positive change

Daily writing prompt

Describe one positive change you have made in your life.

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This prompt had me laughing. I have changed so many times and utterly confounded friends and family each time. I think they are all happy — those who are still alive — that my rate of change has slowed. My recent blogs are pretty clear about what positive change we have made recently. It’s all about moving house.

our positive change

Peg & I have been talking about what our next move would be like ever since moving into this apartment in a Milwaukee suburb. The move from S. Texas to Milwaukee was to get us closer to family, and we literally took the first apartment we found — because it fit every one of our criteria at the time. It was intended to be an interim move until we had an idea of what “old age” was going to look like here near our family.

We thought about number of bedrooms, about whether there needed to be an indoor hallway where we could walk (for exercise as we get older) we thought – obviously – about what floor to be on and whether an elevator was necessary. Those were just a few of the considerations. Slow forward 7 years and the prospect of being less than 2 miles from Katy, on a first floor, not in an apartment arose and we jumped at the opportunity.

Temporarily there’s the confusion of the actual move. But longterm I’ll have better office space, the floorplan (while different from what I would have naturally chosen) looks like it will address all our concerns, and we are closer to medical and other routine needs. So, for us it’s a positive change that moves us forward.

about that which one speaks

Daily writing prompt

What book could you read over and over again?

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at one time, a lifetime ago it seems today, I was a teacher in a small church. It didn’t take long for me to get frustrated/angry/amused by how many people said “the Bible says…” so many ridiculous things! That started me on a quest to read and reread and rereread the Bible cover to cover multiple times from several different translations. It was important that I knew about that which I was speaking.

other than that I find myself far more likely to read other times from the same writer than rereading the same text – whatever type of book it might have been.

but, you see I like learning and to me it’s important to understand. A novel is rather like an instruction book and unless one is wanting to master a skill one usually reads the directions once to learn how to do a thing and then moves on to learn something new.

nonsportive but curious

Daily writing prompt

What Olympic sports do you enjoy watching the most?

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The idea of what SPORT do I watch rather than do I watch the Olympics struck my funny bone. I have tuned in pretty regularly to the idea of the Olympics from the 60’s onwards— whether I always had access to TV coverage or not. Truthfully, I am most taken with luge & bobsled, which of course are winter Olympic sports.

Alas, as the years went by there has been increasing chatter ABOUT the sports and poorer coverage of the actual events so it seems each Olympics I watch less.

unique

Daily writing prompt

Which aspects do you think makes a person unique?

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hmmmmm….

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A distinction without a difference is a type of logical fallacy where an author or speaker attempts to describe a distinction between two things where no discernible difference exists. It is particularly used when a word or phrase has connotations associated with it that one party to an argument prefers to avoid.

For example, a person might say “I did not lie; I merely stretched the truth a little bit.”

Wikipedia

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“Make a person unique…”. You see, here’s the rub. The smallest infants distinguish the differences between people, before language skills, before motor skills, when fresh from the womb.

I think adults try too hard to individuate themselves. And in the USA which is obsessed with individual rights (but not responsibilities) this obsession with seeing yourself as unique from others interferes with our ability to function as a nation.

Every experience (sight, sound, touch, aroma, or taste) file away in our brain to form different memories which not only give us a different library from which to draw conclusions and set actions, but they also contribute to our individual willingness to guess, suppose, anticipate beyond our knowledge — that little understood think called “personality.”

when i was five

Daily writing prompt

When you were five, what did you want to be when you grew up?

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I was a good deal older than five before I had a concept of becoming “something” specific. BUT at the age of five I was obsessed with what I’ll call boats, even if they weren’t actual boats.

For a few years my parents owned a neighborhood hardware store. After trying to make a go of it for two years in the little town of Algoma Wisconsin, they moved all the stock to Milwaukee by truck and started all over on the South side of town.

We lived above the store in a crummy, old apartment. This I know because in later years my mom spoke freely with disdain about the place; she was glad to be out of that apartment even though she enjoyed working in the store. Anyway…

We sold paint. That also meant that there was always a supply of paint paddles.

12 inch paint paddles, with radius corners on one end forming a basic handle shape. The 1950’s versions were nicer but you get the idea.

The good thing about an abundant supply is that I could always sneak one away from the store for my own grand plan. To make a boat I could sail down the creek at Humboldt Park a good 7/10’s of a mile from home.

At home I would glom onto a paddle. Mom did a lot of sewing – in the early 1950’s whose mother didn’t sew! Times were good but money was still scarce and I was told later in life that there were nights when our cupboards were literally empty. I remember none of that— I guess that means I had great parents who put me first but what did I know.

Anyway… with a paint paddle, an empty thread spool, maybe a few tiny brads and a length of thread I would make a boat with a spool as wheelhouse and a brad & thread railing around the outside edge.

When “construction was done I walked the 3/4 of a mile to the park— usually alone. Yes, at age 5. It was a safer and more innocent world then. I did have two friends, one or the other who joined me some days — both named Steven.

Upon reaching the park I put my “boat” into the stream which emerged from under the pavement at the street corner and ran diagonally in a meandering fashion through the park ultimately flowing into a pond at the opposite end of the park.

There was never much flow and there were frogs and salamanders and rocks and “stuff” to be investigated. It took me a couple/few hours to float my boat to the other end and sometimes it got lost down a drainage pipe at the other end of my “route”. At any rate by the time I reached the other side of the park I was usually hungry and it was “time” to go home.

Did I want to own a boat? Or sail? Dunno. I came close to buying a sailboat years later, a Hunter 25

not my boat but like the one I had the checkbook out for and the check half-written out for.

And that’s what I was thinking about at age 5!

different worlds

Daily writing prompt

What’s something most people don’t understand?

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I think something that most people don’t understand is that we all see the world completely differently.

We can only interpret what is happening in us, and around us through our senses and intuition. The thing is, no two people have grown up, or lived with exactly the same influences, experiences, disappointments, and successes. How we react to anything that happens to us is moulded by our unique combination of sensors and interpretive tools.

This isn’t the old nature vs nurture discussion. I’m not saying one way or the other that who we are is determined by one or the other or some alchemy of influences.

What I am saying is that whether losing a job is seen as a positive or a negative depends on a million other past experiences and how all of them have shaped the way we respond, passively, aggressively, joyfully, angrily, etc., etc.. The same with decisions about what to eat, what time we go to bed tonight — or every night — or whether we can even think about living in a routine. No two of us processes the world exactly the same way. And no two of us sees the same problems or solutions and that’s OK. It’s the way it’s supposed to be — and yes, it’s even OK to think that some things are “supposed to be” and some things are “right” or “wrong” or “unworthy of consideration.”