The Fly

For the last two years, I've struggled with a corrosive environment, inside and out, that has made writing this impossible.  Until I can escape it, I won't be posting.

A Christmas Carol

Failure is the opportunity to start again with more knowledge. -J. Sklep

I think lots of people have said that in one way or another. None on a mug or tasteful neck tattoo, but here's a fun fact speaking of necks: No one wants to suck on your ex-boyfriend's name.

Other than not getting a tattoo, here's what not to do—embrace a mistake. Examine it, learn from it, then bury it. Bury it so deep no future can excavate it and then plant a tree upon it, I don't do that. I wrap my whole soul around a mistake, and make it the symbol of my life. When really all it should amount to is the elimination of what doesn't work so what does work can be more easily found.

Here's a mistake I revisit, and never quite learn: I can't write and listen to anything with words.Yet , I continue trying while listening to the greatest possible distraction.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gJ3jINcTR0

Happy Thanksgiving

There's no lonelier feeling than sittiing at Thanksgiving dinner, surrounded by family, knowing you have nothing in common with any of them.

More Sock Puppets--I Guess

If you want to live a happy life, tie it to a goal, not to people or objects. — Albert Einstein

It's hard to be happy when you can't put on your socks. I wouldn't have guessed it, and no one has written a book about it, but it's true. It starts your every day with a simple task fail. Great.

And your shoes slow rot.

Dramatic effect intended. Not that the smell of Nike necrosis wouldn't have tipped you off to my problem. But how, you wonder, did this happen?

I attached my back to the happiness of others and let them have their way with it--for money. Not even a lot of money, barely money to keep me lubed and ibuprofened enough to keep showing up. In pursuit of their goals, or their boss's goal, or their boss's mother's goal, but never in the pursuit of mine, Life requires money and money is sold time, I get it. But the question I should have asked a long time ago is: How much of life am I willing to sell? How much damage to me for lunch money? Apparently, needing forceps and a rolled up magazine to pull on socks worth. This is several blogs ago news now, however the lack of a workable solution keeps it topical on Planet JOHN.

There is a simmering hope out there in the form of discontent salted with anger. If I were happy with my life right now, I would be worried about me right now. Fact is channeling discontent keeps me up at night wondering why I'm not awake and going forward. That's positive.

And you know what else is positive? My Zazzle store. They handle production and shipping while PayPal handles the money. The only solution I can see at the moment. Let's hope it's a good one.

It's a Gift

Writer's Note: Between battling bouts of leprosy and melancholia, I wrote notes for what was to be today's blog. The notes worked better than the mishmoshing I titled “10262019blog.”

Dream is not a bad word. Dream is not a word reserved for the naive. Dream is the first word to happiness. Dream is the seed of innovation. Dream is why you can't sleep. Dream is breath. Dream is a parachute when life crashes. Dream is why you are here.

Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambition. Mark Twain

Dream killers, life suckers, disastrous distractions in the form of friendly advice. Never listen to advice from someone who doesn't have to live with the outcome. Best intentions is failure. Toxic people, no matter who, are not acknowledged in my life. They hate you because they are afraid. Be selective with whom you share.

I'd hate to die without ever having done what I was born to do. What if the only thing you've ever wanted to do scares your parents? your teachers? What if the thing you were born to do is so far out of their experience they smirk because they can't comprehend?   Find a role model on the internet, preferably a successful one.

Live for “why” not “how.” Know what your dream is and why it must happen, not how it must happen. Work towards it every day every day every day every day. Know your gift and give it every day.

Be thankful.

Guilt is a Sucking Feeling

In the last month, I've figured out a lot about life. Mostly, how to get the things I really want, however now that I understand the process I feel guilty when I don't invest every energy into making it work.

I anticipated super results, and I'm okay with super results, but the guilt was a surprise.

Guilt is taking your mother on your honeymoon so she won't feel left out. Guilt is taking a warm mud bath in quicksand. Guilt is the octopus you keep in your underwear because otherwise those silk boxers are too darned comfortable, or. . .

Maybe guilt is the stick to happiness' carrot?

If it is then there can be no joy in the process or the result. “I understand the process part, but why the result?” said ThisIsYou talking. Because instead of admiring your achievement, you'll only be glad it's over. You were going to figure that out, but I wanted you to ponder something much darker which is: I have a job counting houses. Yep, envy me.

I have a job, and that's a good thing, but I now view every house counted, every second explaining why I count houses, to be wasted life. I feel guilty for not applying my new found knowledge to achieving my dreams, but I'd feel guilty for not working, too.

Maybe, I'm transitioning from necessity to only doing what I love?  Applying my new found knowledge, I'll give the transition two more weeks and then I'll only make money doing what I love.

What Was Once A Puzzle Is Now Just Pieces

It all seemed so simple in the brochure. Eat your vegetables, do what you're told, go to school, get a job, and life would be smooth. Basically, they told us to embrace our inner cow and the World would curl up in our laps. Not so much.

Seems like they issued the puzzle with a couple pieces missing. Happiness comes to mind and so does freedom of choice. What if I didn't want to wear a suit to support the three kids I didn't want either? I struggled with “supposed to” and “want to” for years. Just ask my ulcers, they'll tell you. But the reality is no law- physical or biblical-says you can't be a responsible, productive person doing what makes you happy. Do you know what that means for us? We can choose to do what makes us happy and still be responsible adults.

Wow!

The Sandbox

When I was young, the neighbor would come home from his quarry job and empty his boots into his kids' sandbox. It wasn't peculiar to my six year old self, it was simply a thing that happened every afternoon like watching “The Munsters”. It isn't even anything to think about now, except I'm on this kick where every thing has deep meaning and purpose.

I pick up change in parking lots. Enough change to fill up my car and take a day trip every year so it makes me wonder why the people who dropped it didn't bother to pick it up. Maybe they didn't think it worth their while, but pennies make dollars and so on. It's little things that make up big things.

A little at a time is how we build things and how we lose things. And a little time sneaks away faster than anything. Here's an example: I had a coworker who came back exactly five minutes late from lunch every day. Not a big deal, until you do the math 25 minutes per week x 50 weeks=1,250 minutes or 20.8 hours a year. She skipped two and a half days of work five minutes at a time. Just for fun, pick any day and add up how much time you waste on your phone or surfing meaningless stuff on the internet. I'm afraid of the actual number but I suspect I waste at minimum two hours a day on YouTube. That works out to be 30.4 twenty-four hour days days a year. An entire month I'm not doing anything useful

Now for the neighbor, maybe his kids' sandbox was an hourglass measuring his life or just a practical place to empty his shoes. Anyway, the point is the little you things you do every day are what make up your life in the end.

Control Patrol

Last week my morning pages evolved into compiling a list of all the things in my life I have control over The definition of control being whether I could say yes or no and make it stick. Yesses made the good pile and noes were removed from my thoughts. Surprising how many decisions ended up in the yes pile. Lots of little ones like eating, exercising, shutting off the TV that affect the body, but big ones like who to spend time with, too. The most important is being able to choose my thoughts.

Here's a fun fact: I have complete control over who and what I think about.

Can I make that a truth? It's as true as I choose to make it.

Negative people only exist because I let them. Every time I let them in they steal my happiness and time I can't get back There's no good reason to let them do this no matter what leverage they have. I now repeat with conviction, “You're not worth knowing” then remove them from my life.

You know how much more you'll do by only focusing energy on what you have control over? Choosing to do the good things that benefit you? Here's another area I put in the remove pile, worrying about other people's lives. It's one thing to care and an entirely different thing to start trying to think for them.

Freeing myself of all the negatives and people who refuse to think should give me. . .me.

Yeah, I'm all over the place with the “you” and “mes”.

Sweet Mother of Wisdom

Experience isn't the source of all wisdom, wouldn't it be nice though?  But Wisdom lives in Distance and Distance lives on Time.

The Devil's Lawn

I've lived my life like a lawn ornament, relying on people and hunches to move me around hoping one of them will put me where I want to be doing what I want. It's not the most empowered lifestyle what with the dog peeing on me all the time and me always waiting to be three feet from wherever I am, but it does relieve me of responsibility.

I'm pretty sure Druids invented lawn ornaments. It makes sense for a lapsed Druid to cast a likeness of himself and stick it front of a bush so the neighbors won't gossip. And during football season--were the Druids big football watchers? probably not, but you know they watched and bet on something--imagine how handy a stand-in at church could be. Don't even get me started on having a doppelganger to attend your cousin's nephew's christening. Maybe, the Druids were visionaries to enhance their lives with lawn ornaments, but life for the ornaments--gnome, fawn, or mushroom--it is pretty much the same.

And I'm stuck working the lawn.

Synchronicity

Sometimes I breathe on the mirror to make sure I'm alive. You'd think walking over there would do the trick, but I need to see the steam. I need to feel the effort. But being reassured I'm alive forces the bigger question: Why?

YouTube offers a multitude of time enhancing videos on why alive happens and what to do about it, but I couldn't find a one that gave me the why of my alive. However, I discovered a new way to possibly plot a course to Why.

Synchronicity.

Synchronicity or “meaningful coincidences” are “guideposts on the path to your true self and purpose.” Okay, started looking for coincidences with characteristics implying omens. Seems like a lot of wiggle room in the interpretation department, but I've been giving it a shot and, by gosh, if nothing else it's interesting. For the last few months, I've been looking for a suburban farmhouse with a huge barn on fifteen acres with a money no object attitude. Now I never discuss my plans with coworkers or outside my inner circle yet people have started asking me if I'm a secret millionaire. Could it be my ideal house and a pile of money are close to meeting in my life and strangers sense it? Two days ago, a couple kids I was volunteering with called me “Bernie.” Guess what project I've been working on? That's right, “Bernie.” Are these innocent coincidences or comforting signs? It would really be nice if they were signs of imminent successes. Just saying.

I'd been using the Carrot and Stick method. It works well as a gauge. When I work and pursue carrots good things happen, when I wander I get the stick and bad things happen. It's pretty simple and it might work for you. Me? I'm going with synchronicity if only because it makes me pay attention.

The Fairness Factor

Whoever said life isn't fair completely lacked objective perspective and knowledge of the scientific principle behind “I'm rubber you're glue.” Life's bread and butter move is fairness. The physical Law of Fairness: for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction holds in every situation. Remember, though, opposite is a directional measure not a substance measure. This is exactly why when you wish bad things would happen to bad people bad things happen to you. Instead, wish them a long and healthy life when they're doing life without parole.

I'm still perfecting my technique for wishing evil in a good and positive way. Here's an example: Someone stole my thumb drive, with all my writing on it, and when I asked around the house it mysteriously reappeared reformatted. In a less enlightened time I would have wished plagues upon him. Now, abundant fairness whatever the Universe decides that should be.

Let me get to some spiritual good news. Yesterday, I accidentally solved a creative dilemma during morning pages. Really, it launched a cool title with no story into story with one free form line. For three months I had no idea what to do with it and, now, it's complete. Not a bad day's work.

Nothing else has moved forward in a month, but one thing done beats detailed planning with empty pages to show for it.

Indoors

“When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has been opened for us.”-Helen Keller

The Fair

“You won't know anything until you don't know anything.”

Wow! Find me a mountain top, flowing robes, and rubes with $1200 and a free weekend and I'll be rich in no time. I suppose I could do the right thing and distill that nonsense down to “Don't assume; learn.” and give it away, but where's the profit?

There's a whole world of people willing to pay for gibberish and we here at Jotsalot Media are just the guys to give it to them. It's entirely possible gibberish is our bread and butter product outside of our Zazzle shop. Might even be opening an Etsy shop for overflow gibberish.

OR. . .

I could stop thinking cynically and let myself be what I want to be. I'm not a gibberish kind of guy outside of here. Pretty darn serious about being funny and making people happy which might be another reason things move slowly around here.

OR. . .

I have the attention span of a three year old at a candy convention. Which is to say I ricochet between projects and never put enough time in to finish one.

OR. . .

I really need a partner, Yes, I need a partner with all the skills I waste time trying to master whilst not doing the things I am good at.

I definitely need a partner.

Maybe You Can Build a Tree Out of Leaves

Odd, convinced I could never compile a book organizing scraps, I committed to it as a method. Sometimes the scraps are a triggering word, sometimes a sentence, sometimes a paragraph and, despite my worst intentions, they're adding up. All the blog posts I promised I would rewrite are organizing into the same book just as I promised them they would. Huh.

I wouldn't suggest this method unless you're writing a book a hundred different stories long.

The most wonderful epiphany happened occurred at work the other night: I can't work full time and create full time. I know I've posted this idea before, threatened to quit before, stayed before. This time I quit. Yep, free and starving like a starling in Winter. Not really, God blessed me with the cheeks of a chipmunk so I'll be okay for quite a while.

Starving Starling and Cheeky Chipmunk are my spirit animals. Being a Pisces I get two with opposing traits.

Now, I'm all in as a collector of leaves.

P.S. Kind of fun if you want to know.

Cravings of a Lunatic

Yesterday I had a premontion that today would be a good day. The day before that I had a premontion yesterday was going to be a good day. I was just plain wrong both times. Granted today hasn't bloomed into a complete wreck mostly because the snow is keeping me in bed. Maybe that is a good thing? Maybe yesterday and the day before weren't all that bad either. Nobody stole my lunch money and not a single person tried to hug me. I suppose that makes them pretty good days. Lowering standards makes bad days better. Maybe, the key to happiness is flexible standards. Yes, my standards are shifty like dunes in a desert or fluid like a lava lamp.

None of this explains accepting my interior designer's bold choice of beige for the bedroom. Why not a nice slutty ochre? Or a bold dungeony slate? Yep, I think beige answers the age old question of what color goes best with celibacy.

What does any of this have to do with the state of my creative projects? Isn't it obvious? my brain has turned a lighter shade of beige, but only for three more weeks.

I Stole This

All living souls welcome whatever they are ready to cope with; all else they ignore, or pronounce to be monstrous and wrong, or deny to be possible.          -GEORGE SANTAYANA

Amy's Glacier

Glaciers are all about persistence and patience. Lacking the quick reflexes and pouncing skills of slugs, glaciers rely on complacency to trap their prey. Out of the corner of its eye a mountain sees a glacier coming, watches it for maybe a few thousand years, then the second it turns its back WHAM! turned into a valley.

Glaciers are a lot like life that way. You watch, plot, and dream for awhile then just when you think everything is under control WHAM! your dreams are smeared like cream cheese on a bagel. What happened?! I only turned my back for a second! Probably, it was more like a few years and a few more years after that to accept responsibility, and all the while time ground on. Do you know I didn't even see it coming? The horrible realization I wasn't where I was supposed to be, I mean.

Truth is all about timing. It kind of hangs around in the background, knowing WHAM! will come, whether you like it or not.

Okay, somehow the Glacier/Truth/Time continuum is unraveling before my very thoughts (mostly I'm thinking lunch) and I'm going to zigzag like a slug now.

Things are actually progressing inside and out right now. Inside, ideas have taken on prioritizing themselves lest they get time smeared. I like it when plans tire of me and force their own birth. Outside, the sun is coming out and I can work out Winter's kinks in time for swimsuit season.

And if you want to know where all this came from, read the title.

A Long Line to Draw a Conclusion

Men and melons are hard to know. -Benjamin Franklin

It is a little known fact that Benjamin Franklin is my imaginary friend. We talk about a lot of things, but he has never explained this particular quote to me. It would make sense if it concluded with “unless you thump them.” But standing alone all it offers is something to ponder in the produce section.

You know what else is fun to think about while shopping? Yourself. It turns out I'm full of self surprises. I  didn't know I love to draw and love it more after every drawn journal entry. Pretty cool because the drawings crave stories and I have stories needing illustration. You regular readers will point out I've been talking about this for years but, you see, that's all I was doing. I liked talking about it because it sounded cool, but I never really did anything about it. Now, it seems my subconscious was working on it all along. I discovered this at Taco Bell this morning not the supermarket. Not the biggest epiphany of the week, but I'm happy with it.

No, the biggest AHA was realizing I had no fear of public speaking, but lots of fear talking one-on-one. You know when I learned this? Right after explaining to the lunchroom the need to wash their hands (I was paid to do this) and being cornered afterwards by a fink wanting to name names. Maybe it was her insistence that scared me, but I really wanted the obscurity of a crowd.

No, I don't have any point.

No Time Like Overtime

Always beware of the fact, that the only thing hindering an all out revolution is your fear of losing the scraps they throw at you. -GORE VIDAL

And that is why I wake up and go to work, instead of creating, and hate every minute of it.

Death to Fear

I have learned silence from the talkative, toleration from the intolerant, and kindness from the unkind; yet strange, I am ungrateful to these teachers. -KAHLIL GIBRAN, Sand and Foam


I'm in a steep learning curve fueled by anger and curbed by fear. I should be thankful for the horrors trying to turn my self-limiting fears into the desirable choice, but I still hold the horrors. Hate them, rage at them, and embrace them because I know what they are. I'm not sure what could be worse than where I am and what I'm doing (other than life in a Third World prison) and I don't want to find out. Could it be as simple as failure? Been there and done that multiple times, surviving when I thought it was impossible. I've done the impossible as many times as failed with equal ease. (It is failure-mostly-and I just wrote myself out of it, but I need more post.) Fear of success? Isn't that like being afraid of an all-u-can eat buffet? It makes zero sense and it's not me. Fear of the new and unknown? Possibly, happiness has always been an elusive state for me and my plans will make me very happy. So why is it I let the horrors stay?

I don't know, but I sure use “but” a lot.

Let me give you some good news: The shattered tooth was removed and I now have a convenient place to store a six inch sub. It didn't just give in and let itself be yanked; it was kicking and clinging to life until the dentist grabbed the Sawzall. RIP Molar 15

More good news: I've decided to go be happy no matter the cost.

Tastes Like Perky

Mostly “slow and steady” gets you separated from the herd and eaten. -Bernie

I'll Take the Life Raft with the Hole, Please

So, I'm stocking my life raft with needed supplies-I'll get to that next week-when my tooth shattered and I realized I hadn't packed a dentist.  Know where dentists go when it's snowing and your tooth is broken?  Florida, I suspect.

Anyway, I have a whole real idea to fluff and post for next week when my tooth will not be dancing to a throbbing Latin beat.,

I will survive.