Just a hair over 24 hours before the new year arrives and I sit and contemplate the year now nearly gone. I always get like this at this time of year. I sit and I wonder about how I used the time and gifts I was given, how I could have done things differently, and how I'll use my time and gifts this coming new year.It's not regret or negative thinking so much as it's a combination of constructive contemplation and closure.
A wiser older nurse at work once told me something along the lines of just put it behind you and move on. She was refering to our life's experience's and how it can be negative to dwell on the past and instead, learn from the past and move on. No matter if the experience was positive, negative, or any combination or degree between - just put it behind you and move on, learn from it and apply the new found wisdom to tomorrow and what tomorrow brings.
There's all sorts of "New Years Wisdom" I focus on this time of year, the entire year for that matter. We all have 24 hours in a day and it's up to us how to use them, today is the first day of the rest of my life, and a whole slew of other sayings and axioms too numerous to go on here. If I thought of most of them, I could write a book.
Everyone has 24 hours in a day and it's up to us how we use them. I think I first heard this one in relation to time management. Albert Einstein had 24 hours a day and look what he did, Mother Theresa had 24 hours a day and look what she did and so did every other man, woman, and child who we admire for what they accomplish in their 24 hours. It's all in how we use those 24 hours. No one man or woman has so much as one second more or less. It's a matter of utilizing your 24 hours properly with what resources you have and make. Making time, finding balance, utilizing what one has. It sounds so simple and it is, the greatest truths usually are.
Today is the first day of the rest of your life is a paraphrase of another axiom I heard some years ago. I don't recall where or exactly when but it did strike a cord within me. No matter where we are or end up or what we've done in the past; today is today and yesterday is yesterday and tomorrow might be tomorrow. It get's down to we only have today and now. We might have the rest of our lives, we certainly have today and, more importantly, we have now. if we want change and if we want to get on with our lives it has to be today, now. It won't be tomorrow because no one is promised tomorrow. It won't be yesterday because yesterday is gone. It will only be today and, most importantly, now.
These two little bits of wisdom touch on resolution. Resolution is a very powerful thing. The founding fathers of our nation resolved to form a new government, Mother Theresa resolved to serve the poor, and anyone who has ever done anything has resolved to it. Resolution can be half the battle to winning the war of whatever we're fighting or dealing with; the other half is the actual battle and after resolution, it's a down hill run. When one resolves to do something, truly resolves, one is empowered with almost super-human strength. No enemy or opponent can overcome the more powerful resolve of another. Resolution goes both ways, positive and negative.
Positive resolution is a trait to be admired and sought after and nurtured. I've always been amazed at cancer patients who I thought were sure to give up the ghost and then bounce right back. These men and women had resolved to beat their disease process and what it was doing to their selves. Single mothers who bring up their children on their own against incredible odds with limited resources are another example. These women put food on the table, keep a roof over the heads of the little ones, bring up the little ones, work, maybe go to school and fill the roles of mommy and daddy and overcome every obstacle in their path and come out smelling like roses. I am always amazed by how single mothers do it and how they succeed.
Negative resolution, there's not really a lot to say about it except it only leads down a dark and negative path with no good outcome unless one changes their ways and their resolve. We can call this being hard headed or having a bad attitude. However we refer to it, we've all seen the effects first hand or otherwise. It's not something we want or desire, but unless we change our resolve; it's where or how we end up.
It's all a matter of choices. The choices we make can be as clear and black or white or they can involve huge gray areas in between. Sometimes it's the gray areas we have to chose. A lot of life isn't just black and white, a lot of life is gray. Some areas may be more gray than others and some gray areas may be less wide than others, but I've come to learn a lot of life is lived in the gray areas no matter how black or white we may want it to be.
Anyway. I choose to log off now and get on with my life. I choose to stretch, break out the jump rope and get some exercise and reap the benefits thereof. I choose for what's left of 2005 and I resolve to improve my choices for 2006.
Friday, December 30, 2005
Friday, November 18, 2005
Cleaning Up My Act and Getting My Shit Together
It's incredible how we ride and lord over our children in an effort to get them to clean up their room, organize their school work, and just get their act together in general; then go to our own inner sanctuaries and lament and complain about our own acts in private. We may lead by example most of the time and put out fronts, some real and others totally false, but sometimes we falter and get bogged down in the ruts on the road of life. This is all perfectly normal, I'm sure, it just gets to me some days more so than others. Well, today has been one of those days.
I've always admired those parents who seem to have it all together. There are people in this world who have found an almost perfect balance of family, marriage, work, religion, school, community, and whatever other arenas they indulge in. Whole libraries of self help books and seminars and such are out on the subject. Some people even get rich on it and others, if you look deep enough into their eyes, sparkle as if they've found some sort of holy grail. The holy grail of balance and peace and love and being at one with God and it all, everything. The Dali Lama, Blessed Mother Theresa, Ghandi, Martin Luther King, countless saints, and too many others to name all had that sparkle.
Professional nursing models have a sort of answer, it's called Maslow's heirachy. It's a pyramid which illustrates human needs and gives them a place of value. The base of the pyramid is really basic, can't live with out stuff- air, water, warmth, food; then it continues on up. Sex is in there, safety, self esteem, and on up to the holy grail of self actualization. This is the tip of the pyramid , and so far as I've been taught, only three human beings have made it up there - Mother Theresa, Ghandi, and Martin Luther King. I'll toss in the Bhuddha, Mohammed, and Thoreau and Rumi. I think self actualization is the ultimate, all together, shit wired tight, almost perfect, really at one with God and the universe and everything else stage or such. I wouldn't know, I'm still trying to get my shit together, get the yard cut, shelves put up in the laundry room, clean up house, get ready for work, take care of the girls and master songham 3 of ATA tae kwon do. Songham 3 is supposed to be easy but I'm not the best of dancers and I'm convinced one has to be a good dancer before one undertakes ATA tae kwon do. My instructor is great, she's a 3rd degree blackbelt, a former profesional dancer, and one of the aforementioned types who really has her shit wired tight. Cute on top of all that too.
Anyway, I have to press my uniform, get ready for the night shift and get moving. I suppose it's a sort of balance, it might be the best balance I'm going to find for this 24 hour period. My wife and children are well, I've said my rosary, got a sort of work out in and that's a good day. Managed to even clean up and organize my poetry files some, now if I can just get my girls to clean their room and get my wife to wash the car, I think I'll be a step closer to self actualization and the Bhudda and Mother Theresa.
I've always admired those parents who seem to have it all together. There are people in this world who have found an almost perfect balance of family, marriage, work, religion, school, community, and whatever other arenas they indulge in. Whole libraries of self help books and seminars and such are out on the subject. Some people even get rich on it and others, if you look deep enough into their eyes, sparkle as if they've found some sort of holy grail. The holy grail of balance and peace and love and being at one with God and it all, everything. The Dali Lama, Blessed Mother Theresa, Ghandi, Martin Luther King, countless saints, and too many others to name all had that sparkle.
Professional nursing models have a sort of answer, it's called Maslow's heirachy. It's a pyramid which illustrates human needs and gives them a place of value. The base of the pyramid is really basic, can't live with out stuff- air, water, warmth, food; then it continues on up. Sex is in there, safety, self esteem, and on up to the holy grail of self actualization. This is the tip of the pyramid , and so far as I've been taught, only three human beings have made it up there - Mother Theresa, Ghandi, and Martin Luther King. I'll toss in the Bhuddha, Mohammed, and Thoreau and Rumi. I think self actualization is the ultimate, all together, shit wired tight, almost perfect, really at one with God and the universe and everything else stage or such. I wouldn't know, I'm still trying to get my shit together, get the yard cut, shelves put up in the laundry room, clean up house, get ready for work, take care of the girls and master songham 3 of ATA tae kwon do. Songham 3 is supposed to be easy but I'm not the best of dancers and I'm convinced one has to be a good dancer before one undertakes ATA tae kwon do. My instructor is great, she's a 3rd degree blackbelt, a former profesional dancer, and one of the aforementioned types who really has her shit wired tight. Cute on top of all that too.
Anyway, I have to press my uniform, get ready for the night shift and get moving. I suppose it's a sort of balance, it might be the best balance I'm going to find for this 24 hour period. My wife and children are well, I've said my rosary, got a sort of work out in and that's a good day. Managed to even clean up and organize my poetry files some, now if I can just get my girls to clean their room and get my wife to wash the car, I think I'll be a step closer to self actualization and the Bhudda and Mother Theresa.
Tuesday, November 01, 2005
Finally Found My Balls!
Finally found my balls, my poetic balls that is. No, that's not entirely true - finally found my balls to publish my poetry, even if it's just the internet. There's a website called poetry.com, a contest really, which posts poetry. My poetry is copyrighted and posted under my own name or whatever pen name I choose. This could be the start of something big for me.
There are rules, poetry limited to 20 lines and each line to 60 characters, but I'm sure all editors have requirements. It forces me to fine tune my poems. At first I felt the editors were butchering my poetry and raking me across the "creativity coals", but as I looked into it more, all editors have requirements for works submitted.
Writing for publication is something I've always wanted to do, since I was a teenager. In fact, my first choice, my first real choice of a profession, was authorship. Always wanted to be writer. I don't recall when or where the bug first bit me - maybe it was when I was shyly hiding away in the high school library before class and during lunch, it had to have been about that time. I didn't really give much other effort or energy to any other thing to spend my life's work. Even with afterschool jobs of cleaning floors in a burger joint, or my first job of kennel boy at Austin and Associates Veterinary clinic, deep down inside what I really wanted to do was to write, get published, get rich, and spend the rest of my life as a writer no matter what else may come.
When I graduated high school, started classes at the local community college I put down english major thinking that would be the ticket. Little did I know how much real work was involved. I was just an idealistic child with no true idea of what it was to be writer, editing, revising, publishing, rejection, submitting work to editors, competition amongst writers, making deadlines, getting educated, getting started, paying bills, making a living in the mean time until the" big one" was published and just life in general. I had no idea, still don't.
I just knew and felt deep down inside of the deepest recesses of my mind, body and soul that I wanted to be was a writer. Meanwhile - reality bites, it bites hard, holds on tight, doesn't let go, and life goes on. I was only 19, where was the" big one"? I had a notebook full of poems which just sat there and yellowed and collected dust. I didn't do a thing with it.
The early 20's is still a tender age for some people, it was for me. Life went on. I grew bored with college, enlisted in the Navy thinking in the back of my head I'd have some adventures which I'd write about but the reality was I didn't have much discipline for much else so I put ideas of being a writer aside and life went on. Fact is I learned a trade, I was a hospital corpsman and that has been the professional foundation of my life thus far. Of couse there was some adventure, but more importantly I learned and still have a foundation; professionally, personally, and in so many other ways that the military finds to affect one for the rest of ones life. More about that later.
Funny how life goes on. I didn't do much more about a career as a writer except to read about it and read what other people were writing. If anything I was, still do, contribute to their "big ones". I read and read, anything that caught my fancy or held my interests. I collected books, still collect books, on of my very few vices. Instead of becoming a writer, I've become a reader, a voracious one. I'm the type of reader likened to a shark.
Readers like myself start a book, no two or three books, and devote so much time to reading that we do little else. We put down reading as a favorite activity, hit the bookstores on a regular basis, spend money we don't have on books, join two or three book clubs, and neglect a lot of the rest of our lives because we're always reading or spending time in libraries. It's almost an addiction and it pours over into every aspect of our lives.
We marry like-readers, live our lives around our personal libraries, decorate our homes with books, and are rarely found without a book or two within arms reach. Take a look at my living room, three big bookcases lining the walls and each space of shelf filled. At least it's not drugs or alcohol or gambling or anything like that. Meanwhile my writing career still sits on the shelf in a blue binder stuffed with yellowed notebook pages, scraps of paper and some typewritten sheets.
At least that's where it was until a friend of mine told me about poetry.com. So I dusted it off rewrote some stuff and put it on. It was a big step, the first step. The first baby step was a poem I had published in my high school newspaper. Just one little poem in the back pages, that was the only piece of anything I had ever written and had published in any form. But this was for real, copyright and all. Now I'm a writer.
Life happens and somewhere in life one finds what they want, rare, but it happens.
It might me some tiny little thing like a poem published on the internet, but it happens. Not always the way we might want, but life happens. So that's my adventure, my adventures as a writer and I'm sure more to follow on that later. Meanwhile I'm enjoying it, I'm enjoying life and I can't wait for tommorrow.
There are rules, poetry limited to 20 lines and each line to 60 characters, but I'm sure all editors have requirements. It forces me to fine tune my poems. At first I felt the editors were butchering my poetry and raking me across the "creativity coals", but as I looked into it more, all editors have requirements for works submitted.
Writing for publication is something I've always wanted to do, since I was a teenager. In fact, my first choice, my first real choice of a profession, was authorship. Always wanted to be writer. I don't recall when or where the bug first bit me - maybe it was when I was shyly hiding away in the high school library before class and during lunch, it had to have been about that time. I didn't really give much other effort or energy to any other thing to spend my life's work. Even with afterschool jobs of cleaning floors in a burger joint, or my first job of kennel boy at Austin and Associates Veterinary clinic, deep down inside what I really wanted to do was to write, get published, get rich, and spend the rest of my life as a writer no matter what else may come.
When I graduated high school, started classes at the local community college I put down english major thinking that would be the ticket. Little did I know how much real work was involved. I was just an idealistic child with no true idea of what it was to be writer, editing, revising, publishing, rejection, submitting work to editors, competition amongst writers, making deadlines, getting educated, getting started, paying bills, making a living in the mean time until the" big one" was published and just life in general. I had no idea, still don't.
I just knew and felt deep down inside of the deepest recesses of my mind, body and soul that I wanted to be was a writer. Meanwhile - reality bites, it bites hard, holds on tight, doesn't let go, and life goes on. I was only 19, where was the" big one"? I had a notebook full of poems which just sat there and yellowed and collected dust. I didn't do a thing with it.
The early 20's is still a tender age for some people, it was for me. Life went on. I grew bored with college, enlisted in the Navy thinking in the back of my head I'd have some adventures which I'd write about but the reality was I didn't have much discipline for much else so I put ideas of being a writer aside and life went on. Fact is I learned a trade, I was a hospital corpsman and that has been the professional foundation of my life thus far. Of couse there was some adventure, but more importantly I learned and still have a foundation; professionally, personally, and in so many other ways that the military finds to affect one for the rest of ones life. More about that later.
Funny how life goes on. I didn't do much more about a career as a writer except to read about it and read what other people were writing. If anything I was, still do, contribute to their "big ones". I read and read, anything that caught my fancy or held my interests. I collected books, still collect books, on of my very few vices. Instead of becoming a writer, I've become a reader, a voracious one. I'm the type of reader likened to a shark.
Readers like myself start a book, no two or three books, and devote so much time to reading that we do little else. We put down reading as a favorite activity, hit the bookstores on a regular basis, spend money we don't have on books, join two or three book clubs, and neglect a lot of the rest of our lives because we're always reading or spending time in libraries. It's almost an addiction and it pours over into every aspect of our lives.
We marry like-readers, live our lives around our personal libraries, decorate our homes with books, and are rarely found without a book or two within arms reach. Take a look at my living room, three big bookcases lining the walls and each space of shelf filled. At least it's not drugs or alcohol or gambling or anything like that. Meanwhile my writing career still sits on the shelf in a blue binder stuffed with yellowed notebook pages, scraps of paper and some typewritten sheets.
At least that's where it was until a friend of mine told me about poetry.com. So I dusted it off rewrote some stuff and put it on. It was a big step, the first step. The first baby step was a poem I had published in my high school newspaper. Just one little poem in the back pages, that was the only piece of anything I had ever written and had published in any form. But this was for real, copyright and all. Now I'm a writer.
Life happens and somewhere in life one finds what they want, rare, but it happens.
It might me some tiny little thing like a poem published on the internet, but it happens. Not always the way we might want, but life happens. So that's my adventure, my adventures as a writer and I'm sure more to follow on that later. Meanwhile I'm enjoying it, I'm enjoying life and I can't wait for tommorrow.
Sunday, October 23, 2005
I'm back !
John Lennon sang " Life is what happens to you while you make other plans" in a song called "Beautiful Boy", about his son Sean. Funny how John Lennon songs are always associated with the important events of my life.
My oldest daughter, Victoria, was born 12Sep1992 and, as I carried her only minutes old to the newborn nursery it was "Imagaine" playing on the stereo. I couldn't dream a more perfect entrance for any child to come into the world and here it was me and my first-born. Victoria only minutes old, I a new father, and John Lennon music in the air.
Those are the type of memories a man doesn't forget and as I lay dying I know my final thoughts will be of the birth of my children. More to come about that subject later.
It's never forgotten to a young man when he starts to date and actively pursue the opposite sex. When this was happening to me it was Lennon's music in my car stereo. I loved his songs "Starting Over", "Woman", and "My dear Yoko" and "Watching The Wheels". I still do and get that nostalgic 17 year old in me again when I hear them. I crank up the volume and I sing along in the best voice I can bring up from deep within myself; the voice I save for church hymns and the national anthem and such. It makes me feel like a youngster again no matter what husband/father/or whatever issues are on my mind.
The "John Lennon Collection" CD is an integral part of my collection and I still have the cassette stored away somewhere. After I'm dead and gone someone will look back at my music collection and wonder about me and maybe learn something about me from my music collection left behind. Music collections, like journals and letters and books and whatever was important to us in life , are one way we learn about people after they are gone.
When my wife Dana and I were newlyweds John Lennon was played and replayed a lot, along with Ray Stevens. Maybe that was a harbringer of the the things to come later for us and our married life. The deep thoughtful Lennon and the funny happy go lucky Stevens.
I'm about to go out into my garage and hit the weight pile for a bit, get some exercise and maybe reap the benefits thereof; the music from the CD player will be Lennon and whatever else suits my fancy. During the breaks between changing exercises and changing weights, when my mind doesn't have to be focused in the dumbbell or barbell, I can be certain it will be on whatever Lennon song playing in the air and making feel more young, more here and now, and more happy.
My oldest daughter, Victoria, was born 12Sep1992 and, as I carried her only minutes old to the newborn nursery it was "Imagaine" playing on the stereo. I couldn't dream a more perfect entrance for any child to come into the world and here it was me and my first-born. Victoria only minutes old, I a new father, and John Lennon music in the air.
Those are the type of memories a man doesn't forget and as I lay dying I know my final thoughts will be of the birth of my children. More to come about that subject later.
It's never forgotten to a young man when he starts to date and actively pursue the opposite sex. When this was happening to me it was Lennon's music in my car stereo. I loved his songs "Starting Over", "Woman", and "My dear Yoko" and "Watching The Wheels". I still do and get that nostalgic 17 year old in me again when I hear them. I crank up the volume and I sing along in the best voice I can bring up from deep within myself; the voice I save for church hymns and the national anthem and such. It makes me feel like a youngster again no matter what husband/father/or whatever issues are on my mind.
The "John Lennon Collection" CD is an integral part of my collection and I still have the cassette stored away somewhere. After I'm dead and gone someone will look back at my music collection and wonder about me and maybe learn something about me from my music collection left behind. Music collections, like journals and letters and books and whatever was important to us in life , are one way we learn about people after they are gone.
When my wife Dana and I were newlyweds John Lennon was played and replayed a lot, along with Ray Stevens. Maybe that was a harbringer of the the things to come later for us and our married life. The deep thoughtful Lennon and the funny happy go lucky Stevens.
I'm about to go out into my garage and hit the weight pile for a bit, get some exercise and maybe reap the benefits thereof; the music from the CD player will be Lennon and whatever else suits my fancy. During the breaks between changing exercises and changing weights, when my mind doesn't have to be focused in the dumbbell or barbell, I can be certain it will be on whatever Lennon song playing in the air and making feel more young, more here and now, and more happy.
Thursday, September 01, 2005
hurricane katrina
Have been viewing some of the tv and internet coverage of the disaster in the central gulf states. Really tears at my heart to see the devastation wrought. It could well have happened here if not for the grace of God. It could have very easily had been ourselves in such a disaster.
Gas prices up, cost of living up, everything going up except my paycheck. Received a 4% pay raise at work. This is good, it will just about cover what we're spending in gas for the car and truck. Just for once I'd like to save any percentage of a pay raise.
True we're in dire financial shit but we at least still have our home and I still have a job. I grow tired of living from paycheck to paycheck and unable to save anything. Just barely making it on my little paycheck. Wish my wife would get a part-time job to help out with the bills.
I'm tired, worked a double shift yesterday, must rest up before going to tae kwon do this evening, supposed to be testing for my orange belt.
Gas prices up, cost of living up, everything going up except my paycheck. Received a 4% pay raise at work. This is good, it will just about cover what we're spending in gas for the car and truck. Just for once I'd like to save any percentage of a pay raise.
True we're in dire financial shit but we at least still have our home and I still have a job. I grow tired of living from paycheck to paycheck and unable to save anything. Just barely making it on my little paycheck. Wish my wife would get a part-time job to help out with the bills.
I'm tired, worked a double shift yesterday, must rest up before going to tae kwon do this evening, supposed to be testing for my orange belt.
Sunday, August 28, 2005
more musings and ramblings and pondering and such
It's incredible how the people we love the most are the ones who we hurt the most or are hurt by the most. Wether we mean it or not or for whatever reason or excuses we use or hide behind. This morning I had to fight with my children, I didn't want to fight but I tire of their laziness and insolence and lack of discipline and disrepect. My daughters are 12, 11, and 5 years old. They are still just children, little girls who are growing up fast.
I expect some rebellion from my children, it's supposed to happen, but how do I teach my girls about life and living and love and all that a father is supposed to teach his daughters ? It's not easy being a father, much harder being a husband to their mother. I love my daughters and their mother feels I'm too hard on them. Nothing I do to those girls will ever be as hard or harsh or cruel as life and the world will be to them later. I can only prepare them for that. I'm not a wealthy man, not monetarily, so I can not shower them with whatever material possessions they may want. It's almost all I can do to send them to catholic school. I feel a private education is good for them. An education is priceless and it doesn't end with the classroom, it keeps on going for the rest of our lives.
My own parents were divorced when I was four years old, I have only a handful of memories of my parents together,all good memories. I saw my father on weekends and holidays. My dad was an "absentee father", I didn't grow up under his roof. He did not have to contend with his sons, not like my mother did.
My mother provided for us as best she could, a single mother always working. My mother is a strict disciplinarian as was her mother and as is still her father. We did not go without and we were not abused, but life can be abusive and my mother did prepare us for life. She prepared us as best she could, my father tried as best he could according to the examples he had.
Dad was an abused child, his father was a philanderer and beat his children and his wife, hard drinking, hard working but short on showing love to his chidren. Dad never beat on us though, never abused us, but didn't always discipline my brother and I. How could he, he didn't know how. My fathers best friend tells me " our fathers can only love us the best way they know how". How deep and insightful and enlightening when I remember my grandfather and when I think about my father. It's not that my father doesn't love me, it's just he doesn't always know how. Consequently his son, me, will have difficulties in this area also. I still have my mothers example.
My parenting style is very much like my mothers and my grandfathers, the true father figures in my life. Yes I can be hard and harsh, yes it does hurt, I'm sure it hurt my mother also. But my conscience is clear, I'm not guilty about disciplining my children, only contending with the feelings of how to go about it right and dealing with my emotions. I'm not above slapping my girls or lording over them if they will learn. It's not easy and they will not understand now or today or next week or next month, but one day with their own children or with a situation in life later on they will remember; I know they will because their father does. Their father remembers the lessons his mother taught him as his mother remembers the lessons her parents taught her. If it's done right it's an unbroken chain, an unending assembly line of love and discipline passed on from parent to child. Love is discipline and discipline is love, sometimes love hurts.
I expect some rebellion from my children, it's supposed to happen, but how do I teach my girls about life and living and love and all that a father is supposed to teach his daughters ? It's not easy being a father, much harder being a husband to their mother. I love my daughters and their mother feels I'm too hard on them. Nothing I do to those girls will ever be as hard or harsh or cruel as life and the world will be to them later. I can only prepare them for that. I'm not a wealthy man, not monetarily, so I can not shower them with whatever material possessions they may want. It's almost all I can do to send them to catholic school. I feel a private education is good for them. An education is priceless and it doesn't end with the classroom, it keeps on going for the rest of our lives.
My own parents were divorced when I was four years old, I have only a handful of memories of my parents together,all good memories. I saw my father on weekends and holidays. My dad was an "absentee father", I didn't grow up under his roof. He did not have to contend with his sons, not like my mother did.
My mother provided for us as best she could, a single mother always working. My mother is a strict disciplinarian as was her mother and as is still her father. We did not go without and we were not abused, but life can be abusive and my mother did prepare us for life. She prepared us as best she could, my father tried as best he could according to the examples he had.
Dad was an abused child, his father was a philanderer and beat his children and his wife, hard drinking, hard working but short on showing love to his chidren. Dad never beat on us though, never abused us, but didn't always discipline my brother and I. How could he, he didn't know how. My fathers best friend tells me " our fathers can only love us the best way they know how". How deep and insightful and enlightening when I remember my grandfather and when I think about my father. It's not that my father doesn't love me, it's just he doesn't always know how. Consequently his son, me, will have difficulties in this area also. I still have my mothers example.
My parenting style is very much like my mothers and my grandfathers, the true father figures in my life. Yes I can be hard and harsh, yes it does hurt, I'm sure it hurt my mother also. But my conscience is clear, I'm not guilty about disciplining my children, only contending with the feelings of how to go about it right and dealing with my emotions. I'm not above slapping my girls or lording over them if they will learn. It's not easy and they will not understand now or today or next week or next month, but one day with their own children or with a situation in life later on they will remember; I know they will because their father does. Their father remembers the lessons his mother taught him as his mother remembers the lessons her parents taught her. If it's done right it's an unbroken chain, an unending assembly line of love and discipline passed on from parent to child. Love is discipline and discipline is love, sometimes love hurts.
Thursday, August 25, 2005
Wednesday, August 24, 2005
my very first blog
This is my very first blog and, like losing ones viginity, it's a little awkward at first, but I'll get used to it. It's amazing what you can get used to in life. I'm new to computers and am learning. Until recently, my computer skills were limited to cruising the internet, emailing, listening to cds or watching dvds, real kids stuff. My daughters know more about computers and how to really use them than I do. The thought can be a little scary when one considers what's available on the internet. I don't even know how to type, just hunt and peck.
Anyway, more to follow later. Must be dashing off now to pay bills, do shit around the house and such. Spending too much time in front of a computer can rot the brain.
Anyway, more to follow later. Must be dashing off now to pay bills, do shit around the house and such. Spending too much time in front of a computer can rot the brain.
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