I woke up this morning feeling like I slept better than I have in a long time. Part of that might be because I used a portable heater in my room because when I wake up in the morning my room has been like 56°, which feels pretty cold when you’re crawling out from underneath your warm covers. 😅
But with the space heater, I woke up to my room being 66°, which was a lot nicer. 🥳
And I think I slept pretty much through the night for the most part, until I woke up early in the morning to go to the bathroom.
I felt much more refreshed than I have in a while, not truly refreshed mind you, but definitely better than I have been lately.
After going through my normal morning routine, I spent pretty much the entire rest of the day down at the deck and woods area clearing stuff out and cleaning stuff up and getting stuff done that I want to get done. Oh, I guess I did run to the Lowe’s in Rogers to pick up some things that I’m doing as a surprise Christmas gift for my Hill family, and then after that, I went down and started working on all the stuff that I’ve been working on down by the deck and along the tree line by the creek.
I worked all day, exhausting my little body not with crazy strenuous stuff, but just with something like 8 hours of near constant energy expenditure.
Bless my wonderful mother for bringing me food and water while I kept just pressing on working and working and working. I was able, gratefully, to get quite a bit done, so that’s pretty cool. 🥳
After that, I went over and chatted with Jim and Steph for a while, because I had to bring Jim’s drill back to him, and I just stayed and we chatted for probably close to an hour. After that, I went home and managed to get myself in bed on time! 🥳
Hmmm… there is something important I wanted to mention, but I can’t remember what it is…
🤷
Oh well, hope y’all had a beautiful day. 😊
Oh! I remember now. I have been pretty significantly affected by the realization of how sun damaged my faces and all the wrinkles and wear lines and… Just how much older I look. I’ve always been the person who looked 10 years younger, or more, than what he actually was, but I guess these last 7 and 1/2 years of spending so much time outside and in the sun has just hammered my skin.
I found myself a little bit the day before and quite a bit last night as I realized, looking closely at my face, that the damage is even worse than I thought it was from when I mentioned it a few days ago.
So my superficial concerns have gone up pretty high. I already have struggled in the past, worrying about people being attracted to me, and now when I smile, I realize that I’ve got dozens of wrinkles all over my face because the skin is so thin with all of the DNA damaged in collagen screwed up.
So I’m really… self-conscious right now… I’ve always had plenty of issues with my physical appearance that I’ve been self-conscious about, but this took it up quite a notch. I think there’s also a lot of disappointment in myself, as seems to be happening so frequently lately, where I realize that I haven’t taken care of myself like I ought to, and now I’m paying the price for it.
So right now I get to go through the experience of feeling unattractive and self-conscious and having one more obstacle to worry about for why I may never get what I long for, though, the kind of person that I hope for would overlook those kinds of things. The problem is that I’m not that kind of person. I want to be, but I’m… not yet. 😕 So I can’t expect other people to treat me that way.
My hope for what I will be someday does not mean that that’s what I am right now.
So this has been pretty tough, actually. But as I think I mentioned before, I guess at least the silver lining is that it gives me the opportunity to empathize still more with the struggles that people have with their self-image.
I’m getting older and wrinkly, and a good portion of what I’m dealing with is my own fault because of my poor choices.
Live and learn… And hopefully be able to share enough to help others avoid making the same mistakes that I’ve made.
Lift the world.
~ stephen
Lift the World 