Day 10 – #2020 continues

“Oh dear God, I was going down. There was no stopping it. Visions of broken necks danced in my head.”
~J. Lynn

I know it’s probably not ok to blame 2020 for everything going on in your life but it does seem to be as good of an excuse as any… I mean aside from my own clumsiness!!

2020 first ever Sami vs. Treadmill. Treadmill 1 down. Sami just down. Lucky I did not break anything. Positive note .. I am very blessed to have been practicing strength, balance and endurance for so many years. Nothing broke, just torn ligaments and scrapes

“Are you referring to the fact that you can’t walk across a flat, stable surface without finding something to trip over?”
~Stephenie Meyer

Clumsypoetry; foggy; clumsydiet; clumsywaiter; elephant; careful 

Day 9 – Miles of Memories

“Not all those who wander are lost.”
~J.R.R. Tolkien

“Wherever you go becomes a part of you somehow.”
~Anita Desai

“What is that feeling when you’re driving away from people and they recede on the plain till you see their specks dispersing? – it’s the too-huge world vaulting us, and it’s good-bye. But we lean forward to the next crazy venture beneath the skies.”
~Jack Kerouac

“We travel, some of us forever, to seek other states, other lives, other souls.”
~anaïs nin

Nigeria

“I have found out that there ain’t no surer way to find out whether you like people or hate them than to travel with them.”
~Mark Twain

“But that’s the glory of foreign travel, as far as I am concerned. I don’t want to know what people are talking about. I can’t think of anything that excites a greater sense of childlike wonder than to be in a country where you are ignorant of almost everything. Suddenly you are five years old again. You can’t read anything, you have only the most rudimentary sense of how things work, you can’t even reliably cross a street without endangering your life. Your whole existence becomes a series of interesting guesses.”
~Bill Bryson

Inspiring journeys: Giseny; journeys; Scenic; mcconnel: Pena; Angela; seattle; nathan; cashmere; bali; Liam; journeyman; andysworld

Day 8 – Food Porning Memories

One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.
~Virginia Woolf

Happy Thanksgiving 2020 reminds me of other times I have found pleasure with friends and family through the enjoyment of a wild array of food and drink.   Memories are enhanced with food shots from a variety of places and in various forms of preparedness.  Though there were hundreds of other memories associated with food, these were really some of my favorites. I hope you enjoy.

Pull up a chair. Take a taste. Come join us. Life is so endlessly delicious.
~Ruth Reichl

Other posts that made me hungry- foodforthought; kitchenandfood; gummy;  pumpkin; cakes; plating; bread; Hobbs; Dillan; Lesou; Elliot

Day 7 – Make peace with your past so it won’t screw up the present

What a year this has been. Covid, politics, riots, death, destruction and more politics. My entire life.. nearly.. I have found positive ways to move through and past stress.  It takes a lot of effort sometimes but specifically in the past 15 years, I have legitimately found ways to bring myself into a better state of mind.. invisibility for example (Day 6).  I honestly felt that I had grown up and healed from those crazy childhood emotional wounds.  I felt I had made peace with it all.

Set peace of mind as your highest goal, and organize your life around it.  ~Brian Tracy

I’m trying to get more creative in my approach to finding more humor in everything. Sometimes this feels impossible. It used to be so much easier to do this. I felt carefree and fun for years.  I had about 10 years of absolute humorous mayhem.  Everything cracked me up and most everything made me happy.

A day without sunshine is like, you know, night.  ~Steve Martin

Not sure what happened about 3 years ago.  Don’t think it was just one thing.  I think it was a multitude of events, cuts, burns, stabs, and living in the unhappiness of others.  Trying to make them happier and feel more secure by trying to live in their reality and adjust my style, hair, clothes, and attitude to their expectations of what I was supposed to be.  I did this at the cost of my best self.  Constantly trying to be something I wasn’t.  Yet, even when i attempted to change everything about myself, it still did not make anyone any happier or any more secure. I have felt that I have regressed to that sad, angry, morbid child Sami full of hurt and resentment about the cruelty and unfairness of the world.

Life is too short to waste any amount of time on wondering what other people think about you. In the first place, if they had better things going on in their lives, they wouldn’t have the time to sit around and talk about you. What’s important to me is not others’ opinions of me, but what’s important to me is my opinion of myself.
~ C. JoyBell C

Of course, I knew this.  However, I fought against it despite my knowledge of who I was and how I was.  I always seemed to be surrounded by others who seemed to be doing great with things they way they were.  They were able to fit in nicely in their environment.  They learned to close their mouths when needed. Never did they fight the fight.  No truth to power. 

Or

Even worse, they would do all of the things I had been trying to do.  They would fight, scream, say exactly what I had just said and win…and yes, somehow always win.  I kept trying to to fit in.  Obviously, I didn’t.  I would find out that I really just wasn’t where I thought I was or doing things how others wanted me to do it. The little me had somehow managed to creep back into my head.  She began screaming at herself things like, “I am unworthy.  Nobody loves me. I am a horrible person.  I am stupid and not qualified to do anything.”

I wasn’t respected, loved, heard, and sometimes not even seen.  These facts were presented to me and only compounded the way I felt about myself.  The way I had felt about myself as a child.  The way, I apparently had never stopped feeling about myself.  The more I tried to stop digging in that well, the more these thought pressed forward.

I’ve got a bad case of the 3:00 am guilts – you know, when you lie in bed awake and replay all those things you didn’t do right? Because, as we all know, nothing solves insomnia like a nice warm glass of regret, depression and self-loathing.
~D.D. Barant

Why are you lying awake, thinking that you’re a terrible person?
~~To keep my mind occupied when I can’t sleep. Some people count sheep. I self-loathe.
~Rainbow Rowell

When I was seen, it was always when I was at my absolute least best.  I was starting to get mad.  Starting to hold my tongue and mimic all of what I thought was right and still not succeeding.  I was mad at others and even more mad at myself for doing it wrong.  Being right but somehow always doing it wrong.  I was jealous of others success or apparent success and mad that they were always so happy or apparently happy.  So respected or apparently respected. So well thought of .. so .. so .. everything.  It was a super dark time in my life.  Worst time ever in most recent years. 

Anger, resentment and jealousy doesn’t change the heart of others– it only changes yours.
~ Shannon Alder

The way you think about yourself determines your reality. You are not being hurt by the way people think about you. Many of those people are a reflection of how you think about yourself.
~Shannon L. Alder

A few times I swore that i was going to ignore the perfectness of others and just be myself.  I knew that’s what made me happy.  I would laugh again.  Make others laugh again.  I knew I could do it. I occasionally succeeded and thought I had made progress.  I would ashamedly find out that I was only delusional about my fitting in. I would not hear about it directly, but be blindsided by this information in the most embarrassing of ways.

Punch after punch, blow after blow, hit after hit.  Yeah pretty violent.  Every time I thought everything was ok ……

At the same time, I also knew that I have been in the wrong group and living the wrong life. Doing the wrong thing.  Going against my own grain.  I have been going against myself and my innate nature. It has just not been working out.  But damn.. I keep on intently trying to make it work because the truth is, I love my life, my job, my friends, and my family. 

If you had a person in your life treating you the way you treat yourself, you would have gotten rid of them a long time ago…
~Cheri Huber

I have been in a mental rut.  It has been a dangerous rut.  I am now working hard to get out of that rut and what I have found is that the rut is a rut of my own making.  My own desire to make things right, fit in, be good, a rut of negative self-talk.  It’s the same rut I had been in when I was a teen.  The rut of self-non-acceptance.  Self-talk that always put the blame on me for everything wrong in the world.  My sneaky way of making others laugh to get out of challenging situations and emotions has not been working.

The greatest weapon against stress is our ability to choose one thought over another. ~William James.

So, here I am.  Working on rebuilding my funny bones, reclaiming the paths of resilience that I had spent years building up, and reinventing wacky world of Sam that made me so happy. Getting my funny train back on track has been very difficult and nearly impossible.

However,  I am ready.  I get it.  I am still here. I am still as good as anyone else, not better than, but equal to. I am o.k. I am working on choosing the words that go in my head. It’s not what they say, it’s what you hear. It’s not what I say, it’s what they hear.  

Never forget that once upon a time, in an unguarded moment, you recognized yourself as a friend.~ Elizabeth Gilbert

I am working my way back through music, art, meditation, good friends, real friends, letting go of what does not bring happiness, and mostly bringing focus and intentional actions back into my life.  Going back to minimalism, preparing for retirement, and learning to laugh again.  Like really laugh. 

In relationship to work.. I am shooting for mediocrity.

Only the mediocre are always at their best.  ~Jean Giraudoux

In relationship to friends… fame… fortune.. etc. I have decided I would rather just be myself.  wish me luck.  Please.  Myself is a pretty good thing to be..I know this is true, but just have to keep reminding myself.

Don’t let people who fuck with your mind enter into the door of your mind.
~Curtis Tyrone Jones

I will not be “famous,” “great.” I will go on adventuring, changing, opening my mind and my eyes, refusing to be stamped and stereotyped. The thing is to free one’s self: to let it find its dimensions, not be impeded.
~Virginia Woolf

Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.  ~Rob Siltanen

Other voices that rang in my head:  Thegirl; custard; lucid; language; catladysings; compound; anxiety; bop; method; mon; dry; gladgame; writingbug

Day 6 – I’m not superstitious.. but I am a little stitious – Michael Scott

I am not superstitious … stepping on cracks, black cats, ladders, and salt.  So weird.  Where do these ideas come from? What, where, and why in the world?  Not me!  I suppose I’m quirky.  Eclectic.  Ironic. Funny.. at least to me I am funny.  Or maybe just weird.

There’s a whole category of people who miss out by not allowing themselves to be weird enough.  ~ Alain De Botton

I have not suffered from this affliction.  I have made many weirder friends.  Friends that even I sometimes think.. woah.. so weird.  However, the weirdness is what I love.  The weirdness is what draws me to them.  The acceptance of self.  The acceptance of others. 

I think everybody’s weird. We should all celebrate our individuality and not be embarrassed or ashamed of it.   ~ Johnny Depp

Every weird thing about you is beautiful and makes life interesting.  ~ Kesha

I am not superstitious though.  Just weird.  I do have some habits though that would appear to make me seem slightly superstitious. 

I always think of the worst thing that could happen in any situation.  Every time.  I have done this since I have been a child.  When I was young I apparently worried about EVERYTHING.  My mother told me one day that this was a good habit to have. She told me that it was a good thing because whatever you worried about most would never happen. At that point, instead of just worrying about things, I would write down the absolute worst thing that could ever happen for every situation I was in.  It calmed me down.  I have continued this behavior to this day. It has come in super handy in the case of actual emergencies.  I’m amazing in an emergency situation.  I really think that this is a true way of avoiding really bad things.  You can not say I’m wrong. I have never been in a zombie apocalypse.  I have never had a plane fall from the sky and land on my face.  I have never been eaten alive by a pack of cannibals (or any other wild animal).  I have never found myself starving or dying of thirst in a desert, a mountainous area, the middle of the ocean.  I have never had a parasite bed itself permanently in my body driving me to attempt to cut it out because it was making me crazy.  I could go on and on and on but I think you get the point.

I like being weird. Weird’s all I’ve got. That, and my sweet style.  ~  Leo Valdez

I always try to do the right thing all of the time because I am fairly sure I am being watched all of the time.  Again, my mom.  “Would you be doing that if someone were watching you?  Well, it’s possible that there is always someone watching you. So no matter where you are, all of the time, behave as if someone were watching you.”  People.. children are impressionable and you should really take care of what you say to them.  These things stick. 

I’m accused of being super judgmental.  I am always shocked when i hear this.  I’m not.  I mean generally I am not.  I mean, I am annoyed with folks who do not do their part in life, who do not accept others, who blame others for their own issues, who love to argue with everyone about everything, who constantly ask for advice and then never follow it, who wail around in self-pity while not making any movement to change their behavior, who make loud sounds when they chew food.. ok.. ok.. I might be a little judgmental.  But one of my better qualities is that i get over my irritations quickly.. usually.  I’ve been working on finding ways to not appear so judgmental.  I say appear, because I really do not feel that I am judgmental.

We judge ourselves by our intentions. And others by their actions.  ~ Stephen Covey

I always try to sing a song in my head as a response to every question asked before actually responding with words.  This habit did not completely come from my mom.  I would bite my tongue with her but when I was 17 and in boot camp I learned some hard lessons about responding immediately with what I was actually thinking when the company commander screamed in my face about some ridiculous thing I was doing. Initially, this helped me provide a better response to individuals that made them feel better about themselves or how they felt about what I was doing.  It served me well for many, many years.  Unfortunately, I am actually so good at it now that I can make up a song and still respond vocally almost immediately with responses that do not please the folks around me.

I can actually make myself invisible when I do not want to be approached or bothered. When I was a child, I had very low self-esteem.  I was made fun of a lot and really hated who I was.  I spent years trying to make people laugh because that is the only time I felt good about myself or felt that others liked me.  At one point I had hit rock bottom in regards to accepting myself and feeling that I deserved to exist.  From the bottom of the barrel I started trying to find ways to pull myself back onto my feet.  I removed myself from the picture and pretended that I was not there.  No one seemed to have noticed my disappearance.  I was literally invisible.  I would become visible only when necessary.  This allowed me to remove my emotions from situations and I began to understand that I really was not any different than anyone else out there.  As a matter of fact, I began to see and feel my worth in the world.  

I know what you are thinking.  “You really were not invisible.  You were just quiet.  You did not interact but that doesn’t mean you were not seen.”  I beg to differ.  Stick with me on this example.  I was at the mall with my daughter and her friend from school.  They were shopping and I decided to get something to eat.  I sat at a bar in the mall and no one approached me.  No one asked if I wanted a glass of water even.  I finally got up and walked away.  I met my daughter and her friend in a different restaurant.  They were not there yet. Everyone around me got sat down and served.  No one approached me until the kids appeared.  We sat down and I kept trying to get the attention of a waiter.  No one came.  We got up and left the mall and stopped at a Mexican restaurant.  The waitress came to the table and took the order of the kids but completely did not SEE me.  I was so confused.  I forgot that I had made myself invisible that morning.  So, I put my glasses on and the waitress immediately appeared and took my order.  Of course the kids thought that was hysterical and didn’t believe me when I told them why I had not been seen.  So to make my point, I took the glasses back off.  The waitress came to the table and took the order of the kids but did not even ask me if I wanted anything.  They were rolling at this point.  I put the glasses back on and bing, bang, bong.. the waitress came back and boooom.. I was able to put in an order.  You can choose not to believe me but to this day, I can still make myself invisible.

Some are born weird, some achieve it, others have weirdness thrust upon them. ~ Dick Francis

I am guessing there are many more examples of my stitiousness.  I guarantee that none of my habits are quite super though.

Stevie Wonder ~

Very superstitious
Writing’s on the wall
Very superstitious
Ladder’s about to fall
Thirteen month old baby
Broke the looking glass
Seven years of bad luck
The good things in your past

When you believe in things
That you don’t understand
Then you suffer
Superstition ain’t the way

Other posts I enjoyed: Giants; Disappear; Fade; A2Z; Forest; splinter; bean; fart; Should; petloss; life; summergarden