Trying to write again

One of my reasons for starting this blog is to relearn how to write something other than an office document; I haven't written something personally creative since High School. I used to write poetry (pretty poorly, but hey I was young) and the normal required short stories and other writing that my classes demanded. But since High School I haven't so much as kept a journal, much less tried to keep my creative mind active by writing or painting.

Even just putting thoughts on paper turned out to be wonderful, I have started a journal and am amazed at what will come out by just letting my fingers work. I hope to be more creative or at least insightful for my blog entries, but that assessment is best left to others at this point lest my desire for success cloud my judgment.

Restarting this process has been harder than I thought, for the poetry in particular. I have been trying for the last several days to jump start my writing. First I went and bought a few supplies; a notebook that feels right in my hands, a pencil that is comfortable, and a few things to fill out my binder. After more than a day of writers block I decided to go dig out my old poetry. While I found the binder that I had stored all of my writing and sketching work in, I didn't find what I was looking for.

Memories of my writing are mostly positive, though I fondly recall some poems written in times of anger or sadness. But reading them now, for the first time in many years, I see an underlying current of sadness and loss. I had a hard time finding even one poem that was bright or happy enough for inspiration, and that single poem dealt only with the beauty of nature. Not the material I had expected to find, but insightful nonetheless.

While I didn't find the inspiration I was hoping for, I did find inspiration of a different kind. Focusing on the negative has never served me well, and only now am I actively working to change those habits. Part of my own Happiness Project is to "rehearse happiness", I have a real problem with doing the exact opposite even when I am trying not to. Working on writing something that is truly upbeat will hopefully help me change my default mode of thinking.

And if it's decent enough, I may even post it here.

Islands of Ease

Zen Habits is turing out to be a wonderful resource for me. Today Mary Jaksch of the Goodlife Zen blog contributed a post about finding islands of ease (I prefer the idea of peace) in your everyday routine.

I found the first point particulary potent, the idea of spending time with ourselves in silence. I had not relaized until recently that I had been hiding from silence, in essence from communication with myself. Even though I would stay up late at night to do things on my own, I was always accompanied by the TV or the computer. The few moments of silence I had were from the time I turned off the TV until I had fallen alseep in my bed.

Only recently with my quiet moments of breathing to relax myself and some of the longer audio guides I have been useing (though not enough) for relaxation techniques I have started to allow myself to be truly alone again. While I need to make it part of my daily routine, I'll wait until I have several other new things down pat.

Only a short time to live

I was fascinated today by the post at Zen Habits called "What would you do if you only had a short time to live?". The idea of trying to live in the here and now doing only what you deem truly important appeals to me. It is a great way to evaluate not only your life in general, but what you feel are the truly important things in your life. Family, friends, and if you are one of the lucky ones your job.

I decided to look at what I was doing throughout the day and ask myself, would I do this if I only had 6 months to live?

Playing with Austin was an easy yes, as was going home for lunch to spend some time with Courtney and Austin. Going to work hit a maybe on my list, I don't think that I am doing what I want to do for the rest of my life here. I like my job, but there is a "more" that I want and can't currently explain.

But I also ran into a few things that I have to do (other than just going to work) that I certainly would not do if I only had a short time to live. I needed to setup a meeting with a lawyer that I would not have bothered with if time was short. I am trying to address certain problems in my life that would be rendered almost meaningless in the short term but have profound implications long term.

So much is personal perspective, but looking though a lens of "what is important" helps define what it is you really want in life.

I'm just busy

Been a few days and still haven't found the time to write a proper blog. I have plenty of ideas too! I'll try harder tomorrow to make a proper update. For now here is a video on breathing techniques, forgive me for the voice though...

Spare Change

It is kind of amusing to see the ratio of pennies to other change once you sit down and go though your change jar. Ours has been pilfered more than a few times over the years for tolls, school lunches, and air machines at gas stations.

There are also various foreign coins in our jar from years ago when I worked retail and some Canadian from our occasion trips there. In all I found $16 in Canadian coins and bills (mostly 1 and 2 dollar coins) and 4 coins with Asian origins.

For the rest of the haul, there wasn't enough silver coinage of any one type to fill a roll with. I found a 4 dollar coins (one being an Eisenhower, he stays with me), $3.50 in quarters, about $1 in dimes, and a whole 5 nickles. This of course amuses me to no end, as I was using the coin jar to save up for "mad money" someday. That doesn't work very well when you use it for other endeavors that require spare change.

After I was done with the sorting I grabbed the rollers and started counting out the pennies. I used to check all of them for wheatbacks and older, but stopped about 3 years ago. The only one I noted in the pile was a 1945 penny, and those are common enough I didn't bother with it.

After an hour in front of the TV counting pennies I ended up with 26 rolls, a whopping $13 in pennies. I think the total does beat the amount of Canadian money after the exchange rate is taken into account, but not by much. After about a decade of tossing pennies into a jar, it is just enough to buy the family dinner (as long as you are willing to cook it yourself).

I remember it working much better in the past, but I used cash so much more then. Everything is debit and credit nowadays, hampering the change saving and no longer providing an offset for the occasions when you need an unusual amount of spare change.

Our budget is totally out of whack at the moment, and both of us think that using more cash is one way to help us mentally keep track of what we are spending better. Maybe this will be the return of the change jar, I'll keep my hopes up for a Cedar Point change trip this summer.