(written on the 14th)
Alohar!!! 😊
It’s been an up and down, comfortable blessing/uncomfortable blessing kind of day today.
Slept in again, saw Heather off to work, and then proceeded to have probably my best day of dailies–ever? (at least in the most recent efforts of the last handful of months, that is).
🥳
I was motoring right along! Any fears that popped up, I ignored them and just plowed forward.
It was fantastic. 😊🙏
Daily to-dos, done. Uplifting music. Managed. Prayer, gospel study, loving-kindness meditation.
Boom. Boom. Boom.
I got fly tape wrapped around a bucket and put out by the horses.
I called the DMV trying to figure out why my DMV sticker expires in February when I only just barely got it in June (South Dakota does it by last name, so C renews in February 🙃). So they prorated the registration for this year. It’ll be a full year next year…
If I’m here… 🙃
And I got myself a new Little John today. It’s not quite as comfortable as the previous little john, but I have discovered that my backside is cushioned enough to sit on the rim of a 5 gallon bucket without much discomfort. 😅
And I’ve also discovered that since I don’t have a seat pressed onto the top which allows just the tiniest bit of air out, so in hot weather, you can smell just a little bit (and that’s without any sort of sent mitigation, such as wood chips. That’s just plain… toilet loveliness. 🙃)
But with my new Little John, you don’t smell anything (well, until you actually use it, of course). Why don’t you smell anything? Well, because my new little John is the bucket that previously was used to hold the wood chips, and that bucket had one of those screw on lids. So now I just screw the lid on just barely snug, so it’s easy to loosen again, and no smell escapes the bucket.
Nada. Zip. Zilch.
At least, that’s been my experience so far. 🥳
And with a sufficient layer of cushion on my backside, I don’t see myself changing this design anytime soon (at least for as long as I am the only person living in the van). And if it ever gets tipped over again, nothing will spill out!
And the bonus?!?! So far, screwing the lid on has caused all of zero damage to the plastic bag inside, so it’s looking like I’ll be able to simply pull out the bag like I always have.
Let’s see, I answered a handful of questions online, and I spent some time working on memorizing some sections of writings I’ve done of my spiritual experiences.
It was a really awesome morning and early afternoon. And it felt wonderful to actually be motivated.
Naturally motivated.
I wasn’t trying to manufacture motivation to do the hard things like I’ve had to in the past, I was actually motivated to do them.
It feels really good to rise further through the fog. I’m definitely not out yet, and what happened later in the day is clear evidence of that. 😅
But it was really neat to see myself motivated to do hard things for the first time in a long time.
At least, it feels like a long time.
Aaaaaaand… then it was time to work on the New Zealand visa stuff again. 🙃
And it fought me.
After battling with it for a good little while, I finally gave up on any creative electronic methods for combining the PDFs, and when Hans got home, he got out their printer/scanner, and I set about trying to connect to it.
And that fought me.
😅
Eventually, I called my brother richard, and he suggested that I use a program called PrimoPDF, an old program from way back in the day that I used probably a decade-plus ago, probably back when he first told me about it.
So I downloaded the program, had to restart my computer I think to do some updates to make it work, and then gave it a try, and it looked like it was going to be able to combine the PDFs into one document! 🥳
By that time, it was relatively late, and I didn’t want to work on the visa application anymore.
Thus far, despite the potentially frustrating issues with the visa application, I had done pretty well manage my reactions, I think generally taking it in stride, with little bits of irritation starting to creep in.
And then the storm came.
At first, it was just fun because the wind was blowing super duper hard, blowing the parched dirt around in huge swirls and clouds.
But when the rain started falling, and turning itself into a little bit of a pretty hefty downpour, I remembered that I still have a pretty large hole in my roof, so I braved the wind and the rain and ran out to Rover to find something to deal with the rain, and when I got inside, I realized that the whole inside of Rover was almost like a fire sprinkling system. I had water dripping out of holes all over the place from the holes that I had put in for the solar panels, and not just dripping out of the holes, but there was water coming out of places that didn’t even have holes drilled. 😶
I think what was happening is water was going in the places where I had drilled holes and was finding little channels in the fiberglass honeycomb and running down all sorts of different places until it found little cracks in the fiberglass, and then it was just coming through right at those cracks.
😞
And that’s when my upbeat self made its final shift into a pretty dejected self.
All that work. All that effort. All that time I’ve spent trying to get a solar setup on my roof, all those holes I’ve drilled…
With the previous setup, I had 20 holes, and when it rained, I would only get just a little bit of water inside. Not much of a bother.
But now I’ve got 26 open holes and 14 sealed up holes, and none of those 26 holes have sealant in them because I didn’t really think about it because the 20 holes I had through the first go round barely leaked at all.
But this is a different design. This design has lots of gaps between the solar panel and the roof itself, which means a lot more space for water to make its way in and down.
[sigh]
Super discouraging. Mostly, the concern is just the amount of time and energy it’s going to take to get it fixed. I know I’ve been struggling to do the things I want to do. My mental health hasn’t been so great that way, mostly just sort of this mild PTSD that keeps me from going back to the things that have just been seemingly unending obstacles that never get resolved. But time is the most precious thing in the world to me, so when stuff like this happens, and I recognize that it’s going to take my time, and it feels like time wasted when I could be out doing good lifting the world… That’s what finally tripped me up and had me back feeling dejected.
My bed was wet. Clothes were wet, but it wasn’t as bad as it could have been. It wasn’t a goalie washer rain storm that lasted hours like they can in Arkansas.
I went back into the trailer after the rain stopped and hung out for a while before finally heading off to the van for the night.
Chatted with Cory for a bit.
Being discouraged and dejected, I ended up staying up until somewhere just before midnight, I think, just… wasting my time on YouTube videos.
Well, I shouldn’t say waste my time, I did watch lots of videos about how to repair my roof and videos on solar panel setups and whatnot.
Anyway! It was quite the day. 🙃
Gratitude to My Father:
- I’m grateful that I was able to have my best daily day to date. Probably not a coincidence that it came right after lowering the bar. Less self-imposed pressure, more room to breathe, more oxygen in the tank, more capacity to carry the load. And since my heart is what it is, it’s not about lowering the bar because I only want to do the littlest possible: it’s about adjusting expectations to align with my current capacity, my future goals and hopes and dreams still very much the same as they were before I lowered the bar temporarily.
- I’m grateful to have a new Little John and to have it not have taken much effort to prepare.
- I’m grateful for the suggestion of that old PDF program from years ago!
- I’m grateful for the progress made in chatting with the Big Guy, in gospel study, in loving-kindness meditating, etc.
- I’m grateful that there are ways to repair the drill holes in my roof.
We. Celebrate. Successes!!! 🥳:
- 👹 was trying to get under my skin this morning, so I gave him the 👢.
- Off to a great start this morning staring down fear. I plowed right into my formal (kneeling) conversation with the Big Guy. I chat with Him regularly, but I’ve been terrible at the dedicated chats–some sort of fear block. I think there’s still a fair bit of fear that I’ll get I’ll question everything He tells me and not trust it because of my fears, so maybe I avoid those dedicated, focused chats so as not to get more from Him? 🤷 Either way, fear faced. Stared down. … Success!!!
- Didn’t mention one from yesterday… I wore my massive goofy-looking sun hat into Walmart. That’s easy embarrassment for me. Easy self-consciousness. I want everyone to think well of me, and when taken to its end, I want everyone to put me up on a pedestal and think I’m amazing. So little things like this… sticking out awkwardly (at least in my own mind) just aren’t what my pride wants. So… I put on my hat and walked into the store and spent like an hour or two in the store shopping. 😅
- When I noticed that my bug screen door was damaged, most likely from what happened yesterday with the cooler flying forward and everything getting thrown everywhere, any negative reaction came and went so quickly that there was not really anything to register! 🥳 Shrug the shoulders. I put my priorities in other things, never secured the cooler properly, knew it was a risk, took the risk, and received the consequences. [shrug]. I’ll remember for next time.
- No four-letter exclamations or descriptions when the uncomfortable blessings came. 🥳
- No anger when the uncomfortable blessings came. 🥳
- For a decent part of the day, I was able to maintain perspective that it was actually the uncomfortable blessings that I want most because what I want most is to grow and become. That was huge. I think that was today, anyway. Time is… funny.
Reflections on Where I Can Improve:
- Still plenty of opportunity to more-quickly embrace the uncomfortable blessings. 🙃
Thought of the Day:
“Now therefore give me this mountain…”
~ Joshua 14:12
Hand of God In My Life Today:
Despite ending the day on a downer–disheartened and dejected, it was a day that was actually full of evidence of growth and change and rebirth. I don’t think this is me. I think this is God’s grace.
Lift the world.
Bring it on.
~ stephen
Lift the World 