Honestly, I find it uncanny that there are so many people I personally know who share today as their Birthday. Dad, Aunt Charlotte, Mike, Mary, Marti, Jared, Janelle, Angela, Debbie, Mrs. Jones, Me.
Who’s next?
In the Middle of Something
It doesn’t matter what I’m doing, I’m always in the middle of something. So do I allow myself to become wrapped up in frustration because I haven’t completed one task and now I’m starting another? Sometimes I do and sometimes I do not. Therefore, I must accept the fact that there is always something, some task, a book, a movie, a job, a sentence, something that I am always in the middle of working on, or in the the process of accomplishing.
That sounds dizzying. The reality of acceptance toward incomplete tasks. I don’t think I like that. Start – Finish, that’s how I like to operate. That’s how I ‘run the show’, my show at least. One can deduce that this programming method is not how all people run their show. And if that is the case, there will be a difference in plans thus creating possibility of clash amongst two individuals.
Alright, so what gives? How about an understanding that I am in the middle of something, you are in the middle of something, and neither one of those ‘somethings’ outweigh importance over the other.
Understanding + Compromise = Satisfactory Results
where Satisfactory Results = Happiness
Four – Hands
Practice, practice, practice!
This is the *very first* time my piano teacher and I have played this piece together- LIVE. After months of working on this piece through FaceTime, we felt that we were at a point where it could be played, recorded, and used for further practice to getting the piece polished. There are a couple spots where I know that I made a mistake, **I just smile and play on**. THAT is a breakthrough for me because in the past a mistake would completely derail me and I’d either have to stop, or the ‘wheels would fall off’ and continue to make mistakes.
Also in the past I would:
1. be terrified to play alongside my piano teacher
2. be terrified to video myself
3. be even more terrified to post a video of my imperfection
……Progress, Not Perfection!
Four – Hands piano pieces are a thing. They are a type of duet, very difficult to play. Timing needs to be spot-on, and you find yourself often negotiating for key real estate that another hand occupies. In this classical Haydn piece there are eight variations of the initial (Primo) portion. Each Variation is written with increasing complexity resulting in progressively more challenging play as the original tune itself is kept intact. I thrive on challenges and work hard to overcome them. And I strive with everything I have to do just that. STILL able to improve over time, it is all about Progress, not perfection. Now watch!… 🙂
The Importance of Nothing
If everything is important, then nothing is important.
I remember the first time I heard that phrase used in speech and my difficulty in truly understanding what it meant. One day, I finally got it. I understood what it actually meant when assigning levels of importance to things in my life. Tasks, priorities, whatever it was I was prioritizing…it didn’t matter, because everything needed an assigned level of importance.
There was now a hierarchy, a procedure I could follow.
This stack of papers were something that deserved a closer look, perhaps some action on my part was necessary. Oh, but this stack too. Equally important but not sure which of the two, or three, or four, or… items in my stack should be accomplished first. I want to check all the boxes as highest priority but that does no good.
If there was no stack, if that stack did not exist, I would have nothing of importance to accomplish. Existence would have little or no meaning. Not so if the stack were regrets in ones life.
Nothing is important.
After the Move
When we first moved into our current house our ears were filled with continuous child’s play out on our small cup-de-sac. There were many families living on the street who were still building full total family unit. Due to expectant mothers, there were sometimes moves resulting from ‘out-growing’ the current house size. There were some moves resulting from long-time aging empty nest-ors who needed a location for greater level of care.
Slowly, the children grew up, as they do. We watched as they graduated, moved off, got married, and began a family of their own. The soundtrack of neighborhood children playing on the street became softer, and eventually dwindled, to no sound of children playing on the street.
Over time families split and moved away, some grew ill and passed-on, and everyone got older, as they do.
While watching television early evening yesterday there was a sudden burst of yelling kids out on the street. The sound was of a bunch of boys, yelling from excitement to one another and just having fun doing ‘everything’ kids do out on the street. I looked out the window and saw about 10 or so boys running around, some were on bikes, there were a couple of razors being ridden, football being tossed, and a couple of baseball bats being swung. There was nothing coordinated out there, they were simply enjoying the moment seemingly without a care in the world.
They were loud, and it was wonderful.
After our move to this house I didn’t think in long-term fashion, how things would change over time. We were young and everything was different. Things have changed, and we have experienced seemingly everything during this life phase. I’m going to take the new street-playing children sounds as that of a ‘clock-reset’.
Yes, perhaps the reset idea will help me, help us remember and feel the youthful energy of life after the move.
Something So Strange
To experience occurrences in one’s daily life is, well, daily life. Things happen. Happenstance is either externally projected or internally manifested.
We often understand daily occurrences as pattern, or an irregular event. Most often, day-in, day-out events simply occur without us even providing much thought. It just ‘is’, they just ‘are.
Is, am, are, was, were, be, being, been, has, have, had, do, does, did, shall, will, should, would, must, might, may, can, and could.
This post began with a completely different purpose, one that I will continue eventually, soon, later, now, another time, tomorrow, next week, or?
I know now that I’ll be fixated on trying to remember the xxx something that was there in my brain all along. Well I found it this morning. Tucked away neatly within the folds and crevices of grey matter, there it was. All I did was allow the thought to simmer for 24 hours and just like that it was found.
Fascinating to think.
I Only Have So Many Words and I’m Trying to Make Them All Count
A good friend of mine recently spoke the title of this post. Only his intention was not for the purpose of me writing about it. Or maybe it was. It sure got me thinking though, a lot.
I have an ‘expiration date’. We all have an expiration date and we don’t even know when that will come to pass. Nor would we want to know.
My sister, who lost her 27 year old son to pneumonia just a few short years ago, talked about this with me just the other day. We talked about it because I asked. I am close with my older sister Kath, we have always had a special bond. She will still sometimes introduce me as her ‘baby brother’ and it makes me smile. She had great responsibility of the other two siblings in our family including our brother Gib, also older than me, and myself. Gib was more independent however and it was me who needed all the ‘mothering’.
I told Kath that a day doesn’t go by without me thinking about her son Sean, and how I hurt for her. And I asked her the hard question out of loving concern ‘How do you even process that?’ ‘That’, being Sean’s death. I’ve never had this discussion with her because I knew it would be emotional on both ends, and it was. But it was necessary, and it was good, and it was perfect.
During my phone conversation with Kath, I told her about those words my friend spoke last Friday. He spoke them out of love, determination, courage, and strength. He spoke them in front of everyone at his wife’s eulogy, and it was perfect.
I only have so many words and I’m trying to make them all count.
Something is Going On
There is something going on right now and it is either completely new and exciting, or not new and dreadfully boring. Maybe it’s both. There is something going on right now and it may be unsettling, as a lot of every day life can be. I wonder if the feeling of unsettlement is felt by all? At least many? Hopefully some. I know that peripheral reverb is felt among many, and it’s not good.
Things are the same, but they are different. Unfortunately I have experienced many forms of unsettlement in my lifetime. How naive was I to think, well into adulthood, that my entire life would be without blemish?!
9/11
March 13, 2020
January 6, 2021
Unsettlement. Perhaps that topic alone should be an offered course within a higher education Psychology program.
Life these days is not unique, it’s just different. We have new and unknown variables within the equation that we never before experienced. New variables are unpredictable and often they create ‘chaos’, even at the most micro level. So what do we do with these new equations? We try one solution. And when that solution doesn’t work, we modify our efforts and try again. It’s the only way we learn how to solve, or at least thwart, our current challenges.
Whatever ‘it’ is I am unsettled by, will not be punctuated by fear.
Something in the Air
Just posted under the Sky tab is one of the many photos I took yesterday of Sky. I am enamored by Sky and this time of the year produces many visual gems to enjoy. Whether it be Sky or other joys of life, there’s only one of those gems in any given moment of time. My goal is to seek them all out.
Honor the Honorable
Watching a television interview yesterday the interviewee said at one point ‘ …to honor the honorable’. Powerful statement that was, and I became even more captivated in what I was watching. Already interested in the interview, the statement got me thinking about so much in my life, and it created an unshakable impact.
Here is not the place to go on about who I honor and for what reasons because it’s not about me, and I am going to leave it at that. You can fill in your own blank and think of it as one of those ‘food for thought’ ideas that simply gets one to think which is something we as a society need to do more often.
Petdad 