinner: 😎
• Only truly healthy foods: 😎
• No Wasted Life: 😎
• No Distracted Driving: 😎 I wasn’t perfect, but I was really good today. Room for improvement, but I was really good.
• Faced a Fear: 😬 My brain just keeps slipping this cog. 🤦‍♂️
• Tamed the tongue: I let one fly today. Total flier. Was at the junk yard, and I was trying to remove a part from another part so I wouldn’t have to pay for it, and the cheap plastic broke. I bought the part anyway, but a flier took flight when it broke. Oh well.
• Bag of veggies: Thanks to the mother figure, yes. 😊

Assessment:

Really good, solid improvement today. I’m grateful for that. The metta meditations really helped today. I was smiling and happy.

I ordered some new books today by Thich Nhat Hanh, at the recommendation of one of my sisters. They should arrive tomorrow. 😊

Love will “conquer all” (as the lady from the cartoon Robin Hood says).

My love to all y’all. What a journey! So much to learn. So much to become. Bring it on.

Indomitable.

Lift the World

~ stephen