I’m thankful — as silly as it may sound — that I did what I did in the early 90s because it helped make me who I am today, even though I’d do anything to not relive it.

I’m grateful for all of the “stuff” I have even when it’s not as nice as the “stuff” I want or what others have, it’s still a lot more than a whole lot of people own.

Thank you readers of my book, of this blog, and for those of you who have purchased a book …

I’m thankful that God gave me the talent to write … AND the gumption to finish what I start.

I’m grateful for every relationship I have ever had, even though I hope to never experience some of them again. I learned valuable lessons from each and every person in my life.

And for my pets; Buddy who left me earlier this year, and Sully who came to pick up the slack so that I can know that somebody loves me no matter what I do or say. And not to forget the cat who just is.

To all of my friends — those I talk to, and the ones I have never met face to face but know in my heart from online interaction — I am blessed by each and every one of you.

For my family who rarely agrees with me about politics or anything else … we’re still family. And I love each of you.

I’m grateful to live in a beautiful city and state where I can leave home and be at several parks within 30 minutes and feel like I’ve truly gone somewhere.

Even though I complain about you … my jobs, all 5 of them … may you continue to support me so that I may do all the things I like to do … and so I can pay for the bathroom fix up.

There is always something for which to be thankful. I hope to remember that with an attitude of gratitude.

It’s sometimes easy in this world to compare ourselves to others.

I notice as I meet people and also in observing those who are already friends of mine, that more often than not they have much nicer homes than me, better vehicles, are able to take vacations, live in nicer areas and many more things it appears they can do that I am unable to afford.

I’ve worked since I was 16-years-old. I’ve never made much money, although I am making more today than I ever did before. It appears I never will really make good money.

I write for a living, for a newspaper, and while I make more at this job than I would while working for a local paper, it’s still a newspaper writing job. There is only so far I can go on the pay scale.

Along the way to becoming a writer I started my life over, literally in ways. It was sometime in 1993 that I turned my back on some things in my life that were oh so dangerous and bad. I started over financially. I started at the bottom in pay at a new job.

In 1995 I returned to college about 13 years after quitting. It was there that I discovered I had been blessed with something, a talent for writing. That’s a difficult thing for me to say … I’m not sure of it — the talent — but that’s what I have been told repeatedly.

So if I was blessed with it, in my belief system it’s something God given.

And if this is what God gave me to do, to write, then how can I bemoan the fact that I don’t make as much money as I would like to make?

My house is old. It needs some major work. I drive a 2000 model vehicle. I have to work odd jobs to help make ends meet. I’m sometimes embarrassed to have people to my home when I know they have houses worth three or four times what mine cost. And the list could go on.

But what I have to remind myself is that in 1993 I started over. I could have and probably should not have lived through a few years of life before that. I was led to where I am now; to the work I was given to do … perhaps not as a newspaper writer, but to put into words what I do otherwise. 

I must always remember that my worth is not determined by my bank account. And I have to keep in mind that if others judge my worth by the things I have then they aren’t the kind of people I really want to spend time with anyway.

As mentioned in an earlier blog, Living Life Inside Out is now available for checkout in the Central Arkansas Library System.

I checked one out so that I could see it with the library stamp on it and so I could include some pictures here.

How does one define success?

When I wrote the book “Living Life Inside Out” I didn’t have plans for it to be a bestseller, although that would be wonderful. But the decision to write it was never about money or success.

I wrote it to share my journey with others in hopes that it might help them. I also have relied on books like mine to help me along the way for many years.

Once I decided to self-publish a lot of decisions had to be made about quantity, costs, who to contract to print it, and so forth. This is where success could be placed on a dollar amount.

My initial goal was to recoup my costs by selling half of my original order. That was the easy part, really. I managed to make back what I had spent after just a couple of months of having the finished product in hand.

Having met my initial goal is a successful step, but I do have higher goals. I truly believe my book can help others and I want it in as many hands as possible. I was touched recently when a friend who is a senior in high school bought the book for her boyfriend who is a freshman in college. Her mother had bought her one and she liked it enough to buy it for him. That’s what I want for my book, whether it ever makes it big or not, I want it to help people enough that they want to share it.

I don’t know when or if I would ever feel like this is it as far as calling it a success. However, something happened recently that caused me to feel a little more official as an author. The Central Arkansas Library System purchased two of the books. They can be found at www.cals.org. There’s just something about being part of the library that gives credibility, at least in my mind.

I have very few childhood memories although I can remember going to the library in downtown Little Rock to check out books. I remember the stairs that led up to the children’s books and carrying armloads of them to check out.
Now if someone wants to read my book without having to spend any money, they can do it in central Arkansas.

It’s just one brick in my wall of success.

My life is still turned upside down, sort of.

I held another snake the other day.

On Sunday I went hiking — all day — and the yard needs to be cut, the house is filthy, and I’m working the next 11 days in a row and then leaving town for a few days, and I’m not worried about any of it.

What has happened to me?

Did you catch that? I held another snake. Yikes. Not a big deal, you might think. For me it is.

What’s happening, what happened to me? Did I finally figure out I’m not that big of a deal? Did I realize just how little control I have on the world and that I don’t have to keep all the plates spinning?

I keep up with high profile murder and missing person cases. I think I started that with Jon Benet Ramsey, or I might have picked up on that later while reading online about another case. I remember a lot about the O.J. Simpson case. I remember where I was when I heard that Laci Peterson was missing. When Elizabeth Smart was found I was online on a crime forum typing in how she wouldn’t be found when I heard it on the news in the background.

Now there’s the Caylee Anthony case. A reality television show that nobody could have dreamed of. That poor little girl was murdered and thrown out like trash and her mother, Casey Anthony, in jail accused of killing her, rants to her parents that she’s lost everything and she does not mean her daughter.

I don’t like drama in my life. Maybe that’s why these high-profile cases attract my attention. I can watch the crazy drama and not have to live it.

There are so many things and situations that I’m grateful to not have experienced. I’ve had my excitement, I hope. I’ve had drama. I’ve lived on the edge and almost died. I like calm now.

I stopped in the woods Sunday while hiking so I could just listen. There was a stream flowing visible for at least half of the four-and-a-half mile hike. It made a beautiful sound. Sometimes I heard leaves rustling and prayed it wasn’t a rattlesnake.

My life is simplified of late.

For the past several months I’ve been working two jobs and trying to find time to promote my book. I’m no longer on a partial layoff; I’ve had all of my hours restored, so any time I work at the second job it’s extra income.

It’s been tough and it has changed me. The worry and stress about what might be has been bad. But here I am on the other side of that, at least this time around, this recession.

Life is good.

In other news: I sold another book internationally this weekend. This one is headed to France.

The books will make wonderful Christmas presents. It’s always fun to get a new book to start on January 1 and follow through the year.

I realized something about myself recently, a trait that isn’t pretty and one which I hope to change.

For the most part it seems I see the bad in people. I can trace this back to things and people in my life and blame it on that, however I won’t change if I do, so I choose to move forward and not make excuses. I want to see the good first and foremost.

It’s so easy to turn against a person, to see things from our own vantage point, and sometimes with negative input from others. If enough people tell us that a person is a failure of sorts, or a problem, whatever it may be, we start to believe it.

I watched the movie “Doubt” for the second time recently. I won’t give away the ending, but in the movie the nun who leads the school accuses the priest of doing something inappropriate with a male student. She sees the bad in the priest. The nun has black and white thinking, she is certain that she’s right. And he can do nothing right in her opinion including how much sugar he uses in his tea, the length of his nails, and so on. You get the point.  

When we only see the bad, when that’s what leads us, rather than finding the good first (and always) it’s easy to be led down the wrong path.

My eyes were opened to this whole concept when I found that I had developed a negative attitude about someone who once had an important place in my life. I only heard one side of the story: the negative side. And I heard it a lot. As we all know there are three sides to every story: yours, mine, and the truth.

I walked in this person’s shoes just long enough to get it, to realize what a mistake I had made.

I encountered the beast firsthand, the same monster that had been attacking this person. That’s when all the pieces fell together … sort of, although it was anything but immediate.

If you haven’t walked in someone else’s shoes, you won’t know where they have been, what their struggles are, why they behave in a particular way, and especially how they feel.

But if you face the same monster as another it opens up a whole other side. It gives you knowledge that is missing when you only hear the negative about someone.

You may wonder about this beast, monster to which I refer. It’s comparable to watching a bear play from your picnic table. The cute bear you see is like Winnie-the-Poo. He eats honey and seems sweet and loveable. But he’s not Winnie-the Poo. He’s actually a very real bear who is just who he is, but you don’t want to be in his path when he’s angry, or have him mad at you, because that’s when he becomes a monster, a beast that is unrelenting and will take whoever he must in his path to get what he wants.

When the monster first attacked me I didn’t see outside of myself, it was all about me and my pain. But through the grace of God I was given insight via a conversation or two and the light bulb came on with a very high wattage.

It was a knowing that you know that you know moment. Having faced the wrath of the beast, I knew exactly why others behave as they do having experienced it too. It makes perfect sense.

So here I am a while later having made amends where necessary for any part I played in the monster’s game. I learned so much. I feel like a load has been lifted off my shoulders and the world shines more brightly.

Now I have the opportunity to carry this knowledge and wisdom with me into the future. I hope I do. I pray that I don’t forget the lesson of seeing both sides before making a judgment.

I hope I see the good first and always.

Someone told me recently that lying is okay. In fact, I was informed that sometimes you have to lie, and that everybody does it.

Really, I thought?  It does seem that telling the truth has become almost a thing of the past in some circles.

I won’t say that I never tell a lie. I think it may be a fact that most people do lie occasionally, especially white lies, but to claim that “everybody does it” and that it is okay is beyond my realm of understanding.

Just imagine if you taught your children that it was okay to lie either by direct teaching or simply showing them that is how things work by your actions. Do you think one day one of your children might say that his or her parent lies all the time? It happens.

Do as I say, not as I do, will not work when we are dealing with children or even adults who look to us as models of behavior. One never knows who is watching and who is emulating our behavior.

We all have a responsibility to do the right thing. I have been really surprised of late by some people who would boast of their love of God, of how good they are at living the Christian life, but who also have turned their backs on what Jesus would instruct them to do, and how he would act.

I’m not trying to judge, but once again the Christian teaching that I am getting from observation has turned me against organized religion so much that I may never attend church again.

When people celebrate that folks are not attending church by blaming it on what another person did or did not do, the message they are supposedly trying to portray is buried in the insanity of the behavior. Rather than reaching out to pull the flock back in, they laugh and virtually high five to cheer about how “right they are” even though they didn’t get their way.

Is “being right” to a Christian more important than “living right?” I often think about the question that emerged a few years ago on bracelets: WWJD? (What would Jesus do?)  If you don’t get your way is it okay to behave in a way that Jesus would frown on?

I think God might not be smiling down on this behavior.

For now, I’m done with trying to follow those who supposedly lead in the Christian faith. This includes all of the politicians who preach the gospel and wage the sin behind closed doors.

I’m going to look into some other beliefs and find which one I believe that MY God would want me involved in.

The following was written many years ago. I challenge those reading here to truly take it to heart. If you follow the crowd and side with those folks even when they are wrong, maybe it’s time to look in the mirror.

The Man In The Glass
— Anonymous
When you get what you want in your struggle for self
And the world makes you king for a day,
Just go to the mirror and look at yourself
And see what that man has to say.

For it isn’t your father or mother or wife
Whose judgment upon you must pass.
The fellow whose verdict counts most in you life
Is the one staring back from the glass.

You may be like Jack Horner and chisel a plum
And think you’re a wonderful guy.
But the man in the glass says you’re only a bum
If you can’t look him straight in the eye.

He’s the fellow to please-never mind all the rest,
For he’s with you clear to the end.
And you’ve passed your most dangerous, difficult test
If the man in the glass is your friend.

You may fool the whole world down the pathway of years
And get pats on the back as you pass.
But your final reward will be heartache and tears
If you’ve cheated the man in the glass.

“Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope … and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring those ripples … build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.” —Robert F. Kennedy

 Wow, “a tiny ripple of hope” … that when combined with other ripples can “build a current,” one that can knock down oppression and resistance.

Those are powerful words and while I’ve been thinking about this blog for a while it’s taken me a very long time to get started writing it.

You see, what I want to write about isn’t about hope, it’s about what happens when evil and destructiveness are involved in the midst of something that’s supposed to be good and healing.

You may know what I’m trying to say. I’ll give a few examples.

Have you ever been involved with a group of people that was trying to do something good for a cause? And all the while the group is trying to do it there is one person, or a handful of people, who just continue to bring negative energy into the situation. There’s bickering amongst the group and soon few people show up to help.

I think about jobs I’ve had where one supervisor continuously said bad things about his supervisor to his staff. I felt the tension and negative energy in that situation and I often wondered if it bled over on the project we were doing. 

It’s the same thing in some churches. Those who claim to be doing God’s work are often not really doing that at all. Because if they were really doing what God commanded there would be love in their hearts instead of constant gossiping, lying, judgment and just overall bad feelings. How can a person say they are serving God and praying for good things to happen, when they spend more time putting down others and lying?

It happens at jobs, clubs, churches, and in families.

Do no harm

We’ve all heard that over and over and I discovered that it’s used in some religions as well as in the oath doctors used to take:

• The Golden Rule in Buddhism is: Do no harm.

• When John Wesley gave the General Rules to the people called Methodists the first thing he told them was to do no harm, and

• The original Hippocratic Oath, once sworn by all doctors required that its adherents “do no harm” to their patients.

It’s used in many more places than I listed, but the point is made, it is used in different religions and by the medical community.

How do we do harm? We don’t do harm by focusing on love which encompasses all things good, but we do harm when we focus on all that is wrong. We talk about it to whoever will listen and we keep the evil energy alive.

We do harm when we don’t show love. If I look someone in the face and smile really big at them when I want a favor, yet I won’t give them a passing glance when I don’t need something, that’s not love and I find it unlikely that many folks would think it was.

It’s easier to catch flies with honey than with vinegar, and so it is with people, with success, with doing right.

We do what we know is right to do, even when it would be easier to do wrong.

What I’m saying is that if a small act of kindness — a ripple of hope — can spread out and have a snowball effect for good, then too, can a negative act have the same impact.

To me, if there’s negativity behind the scenes, then the energy from that is going to show in real life.

If sending up prayers can heal, then can’t also speaking evil harm? Does it harm even if the person spoken about never knows it was said?

It takes just as much energy to say a bad thing about someone as it does to say a good thing, maybe more.

Another thing to remember: the majority is not always right.

Just because you may have found a group of people to befriend who support your negativity, that doesn’t make it right.

Most people would probably say that it matters not what they say or do in private, that it doesn’t reflect upon their public work. I disagree. I think that our negative energy shows up in our lives and causes us not to succeed where we are most striving for success.

I implore you to always strive to do the right thing no matter what. Yes, we all fall short — I never claim to do the right thing all the time. But I do know that the attitude of frustration that says if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em, has never worked for me even though I’ve followed that path before.

Do no harm in person or behind another person’s back.

I delivered a book today; my book about living life to the fullest; the one about following your dreams; the book that talks about lessons and gifts; starting and finishing.

I wanted to take this book to Jason Priest, owner and founder of Little Rock Jams, so that I could get a tour of his new studio that opened in August of last year.

I took guitar lessons from Jason for about a year and stopped before he made the move about a half-mile away to new digs. I was a true beginner, and never did progress very far. I determined that my money would be better spent elsewhere, but I could still pick around on my guitar at home.

Jason was a faithful reader of this blog, which was my book in progress, and now as you know has turned into more of a regular blog.

Jason started his first guitar studio as a solo teacher. He began this gig back in July 2006 when he had an opportunity to “early retire” from a telephone company job during one of the mergers or something similar to that. In other words, a window of opportunity happened and he moved with it.

So to know him when — back when he was just about to add a teacher besides himself and then he was looking for a bigger space to add more staff — to know him then and to see where his studio has progressed today was a treat.

He took a step of faith to do what he’s done; what he’s doing. Little Rock Jams is a studio in Breckenridge Village with instruction rooms and an awesome studio for concerts. He’s so busy that Jason’s taking on running the show and letting the other teachers handle most of the teaching.

Going from a one-man-show studio to having numerous teachers, including piano and voice, to what Jason has developed now didn’t happen without a lot of prayer, persistence, faith, determination and I’d guess blood, sweat and tears.

Life is about stepping out of our comfort zones in order to fulfill our dreams.

We rarely get anywhere in life without taking a leap of faith. If you’re one of the few who was handed everything on a seemingly silver platter, if life just comes easy and there’s never a struggle to achieve and get what you want, rejoice in that. Because for the rest of us what we have is what we earned.

We work hard, we pray a lot, we take two steps forward and one back, sometimes we even give up. But for the most part, when we truly want something, we go the distance, we don’t quit or give up, we just keep moving on.

And so the delivery of my book to Jason about living life to the fullest; the one about following your dreams; the book that talks about lessons and gifts; starting and finishing was one that could have been written about him.

He’s already asked to star in the movie, so we know he dreams big.

Jason Priest, congratulations, my friend. Thanks for all of your support as I wrote my book and today as you admired it in your studio. Thanks for living your life as a good example. I know your children are learning the right way to do things.

Visit LittleRockJams.com to sign up for your lessons today!

Have you ever felt as if you had every right to retaliate against an action by someone who had harmed you in some way?

I think we all feel this way from time to time, probably very often actually. A simple thing like a driver cutting us off might make us want to do the same back, but where does that get a person? Possibly in a wreck.

Sometimes there is no solution to an issue. At other times there is, but a wrong for a wrong won’t solve a thing. Turning your back and walking away when angered is a good thing; running to tell everybody you can about how so and so ticked you off is another.

I don’t believe in standing around and letting someone badger me. If there is no way to stop it, I will leave. Seriously. You have to look at what you are getting out of the pain. Is it that you need attention so bad that you’re willing to stand for abuse? Verbal abuse, being lied to, bad treatment, is abuse.

Most folks, when they think of abuse the first thought is getting beat up, slapped, or some other form of physical altercation. Verbal and emotional abuse is just as bad and often more hidden.

A person can suffer emotional and verbal abuse from a partner, friend, boss, family member, or anyone really.

Of course, it’s easy to walk away from a casual friend who might abuse you, but not easy at all to turn your back on a family member, boss, or significant other. Easy or not, if you are in the midst of emotional or verbal abuse, get out.