When I woke this morning (at 4:30am) I could not move fast enough to find out anything about the direction of the votes. Now I have to own-up to a slight knot in my stomach as I found out that … Continue reading
24th June 2016 Good or Bad Day?
Tag Archives: life
Moments of Importance
Some moments are ment to change us and some are meant to fade like a smoke ring carried on a passing breeze. Such moments like, the first look from a girl across the room. The first time a girl holds your hand. The first time you pluck up the nerve to kiss her on her lips, the clash of teeth and the acupaning realisation that you are not as good a kisser as you thought. A true Constant in life is love. And if your lucky enough to find it and you hold on to it. Then happeness will follow.
Whatever love may be, I think its emotion, the rawest emotion of all, it fills our lives with Purpose. Without it memory’s will fade and dullness takes over. Just remember that in the end we don’t look up a picture of our best car or wish to see a statement of our closing balance.
We look into the eyes of a loved one and remember them moments of importance. Them moments that filled our life with love and smiles. Have a good day and I hope it’s full of such moments.
Photo from http://funny.pho.to
Christmas cheer
snowman holding a box
Well Christmas is finely here and never mind the goose I’m already getting fat.
What a great time of year this is. That’s if you can avoid the hype and take it for what it is. And that is a time for greeting and meeting and making merry. Catch up with family, friends and the odd stranger.
I met two polish guys yesterday, they came to buy my old car. They were hooded and spoke broken English like they just stepped out of a modern day thriller. It took one look at my Christmas decorations and hopefully a smile in my face to bring the conversation away from cars and clutches, brake pipes and bushes to the merry Christmases we had when we were young. They told me of twelve course dinners that they had to endure and fish not turkey as the main on their special day of days.
So meet and greet and be kind while remembering that a smile and a little sharing can change a novel book villain to really nice guys. Merry Christmas to all and I will blog again soon.
40 things about being 40
I turned forty last week and with this mile stone I thought I would give you my list enjoy.
1 Baking bread is suddenly good.
2 As is playing a guitar.
3 The prospect of playing a guitar in public is terrifying.
4 You jump when your mobile phones go off at the cinema .
5 You forget to turn your mobile to silent in the cinema.
6 You have a life-belt rather than a six-pack.
7 Your younger colleagues think your sex drive is a lie. (little do they know.)
8 You buy more chart music than ever but still go home and slap on madonna’s like a prayer.
9 You start running for health, not for looks. (or try to.)
10 You punch the next person who says “life begins at forty.” and laugh when anyone uses a fist bump in place of a hand shake.
11 It takes a lot longer to get worked up.
12 Harmless flirting may not be perceived as being so harmless. You don’t want to be known as a dirty old man.
13 Maybe Twitter has passed you by.
14 You worry about being wrong, you apologise for being right.
15 Moisturiser for men is firmly embedded within the morning routine.
16 Thinking about death begins to compete with the six second thoughts about sex.
17 You sit at traffic lights singing along to pet shop boys. Girls at the traffic lights laugh at you. You don’t care, you only sing louder.
18 When your boss asks you when you can do some urgent task, you welcome the challenge.
19 You think groups of younger people who wear hooded sweatshirts with the hood up look sinister. You feel like you should cross the street to avoid them.
20 You go out drinking less often due to the realisation that it’s rubbish and the musics to loud to talk.
21 You become less certain of things than you used to be.
22 On the rare accession you go out, you feel uncomfitable because all the girls seem to be wearing little more than there underwear.
23 Reading is the new tv. Because everything seems shallow on the box.
24 Board games make a comeback.
25 10:00pm becomes the new midnight.
26 You find children more interesting, and are less perturbed about making small talk with them.
27 You increasingly find your self searching magazine racks for diverting entertainment.
28 You can cut through the smalltalk and to get to the point. (Or looking at this list maybe not.)
29 Your teen years are now considered retro and cool.
30 You find solace in crashing waves.
31 You begin to worry about the decline of public services.
32 You wonder if you will ever see the seven great wonders of the world, or even outside of Europe.
33 You have a ton of fabulous friends who also just turned forty, or are about to.
34 You think nothing of spending £12 on a bottle of wine or £30+ on a bottle of whisky.
35 You take a thermos pretty much everywhere, filled with your favourite coffee.
36 The urge to give in to peer-pressure disappears. (So I’ve been told.)
37 You talk like you have something interesting to say. (and don’t care if its not that interesting.)
38 Your never on your own anymore.
39 Your on your own to much.
40 You know the best thing about reaching forty is that fifty is ten years away.
Reflection!
When we reflect I cannot help but wonder why. People I speak to seem to reflect back on there life with the filter of regret. I can honestly say there are only a handful of friends and family in my life that follow my interpretation of reflection.
Above is a collage of words from my tags of the last year. I can say that these are the most important words from my last year of posts. When I look over these, it makes me reflect with in, I see happy, sad and great social times. The last year has brought me the death of my father. The finish of my book. The realisation that I need to do more. Also a great growth within my self. My first blog almost a year ago was (and you can look this up in my archives if you wish) To Van Dyke or not To Van Dyke That is the Question. Since than I have posted fifty seven times subjects ranging from information about my writing to family holidays, great social events such as the Royal Wedding and some very personal events too.
This is the past and we should learn from this, not repeat it.
We hold onto the past with notions that to persist and repeat will bring better results. It will not.
Most conversations I will have over the next twenty four hours about the future, will involve the past. Trying to make a better future by clinging onto a changed or modified past.
The glory days are just that.
We anchor ourselves with Memories but we set ourselves free with Dreams.
We look forward and shape the future, use your glory days, don’t repeat them.
On this I wish you all a very happy and productive New Year. I look forward to the new challenges it will bring.
Emotions part five ‘Hate’
I wonder what we mean when we say hate. I think most people can see a person in there minds eye if I ask.
‘who do you hate?’
I have been trying to write this post for months, it seems that I just cannot get a handle on hate. It could be me, maybe I just don’t have the ability to hate.
Is it hate that we feel? or is it another emotion that we are just confusing as hate. Like jealousy or envy.
Hate is what I would call a prime emotion like a prime colour. It’s one of the big ones, we use this in a combination with others to make our mood or feeling at any one time. It wouldn’t suprise me to find that there are specific parts of the brain that directly involves it’s self to making us feel hate. There has been many times in my life when I have felt hateful towards someone or something; it is normally short lived and happened when I was a much younger person.
In the wisdom that comes with thirty eight years (if any) I seem to have mellowed, It takes a lot more to rattle my cage. Maybe having children has taught me to control this destructive emotion.
Our feelings have developed over many thousands of years. We as a species used to use such things as tools. Only now we live so different to our recent ancestors that we can get confused to which emotion we should be using.
It’s not human to hang on to any situation after the outcome is obsolete. So if you feel hate for someone because they have done you wrong then that’s fine but as soon as your hate becomes self destructive then it’s time to let go. Move on and make the best of what’s left. Whether it be love, money or a family feud. Life is to short and to preoccupy our life’s with such futile endeavours if wasteful to say the least. In the end hate is powered by the situation that gave it life. What we have to do is rationalise it as quick as possible to limit the damage it will cause, because if left it will cause damage.
This is when the empathy comes in; to see the situation from the other point of view will give you prospective and know doubt show you how small it was in the first place. In the end maybe it’s our ability to forgive and empathise with others that makes the difference. Writing makes me empathise with others, after all if I could not empathise I would only write a one sided story. I’m only able to give characters there own life by taking that life from everyone round me. I little bit of everyone I know will be in all my story’s
My oldest brother has some great advice, that is “do to others, only what you would have done to yourself’ (Im sure thats out of a very famous book, involved a man who’s name began with a “J” I think)
So hate is useless and a waste of hormones.
Buddha said “Hatred is never ended by hatred but by love” Be it karma or some faith from a corner of the world or a spiritual intervention, but I do believe that we get what we give.
What I tell my two boys when they blur the line between right and wrong is that ‘bad people get bad things and good people get good things’
So give nice and receive nice in return.
The Beauty of Woman
You know, you drive around, the sun breaks through the clouds. We feel warm and happy.
I think you can see a definite change in women in general when this happens. In the winter months, when it’s cloudy, it’s raining, or drizzle, it feels miserable. Oh did I forget Wet and damp. Well women cover up they have there hats on, umbrellas and big coats.
We don’t really see then. We just don’t notice them. They become part of the grey back ground.
I’m talking from a male point of view, from a mans point of veiw, I like to think of myself as a mans man, I believe in traditional values.
So as soon as that sun comes out woman change, they evolve like a butterfly, they will go from this coved up form, kin to a nun and then transform into a beautiful creature. They really do entice us all, my male friends pretty much say the same thing, we all notice. with the first bit of sun that the first thing a man notices is women. It Isn’t the sun its self, we love the sun only because women are gorgeous and I’m including my wife she is very gorgeous. (also to protect against fallback I only ever look at my wife, she is the only gorgeous woman for me) now that done I will carry on.
Even my wife does the same, see changes, see becomes vibrant and colourful, there is a little bit of flesh that starts to show this is coved up in the winter months. The skirts, the makeup, and then the smile.
This is the most important of the changes, the smile comes on most faces. We drive round the streets or we walk round the town centres, we go for walks at the weekends. If the suns out with blue sky’s and fluffy clouds then people smile and I presume men are smiling just as much as woman, it’s just that I don’t really notice as much. That’s because I find woman attractive. I dare say a man who finds men attractive would find them smiling alot. I would like to think that I smile more in the summer.
So I think this post is a testament to all women, to say thank you for uplifting my day and most other men’s day. I don’t think you realise what impact you have on us men of the world.
So Thanks.
Emotion’s part 4
Affection, Love, Happiness. (all the good ones)
These emotion’s seem really hard to write about.
I think its because where as the other emotions can be broken down I find it harder to break this one, when I do it kind of breaks the magic behind love and happiness.
I do believe in the magic that comes from caring for someone close to you, when you give over all you are. If you are as fortunate as me to have found the one person who you truly care about above and beyond yourself. (I think I will get some stick for this post)
Maybe this is it, we give affection to others in the hope that it will be returned. The problem is that sometimes it’s not returned and we start on one of those other emotion. This is what’s hard about the good emotions, they take an effort to keep. Were as the bad ones like hate and anger these take an effort to get rid of. It’s easy to stay angry. It’s harder to be happy.
Which in its self is kind of cool because most people you will meet are happy. I know a lot of people who are in love with someone. So at least we can take joy from the fact that most people want to smile and be your friend.
This is a quote I like from Albert Camus
Do not walk in front of me; I may not follow.
Do not walk behind me; I may not lead.
Just walk beside me and be my friend.
(like I said, I think I might get some stick for this post, showing my softer side I think)
I do like that that Albert Camus has written. It basically says be my friend, not by boss, nor me yours.
When I decided to write about emotions I did a bit of research. Did you know that there are 48 separate emotional states. I won’t cover all of them, that could get boring fast. But I do find the emotional state very interesting, how we mix and match them depending on who we are interacting with. How some people can be angry at one person then turn and be nice to the next. while others get into an emotional state, no mater who they see, that state will not change, it has to run its course. (heart on there sleeve comes to mind)
This variety in the Human emotions makes for very interesting discussions. Me and my wife will talk and when out eating at a restaurant we people watch. It soon becomes apparent that people are all the same, we all have the same worries and problems while at the same time we all have the same desirer to be connected and wanted by others.
Life is good if we understand that deep down we all want the same.
To Lie?
I was going to call this post emotions number four but lies are not really an emotion, although they do evoke an array of emotion.
First I should define between a damaging lie and a white lie. I believe a white lie is when your partner says they had one biscuit when they really had two. A damaging lie is self explaining, they cause damage. The worst kind of lie is when the lie its self prevents you from fulfilling a promise or stops you from supporting the victim of the lie.
If you lie to someone close to you, the kind of person you would not normally betray. The disappointment you will cause that person will do a number of things to you (the lie giver). Firstly the guilt will make you angry at yourself which you will pass on. Also you would begin to avoid the victim of your lie (the one lied to), this in its self could cause more damage.
Then there is the trust lost, all lies do make themselves known eventually.
Someone once said if you cut your arm you will heal. If you keep cutting the arm eventually it will fall off. A lie is like a cut you only get to do it a few times. Then it will end.
As for the victim lies only hurt. There will never be a good one.
If I sound like a preacher I apologise, I don’t lie.
DO NOT LIE. EVER. EVER. 🙂
Procrastination or incubation
I’m in a dilemma, this is that I’m not, or maybe I just cannot, but I must do this first. You know if you give me some time I will.
Am I procrastinating? maybe.
In all seriousness, I am suffering from a dilemma. I have been told that when finishing you first draft of a novel you must move on to some other project. This is to give yourself distance from the characters and plot that has drilled them selves out of you brain for the last twelve months or so.
I have done this by writing the start of a new book. I have written the first three chapters and hit a wall, that wall being what comes next.
The problem started when I began to revise my first book. All I can see is where I need to take the characters into a second book.
I can see the sky. The people and most exciting of all the new characters that are beginning to pop into my head.
Every time I start to work on forth chapter of my new book that is supposed to distance me from this. I write like I’m writing for the second part of my first book.
I getting confused so you must be very confused.
My question is do I give in and start on the second book, while revising the first. Or preserver with the forth chapter of my new story?
I’m I just incubating the new story. It did start strong, then I hit the wall. I think it was that I have no idea where the story is going. It’s not that I need to know the ending, it’s just that I need a goal to aim for. That goal can move change or do what ever it wants. I just need something there to lead me.
Comment always welcome.
Steven Glenn Writing Words 