Close Call With Kitchen Floor Gives Me Pause

 Early in the Morning od Jun e 11th, on which my late mother would be turning 86, while chasing down a roach before heading to the back of the house,, I lost my balance and collided, nose-first, with the hard kitchen floor. At first I was convinced that a tooth had been broken, but the effect was to violenty twist the cartilage of my nose, bringing on some scary, acute nosebleed before the needed clotting set in. Melissa quickly drove my sorry ass down to the UFHealh Emergency room on  NW 39th Avenue.    After my session there, I returned home and slept off the rest o the morning, grateful to God for His divine protection during that time of my personal foolishness that I hope I learned something important from.  The rest of the day saw me being much more careful with my movements while honoring my wonderful mother's memory..Now onward to June 12th..    

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Comparing Jim Rohn's Legacy to Tony Robbins This Early Morning

 Back in the late1990s, while working at the Gainesville, Florida USPS mail processing plant on SW 34th Street, I discovered that I could listen to Anthony Robbins' personal development tapes.  His big attraction at the time was how to achieve personal power.  Although I never fell for his live seminar gimmicks like the stunts where everyone walked over the hot coals, I did appreciate some of Robbins' pointers that resembled stoicism when it came to approaching some of life's sticking points, like "I always act until I succeed" or "the meaning of a communication is the response I get".  I memorized and adopted them because they made good sense to me.  Even in future projects Tony Robbins seemed to project a strong, positive aura about himself that I found very appealing.  He's still around, voice a bit scratchy and rough but with the same "can-do"personality.  A few days ago I discovered on YouTube the late personal development coach JIm Rohn's collection of podcasts.  Most of them are pretty direct and sometimes confrontational, demanding a response from the listener and indicating a "it's my way or the highway perspective from Rohn". Rohn, born in 1930, passed away from pulmonary fibrosis in 2009.  His business and professional life much resembled that of Am-Way's Bubba Pratt in that they escaped the common day-to-day workplace existence I followed at the post office to make their fortunes largely from sales and seminars.  Not that I'm complaining, since I'm grateful for the benefits and wages I received from there...including the opportunity for excellent health care and retirement accounts.  today I awoke a little before four, resisting the temptation to return to bed to continue A.C.-comforted sleep (something I'm considering returning to a little later this morning). 24 hours from now I'll be in a position to get ready to go with Melissa to Depot Park to participate in a new Parkrun 5K...it would be the second complete event I've done in 2026.  Today marks my late sister-in-law Krista's birthday...she would be turning 63 today.  Even in the middle of her medical ordeals, she was very positive and encouraging.  Well, Mr. Rohn has inspired me to keep tuned to his messages, which I think have a good amount of value to them.  I like stoic wisdom, and sometimes just getting out there and refusing to succumb to comfort is a healthful undertaking.  Now let's see if I can't make some more real progress today getting through that horrid Khan book. I did do some eight minutes of running in place already...

Quote of the Week...from Sting of the Police

"When the world is running down, you make the best of what's still around"...by Sting of the Police 

The Police, a highly talented British reggae/punk-rock/jazz trio from the late seventies and early eighties, is one of my all-time favorite musical acts...I was not at all happy when they broke up after only five (incredibly good) albums.  The above quote, penned by their chief songwriter and front man Sting (Gordon Sumner), is actually the rather long title of a track on their 1981 third LP, Zenyatta Mondatta.  It is also a heavily-repeated chorus that rams home the deep...but oft-neglected wisdom...of making do with what you have.  It speaks to the tendency of folks to let themselves become mired in discontent and grief over their situations instead of working in a more constructive manner with the circumstances they face.  This spring and summer has been especially difficult for myself and Melissa, and our "world" has definitely fit the parameters of this song.  Not that the rest of our little planet isn't undergoing some trying times as well, and I could easily slide into a state of hopelessness by focusing on one thing after another that is "running down".  Yet in the middle of this there is hope and much to be grateful for.  That doesn't mean denying the tragedy and troubles, but rather to place them in a broader perspective and to realize that life by its very nature is a struggle...and embracing that struggle is indeed the way to "make the best of what's still around"...

Quote of the Week...from Benjamin Franklin

Never leave that till tomorrow which you can do today.        ...Benjamin Franklin

Of course, ol' Ben didn't live in today's bustling culture of digitalization, where technology that was supposed to liberate us is actually shackling us into more and more commitments to fit within a shrinking available time period.  Tack onto that the fact that, while in Franklin's time the concept of a "day" was closely tied into the cycles of the sun with the daytime's lightness and the nighttime's darkness, the day, at least in the cyberworld, is "on" for 24 hours, nonstop...including streaming entertainment and video games.  I wonder whether this is a contributing factor to the tendency for formerly late-night businesses operating in the real world to shut down much earlier...of course, Covid got the ball rolling in that direction with a subsequent shortage of available staffing that hasn't since completely abated.  It can be a struggle to try and keep one's calendar clear amid the many calls for commitment to different things, while at the same time that this digital bombardment is happening never before have people felt so disconnected, unrecognized and irrelevant.  Maybe you're an exception to this trend...good for you. But I don't see this going in a good direction as the concepts of "news" and "reality" have become so digitally twisted that our democracy and freedoms may be in dire peril during the next few years while autocratic demagogues run rampant and unchecked.  But back to Benjamin Franklin: it's coming down to having to be a bit of a jerk around others to assert myself and live my life in today's allotted span that I have set out for myself.  Otherwise, today will turn into tomorrow and then the next day and then the next week, month, year, decade...until I am no longer around to look back with regret on the wasted past... 

Quote of the Week...from Baker Mayfield

It doesn't matter what cards you're dealt.  It's what you do with those cards.  Never complain. Just keep pushing forward.  Find a positive in anything and just fight for it.                      Baker Mayfield

If you're not a football fan (or even if you are one), you might know Baker Mayfield primarily as the dude living in the Cleveland Browns' home stadium in a series of funny Progressive Insurance commercials a few years back.  He's a Heisman Trophy winning quarterback from Oklahoma.  After being shipped around in 2022 to the Carolina Panthers and Los Angeles Rams with uneven results, he finds himself now with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers now that their star QB Tom Brady has retired...at least Tom hasn't changed his mind yet like the last time he left the game.  The Bucs already have Florida Gator standout Kyle Trask on the roster and soon plan to draft high for another signal caller.  But I think that Mayfield has what it takes to do well as a starter with this team and has shown flashes of brilliance in the past if he can avoid injury...always a danger in this very rough sport.  Nobody's expecting much from Tampa Bay in 2023...last year, even with Brady at the helm, they went 8-9, barely made the playoffs and made a quick exit.  I'd like to see Baker Mayfield confound the critics...and if he wants to make a few more insurance commercials that's all right by me, too.  I like his above quote, since you can apply it to just about anything in your life, regardless of whether you're a star athlete or not.  Do I always follow Baker's words of wisdom? Hell no...

Quote of the Week...from Albert Einstein

 Knowledge is realizing that the street is one way; wisdom is looking in both directions anyway.

                                                                               ---Albert Einstein

The great physicist from the twentieth century made a lot of pertinent quotes that I've discussed on this blog...you can take his above one in different "directions".  Allegorically, I think he's stressing the importance of thinking outside the box, beyond the standard constraints of established norms and rules.  Literally, though, I think his example comes up a little short.  So I'm driving along and come up on a one-way street...let's just say it's going right. If I'm going to turn onto it, I'm naturally not just going to look to my left to see if any vehicle is approaching.  Simple knowledge of traffic requires me to also look to the right to detect any possible pedestrians or bicyclists coming from that other direction.  I say this (and include this quote) because of the number of times I've been driving around town and observed how too many other drivers virtually ignore pedestrians and refuse to yield to them when they clearly have the right of way, especially at intersections.  And even if they don't, the law requires motorists to yield to them.  Having said that, let's get back to Einstein's probably figurative meaning.  An initial perusal of any situation or issue may reveal a general structure governing it that can lead one to make certain initial conclusions. But that perceived structure may be incomplete or even contrived to mislead...as so many political arguments are being presented during this election cycle.  Looking in both directions "anyway" means that, while I may be predisposed to accept a particular truth or opinion, I'm still instinctively going to make myself look at alternative and dissenting takes on the situation in question.  And if it involves a one-way street, I'm looking in the other direction as well before I take any action...

Quote of the Week...from John Boehner

You'll never get into trouble for something you don't say.              ---John Boehner

Ohioan John Boehner was the Speaker of the House of Representatives from 2011 to 2015 and was prominent in the national news as an opposition leader to the then-Obama administration.  He's recently come out with a memoir book On the House, which I just read and reviewed on this blog this past Monday.  In it I mentioned that I like Boehner: I'll go further in stating that if the Republican Party's politicians had consisted mainly of people with John Boehner's character and philosophy then I would have been much more inclined to vote for them as I had done for conservative GOP candidates in earlier times...instead we've been inundated the last decade or so with those Boehner calls "the crazies", first from the Tea Party movement and now from the ongoing Trump personality cultists.  At the end of his book, the author listed a few of his own sayings, which he terms "Boehnerisms"...the above quote is one of these, along with others like "There's a fine line between stupidity and courage", "Never get into a pissing match with a skunk", and "It doesn't cost anything to be nice." The quote I picked to discuss doesn't necessarily imply that I should never say anything to avoid getting into trouble, but rather that I should choose my own battles, so to speak, and prioritize the situations that merit a reaction from me.  Boehner himself has often been very outspoken, often in a profanity-laced manner, but he also is a "live-and-let-live" kind of guy who values respectful relationships and can sort out the relevant from the petty...and nobody should let themselves get mired into petty confrontations.  Over the course of my 64+ years of life, I have...like just about everyone else...encountered times of adversity and injustice, but my regrets are almost always centered on my own responses to them.  This is especially true in those circumstances when I displayed lack of judgment and said things either hurtful to myself or others when I should have let time cool off my righteous anger and kept my mouth shut.  That's why these short quips like the above one from the former Speaker are helpful...they're a good little reference to keep mentally stored until the situation calls for them...