As we get ready for 2014, let us reflect upon our actions and ask ourselves what we can do to improve our situations and assist others who, with a little encouragement, might do the same…
Author Archives: treetrunkrick
Congrats to the Claire Lynch Band for their “best of 2013” top five listing
Engineering apathy into social values!
Moustache power
One of my nieces, Maggie, works volunteers for her university’s entertainment board.
Not too long ago, an actor from a popular American television show called “Parks and Recreation,” Nick Offerman, performed a comedy act at Maggie’s school.
Nick wanted a student to make fun of, someone easily embarrassed/intimidated.
Maggie’s fellow students volunteered her.
So, during Nick’s act, he asked for a student to step on stage.
“I’m looking for someone on Row 1…” Maggie thought it was neat he picked a row on which many of her entertainment board members sat.
“Seat A!” Maggie screamed “No!” in her thoughts. “Not me! Not in front of 4000 people, especially students I know! I’ll die!”
Her face as red as Santa’s cheeks after a few hundred million swigs of eggnog, Maggie reluctantly walked on stage, stumbling up the steps.
Nick motioned her to stand in front of him.
He stared at her with his humorously fierce look.
He held the mike in her face and asked her name.
“M…M…M…Ma…Maggie.”
“Well, Maggie, do you go to Appalachian?”
“Y…Y…Yes.”
“Uh-huh. I see. I want you to stay in school and do good.”
With that, he pushed her off the stage.
For weeks afterward, students came up to her and asked if she was the famous student who had been grilled by Nick Offerman. She was shocked people recognised her.
However, that’s not all the story.
It’s her job to make sure the entertainer’s green room is set up before the show and then cleaned up after the show is over.
Maggie went to the green room to throw away food and trash.
She heard a sound and turned to see Nick walking back in.
“Oh, I get it. You think you can just do anything now, huh? Stalking me, are you? Rummaging through my stuff and looking for something to steal?”
Maggie stammered. “No, no! I’m just throwing away old food. Really!”
Nick nodded. “Sure, sure. Here, take these.” He reached into the fridge and handed Maggie four Diet Coke cans. “Just so you know, I stuck this one up my butt so it’s got my DNA if you want to clone me.”
Maggie, her face again red as a rabid beet, looked shocked even if it was Nick’s sense of humour. He then signed her ticket and gave her an autographed picture.
Later, she was walking down the hall and heard someone whisper loudly, “Maggie…Maggie.”
She turned to see it was Nick.
He smiled. “You still following me around, are you? Seriously, be good. Seeya!”
Having never seen the TV show, I’m only familiar with the actor via osmosis, knowing him marginally as the Moustache Man. However, Maggie, more in the demographic for the target audience, knows a lot about him. In my day, Timothy Leary and G. Gordon Liddy were gods of the university entertainment circuit just as the likes of Andy Griffith and Bob Newhart were the entertainers in my parents’ school days.
Guest post from Lesley Carter, of Bucket List Publications fame…
Ever get the feeling someone can read your thoughts? That’s the feeling these 30 things give me – time to start believing!:
30 Things to Stop Doing to Yourself
I read this post this morning and loved it! I don’t often share the work of others on the blog but this post was definitely ”share-worthy”. Creating a bucket list lifestyle encompasses treating yourself right and learning from your mistakes. This post is a great reflection of those lessons.
Is there one of these that you do often? Are there several? Let’s let the good things catch up.
Written by marcandangel
When you stop chasing the wrong things you give
the right things a chance to catch you.
As Maria Robinson once said, “Nobody can go back and start a new beginning, but anyone can start today and make a new ending.” Nothing could be closer to the truth. But before you can begin this process of transformation you have to stop doing the things that have been holding you back.
Here are some ideas to get you started:
- Stop spending time with the wrong people. – Life is too short to spend time with people who suck the happiness out of you. If someone wants you in their life, they’ll make room for you. You shouldn’t have to fight for a spot. Never, ever insist yourself to someone who continuously overlooks your worth. And remember, it’s not the people that stand by your side when you’re at your best, but the ones who stand beside you when you’re at your worst that are your true friends.
- Stop running from your problems. – Face them head on. No, it won’t be easy. There is no person in the world capable of flawlessly handling every punch thrown at them. We aren’t supposed to be able to instantly solve problems. That’s not how we’re made. In fact, we’re made to get upset, sad, hurt, stumble and fall. Because that’s the whole purpose of living – to face problems, learn, adapt, and solve them over the course of time. This is what ultimately molds us into the person we become.
- Stop lying to yourself. – You can lie to anyone else in the world, but you can’t lie to yourself. Our lives improve only when we take chances, and the first and most difficult chance we can take is to be honest with ourselves. Read The Road Less Traveled.
- Stop putting your own needs on the back burner. – The most painful thing is losing yourself in the process of loving someone too much, and forgetting that you are special too. Yes, help others; but help yourself too. If there was ever a moment to follow your passion and do something that matters to you, that moment is now.
- Stop trying to be someone you’re not. – One of the greatest challenges in life is being yourself in a world that’s trying to make you likeeveryone else. Someone will always be prettier, someone will always be smarter, someone will always be younger, but they will never be you. Don’t change so people will like you. Be yourself and the right people will love the real you.
- Stop trying to hold onto the past. – You can’t start the next chapter of your life if you keep re-reading your last one.
- Stop being scared to make a mistake. – Doing something and getting it wrong is at least ten times more productive than doing nothing. Every success has a trail of failures behind it, and every failure is leading towards success. You end up regretting the things you did NOT do far more than the things you did.
- Stop berating yourself for old mistakes. – We may love the wrong person and cry about the wrong things, but no matter how things go wrong, one thing is for sure, mistakes help us find the person and things that are right for us. We all make mistakes, have struggles, and even regret things in our past. But you are not your mistakes, you are not your struggles, and you are here NOW with the power to shape your day and your future. Every single thing that has ever happened in your life is preparing you for a moment that is yet to come.
- Stop trying to buy happiness. – Many of the things we desire are expensive. But the truth is, the things that really satisfy us are totally free – love, laughter and working on our passions.
- Stop exclusively looking to others for happiness. – If you’re not happy with who you are on the inside, you won’t be happy in a long-term relationship with anyone else either. You have to create stability in your own life first before you can share it with someone else. Read Stumbling on Happiness.
- Stop being idle. – Don’t think too much or you’ll create a problem that wasn’t even there in the first place. Evaluate situations and take decisive action. You cannot change what you refuse to confront. Making progress involves risk. Period! You can’t make it to second base with your foot on first.
- Stop thinking you’re not ready. – Nobody ever feels 100% ready when an opportunity arises. Because most great opportunities in life force us to grow beyond our comfort zones, which means we won’t feel totally comfortable at first.
- Stop getting involved in relationships for the wrong reasons. – Relationships must be chosen wisely. It’s better to be alone than to be in bad company. There’s no need to rush. If something is meant to be, it will happen – in the right time, with the right person, and for the best reason. Fall in love when you’re ready, not when you’re lonely.
- Stop rejecting new relationships just because old ones didn’t work. – In life you’ll realize that there is a purpose for everyone you meet. Some will test you, some will use you and some will teach you. But most importantly, some will bring out the best in you.
- Stop trying to compete against everyone else. – Don’t worry about what others are doing better than you. Concentrate on beating your own records every day. Success is a battle between YOU and YOURSELF only.
- Stop being jealous of others. – Jealousy is the art of counting someone else’s blessings instead of your own. Ask yourself this: “What’s something I have that everyone wants?”
- Stop complaining and feeling sorry for yourself. – Life’s curveballs are thrown for a reason – to shift your path in a direction that is meant for you. You may not see or understand everything the moment it happens, and it may be tough. But reflect back on those negative curveballs thrown at you in the past. You’ll often see that eventually they led you to a better place, person, state of mind, or situation. So smile! Let everyone know that today you are a lot stronger than you were yesterday, and you will be.
- Stop holding grudges. – Don’t live your life with hate in your heart. You will end up hurting yourself more than the people you hate. Forgiveness is not saying, “What you did to me is okay.” It is saying, “I’m not going to let what you did to me ruin my happiness forever.” Forgiveness is the answer… let go, find peace, liberate yourself! And remember, forgiveness is not just for other people, it’s for you too. If you must, forgive yourself, move on and try to do better next time.
- Stop letting others bring you down to their level. – Refuse to lower your standards to accommodate those who refuse to raise theirs.
- Stop wasting time explaining yourself to others. – Your friends don’t need it and your enemies won’t believe it anyway. Just do what you know in your heart is right.
- Stop doing the same things over and over without taking a break. – The time to take a deep breath is when you don’t have time for it. If you keep doing what you’re doing, you’ll keep getting what you’re getting. Sometimes you need to distance yourself to see things clearly.
- Stop overlooking the beauty of small moments. – Enjoy the little things, because one day you may look back and discover they were the big things. The best portion of your life will be the small, nameless moments you spend smiling with someone who matters to you.
- Stop trying to make things perfect. – The real world doesn’t reward perfectionists, it rewards people who get things done. Read Getting Things Done.
- Stop following the path of least resistance. – Life is not easy, especially when you plan on achieving something worthwhile. Don’t take the easy way out. Do something extraordinary.
- Stop acting like everything is fine if it isn’t. – It’s okay to fall apart for a little while. You don’t always have to pretend to be strong, and there is no need to constantly prove that everything is going well. You shouldn’t be concerned with what other people are thinking either – cry if you need to – it’s healthy to shed your tears. The sooner you do, the sooner you will be able to smile again.
- Stop blaming others for your troubles. – The extent to which you can achieve your dreams depends on the extent to which you take responsibility for your life. When you blame others for what you’re going through, you deny responsibility – you give others power over that part of your life.
- Stop trying to be everything to everyone. – Doing so is impossible, and trying will only burn you out. But making one person smile CAN change the world. Maybe not the whole world, but their world. So narrow your focus.
- Stop worrying so much. – Worry will not strip tomorrow of its burdens, it will strip today of its joy. One way to check if something is worth mulling over is to ask yourself this question: “Will this matter in one year’s time? Three years? Five years?” If not, then it’s not worth worrying about.
- Stop focusing on what you don’t want to happen. – Focus on what you do want to happen. Positive thinking is at the forefront of every great success story. If you awake every morning with the thought that something wonderful will happen in your life today, and you pay close attention, you’ll often find that you’re right.
- Stop being ungrateful. – No matter how good or bad you have it, wake up each day thankful for your life. Someone somewhere else is desperately fighting for theirs. Instead of thinking about what you’re missing, try thinking about what you have that everyone else is missing.
Noon on Christmas Day
In this house, where memory markers are stored, sits a lighted Christmas tree under which a modest number of gifts covered in decorative wrapping paper and topped with shiny bows marks a moment in the future, a few hours from now if random interruptions do not distract our family from agreed-upon meeting times here.
Do you faithfully promote the traditions of your ancestors, not questioning the reasons they chose for the habits we have setting aside family time to celebrate holidays?
Are you happy with the rhythms of life recognised by others?
In the past two years I have experienced changes to the patterns to which I’d grown accustomed, a few of the changes themselves repetitious changes to patterns earlier in my life, like familiar concentric waves I once formed bouncing back toward me.
We reap what we sow.
Karma will get you.
Reminders of the fish that got away, the paths not taken, the opportunity costs and risks associated with choices I made.
Because I have more than enough material goods in my life, my wants and needs in that regard are greatly diminished from when I was younger and driven to accumulate as a bizarre twist on the innate nesting, hunting and social climbing drilled into my head by a conspicuous consumption culture.
Share the wealth.
I only had 50 Christmas days with my father to work out the details of a family tradition that changed as our family changed, 50 more days than some. There were about 18,200 days which had no tradition tied to them that I could have spent with Dad learning about ancestral patterns.
In this house, my wife and my mother prepare food for our family Christmas dinner in a few hours, while my sister and her husband spend time with his family, my nieces and nephews spend time with their families.
On this day, people around the world, hundreds of millions of them, as the world turns, have set aside time with their families to repeat a pattern handed to them by their ancestors, a pattern that gives us a reason to share our wealth with each other.
Billions of us may or may not join in the celebration or don’t celebrate it for the same reason.
A week from now, our traditional calendar shows that a new year will begin on the 1st of January 2014.
I wonder if, on that day, I should move to a Martian calendar, no longer concerning myself with an Earth-centric one.
What about the other traditions handed down to me from my ancestors?
Points to ponder on Christmas Day…
Historical correctiins and faith: Census of Quirinius
Power to the people, holiday edition
I give thanks to all the workers who have given their time and talent to their jobs, from Walmart employees to police officers, for making the holiday season enjoyable, peaceful, and enriching.
Monopolised no more
I think it’s time we unplug the oil/petrol companies from the monopoly of market price fixing but I don’t know if I have all the facts.
In other words, if I have an oil well in Texas and supply petrol to gas stations in Tennessee, then I set my own prices at the pump, regardless of some arbitrary barrel price for crude oil that doesn’t reflect my economies of scale, right?
Same for corn, soybean, and other imaginary future prices…
It’s my supply-and-demand that puts food on the table because of my smart business practices, not at the whim of market speculators/manipulators who may not have me and my family/community’s best interest in their interest.
Sometimes, the simplistic viewpoint helps me make better decisions.
Hmm…
AK-47 or Turing machine — which would you rather have when you’re under attack?
Attack is a word that needs a good adjective — verbal, military, viral, bacterial.
Let’s go in another direction, instead — the debate about Calvinism.
No, let’s go one better — the extended order of human cooperation (aka capitalism).
treetrunkdings 