We’ll start with some gratitude. It’s been a rough day.
- I’m grateful that my poison ivy immersion this last Sunday apparently wasn’t the immersion that I thought. Yes, I have some new patches of rash on my arms, but that’s really it. Pretty amazing, given that I was basically hugging vines and burning poison ivy vines and whatnot. 🥳
- I’m grateful that I was able to play some basketball last night. It’s good to get exercise, and for cardio, playing sports is pretty much the only way that I can do it without being just ridiculously bored to death. So my body looks like it’s in really good shape, but my lungs and cardiovascular system will definitely disagree 🙃, so every little bit of cardio that I can get is fabulous.
- I’m grateful for my friend Cory who’s been instrumental in helping me to make progress recently on One of my many addictions.
- I’m grateful for cheap magnetic cell phone holding devices that go on my dashboard and whatnot in my various vehicles. It’s funny how many years I went holding my phone or having it in my lap or whatever instead of just buying a cheap magnetic stand thingy. I think it was like two for $17 bucks. So nice!
- I’m grateful that after my fully loaded down shelving in my van broke free from the metal frame of the van itself and came crashing down just as I was pulling into a job I was able to get it back standing upright, and though I didn’t have a way to re secure it back down, it stayed upright all day. I just had to be careful how I took left turns.
- I’m grateful that I didn’t get injured playing basketball. Well, other than hurting my already injured shoulder and little stuff, but no sprained ankles are broken bones or anything like that.
- I’m grateful for opportunities to make little bits of progress that make a difference. On the lower part of our dirt road/ gravel driveway, we end up with potholes on a regular basis after rain settles in the lower parts and cars drive through the lower parts, splashing out the dirt and leaving the rocks in little pot hole depressions. Since I cleared out the brush in the woods, the vines and everything, that made it a lot easier to access all the dirty base that had washed from the main road into the woods during the last major flood that turned our lower pasture into a river. With the dirty base, quite a lot of it actually, each day that I’ve been coming home from work, I grab my 5 gallon bucket, fill it up once with dirty base, and go fill one of the potholes. After just a little while, there aren’t really any more potholes. 🙂 It only takes a few minutes each day, and it’s a lot less daunting than having to go get the tractor, load up a bucket, drive it all the way down, dump it, and then spread it. The five gallon bucket seems to work fabulously and is just about perfect for the size of the potholes. One bucket generally fills one pothole.
- I’m grateful once again for my friend Cory for being there through a rough time in the morning.
And now, on to the day…
I don’t remember exactly why I got started, I think because maybe I’ve been thinking about dating and what not recently and going on dating app websites and whatnot, has made me think a little bit about people I used to date And those years way back when.
It’s amazing how quickly time flies. It’s been almost 20 years since I broke up with Janelle in college. It’s so long ago, but it also feels like it could just be yesterday. Some of the memories are quite vivid.
I miss her. She was absolutely incredible, far better a person than I was. I wish it could have worked, but I wasn’t capable of being the kind of person that she deserved, and I just couldn’t ever get it to feel right even though I loved her with all my heart.
She married many many years ago and has four daughters, Same as one of my best friends from college. He’s got four daughters as well, the oldest starts college this year. I reconnected with him for the first time in like 8 years today.
I think I remember at the time feeling both left out and afraid as I watched all of my friends getting married and I… not.
It was hard this morning as I thought of all those things. There’s so much pain that I have buried in there that I don’t really let out, I guess. But as soon as I think about it, I can get pretty darn low… Eyes getting a little wet…
I keep it out of my mind most of the time, but I pretty much feel like a failure at life. I know I’ve done good in my 40 plus years, but I feel like most of my life is just a waste– a clinic in lost opportunity, unrealized potential, and shattered dreams.
I’m grateful for Cory for being there for me this morning when I was struggling. There’s not really much anybody can do other than be there. One day, hopefully, I’ll find some peace and not look back over my life with The deep pain that floods through me as it does now.
I can, in all honesty, say that I have tried. So that’s something. My integrity is at least relatively intact, even if my hopes and dreams are not.
It’s all the metric on how I decide to measure my life. If it’s on effort given, then I’ve succeeded. If it’s on results, then I’ve failed worse than even some of my worst nightmares, I think.
When life has to be lived within the boundaries of the results, it’s hard to look at the effort and say everything is good.
Anyway, I’m trying to move forward, hoping that at some point I will finally realize some of my hopes and dreams.
I spent a little time today on eHarmony. And I sent a message to one person before bed.
As far as cars went, it’s funny, I spent the whole day working, but I only got two cars done. And it wasn’t like they were even long or hard jobs, so I’m not sure where all the time went. The first one was a Mitsubishi Montero that needed a starter, so I went ahead and put that in., And the next one was a 2015 Nissan Altima that was having runability issues. It was a bit tricky figuring it out, but in the end, I figured out that it was the fuel pump, at least as best as I can tell right now. Unfortunately, the fuel pump is super expensive on that one, just the part’s like 700 plus dollars.
The last car was a 2007 Chevy Silverado that wouldn’t start. It also needed a starter, but when I took the starter out of the box to put it on, they had the wrong starter in the box. Right box, wrong starter.
The guy was super nice about it, wasn’t even really concerned at all, so that was nice. It’s definitely ways of my time, but whatever. Glad the customer wasn’t angry.
After that, I went up to the Bentonville AutoZone to return some parts, and I ended up hanging out with Allison, the store manager for a while doing business stuff and then just talking about life and whatnot.
From there it was on to basketball, where I played really well in the beginning and fairly well at the end, But after my first game, my long-range ball consisted of lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of misses, including several air balls.
Oops.
I added some pictures to my eHarmony profile and sent out that message before going to bed.
I’m not going to get any hopes up. I’ve done that too much.
That missing God thing has been pretty strong today. But it’s also very painful. I miss the relationship a lot. But I just don’t trust him anymore. Not even a tiny bit.
I want to… gosh I wish I did.
But there is so much pain after having given and sacrificed so much and having lost so much of what was most precious to me.
Honestly, the chances are probably a lot better than not that I will choose one day to trust again, but that day is not today.
(sigh)
Until next time, my lovelies. 😊
Lift the World
~ stephen
Lift the World 