2024

Will you be taking on any new adventures in 2024 or will your new year pretty much be the same O

same O like kicking the same can down the same street and calling it good a.k.a. just planning on existing another year!

My garbage disposal was leaking in my tin hut soooo I had to replace it. Age will do that, right? A problem it could be, maybe, possibly or an opportunity!  I went to ask a friend if he would help me with the project as he is very handy and full of knowledge about a lot of stuff including garbage disposals I figured.  He is Canadian and his wife told me that in Canada they call them garburators!  What!  We put it in together, he did the work and I watched; it worked well! ANYWAY, later we sat on their deck and talked for about a half an hour, and I learned a lot from them (i.e. great folks with good hearts, my kind of folks). Sorta kinda a problem that turned into a great opportunity! Bingo!

Soooo will you be taking on anything a little risky in 2024 or playing it safe? Of course, if we don’t take on anything risky, we won’t have to suffer any unhappiness with a potential failure and God only knows many folks don’t like to handle failures.  When we were in MO looking for where Jeanne’s past family that are buried up ‘er in ‘em hills in a little cemetery by a little, rural Baptist church we had to drive on narrow, windy roads to get there. They had no guard rails on their bridges and folks better pay attention or else. Only in MO, as other places would have guard rails to protect everyone. I guess those descendants of the moonshiners are used to taking risk! haha We had a good laugh. Soooooo do you need guard rails or are you going to take your chances in 2024?

I ever sooo often get off kilter, out of whack, lose my priority, don’t think right, think I’m more important than I am, get cocky, am not appreciative enough and those are just for starters!  In other words, I can become a mess.  When I see it, I humble myself and recalculate my journey, readjust, fix it, etc. a.k.a. grab the bull by the horns! A big part of this reshaping is to realize that I’m not in control and that I need to slow down, do my life unhurriedly, hold the horses, reanalyze, become less intense, not soooo involved, smell the roses, settle back and see the big picture and just enjoy. In other words, revert back to being myself! Does any of this make any sense to you?  That is what I thought!

Maybe this person is a smart person and maybe not (i.e. you decide) but anyway he says--Reflection is one of the best ways to learn from the past. Considering our experiences, decisions, and behaviors of the past allows us to see what we like and don’t like, what we value, where our strengths and weaknesses lie, what we want to do more of or less of, the people that give us or drain our energy, and much more.

I’m a Viktor Frankl fan and have read his book Man’s Search for Meaning maybe three times; it is an icon book. It’s a good one, my opinion. ANYWAY, I find it many times that it’s not the other person’s fault but mine. I’m the one who is wrong. Now that is humbling!  I admit it, it is.  One of Mr. Frankl’s sayings is this—"When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.”

RickyRick says—”Everyone wants to know the antidote to anxiety because we all experience it…set a pace that is gentle and have a humble heart; that will bring a good life and not a weary life.  Learning how to live like this is a process. You don’t learn it overnight because you didn’t develop your overloaded lifestyle overnight. But no matter how long it takes, you’re going to learn to trust Him…learn how to be gentle and humble. But how is that going to help you? Gentleness and humility don’t seem like the natural cure for being stressed out and tired. Maybe we would expect it to be, ‘learn to have endurance and stamina’… gentleness and humble will overcome aggression and arrogance, the two of the biggest causes of stress and emptiness in life…aggression is when we don’t want to wait for anything, and we get over-committed; it’s the opposite of gentleness.” That is RickyRick's opinion. You can choose your own opinion. BUT a friend would say to me when I was in business--There is no person with endurance like a person who sells insurance! Such is life.

In our 55+ community a.k.a. the Winter Camp for the Experienced as named by a couple from Las Vegas, there are many many opportunities to spend my time. There are hobby groups for pretty much anything anyone wants to do.  And if there isn’t one, they say, start one and folks do. Most of the groups are always soliciting more people to join their groups; and many folks join many groups of activity. Many folks really like this lifestyle. But for many, they have to be selective, they can’t join them all, there isn’t enough time even though they might have an interest. Oh, being selective makes a huge massive difference in what our lives look like. ItchieBitchie says—We have choices, and those choices will affect our life!  I plan to start a new group here in 2024 that I have an interest in. Let’s see what happens! I am going to organize it using personal invites. JoeBlow who can be like a constant nasal drip, says—Are you crazy erv, wonder if no one wants to join; that could really hurt your ego! If I were you, I would take the easy way and do nuttin rather than taking a chance in hurting your ego! CoachB says—There is a constant battle. There is a constant war for our mind, for our spirit and even for your money and if we don’t understand the tactics of war we will lose to the enemy every time! That is what he said; you believe that?  Sooooo do we need to think about maybe being more selective?

My new neighbor and I were getting to know each other some. He told me that he got married for the first time at the age of 47—what! what took you soooo long! He said he had a good job, but the company went broke soooo he had to find another job, he delivered bread for a bakery. The stores wanted the bread to be delivered at 6 in the morning, but he had a very good customer that was a convenient store soooo he would deliver their bread at 5:30 every morning. There was a lady who came in for her coffee each morning at 5:30 and he started to talk to her; it took him a year and a half before he asked her out; the rest is history!  His wife has now passed on from cancer and he is a widower.  He walks around much like I did for several years, like in a funk (i.e. I can relate to that). He should move to Canada where my friend, the garburator installer and his wife live; the complex they live in there is 100 single women to every 10 single men!  Our 55+ community has a lot of single women tooooo!  Maybe that is why he moved here!  Could be! BUT neighbor, the best one is taken buddy!

We make plans and they maybe are good plans but for some reason they always don’t work out. I had just that happen to me and it will happen to me again and again, probably in 2024. It ain’t nuttin new folks. I actually expect it. I’m not surprised. The best plans don’t always work out even though I think they should. They are not like a proven equation of A plus B equals C! There are toooo many variables that I have no control over. I try to be resilient and bounce back. I like the scenario of a basketball (i.e. I like basketball and enjoyed playing and coaching it)—When I bounce the basketball it comes right back to me (i.e. however I bounce it I get the same result back). If I bounce it off my foot, the result isn’t as good! Ouchy ouchy! Sometimes I must adjust my plans!  Such is life.

I sat next to Paul at church recently. He told me he was originally from IA and went to the National Livestock Show in Denver as a young man to look for a cow but instead got a wife!  Soooo he said, I moved to Denver. We had a good, long marriage until she passed on. Then when I was 78, I married my second wife, and we live half the time in Canada as that is her home and the other half in AZ for the winter; I have the best of two worlds.  How old are you Paul—92...we were hoping for 5 good years and holy smokes! His wife had her hand on his hand the whole service. Bliss!

Saturday question—Are you darn tough?  We had a rare rainy morning recently here in the Valley of the Sun and Jeanne and I were sitting on the couch while looking outside watching the rain and sipping our morning coffee. She had her Darn Tough brand wool socks on, and she said to me—erv, we are darn tough just like my socks. We had a very delightful conversation. What do you think we talked about? Huh, interesting!

CoachB says—"What we want is not often what we need, and a wise person focuses on and trains their heart to what they need instead on what lower nature says they want.” Most of us have options in life. We get to choose and make decisions in how we are going to live our lives. We pretty much do. And our decisions have consequences and guess who gets to make those decisions!  You got it! 

Try to think through this and understand it. It’s really toooo big for me to understand, I admit it. 2024 might bring some incredible great things that might happen to us that we just can’t understand or deserve and also some seemingly maybe some terrible things that might happen to us that we just can’t understand either. Could be maybe probably, I don't know! Soooo why?  And do we deserve them; probably we don’t think sooooo, for sure. Why do they happen? And the simple answer is: Because He is God and God is God and He is in charge. He is not human, but He is God! Bingo! Doesn’t human rationale make us wonder. Some things seem to be counterintuitive, at least to me they do.  One of my favorite verses that I really believe is—His understanding I cannot fathom. It makes my life much more enjoyable when I accept that and somewhat understand it. I have received beatitudes in my life a.k.a. supreme blessings! Saturday question—Have you ever received a beatitude?

Have a FUN day my friends unless you have other plans. (-:

erv

MyFriendJean said--To understand a person you must understand their memories.