Staying Upright

Wires from pole to pole moving signals forward...

Recovery takes time. Only you know your body, mind and soul and have free will to be in charge of it.

These past nine months for me have been a medical confrontation of rather mundane problems that by themselves would be readily recovered from. When they occurred simultaneously in me the interior body collision detonated a multitude of primary, secondary and tertiary responses of unexpected varieties. A sudden turn of events with the body can affect the mind if you are not careful. One sure empathizes with what a person who regularly lives with medical issues goes through daily. Gratefully my problems are resolvable but recovery takes time and a toll on both body and mind and is ongoing.

Nowadays I'm putting one foot in front of the other literally and figuratively to keep on moving. It's a matter of daily regaining physical strength and reconnecting the synapses again. A doctor can help restore my body but only I can do the physical and mental work. It is something you have to want and a component is recognizing that combating the feeling of not wanting to do what is required is its own separate work. On occasion it requires operating in a functional utilitarian fashion to keep on walking for the later reward of operating smoothly again. If you stop doing the work the risk is too high you will not start back moving again.

It is best to take your own time for recovery because it is your body, mind and soul. Likewise know yourself enough to take charge of what is best for your health and well being to keep moving.

Brawny Sundown

Golden aurora fading in dusky eventide...

Yellows for Sue

The Wonder and Advantage

Of being that man of a certain age...

Wherein I openly reflect out loud not caring what others may think.

Here I am at that point in life where it is too obvious to ignore that I've become "a man of a certain age." Fortunately it doesn't concern me much since it only jars me into recognition for rare brief periods such as the past few weeks where for the first time in five years I've had some minor physical problems. Although the anatomical disruption is still not completely resolved for the most part it has already passed. Although not definitively diagnosed it's fairly certain that it is the variety that comes with approaching the sixth decade of living and nothing serious or long term. My sense is that due to taking generally pretty good care of myself my entire life things will occur that can be coped with. It's a simple welcome to advancing in life when body parts occasionally annoyingly twist mildly while wonderfully most mental stress and worries uncurl into a lack of concern over them.

Somehow I seem to have escaped a lot of the psychological and mental matters that plague a lot of boomers hitting this mark in life. Frankly I think a lot of those are a result of decisions people consciously and fully made among our panoply of choices and some of them have brought consequences. My hope is younger people observe this and avoid the pitfalls and choose the better options among those of us still around. One great advantage of arriving at this point relatively intact is not really caring too much what others think. A lot of things I once worried about in the social realm no longer cross my mind and I have a definite comfort with myself that didn't arrive until over a decade or so ago. There is also the wonder of wisdom and the sense of being at certain places before and knowing how to deal with them.

This photograph of a wizened tree stump among broken rocks and boulders of ages surrounded by wild flowers reminds me of how grand aging can be. It is not hollow but still full of space to be filled with all sorts of knowledge, emotion and enlightenment. It symbolizes being surrounded by both the known friends who are solid as rocks, as well as the beauty of new blooms of young people and ideas among dead thistles that will revive in season to keep the years full as they go by.

There Is No Place

Like Our Place...

Since 2008 I have been taking road trips through Arizona, New Mexico and the Inland Empire of California sometimes alone and other times with my partner. During my trips I talk with local people, observe local color as well as visit friends and make new ones. I've also watched the area change during this economic period and how it has affected people and the landscape. It is clear there has not been an economic recovery or that we are merely in a double dip but in some sort of disruptive economic contraction that is of greater magnitude and will take time to resolve. The question now is how do we cope and make the best use of what we have and keep ourselves alive and prosperous in mind and spirit?

There are pockets on the map that are doing fairly well, some in a temporary mini-boom. The majority of places of any size are at a minimum in a holding pattern of stagnation at best while there are areas that are clearly in a doomsday bust. You see it in small things such as service at a decent hotel is slightly degraded to entire blocks of buildings empty, broken down and facilities lacking. The most telling thing is people and what is in their eyes.

Many people are clearly not doing or handling the downturn well. There are others who keep going through their daily routine seemingly happy enough but you can sense by looking in their eyes many of them have troubles. Others eyes are clear and bright, full of the knowledge that times are getting tougher but there is still life to live and make the most of. Those are the people I'm drawn to and hold fascinating conversations with about the condition of our region and how to make the best of it.

The mainstream media, politicians and special interest groups would have us believe all kinds of things about each other. One thing that has been consistent in travelling this region as time has tattered and worn down structures and people is the resilience of a significant percentage of the population. That has not changed. They come in all sizes and shapes, colors and age but all of them carry a spirit that is healthy to be around. These are the people I'm surrounding myself with to maintain a high level of energy and optimism so I may return the favor. In the long term our place is in our minds and souls and how we choose to preserve and uplift ourselves and others.

The Power Within You

What is your perception of who is in control?...

We live in an era of change of great magnitude. On Monday the stock market tumbled and the world as the financial people viewed it was coming to an end. Like lemmings to the sea the next day stocks went slightly "back in the green" clinging to a thread of hope that the Federal Reserve meeting yesterday holding interest rates until mid-2013 will bring restoration. Never mind that the underlying fundamental financial problems of nations are unlikely to be solved by any intervention. The bottom line is the world is overleveraged, unemployment is high and demand for goods is down and these elemental circumstances are unlikely to be changed in the short term. It is going to require a long term effort of hard work to restore the world's economies and reshape our society. How we cope as individuals to global events determines how we maintain or physical and mental well being.

A lot of people in the US have been financially hurt and will continue to be by the rocking of the markets since they believed in them and invested their savings and retirement funds in stock market vehicles. How people react and cope with financial losses as well as changes in style of living, breaks in personal relationships and upheaval in daily life will be built on how they perceive life. Who is in control, themselves or external forces?

This concept in psychology is called locus of control. It is based on the degree an individual considers they control the events of life that effect them and their reaction to them. If you believe that what the government, your employer, the financial markets, events external to you determine the direction of your life, then they will. The path your life takes and your outlook towards it will determine the direction it goes in. If you are expecting the government, your employer or the amount in your bank account to fix what is wrong with you, our economy, society or politics then you are likely to be hanging out a long time and unhappy while you wait.

On the other hand if you decide that the losses you may have taken financially, your lack of employment or income, what is going on in world events is not going to determine how you react, you stand a much better chance of living through them in a healthy manner. If your approach is proactive and positive, keeping your mind healthy and determined to ride out any storm, then you will. This is not to say it will be easy. Those of us who have weathered a few tough storms in life have at times felt we weren't so sure we had the self control or willpower to overcome but still persevered. In the end I've been glad I did. There are proven scientific models that indicate how we think and view events in our life does determine the manner in which our brain waves react. In turn this affects the outcome of how we perceive our lives and resolve problems.

Whatever it takes that suits you to direct your brain matter in a positive direction is what is important and not what other people may think about it. You have control over your mind and attitude, no one else does. The power of positive thinking, belief in a higher power, meditation and prayer, hypnotherapy, self-talk and other methods have helped millions of people overcome when they think things couldn't be any worse. It is crucial to keep in mind that just when you think nothing is happening, suddenly a simple thing occurs that creates a wind of change in direction, causing you to catch the crest of a wave in thinking differently. An opening of the mind and insight usually happens when you're not looking for it. Prior to it happening your brain must be prepared for it by working toward and maintaining a confident outlook.

We can't change the monumental events of our times and sometimes we can't change the things that have happened to us that cause our losses. What we can change is the way we view them and redirect our energies into something better, one step at a time. We can work to restore our lives, help others do so and reshape the society around us. It is hard work well worth the rewards.

Living In America

It's not easy to stay motivated and positive...

The alternative however, is not a good choice.

Yesterday morning I woke up feeling alright until I moved to get out of bed. At first I thought that allergies, which are prevalent and very bad this year and the medication I had taken before bed, had caused me to sleep hunched up. That was my explanation until I stood up and realized that my back hurt badly, in the kidneys-kind-of-way and not just sore but painful.

This always freaks me out because it is close to the pain I woke up with one Sunday early in 2008 to find out during a week of doctor visits, something I dislike, that my left kidney had failed and as a result the right one was failing. Sparing the details, I ended up with months of several operations and outpatient procedures. I've also been having these past few weeks other small signs that could be related that I've brushed off. OK, I can deal with it, knowing it's probably only at worst a kidney infection or a stone. I drink a lot of water (it's all I drink) every day and now drink even more now to try to clear it out. I'll wait until Monday to see how it goes and then decide how to proceed if nothing's improved. My theory is if I'm not unceasingly nauseous, passing blood or throbbing with intolerable pain, physical problems usually can wait a few more days.

That discovery would have been alright if I hadn't been told shortly thereafter that the person I've lived with for 15 years, suddenly realized that he couldn't find my Post Office Box key, the only one that exists. This required retracing his steps to all the places he'd been before the post office, at the post office and from the post office as well as searching the house. Still...no key. Later in the day I went back to the post office again to ask if anyone had turned in a key. To summarize, this is going to be a different kind of pain in the backside, since I've had this post office box for decades and the other key disappeared years ago. I am going to have to pay the Federal Government to replace my lock, which will also wait until Monday, when I plan by then to still be walking upright.

Why am I recounting this Too-Much-Information in a blog that could be read by anyone? One of the few YouTube video bloggers that I still subscribe to who is of the video online community I was once part of, Mean Black Dude, in the Washington DC/Maryland area, posted a video blog "Motivate Me!." In his vlog he asks "how does one stay motivated in this society?" and keep on going in this economy. (Careful if you're squeamish about the "BS" word.)

It's a good question I think everyone from all segments of our society ask themselves. Some ask it every day, all day and others of us just ask it every once in awhile on a bad day. My response to him was in the limited context of what YouTube allows in 500 characters. Essentially I commented: What keeps me motivated may sound really corny but it's staying positive. I'm a pragmatic, realistic man so I control what I can, myself and my attitude, letting the rest go. I avoid negative people and refuse to buy into bad attitudes. That said, it's not easy to do, it takes effort. You can read the entire comment section here to see his response and the variety of other comments.

Am I always positive? Am I one of those happy, upbeat people that drives everyone nuts? Absolutely not. It is work to stay optimistic sometimes and I have down days. Some of them have been down weeks these past few months but in the back of my mind there is always the thought, that the only other option to not being generally optimistic and positive is not a pleasant one. I know because I tried it for a time when I was younger. Fortunately I discovered that being an angry young man wasn't good for me and especially for anyone around me. The prospect of being an angry old man also meant being a very depressed and bitter old white guy we all recognize. I'm not sure what woke me up but I'm glad something did. Perhaps it was another dramatic medical event in my twenties, the early death of my father when I was starting college or a combination of a number of unfortunate things that happened then.

When I had a medical crisis in 2008, far worse than I let most people realize, I again recognized that my only option was to remain optimistic, positive and self-reliant. That is because when you send out those signals to people, they are returned to you, multiplied. It attracts people to you who will also provide you with support and mutual help. When I had a less than productive or good day such as today, I somehow manage to keep putting one foot in front of the other and stop it from being a negative day.

I also reminded myself that no matter where you are in life you are, high or low, you can always look and find someone better off than you are and someone worse off than you are. That is what keeps me motivated to stay optimistic and positive as well as considering that the alternative is not a good choice.

Geography of the Mind

Navigating a toxic culture...

We live in a time with so much information bombarding the wired and wireless world, the old and new media, online and offline life, that if we are not discriminating and filter a lot of it out we become overloaded. So much of it is like zany Morning Zoo radio that our minds drive time in the wrong direction, on roads that either lead us endlessly to nowhere or to dead ends. It is up to us to distinguish what we are exposed to, distilling the stream of data flowing in, to avoid pollution of our intellect.

This can be difficult to do but critical since more than we cognizantly recognize, our everyday lives are affected by what we see and hear, consciously or not. It has the ability to affect our judgment and perceptions more than we realize. There is a menu of junk for the brain readily available that damages our mind just as much as fast food does our body. Much like surface-radiation inversion creates a bad air quality cloud over an urban area, too much mix of poisonous information creates a low quality cloud over our critical thinking.

Some of this can be hard to turn off but an effort to do so is not as hard as it seems. There's a barrage of messages, sales pitches, broadcasts, banners, announcements, links, friend requests and spam to fend off. The first place to start is television and radio, few original ideas come out of them and they're mouthpieces for their sponsors, noise is not news. My choice is not to watch it at all. The web is both wonderfully full of information but a lot of it is disorganized and useless. Because most of our media and communications have moved onto the internet, it is not as easy as turning off the television or radio, since it also contains a lot of useful and valuable information. This requires choosing careful discrimination on what sites to go to and how much time we spend on them to avoid saturation.

Another source of information blast is not so easy to quiet and that is people. We may be exposed to cynical contrary people we can't avoid in our work, family and in public. We can choose our friends and who we associate with by choice. Avoid negative people and don't listen to constant whining and failures. Anyone who is involved in too much excess or extreme at anything, constantly complaining, never resolves their own problems, stay away from them. The chances they're going to change are highly unlikely. With inescapable people at work and family members this requires developing a mechanism to tune the discord out, a difficult but not insurmountable task. There are ways to mute their dissonance both by your approach and response to them but it requires some trial and error effort.

The more distilling down of the babble of information streaming at us from multiple channels we do, we discover that day to day life becomes more harmonious and less disquieting. Cleaning out the clutter of the clatter and chattering blows the bad air out and improves our field of vision. The knowledge we intake is of better quality and allows us to breathe clearer air and think with more clarity and calms the mind and soul.

Thinking Out Loud

Fast Food Head vs Good Food Mind...

You Are What You Eat

A diet of fast food and prepared chow is basically junk and nutritionally vacant, full of clogging fats, salts, starches, phosphates, dyes, colorings, hydrologized compounds and unpronounceable chemicals, to mention a few. Not only does it lack much nutritive value but it also has a lot of harmful constituents that are bad for your body and overall health. It stands to reason that an intake of this as food is not only bad for the body but cannot feed the brain what it needs to reckon even ordinary stuff out.

My conclusion, completely unscientific and from mere observation, is most people who survive on fast food and junk live their daily lives the same way they consume food, in an inert head that lacks control. Fast and full of junk time, wasting energy on trivial pursuits and not really thinking about what they are doing, how they live their lives and thinking ahead. This is a generalization but it seems to me, that if you don't think about what you are putting in your body, not considering how you eat, it's an indication of a general lack of concern about personal well-being. It's difficult to tell which comes first, a lack of ability to have a strategy and a purpose or the lack of good nutrition that creates a toxic body and dull head that can't think well because it's undernourished.

On the other hand, eating healthy food, basic unadulterated stuff that provides protein, carbohydrates, fats, vitamins, minerals and other nutrients in proportional balance, is good for you. It doesn't have to be organic, vegetarian or vegan, sparse or dull and can be obtained in a regular grocery store for reasonable cost. It requires thoughtful shopping and most prepared freezer, prepackaged box and canned foods should be counted out. A lot of basic good food doesn't require much preparation and can be fixed relatively simply for a wholesome meal or "grazing" during the day. It provides the building blocks for a healthy body and simultaneously nourishes the mind.

Thinking about how you treat your body by considering what you eat with a modicum of exercise, is a sign of having control over your life and how you live it. It's an indication that you plan ahead, consider the consequences of bad choices, deliberate on important decisions and overall think relatively clearly. There's also a high probability that your moods are better or if you have mood problems you are better able to deal with them. My completely unscientific conclusion is that because you eat better, you also have a better mind.

Hans Rosling

200 years that changed the world...