My life is still shaped by my personal experience as a dementia caregiver for my father who died from Alzheimer’s disease on October 13th, 2007. As is indicated in my previous post, I didn’t want to write about my experience, but I couldn’t help but do so in my effort to honor those affected by this always terminal illness. I am glad I did, to which this review attests:
The author, who has closely experienced the cruelty of Alzheimer’s in a loved one, has shown a great deal of courage and consummate determination in writing this tale.
This well-paced and brilliantly written story is at once poignant, agonizing, funny in places and all-consuming. The reader will have difficulty putting it down but had best keep a box of tissues at hand. It made this hardened, former combat solider weep like a school child through much of the second half.
I have emerged from this novel with greater sensitivity to the whole continuum of dementia and its emotional impact on those who must find a way of dealing with its encroachment on their lives. There are not enough superlatives in the English language to give justice to a description of this novel by an obviously compassionate, energetic, and witty author. It is worthy of six stars. – R. Bruce Logan, author of BACK TO VIETNAM:TOURS OF THE HEART
REQUIEM FOR THE STATUS QUO and all of Mr. Logan’s books can be found on Amazon or wherever you buy your books.
My thoughts about being a family caregiver. Been there, done that.
Even with all the book knowledge a person can garner, caregiving “mistakes” are bound to happen. The following tips are provided to active and former family caregivers who struggle with what they consider failed attempts at getting the caregiving task done correctly.
Perfection is highly overrated. No one, absolutely no one, expects you to do everything correctly 100% of the time.
Don’t be so hard on yourself. Why? See Tip #1 above and Tip #3 below.
Caregiving is difficult, so celebrate the wins! Sometimes you will have just the right way of doing or saying something that wipes out every other time you feel you didn’t do or say something correctly. Tally up the victories and celebrate them!
Carefully choose your confidantes. Having acquaintances that are slow to judge but quick to affirm will be just the nourishment your body and soul will need.
If you are doing your best, that is all that is needed. But you say, “I could have done better!” No. You did the best with what you knew at the time, therefore you are to be congratulated. Instead, ask yourself, “Did I give it all that I could in the moment?” Yes, you did.
“Mistakes” are simply learning opportunities. Even today, years after my family caregiving experience, I remind myself that when something in my life isn’t going quite as planned, I can still learn something from that lesson, which is an “unmistakably” good thing, don’t you think?
I wrote a novel about my own caregiving experience. Just like my caregiving skills were a work in progress, so too was this novel, published a few years after my father passed from Alzheimer’s disease. May it encourage you, or someone you know, who just might need a cheerleader in their corner.
The writer Anne Lamott really nailed it on the head with this sentiment. I certainly get up and walk and I also fall down…fortunately not the physical type, but definitely the emotional type of falling down, but do I keep dancing through my days regardless?
I can’t say that I do.
Mind you, I always recover because after 70 years on this earth, I have proven to be quite resilient and although the recovery period takes longer than I would want, somehow or other I have survived every horrible day or event I have encountered in my life. In my birthday post, I mentioned the living milestones one encounters after 70 years which also included the number of breaths to my name as of my birthdate: 434,350,000, and the breaths keep adding up! But that’s not enough for me; what else can I do?
I can stop letting the stresses of life get in the way of my dancing.
I may not dance in the literal sense, but I can decide to shake off the intricacies of the world around me so that my health and well-being aren’t adversely affected. That does not mean that I don’t care about those intricacies – trust me, I lose considerable sleep over the caring that I harbor – but I will be a better participant in this life if I let my spirit and psyche dance a bit more than not.
And if doing so rubs off on others? All the better, so I will dance, dance, dance.
I previously posted, here, about what it takes to make it to seventy-years-old but I left out one statistic which I now provide to you on this American holiday, Labor Day.
Based on statistics of taking 17,000 breaths a day, when I turned 70 earlier this summer I had already taken 434,350,000 breaths. I don’t know about you, but I think that’s pretty darn impressive. One need not be an Olympic athlete, or any athlete for that matter, for the breaths to still add up.
One breath at a time. That is all that is needed, today, and every day.
Many of us of a certain age have endured much throughout our lives, both personally and historically. I have had the right to vote in the United States for fifty-two years. Let me tell you, I have witnessed my share of elections that didn’t go my way and somehow my country has managed to survive, which for some election cycles is really saying a lot. On the other hand, some election results pleased me to no end, allowing me to endure periods of time of seeming ease.
Residents of each country reading this post have faced monumental weather anomalies, financial hardships, and devastating illnesses. If you are reading this piece, you have made it through those disasters and perhaps have wondered how you made it! I’ll tell you right now, there are individual days wherein I have questioned my own ability to do so and yet I woke up every day-after able to call myself a survivor.
As of the date I turned seventy-years-old earlier this summer, I marveled at the fact that my body had rewarded me with daily breath more than 25,500 days in a row. Astounding! And what about the heart? Given an average 100 beats per minute – at least at my age – that equated to 3,672,000,000 beats as of the date I turned 70! WHAT???!!! If that isn’t endurance, I don’t know what is! Thank you, precious heart of mine!
Now I will confess to you that I am a habitual catastrophic thinker (for me that means that I assume the worst rather than the best) so the stats I just gave you are vital tidbits of information I can now add to my evidence list that things are better than I might have assumed them to be. And perhaps such evidence will sufficiently encourage you to increase your own hope quotient so you can find the best, instead of the worst, going forward.
If that is the case, I am absolutely thrilled for you, and I’m thrilled for me as I grab my calculator to figure out how many breaths I’ve taken in the past 25,500 days and counting!
Sometimes our thoughts can lead us astray, as I hinted at in my previous post. The above quote from a meditation coach I listen to really resonated with me.
There are so many aspects of our being for which we need to provide a harbor of safety and calm. Sometimes our boat is easily guided towards that safe harbor, and other times? Not so much.
My encouragement to all of us today is to not seek perfection, to understand that we will always encounter rough seas during our life, and when a wave is at its peak, we can know that on the other side of that wave, calm is waiting for us.
THOUGHTS No doubt you have been told that thoughts are just thoughts, that they are not facts. That’s true and we know that to be true, but do we believe it? Rarely. Instead, we let our thoughts consume us, depriving us of calm and making sleep as elusive as winning a big lottery jackpot.
WORRY. ANXIETY. STRESS. ACK!!!!! Everyone has their own “favorite” topic of the aforementioned emotionally distressing occurrences. Health, or lack thereof, is the catalyst for anxiety that is universally experienced, but one need not have that type of fear for ones’ thoughts to take center stage.
Family challenges, financial insecurities, political upheaval. Upcoming life events, whether positive or negative in nature. Socially and emotionally charged incidents. My goodness, the list is interminable! If only we could stop thinking such things!
THE BRAIN DOES WHAT IT’S DESIGNED TO DO I don’t have a magic solution to stop all thought and quite frankly, it’s not possible. Making worthless attempts to stop all thought adds stress, stress adds tension, and tension builds anxiety. Accept that you can’t terminate all thought; personally, that was a very helpful starting point. Acceptance is the key but please know that acceptance does not equate to agreement, rather, it simply means you acknowledge what’s happening and move forward through it without fighting it because…fighting adds stress, stress adds tension, and tension builds anxiety.
ACCEPT THE POSITIVE AND THE NEGATIVE I don’t subscribe to the philosophy of think positive thoughts and all your worries will disappear. Nope, but what I do subscribe to is getting to a place of understanding that nothing is permanent…NOTHING. The bad times wane and, of course, so do the good times. For me, knowing that to be an incontrovertible fact helps me realize that my thoughts aren’t worth investing in. I enjoy the warm fuzzies that positive thoughts give me while trying not to assign too much weight to the negative thoughts that occur unbidden at the most inopportune times, like when I’m trying to fall asleep.
THIS TOO SHALL PASS We know that’s true. Just as the weather changes, so do circumstances. Remember, nothing is permanent, so along with understanding that bad times aren’t permanent, we have to be willing to accept that neither are the good times, and that’s a healthy mentality to have because you can’t have one without the other. Please know, I’ve given this topic an extraordinary amount of thought and have had countless opportunities to practice letting go and letting be, but I am still a work in progress where failure oftentimes outweighs the successes, but practice makes perfect or at least as perfect as us fallible beings can be. You’ve got this my friends. Just as I believe in my ability to wade through all the positive and negative thoughts that fill up my head, I believe in your ability as well. Welcome each opportunity to engage in this practice. Eventually, you and I will get the hang of it and we’ll be better off as a result.
I lived the dementia caregiver’s journey. When it was time to write about it after my father’s death from Alzheimer’s disease, I chose the Fiction genre, rather than Non-Fiction. That’s what worked for me, and I am pleased that it also worked for readers. This review warmed my heart as it was exactly what I was hoping for.
The story-telling format is a gentle way to learn about symptoms and progression of this eventually terminal ailment. Most revealing were the passages depicting Colleen’s exchanges within her caregiver support group. This technique allows the author to educate her readers about the varied behavioral challenges faced by the patient and sometimes not-so-patient caregivers.
The author also manages, through well-written dialogues with Colleen’s siblings and her best friend, to do a lot of teaching without overwhelming technical medical jargon or lecturing.
This novel is a tender one about a family who manages to help their father maintain his dignity throughout a grueling and heartbreaking journey.– Elaine H., British Columbia, CANADA
Even though no human being is perfect, we always have the chance to bring what’s unique about us to life in a redeeming way.
Irene says: I celebrate being perfectly imperfect. And my normal weekly blog posts will commence on August 7th. I hope you have enjoyed this Mr. Rogers summer interlude.
When we love a person, we accept him or her exactly as is: the lovely with the unlovely, the strong with the fearful, the true mixed in with the façade, and of course, the only way we can do it is by accepting ourselves that way.
As human beings, our job in life is to help people realize how rare and valuable each one of us is, that each of us has something that no one else has or ever will have something inside that is unique to all time. It’s our job to encourage each other to discover that uniqueness and to provide ways of developing its expression.
You are special. There’s only one of you in this wonderful world. In a way, you’ve already won in this world because you’re the only one who can be you!
Mr. Fred Rogers had a boat load of wisdom that he passed along during his show Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood. With summer approaching and the outdoors calling my name, I am going to share tidbits of his wisdom each week. This inaugural Rogers quote centers on children.
Anyone who does anything to help a child in her or his life is a hero.
I celebrate the fact that I am perfectly imperfect. I have no goal of ever being perfect. In my mind, perfection is greatly misdiagnosed when applied to human beings.
How is human perfection measured? (Humans are involved)
Whose standards are used? (Human standards)
Why aim at perfection when doing so can cause comparison and strife that individuals can certainly do without? (Yeah, why?)
Comparison. Ugh, no good can come from such a practice. Whether you compare your life to other people’s lives on social media – or you compare yourself to your neighbor, friend, or enemy – more often than not the measuring rod’s results will not bend in your favor. Why? Because we are hard on ourselves and therefore in our minds will never measure up.
We are individuals and therefore distinctly different from everyone else!
We complement each other; filling in the blanks that quite naturally exist within each of us.
And THAT, my friends, is something worth celebrating: me helping you, you helping me. A definition of:
Spotlight on Care is an extraordinary podcast developed by the University of California at Irvine Mind Institute.
I was honored to participate in this podcast service very recently and provide it to you at this time. It is only 25 minutes long, a perfect length to grab your attention and then let you be on your way. If you know of a family caregiver who might also benefit, please share it with them.
True beauty exists in a person who is kind, giving, and loving.
Without a doubt, each person reading this post has encountered outwardly beautiful people who oozed ugliness. We have also witnessed the opposite to be true: the less-than-beautiful acting with extreme ugliness. Genuine beauty exists deep within the heart and the mind.
I’m not telling you anything new and I’m not going to go on and on about this subject other than to say:
Words and actions matter.
PLEASE MAKE YOURS COUNT AS I TRY TO MAKE MINE COUNT AS WELL.
How about family caregivers who live near their loved one?
This Spotlight on Care audio podcast, only 25 minutes in length, will encourage you greatly. I was the long distance caregiver for my father who died in 2007 from Alzheimer’s disease. This recent podcast produced by the University of California at Irvine MIND institute provides a snippet of how I succeeded, or failed, in my efforts to make my father’s experience as carefree as possible. I was just like you: figuring it out as I went along, picking and choosing methods that might help both my and my father’s experience. Looking back, I can celebrate that I did my best, and that’s all that matters.
Doing your best doesn’t demand perfection, just your best.
I recently completed a guided meditation on loneliness where it was suggested that hunger and loneliness are spurred on by the same need in a person’s brain. When our tummy tells our brain it needs nourishment, we act on that need, but do we act on our need for connection when we’re lonely?
Like many of you, my yearning for connection grew by leaps and bounds the past three years. With very little recourse, my personal world became smaller and smaller, and although my husband is great company day-in and day-out (for over 23 years now) I still craved interaction with others. Then the world opened up and doing something and going somewhere finally became an option.
But I was still lonely and didn’t know how to satisfy that hunger.
I have very few friends nearby. It seems once a person no longer goes to work each day, exhausts their desirous volunteer activities, and their neighbors move away, there are fewer opportunities to make healthy connections. I have a literal ache to make friends and spend quality time with them. I am happy to say that for the past three months, I have found that connection at a weekly class offered by the city in which I live.
The class is a combination of Tai Chi with the healthy addition of maintaining physical balance in ones’ later years. I turn seventy years old next month so it stands to reason that seeking better balance would be high on my priority list. I am receiving the benefits of such exercise with the added benefit of meeting new people and spending time with them. The twenty students in the class are all of a certain age, the youngest being 50 and the oldest appears to be in their 80s.
None of us students have perfected the art of Tai Chi. We will no doubt never reach the perfection of form demonstrated by our teacher Julie, but as she emphasizes each and every class session, “You do you” and that is exactly what I am doing.
The need to connect is still there. There are some deeper connections in the class I hope to make. But if I hadn’t sought that initial connection, the possibility of gaining a deeper connection would have no chance of happening. I guess a good way of summing up matters is to say that if I hadn’t done my part, I would still be as isolated as I was before, and suffering the same mental health deficit I felt at the beginning of this year. As Yoda of Star Wars movie franchise fame so succinctly said:
“Do or do not. There is no try.”
If you don’t set a goal, you’ll never reach it. If you don’t ask, you’ll never receive. We only have one life to live. Please don’t let it expire without your participation.
Putting off matters is such a common experience for all of us. Speaking for myself, I usually adopt that avoidance behavior when I lack the confidence needed to master the task at hand. It helps to have a deadline but when that deadline is a generous one, chances are attention will be diverted for quite some time.
FOR EXAMPLE: I had 3 years in which to file our amended 2022 tax return.
I thought I had absolutely every form needed to file last year’s taxes and was quite proud of myself for electronically submitting my household’s return using the tax prep software I have used for many, many years. I mean, it was the end of February so any entity that was slated to send me a form would have already done so…right?
WRONG.
Wouldn’t you know it, an errant form from a country other than the United States arrived shortly thereafter which most definitely created the need to file an amended return for the first time in my entire almost 70 years of life.
I researched it. I looked for every possible legal loophole to not have to go down that path, but I discovered there was no way to avoid the dreaded amended tax return process. But I had three years in which to do so, so why rush?
Because the manila folder on my desk containing the 2022 tax files kept mocking me each time I walked past it.
Given the fact that I’m retired and have all the time in the world to travel down the path of tax return hell, I couldn’t even claim busyness to avoid opening up my 2022 electronic file and diving right in. I absolutely knew that the tax prep software would hold my hand through the process but I still took comfort in the fact that I had plenty of time to get ‘er done so why add stress to my somewhat calm life if I didn’t need to?
Because I needed to eliminate the fear that had subconsciously been keeping me awake at night.
On April 5th, 2023, I tackled the software, only to find that it did indeed walk me through the process, and the anticipated pain was minimal at best. Sure, we ended up owing the IRS some money, but the peace of mind experienced having finally stored that manila folder in the file cabinet was worth every penny electronically deposited into the IRS’s bank account.
What task have you been putting off? Hoping you can experience an Oh Happy Day moment to rival mine!
Both of my novels address the impermanence of life, while also addressing how difficult some situations can be when we’re fully enmeshed in them. Requiem for the Status Quo speaks of the difficulties of a dementia diagnosis on the patient and on the family members who care for her/him, while A Jagged Journey exposes the reader to life with all its catastrophic imperfections. Both novels also shine a spotlight on the fact that bad times don’t stick around forever.
The good news and the bad news of impermanence in these situations is that we have to accept that along with being in favor of bad times not hanging around forever, we have to acknowledge and even accept that good times are subject to the same fleeting characteristic.
Take comfort in knowing, however, that tomorrow – or the next hour – may reward you greatly.
What has been your experience surrounding such opposites as appear in our lives?
I’ve read lots of articles and listened to numerous podcasts the past few years wherein self-forgiveness and self-compassion are talked about at length. Intellectually, I understood the concept but my heart didn’t catch up until a few days ago so that the IMPORTANT understanding could settle in.
Self-forgiveness is not dependent on rectifying a past action or mistake.
Perhaps you’re thinking, “Well, duh – you can’t change the past” but believe me, my previous inability to forgive myself was based on wishing I could change the past and because I could not, forgiveness was not possible. Had a friend experienced a similar faux pas as me, would I castigate her? Would I shame her? No, I would not, so why be a jerk to myself?
Indeed.
I have finally forgiven myself for previously unforgivable mistakes – the ones that still pricked my conscience – and I have become a free woman where those matters are concerned.
My shoulders and my heart have been relieved of a VERY heavy burden.
My sister, Mary, was born 8 months before me; my parents adopted her after my mother suffered three miscarriages. As sometimes happens, before the ink was dry on the adoption papers, my mother became pregnant with me. Yay me!!!
Suffice to say, being so close in age, my sister and I grew up together with the same experiences and oftentimes the same friends. We are still very close, even though we don’t live in the same state.
Several years ago, after our mother and father had passed away, my sister located her birth mother, met her, and had a few occasions to get together with her and her other daughters, even though her birth mother lived in eastern Canada and my sister resides in California.
Because I erroneously believed I would have all the time in the world to write a letter to and further communicate with my sister’s biological mother to thank her for placing my sister up for adoption, I missed out on that opportunity because Cathy died a few years after my sister first connected with her.
Cathy’s decision to provide the best possible home for my sister was an extraordinary gift for which I wanted to express my gratitude, but I procrastinated and never told Cathy what a blessing her first daughter is to me. In my recent history, this by far is the biggest regret I harbor in my heart.
Evidently, the Egyptians were one of the first civilizations to invent writing. It looks as though their characterizations on stone are being repeated in the 21st century with varying emojis depicting anything from a pile of something we would prefer not to step in, to a happy face that makes everyone within its purview HAPPY as a result!
Many of us grew up with clear instructions on how to firstly, pencil individual printed letters to perfection, then we graduated to a stylus of sorts and carefully curved those same letters into cursive form – a form that appears to have become a lost art for far too many people whose primary mode of “writing” is texting. And because texting has become a primary mode of correspondence, I’ve come to find it very rewarding when I receive a full-fledged email “letter” minus the LOLs, CUL8Rs, and BTWs.
So, who’s right: you and I who communicate with letters, greeting cards, and even person-to-person telephone calls, or the rest of the world with there/their hastily misspelled 5-word message that will just have to pass for a gripping conversation?
I’m willing to concede that we’re both right, because in my mind, as long as communication lines are wide open, I will be happy and genuinely grateful to be on the receiving end of even the most terse message. If I receive a heart emoji text from a younger person as their way of telling me they were thinking of me, I’ll celebrate that I was thought of and that someone took the time to hug me with their equivalent of a piece of personal correspondence.
I guess what I’m saying is, writing can mean whatever you want it to mean – as long as you don’t forget me – or your loved ones – in the process. This post assembles 26 different letters placed together to make some sort of sense to the reader, and to make some sort of difference in the lives of those who have an opportunity to read it. It would be difficult for me to write this post if I was limited in the manner in which I tried to communicate with you, but, if need be, I guess I would figure out how to work within those limits just so you and I could keep the lines of communication open.
THE BOTTOM LINE: I don’t want to lose touch with those about whom I care deeply, and if being in touch with them means text messages or emojis between us? Count me in.
When there is spoiling in the world – whether found in the air, the ground itself, the water, or in the destructive power of fire – quality of life is seriously reduced in the spoiling.
There are other ways to spoil the world, however; spoiling that occurs as a result of words spoken or not spoken; of kindnesses withheld and cruelties expended. Just like earth’s elements, words and actions can cause grievous harm – or they can heal.
Earth. Fire. Air. Water. My research on these four elements revealed an interesting outcome: all four elements have the power to cleanse.
Additionally, the following qualities are attributed to these elements:
Earth: order, structure, and stability.
Fire: warmth, transformation, and the enabling of life.
Water: healing and regeneration.
Air: communication, intelligence, and harmony.
The world seems to have experienced a serious reduction in the level of qualities attributed to these elements. The unfortunate divisions that have always separated us appear to have widened and deepened, fueling a battle that should have never been raged.
We are not charged with making the entire world a better place in which to live – each of us need only attend to our miniscule corner of the world to accomplish such a task. It is my hope that the words we choose and the actions we take bring about a much-needed purification of this Earth, which leads me to this challenge for me and for you:
Do all the good that you can, in all the places you can, in all the ways that you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, for as long as you can. – John Wesley
The writer Anne Lamott really nailed it on the head with this sentiment. I certainly get up and walk and I also fall down…fortunately not the physical type, but definitely the emotional type of falling down, but do I keep dancing through my days regardless?
I previously posted, here, about what it takes to make it to seventy-years-old but I left out one statistic which I now provide to you on this American holiday, Labor Day.
Many of us of a certain age have endured much throughout our lives, both personally and historically. I have had the right to vote in the United States for fifty-two years. Let me tell you, I have witnessed my share of elections that didn’t go my way and somehow my country has managed to survive, which for some election cycles is really saying a lot. On the other hand, some election results pleased me to no end, allowing me to endure periods of time of seeming ease.
Now I will confess to you that I am a habitual catastrophic thinker (for me that means that I assume the worst rather than the best) so the stats I just gave you are vital tidbits of information I can now add to my evidence list that things are better than I might have assumed them to be. And perhaps such evidence will sufficiently encourage you to increase your own hope quotient so you can find the best, instead of the worst, going forward.
THOUGHTS No doubt you have been told that thoughts are just thoughts, that they are not facts. That’s true and we know that to be true, but do we believe it? Rarely. Instead, we let our thoughts consume us, depriving us of calm and making sleep as elusive as winning a big lottery jackpot.
THIS TOO SHALL PASS We know that’s true. Just as the weather changes, so do circumstances. Remember, nothing is permanent, so along with understanding that bad times aren’t permanent, we have to be willing to accept that neither are the good times, and that’s a healthy mentality to have because you can’t have one without the other. Please know, I’ve given this topic an extraordinary amount of thought and have had countless opportunities to practice letting go and letting be, but I am still a work in progress where failure oftentimes outweighs the successes, but practice makes perfect or at least as perfect as us fallible beings can be. You’ve got this my friends. Just as I believe in my ability to wade through all the positive and negative thoughts that fill up my head, I believe in your ability as well. Welcome each opportunity to engage in this practice. Eventually, you and I will get the hang of it and we’ll be better off as a result.
I lived the dementia caregiver’s journey. When it was time to write about it after my father’s death from Alzheimer’s disease, I chose the Fiction genre, rather than Non-Fiction. That’s what worked for me, and I am pleased that it also worked for readers. This review warmed my heart as it was exactly what I was hoping for.
It won’t be long now.
Without a doubt, each person reading this post has encountered outwardly beautiful people who oozed ugliness. We have also witnessed the opposite to be true: the less-than-beautiful acting with extreme ugliness. Genuine beauty exists deep within the heart and the mind.
This Spotlight on Care audio podcast, only 25 minutes in length, will encourage you greatly. I was the long distance caregiver for my father who died in 2007 from Alzheimer’s disease. This recent podcast produced by the University of California at Irvine MIND institute provides a snippet of how I succeeded, or failed, in my efforts to make my father’s experience as carefree as possible. I was just like you: figuring it out as I went along, picking and choosing methods that might help both my and my father’s experience. Looking back, I can celebrate that I did my best, and that’s all that matters.
I recently completed a guided meditation on loneliness where it was suggested that hunger and loneliness are spurred on by the same need in a person’s brain. When our tummy tells our brain it needs nourishment, we act on that need, but do we act on our need for connection when we’re lonely?
The class is a combination of Tai Chi with the healthy addition of maintaining physical balance in ones’ later years. I turn seventy years old next month so it stands to reason that seeking better balance would be high on my priority list. I am receiving the benefits of such exercise with the added benefit of meeting new people and spending time with them. The twenty students in the class are all of a certain age, the youngest being 50 and the oldest appears to be in their 80s.
Putting off matters is such a common experience for all of us. Speaking for myself, I usually adopt that avoidance behavior when I lack the confidence needed to master the task at hand. It helps to have a deadline but when that deadline is a generous one, chances are attention will be diverted for quite some time.
Because the manila folder on my desk containing the 2022 tax files kept mocking me each time I walked past it.
Because I erroneously believed I would have all the time in the world to write a letter to and further communicate with my sister’s biological mother to thank her for placing my sister up for adoption, I missed out on that opportunity because Cathy died a few years after my sister first connected with her.
Evidently, the Egyptians were one of the first civilizations to invent writing. It looks as though their characterizations on stone are being repeated in the 21st century with varying emojis depicting anything from a pile of something we would prefer not to step in, to a happy face that makes everyone within its purview HAPPY as a result!
So, who’s right: you and I who communicate with letters, greeting cards, and even person-to-person telephone calls, or the rest of the world with there/their hastily misspelled 5-word message that will just have to pass for a gripping conversation?
THE BOTTOM LINE: I don’t want to lose touch with those about whom I care deeply, and if being in touch with them means text messages or emojis between us? Count me in.
When there is spoiling in the world – whether found in the air, the ground itself, the water, or in the destructive power of fire – quality of life is seriously reduced in the spoiling.
Living: the ultimate team sport 