I Love My Brother

For some reason I've been feeling a bit reminiscent tonight and have been watching some old movies of my family. I have watched the following clip over and over. I can't help but smile and laugh every time I watch it. I even catch myself cheering and clapping at the end. I love my brother. He has an amazing voice (that I wish I heard more often) and super awesome personality.

BTW, he's the one in the shorts.

Revising Life

I've been taking an online writing class and really thinking about the whole writing process. First, I start with a bit of free writing to simply get my thoughts down on paper then I go back and sift through it to see what is worth keeping. From there I write, revise, and write some more, I tweak certain parts changing certain words to make the thoughts I'm trying to express come out right. By the time I print up the final draft I have revised the original several times.

Oh how I wish I could use this process with real life as well. I face situations every day where I say things I wish I hadn't or act without thinking it through. How wonderful it would be to go back and tweak a few of my words and/or actions. I would revise all the times I judged a person or situation without knowing the full story. I would tweak all the words that I blurt out without thinking how they may affect those around me. I would discard all the times I let my emotions control my actions and hurt friendships in the process.

While I write the story of my life each and every day I am writing with permanent ink. Things I have said and done can not be erased. The best I can do is learn from those unguarded moments and do better to write it right the first time.

The Time-Suck Monster

I've been thinking a lot lately about the way I use my time. Time is a precious gift and we only get one shot at it. Once time has past we can never get it back. There are days that I wish life was like tivo and I could rewind, fast-forward, and even pause it. However, for VERY good reasons I was not involved in the planning committee on how time would be governed in this life. Life is and always will be in constant play mode, our job is to make the most of every second and not need any of the other buttons.

I spent last week evaluating my time. I didn't change anything in my normal routines. I simply went about my days the way I typically do, only I carried a timer with me. Whenever I engaged in a particular activity I started the timer and when I was done I stopped it and recorded the amount of time that had gone by. After a week I looked over how I had spent my time during the week. I was pretty disappointed in myself when I saw the results. The majority of my time was spent mouse-clicking through the internet. Runner-up went to watching movies and T.V. Next on the list was sleeping...I like sleep! Then there was time with friends and family. Glancing over the numbers it didn't take a rocket science to figure out my life was out of balance.

I was pretty shocked to see how much time I actually spent doing certain things. The timer experiment really opened my eyes to how easily time can slip away from us if we are not careful. I know some days I would sit down at the computer and say that I was just going to take a second to update my facebook status and check my email and that would be it...hours later I was prying my fingers off the mouse and dragging myself away from the computer. Some nights I tell myself I'm just going to play a quick game of solitaire before bed and then find myself falling asleep on the keyboard. I decided that the internet has a hidden monster inside of it...kind of like the one in the dryer that is always eating up my socks...it is a time-suck monster! You sit down with good intentions to not spend much time, but before you even realize it the sun is setting behind you and your left wondering what happened to the day. I'm sure other things have time-suck monsters in them as well but for me personally the internet holds the most vicious one.

In order to try and fight off this ugly monster I have been working harder to create a balance in my schedule. I am still carrying around my timer but this time I am setting it for the amount of time I will allow myself to indulge in a certain activity like watching tv or playing around on the internet. Once the timer goes off I force myself to walk away from the status updates and do something different...something more productive. I still fall prey to the time-suck monster now and then (I think sometimes he reaches through the screen and resets my timer!) however, I feel as though I have done much better at being proactive this week. I shall continue on my quest to completely destroy the time-suck monster, but for now I feel slightly victorious. I think I may go celebrate my victory with a banana split. :0)

March Madness Update: I am currently reading The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis which is my 4th book so far this month!

P.S. Good news for the day...It was sunny and warm! Yay for Spring!

March Madness

Spring is trying to creep it's way through the clouds of winter and with that comes many things. The birds are chirping more, the sun is shining more, and college basketball scores are all over the news. I know many people are gearing up to fill out their march madness brackets and pick a winner, but I have a different kind of march madness in mind. I heard of a friend that was doing this and decided to follow suit. I am setting a goal to spend less time on the computer and more time in books. I want to see how many books I can read in the month of March. I am not going to set a goal of a certain number because I don't want that to hold me back I am simply going to read, read, and read when the month is over we'll see how I did.

I'll try to post on here and keep you updated on how I'm doing and what books I'm reading. You can also track my progress on goodreads.com I update that with each book I finish.

I think I'm off to a good start considering it is only the 3rd of March and I just finished my first book. Before My Heart Stops by Paul Cardall was a great book about all that he went through while waiting for a heart transplant. I would recommend it as a great read that makes you want to go out and live life to the fullest.

As I contemplate what books I'm going to read over the course of the month it makes me stop and wonder what are some of your favorite books?? So, if you are reading this I challenge you to make a comment on this post and share what books you have really loved. If I haven't already read them, then I'll be sure to add them to my list. Thanks!

February Focus Project

This month for my word project the assignment was to cultivate my awareness of my word in the world by looking through the lens of a camera. The idea was to open our eyes a bit more and help us to be more consistently aware of our word. We were supposed to take pictures that we can look back on, reflect on and say, "Okay, this is a representation of my word or this is why I chose this word.

I'm not going to spend much if any time explaining the why behind my photo's if I did my project right you should be able to kind of see for yourself the reasoning behind the picture and what goals it represents. So, here are some of the pictures that I have been working on...