Happenings

:)
1. Blog is back online.
2. New project making quite a rumble.
3. Feeling a bit better.
4. New design coming soon.
5. Had fun over weekend.

I am thankful for...
1. God.
2. My love.
3. My family.
4. My friends.
5. New found friends.

I'm hearing right now...
The Cars - Shake It Up

I'm feeling Happy.

Things have been very quiet here on the home front for quite some time and I’ve finally had sometime to put down in words what it is I’ve been thinking for the past several months and what it is I am going to do next with my life.

So where did my blog go? Well after a couple of assholes decided to get on here and post many harassing comments I decided to pull things down for just a while to let them cool off. Then I took action with the local high school where these immature brats are posting said items to my blog to have my site added to the banned sites list so they can’t visit from school.

That is right… from school. Immaturity breeds at school apparently. Apparently teaching kids during the day how to use time in “study hall” properly doesn’t happen and you can use that period of the day to do whatever you want. Including getting online and posting harassing messages to an adult’s blog.

Now you’d think that an adult wouldn’t be bothered by such petty things and that would be correct… remember however I am barely an adult to be honest and while I think it is the most petty and ridiculous thing I’ve ever seen in my life it is interrupting the ability of my readers to read and enjoy my journal.

So what is happening exactly?

I live in a small town. A town where everyone thinks that knowing each others business is totally necessary to living life and I’ve even seen some of these gossips make a living out of knowing stuff (read the Albion New Era’s Merriam News). What does this mean?

If you even try to keep a secret or do something that the conservative control of this town won’t approve of you can forget living a peaceful life and say hello to a bunch of people who know nothing breathing down your neck and trying to make your life in general a living hell.

Rumors are nasty and sometimes people start rumors out of spite because they don’t know an entire situation or because a friend starts one they feel it necessary to contribute as well. In a small town like Albion, Indiana the people live and thrive on rumors.

If people want to speculate on whom I date then more power to them. Frankly who I am dating at any given moment is my own business. It isn’t the business of anyone else and unless they have proof of something going on that is illegal they can speculate all they want… even though it isn’t their damn business.

For some reason the people of my town Albion find it necessary to talk amongst each other about whom I am dating (even if I am not dating the person they think I am) and then spread nasty rumors about me. Rumors that could potentially hurt my career options in the future and wreck my personal reputation.

You’d think it was something that only happened in high school but it isn’t sadly. I’ve heard grown adults and even people I had grown to respect spreading these rumors about myself and other individuals. All I can say is that I’m greatly disappointed in these individuals and I’ve lost a great deal of respect for them.

The fact that I’ve had to change the entire scope of my personal online space because of these individuals is sad. The fact I’ve changed my telephone number because of these individuals is sad. I’ve had to change so much in my life because of these people.

For the longest time things seemed so great. I felt like I was finally getting everything I deserved but lately it feels like it is all crashing down. I’ve been quite ill, I’ve lost something in my life that meant more to me then anything else, I haven’t been able to attend church because of my sickness, I am falling behind on my bills and I can never leave the house because of being sick.

Being able to post about these trials and tribulations is key to my success in life. I’ve created this space in an effort to help me maintain my life, become more organized, set goals for myself, vent my feelings and help myself improve.

Over the weekend I received a most excellent e-mail that helped me feel inspired to begin posting on this journal again. I receive a newsletter called “Almost a Newsletter” by Boogie Jack. I’ve been receiving the newsletter for quite some time now and it always has bits of information or similar features that enlighten and make you think. This issue it had a most excellent bit about keeping a journal. I thought it was interesting enough so here is the feature.

Seven Great Reasons to Keep a Journal

I ran across an old cassette tape the other night marked only as D. I knew what D was immediately, it was a recording of songs I wrote years ago. I couldn't resist. I popped it into the cassette deck and sat back and listened to me at half my current age playing guitar and singing. Since all the songs were my original lyrics, it was a glimpse into who I was about 25 years ago.

We spend so much time looking forward we often neglect to look back to see where we've been. It's even more rare that we look back with the intent to learn from the past. Our usual purpose for visiting our past is to relive pleasant memories. I had that pleasure and more, courtesy of this forgotten tape of evidence.

Looking back without evidence, however, often gives us an inaccurate view of who we were. As a friend of mine is fond of saying, "the older I get, the better I used to be." Of course, he means that as he gets older, he tends to see the past as he wants to remember it, rather than as it really was. Other personality types may remember things through different distortions.

Figuring out life isn't easy. Sometimes what we want to know or need to learn can take months or even years to play out before we can see enough of the picture to draw conclusions. I don't know about you, but I have a hard enough time remembering last week, let alone last year. Without some kind of record of the past, learning from it becomes more difficult. We tend to filter our memories through our current thought patternings and biases and forget important details that would give us proper perspective.

As our distortions of reality grow our memory base begins to corrupt, and we may unwittingly create false memories. Most of the time these false memories are harmless, but sometimes they are harmful to us or to others.

Professionals agree, the only way to distinguish between false memories and true memories is by external corroboration. Keeping a personal journal is not only a great way to keep track of important events in our lives, but it helps us in many other other ways, which brings us to the point of this article.

Seven Great Reasons to Keep a Journal

   1. It's an exercise in self-empowerment, it helps you become a better you. Taking pen to paper, or fingers to keyboard if you keep a journal on your computer, helps us focus. Fuzzy notions of someday, confusing thoughts, conflicting imagery and gray areas in life are resolved by faithfully keeping a journal. Goals become better defined and worked toward more diligently and intelligently. Unhelpful behavior patterns are identified and remedied as well. Our course becomes more clear.

   2. It's a great stress-reliever. Writing down your thoughts about stressful situations is a proactive approach that can help relieve the stress and even help help solve the problems causing the stress. Keeping things bottled up inside instead of finding healthy ways to vent can lead to all sorts of mental, emotional, and physical problems.

   3. A journal will increase your sex appeal! I'm not kidding. Men, ask any woman what they find sexy and nearly all will rate intelligence at or near the top of the list. Keeping a journal helps you to get to know yourself more fully, which is a form of wisdom and intelligence. Knowing yourself also helps you to express yourself with a more sincere and geniune confidence (rather than with typical male bravado and bluster). Genuine confidence also increases your sex appeal. Ladies, men are attracted to intelligence too, but many won't regard it as important as you do.

   4. A journal will add depth and meaning to your life. As you mine your thoughts and feelings you'll make more self-discoveries (those wonderful a-ha! moments), you'll realize many more layers of reality and see how they interweave, and you'll affirm and confirm your values and live in closer harmony with them. Later in life, you'll remember things you would have forgotten. You be able to see how much you've grown as a person. You'll find unexpected value in your own words, just as I did my old songs.

   5. A journal can help you quiet the din of daily life so you can tap into more intelligent thought streams than we live with during the rush of an ordinary day. It opens doors to thought and wisdom we don't know are available to us until we start frequenting our quiet, pensive inner nature. Great insights don't often visit a mind already drowning in piffle. The quiet time journaling provides allows us to slow down and enter the deeper thought realms. You see, a too-busy mind is like an unassembled jigsaw puzzle, its full of pieces but doesn't see the bigger picture. Quieting the mind helps to put the puzzle together.

   6. A journal helps you to be more creative. Many times I've been asked where I get my ideas from, and much of the time they come from my digital journal. If you contemplate your journal entries, it can lead to new ideas and discoveries that were not a part of your original thinking, but can prove to be even more important. Mental apathy leads to the mind's stagnation, but mental activity leads to idea proliferation!

   7. It's a learning tool unlike any other. Besides being your own teacher, it's fun once you get into the habit of chronicling your life. You will see yourself in new ways and realize there's more to you than you ever knew before. A journal is making time for yourself. It gives you an opportunity express yourself without fear of criticism or rejection. Remember, there are no rules, it's your journal. You can write as much or little as you like each day. My shortest entry is only four words, but they pack a punch!

There are many other things that could be added to the benefit list of keeping a journal, but I have to draw line somewhere. If not, I'd wager a person could write an entire book (or journal) about the benefits of keeping a journal.

If you don't think you'd have anything to say to yourself in a journal, let me assure you that you are wrong. Even if you can't start off your journal today with nothing more than whining, that's a start. You'll soon tire of that and find more important things to say to yourself if you stick with it.

Here's an grand idea, keep a second journal for someone else! Why? Imagine this: You just found out you and your spouse are having your first baby. Your mom and/or dad come over and give you a couple books. The books are journals of their thoughts about you and the events in your life from the day you were born until the day you told them they were going to be grandparents. You go over them together - laughing, crying, sharing and marveling at how sacred and precious life has been together. You'd not only be receiving one of the most remarkable gifts you'll ever receive, but you will learn how to be a new parent from them as well. Your bond of family unity will grow even stronger.

You could keep one for your siblings, parents, children, spouse, best friend, or whoever else is important enough to you to give them a few minutes a day. Men, suppose your wife lost a breast to breast cancer. Did you know this can leave a woman fearful that you will no longer find her attractive and afraid you may leave her? Imagine, on such a traumatic occasion, handing your wife a journal of how important she has been to you over the years and telling her, "This is the woman I know and love...nothing will change that." I guarantee that is one of the most inspirational things you could ever do for her. Instead of fighting cancer while worrying about losing you, her will to live will skyrocket and her love for you will glow brighter than ever.

A journal is not an exercise in vanity as some have claimed. A journal is thoughtful way to experience a higher quality of life. I hope I've convinced you of that, so now let me ask you a question...

If you believe you could improve the quality of your life simply by keeping a journal, why wouldn't you get started today?