Every time someone tells me a story about a marital dispute someone they know is having, or some other calamitous, or even stupendous happening, in someone’s life I may or may not know, I invariably want to know the back story.
Awards are pleasant things, and are given for many things, including to adults for perfect attendance, as I found out recently. Being awarded something is a pleasant and exciting concept. It intrigued me enough that I was willing to waste some time on it with Google. I wanted to know when the first award was awarded.
Annoying myself should not be my main goal, despite the title of this post, which is already raising my blood pressure, thinking about the self-imposed challenge of going for thirty days without getting annoyed.
I realized this morning that I get annoyed on the average of every five minutes while driving the surface streets. If I hit the freeway at a quiet time, that’s no sweat. The idea of this challenge came to me when I found myself dawdling behind an Echo, which was driving at approximately the speed that an iceberg melts, and I swung over to change lanes and pass it.
As writers, or athletes, or painters, or anything else, we are always striving to be the best, but let’s face it, being the worst can really work for us. If they can ignore the best directors, or actors, or movies for an Oscar nod, as they have done this year, then we are in good company. ‘They’ also ignore a great many other people who are involved in actual productive and valuable work.
Forging friendships shouldn’t be hard. We all know, perhaps may even be, one of those paragons of virtue who are kind, compassionate, and helpful, and have a flashy personality to boot. Maybe even a flashy personality who likes to wear boots.
Most of us love those people. Not everyone does, because some people are just miserable, and hate all kind, compassionate, flashy, boot-wearing paragons, most notably those who are arch-enemies and nemeses (the plural form of nemesis, an arch-rival) of superheroes and urban legends. I’ve always thought how interesting life would be with your very own arch-enemy, or nemesis. If anyone ever doubted their own importance in the world, they could rest assured of their value by whether they keep a superhero up at night with their shenanigans.
As I was blogging, meaning looking for inspiration, I read about a scale that is a kinder, gentler device that measures your body weight. It is called a Quantum scale and only tells you how many pounds you’ve lost, keeping you blissfully in the dark about what you currently weigh.
I am a proud beneficiary of self-publishing. I say that with a touch of sarcasm; since I am too lazy to send my manuscripts to a zillion publishers, and I am not a famous person who writes an immediately successful children’s book, I took advantage of self-publishing. I think my writing is pretty decent, but I have no assurance that a traditional publisher will feel the same way about it. The hell with them. I’ve got Kindle and Smashwords.
Doing the transformation tango is not easy. After two years of back trouble, I have decided it is time to do what that seventy year-old woman did (not the one who got pregnant) and transform myself, although being pregnant would certainly qualify as a transformational experience. This was a woman who, in her fifties, or sixties, decided she wanted to be in phenomenal shape for the rest of her life, and knew it would require more than just a stroll around the block. I am not sure why I decided to do the transformational tango now; it wasn’t the advent of the new year that pushed me over the edge.
Regrets should not include spitting at someone, and I’ll tell you why in a minute. I heard a young woman say recently that she didn’t want to dance in public because she thought she was bad at it. My goodness, if all of us followed this maxim, YouTube would be half-empty, and America’s Funniest Videos would be scrambling for filler. Certainly, Seinfeld would have one less episode, as Elaine would never dream of dancing at her office party.
A week ago I decided to do the Transformation Tango with the cardio barre workout. The transforming tango is not easy to do. In fact, I have been standing in a puddle of sweat during each workout. My goal is to transform myself physically as much as possible in the space of three months, in time for a landmark birthday. New Year’s resolutions mean little to me, but I did get inspired by the calendar in another way.
