Today Wasn’t It

Triple Chocolate Muffins Ready For The Oven

So what do you do when your head hurts too much for you to focus on writing?!?!
If you are me, today…..you Bake!!!

Like a lot of people I suffer from a couple different types of headaches. During season changes I can get sinus headaches from my allergies and I also suffer from migraines.
If you are a fellow migraine suffer then you know that you can actually have what I refer to as levels of migraines….usually, two of them…the ones that you can try to ignore and work through, but you really aren’t…and the full-blown ones, that put you in the quietest, darkest place you can find curled up in a ball, hoping for sleep to cover up the pain and outlast the attack so that you can wake-up and pretend it didn’t happen and hopefully not miss too much in the day or two that you were hiding!

So, today, for me, is one of those days where the pain isn’t enough to make me hide away, but, it is the constant pain that is enough to keep me from being able to focus on anything truly mental. Partly, cause while light and sound is not unbearable it is unpleasant to say the least; thus, staring at a computer screen to write is more than I truly want to endure.  For example this article has taken me several starts and stops, as well as, straight-up breaks and we are only 3 paragraphs in. But, it isn’t only the light of the screen that is an issue, it is that the pain in my brain causes it to just stop thinking. I can be in the middle of writing and it just stops, the thought(s) is gone and nothing replaces it. Neither is good for writing or meeting a deadline!

Fresh from the oven!

At least we have Triple Chocolate Muffins to console us! Or so I am claiming. I mean we do have them and I am using it to console myself for not starting on the next article for Random Thought, but, I will still need to catch-up in the next 36 hours. Such is the life of migraine sufferers.

And we all find ways to deal with our own issues and quirks and that is a good thing. Sometimes, it can be hard to remember that we all have our own quirks from dealing with our own issues and thus we are not always so ready to make allowances for others, mostly cause we do not stop to think that maybe this is their quirk, we just assume that others are “normal”, whatever that is and have no quirks cause they have no issues. But, we all have own issues!

New Things For A New Year-You-Life

With the New Year, there are lots of opportunities to start new things and or to restart old things and or to change old things into something new. Currently, I am in the process of doing all three.

First, as you know, I am changing this old blog into something different if not new. I am going to be more open about posts and in doing so maybe provide insight and company where it might not have existed before and enrich it where it was a faint glimmer already.

Secondly, I am rebranding, in a manner of speaking my blog and podcast that focuses on ancient history and other topics that I feel are closely related to my interests in ancient history. That is a slower work in progress. I am still sorting out the hows and whats and whens and wheres. Taking it slow is okay, as the saying goes any step forward is still forward movement.

Lastly, kinda, sort-of, maybe……is the starting of a new blog in the tech area, but for ordinary people and the studying of or improvement of a natural skill set to possibly lead to a new professional adventure. As well as a couple more personal ‘new’ adventures, which I will share at a later date.

Each of us can take each new beginning, whether it be a New Year or new circumstances in life or just a new week or day and make it our new thing, whatever we want that to be. No matter our age or experience or circumstance, we all have the power to make changes, however small they might be at first, that will lead to new things and give us the ability to make more changes leading to more new things.

There are lots of little things that can lead to big changes in our lives that we do have power over. We may not be able to buy the house we want to day, but, we can make a change in the house we have to make it feel new or different. Something that we can all do in that regard is to donate or throw away or sell the things that no longer benefit us. Another easy way to feel like our space is new, is to simply rearrange the things that we have to create a different point of view or flow of energy.

You might be thinking how can that benefit me on a larger scale. Well, having fewer things and letting go of the things that no longer benefit us actually lighten our mental and emotional loads and thus can greatly improve our physical loads, both figuratively and literally. In addition, giving ourselves a new perspective or flow can continue the impact beyond our room or home out into the real world or at least into our outside worlds.

Make very small changes in how you engage the world around you. Take one whole second when you step outside to just stop and breathe in deeply. And then continue one your day. Or take a few extra seconds to just look at the world around you and really see it. This simple gesture will make you more aware of your surroundings and more present in each moment.

Park an extra row out or get off the bus or sub one stop early or ditch the cab one block away and walk those extra steps. Walking provides many benefits to all parts of our self. And will expand our world and provide us with more opportunities and experiences. We might meet new people, find new shops or cafes, see new environments. We will learn something more about places we frequent or work or live by seeing past just their part in our lives and seeing them in their place in their world.

Put your phone on silent or do not disturb for a half an hour or even a whole hour and do something or nothing that does not require that addiction to your phone. Just sit on a park bench or take a nap or go for a walk or read a real book or doodle on real paper with a real pen or pen a real letter. All these things require us to engage different parts of our brain and our bodies and require different muscles and coordination be used to accomplish.

If you pick even just one of these things to accomplish, you will see a much larger difference in your life and world that you can imagine and that will lead to other changes and improvements.

Yes, it can be hard to make even the smallest change, but remember, nothing great comes without some risk and courage. Be we all have that courage to take the risk in us, we just have to dig down into the core of our soul and find it. And take each step, one step at a time. And be proud of each step that you take.

If you have to lighten you load by only letting go of one thing at a time, that is fine, you are still letting go. If you can only walk one extra parking spot, instead of a whole row, fine that is still 10 extra feet. And you can get to a whole row, one spot at a time. And ask for a partner in this. Ask a living companion to also let go and or help you let go. Ask a co worker to walk that extra stop or block with you. Ask friend or family member to be the “no phone” time with you.

Don’t worry about doing it The Right Way, however, you accomplish it is YOUR Right Way!

Photo Credit:    Chicago Agent Magazine
Olivia and Poppy Wallpaper

It’s Okay To Be Okay With Saying No

So I have this, usually not very good for me, habit that I am trying to work on reining in some. And today, I did manage, with the help of my totally amazing and completely supportive partner, to make the choice to not save the world by killing myself and more importantly, being okay with the choice.

See, I think sometimes when we are trying to change or balance some aspect of ourselves, what makes the changes so hard is not the logic or reason behind needing to change, nor is it always about making and following through with the choice. Most of the times what sabotages us is the emotional weight after making and or following through with the better choice.

It is that emotional weight that prevents us from staying the course of making the change that will eventually make us happier and healthier. And while it is not really ourselves not wanting what is best for us, it is about the habit or normalness of what we have been doing for so long to not risk being unhappy because others are unhappy with us.

From birth we have all the outsiders that tell us what is right and wrong, what is good and bad, and even what is best for us. In addition some of these people constantly convince us to change our minds by manipulating us into believing that they know more or better what will make us happier and better people.  Most of the time they are not right, at least not completely and sometimes they are flat out wrong. Now, I am not blaming our loved ones for being bad or mean or anything negative. In most cases, they are merely following the example that they grew up with. Their thought process is that it is the adults’ job to tell the child what to do and how to do and even why to do’ in addition, a lot of times they are also telling the child how to feel about things. And that is the grossest error!

The result is that we grow up and some of us still allow everyone else to tell us how we feel and what we should do to make others happy and how that will supposedly make us happy. The reality is that most of the time it doesn’t make us happy at all, it usually makes us very unhappy.

In general, I think that we are all generous souls. We are after all a very social pack animal. It is one of the reasons that dog is man’s best friend, we are both pack animals and we, at our core, rely on that packness for everything. Thus, I do not think that we need to tell each other how much to give in order to be happy and instead we need to accept what others are willing and able to give and be grateful. And we need to be able to do and give what we are able to in the way that is best for us and others accept that from us.

We need to allow ourselves and others to say No! and we need to be okay and even happy with ourselves and each other when we say No. We need to, also, understand and accept that a single No or even a dozen Noes is not the end of the world. Nor does saying No once or twice or a dozen times make us a bad person.

It really is okay to be okay with saying No.

Photo Credit: tinybuddha.com