A Variety of Thoughts About Everything

"I am a lover of what is, not because I'm a spiritual person, but because it hurts when I argue with reality." Byron Katie ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ I have a lot of experience with arguing with reality. It does not happen so much today as it used to. And it still happen occasionally. Fortunately, most times, I am able to catch it when it does happen a lot quicker. This started when I was very young. At somewhere around five and half to six years old I looked at the world around me and said, deep in my gut, emotionally, not intellectually, "F** this. I'm out", and began to dive into my imagination. My Imagination was my first, and the one that I sometimes will still struggle with, drug. And how do I know it is a drug and I use it addictively? Because once I start imagining I cannot stop on my own. And once stopped by outside circumstances I cannot stay s

 "and move the f*** on." I just finished watching a movie called "Whiskey Tango Foxtrot". Very interesting movie. I encourage anyone to see it. The basic premise is a woman reporter in New York shakes up her life by going to Kabul to report on the war in Afghanistan. When she is just beginning her time in Afghanistan she meets and interviews a young Marine Lance Corporal. And they soon become friends. And she uses a quote he gave her about not loading his rifle because he does not need to.  And then he disappears from the story. Several years later she is in a situation and she is told that after she used his interview in a story he got sent to Kandahar. And that an IED had taken off both of his legs. She is devastated by this as she feels responsible for his being transferred into danger. After she gets the situation she is handling resolved she goes back to the "real world" after years in the Afghanistan. And she finds out where the former Marine Lance C

 After I wrote my last on Being Happy I received the following via text message from one of my Recovery friends. And I want to address it. " I get that our mindset is important. However, no amount of choosing to be happy would cure my depression. Medication can be life saving. There's also TMS and I know one person whose life has completely changed for the better because of it. It makes me sad to see anyone believe that if they just try hard enough, they can just choose to be happy. When literally, it's your brain chemistry and there's help out there. I wanted to be happy so bad and kept blaming myself for TOO long. What I needed was a mix of medication, therapy AND NA. "  First, I totally understand where my friend is coming from. I also have mental health issues to deal with. Depression and PTSD being my two. That I am aware of. I am also an Addict in Recovery thru NA. Choosing to Be Happy does not cure depression. And I never, in any way, meant to imply that

I have been told, and kinda faintly remember, that when I was real young I was a mostly happy and curious kid. And then I became a miserable S.O.B. for a long time. Always focused on the negative aspects of life, and in and my life in particular. Now admittedly, there was a lot of negative things happening in my life and had been for a long time. That had been true for as long as I could remember. And when one is focused on the negative aspects of life, one will always find more negative aspects of life. A full circle self fulfilling prophecy of the future and present. So here I am, going through life still being curious, and expecting the worst all the time. And when one is expecting the worst one will continue to find the worst. And I was wondering why I kept getting the worst. I had no idea about mindset and the way one sees the world through what they always expect to find. And then one day I began to hang out with some people who understood that Happiness is a Choice that one must

When I was seven years old I had a lawnmower accident in which my left big toe was chopped up pretty good. It was a traumatic, for me, experience. My Mother, not wanting the Emergency Room bill, called our Family Doctor, Primary Care Physician today, and arranged to bring me to his office instead. We got there and there seemed to be some tension happening. I know that he was not paying a lot of attention to my toe and was discussing something with my Mother that, it seemed, she did not want to talk about at that time. Thanks to the Doctor not doing his job I have a very deformed toenail on that toe ever since. And because it does not grow right there is always very low level pain there. And I have to pay more attention to it than all the other nine toes and all ten of my fingers. What the Doctor was discussing with such intenseness was an overdue bill. He did not do his job because we were poor and running behind on paying bills. Which was not an unusual thing in my growing up life for

 In the year 1761 the Seven Years War, AKA the French and Indian Wars in the colonies, was finished by treaty between England and France and Spain. One of the effects of the peace treaty was that French Canada was ceded to the British. This had a tremendous effect on the British colonies from before. For the first time they did not have a hostile foreign power to their North. One that had been in the habit of destabilizing things through their proxies, the Native Tribes of the area. And Britain was kinda broke. And they decided that they needed to raise some revenue and that the colonies, that they had just fought a long war to keep from getting wiped out by Natives or Conquered by France, should help pay the War debt thru a series of Taxes and Fees. Some people in Massachusetts (Massholes were trouble makers even then 😂) looked at these taxes and fees and decided that they should not have to pay them. They stated that as they had no say in them that they should not have to pay them.

 My first drug was my imagination. At a very young age I began retreating inside my imagination to create a world where I mattered. As I felt that in the world as it is I do not matter. And my imagination also became my first Avoidance "Therapy". And I call it that because when I was in my imagination then I did not have to deal with the real world. I could avoid all of the unpleasantness that was my reality. And, like all addictions, over time this was no longer sufficient. So I developed other ways to avoid reality. Reading was a huge one. I could get lost in a book where the world around me did not exist at all. This was, I have known for years, an extension of and fuel for my imagination. I also began the blame game. IE; my life was everyone else's fault. I bore no responsibility thus there was nothing for me to fix. Why should I look at what is clearly, to me, yours to fix? I should not. There was also the variation of the Blame Game called the Self Pity game. Becaus