Do you see what I see?

Just a quick and dirty post today. Mostly because I haven't written much this month and I've reached the point where the lack of writing is overwhelming me. I have too many story ideas battling to see who takes the lead, too many rants pent up trying to gut punch their way to the front and too many blank pages screaming to be filled, so today you get a quick and dirty post just to get the words flowing again.

This morning there was a video on my feed. It was Chris Kyle's widow talking to President Obama at his CNN Town hall on Gun Control. Or I should say it was "President Obama shuts down American Sniper Widow's Gun Control Argument BOOM!" or maybe "American Sniper Widow makes Obama's Gun Grab Look Foolish! BOOM!" Literally both headlines had the BOOM! in them. Same video, two different headlines. They watched the same thing, they saw the same arguments, they took away two completely different things. Though I will say one of them cut out a little quicker than the other so their point could be made a little stronger. But everyone edits. Blatantly or in their heads.

And this is why we can't have nice things.

Really.

We see what we want. We hear what want. We edit information to fit our needs.

Anti-vaxxers will dig their heels in more firmly the more studies you show them that vaccines are safe. This has been studied.

Republicans and Democrats actually use different language when making arguments for the SAME points. And will fight with each other because of the words used not ever realizing they are arguing for the same outcome. This has been studied.

Which that one, for me, has always been funny. When I worked in advertising my first go round the owner of the company and the media director would do that same thing. They would be saying the exact same thing. Just using different language to describe it and would argue. I would have to interpret for them, "So what you are saying is..." "I hear that you think we should..." and they would understand me, but not each other. It was wild.

We see the world the way we see it. We filter and we edit and we parse words and we share stories that support our arguments and we ignore or rationalize things that don't. Biased source! Unsubstantiated! Or my personal favorite, They did it too!

We all suffer from confirmation bias. We give higher weight and great credence to things that agree with our views and less to things that don't. And no matter how open minded you think you are, you still do it. You can't help it. You can try. You can really try to put things aside, but you have a view of the world that you filter everything through. And everyone else can see your bias clearly. So when someone points it out to you, you should probably understand that they can see what is invisible to you. Of course, their own bias will be in full effect as they point yours out. So there is that as well.

Basically you can sit in the bar with your friends and all agree completely that only an idiot would vote for Donald Trump and as you all agree nobody would point out that it was only one point of view. Meanwhile across town in another bar another group of friends is talking about how Donald Trump is the only chance we have at making America Great Again and only an idiot wouldn't be able to see that. And because they all agree nobody points out that maybe that's wrong. Same candidate. Same ideas. Same coverage. Totally different reactions. Different filters.

So as we head in to a really contentious political season (my personal filter, I see it as bad) I am trying really hard to remember that everyone is wearing their own set of homer glasses. Every video, every opinion piece, every link that has BOOM! in the title, all of it, it's been filtered and processed for one specific audience. It's been processed and posted to make one point. And odds are strong you can find a video, opinion piece or link that also has BOOM! in the title that is for the opposite audience. Showing the same thing. Just spun a slightly different way. Or edited at a slightly different point.

And this is why we can't have nice things. Because we will just spin them until they are unrecognizable.

BOOM!

Rut? RUT? RUT??!!

"Deciding to lose weight means actually stepping on a scale to see where you are starting. I don't recommend this part.

Eek! I have really enjoyed the holidays!!

And it's not over until Monday...today was just to get the baseline for next Friday. But I have banana bread to make and eat and Pepper Box to have and maybe BBQ....Best to start really high so it looks like a bigger accomplishment right??"

This was my status from last year. If you make just the barest of tweaks (I made the banana bread yesterday) it could be a repeat today. We had Pepper Box for breakfast, we will have BBQ for dinner, I ate a ton of junk food and yummy goodness over the holiday knowing full well that I still need to lose weight come Monday. I even stepped on the scale this morning to see what the damage was and eek!

I have noticed this a lot with the "On this Day" review from Facebook. I do the same things over and over again. And every once in awhile I feel a little weird about it. When someone asks me what I have been doing lately and I have nothing new to share. If it's hockey season, I went to a hockey game or am going to a hockey game. If it's football season I am watching football. If there is a musical in town I am going to that. If it's February or March I am going to, returning from or planning to go to Hawaii. I eat at the same restaurants for the most part, a few new here and there, I even order the same things most of the time. I work out at the same gym, I live in the same house. And when people tell me I'm boring, or I'm in a rut sometimes I think they might be right.

But then I think again.

I believe the point to life is to figure out what makes you happy. And I've found things that make me happy. I like hockey. I like football. I like Pepper Box. I like BBQ. I like the gym. Okay, well, I don't like the gym, but I like being able to do the other things I do like as pain free as possible so that means I tolerate the gym.

So one person's rut is another person's happy space. I've found the things that make me happy and I do them. A lot.

So where does that bring me now? Well it's the first of the year and to make sure that my happy space doesn't become too confining I have my goals to set.

(Okay so that doesn't really dovetail but we can sand and spackle that later to get a better fit)

Books-- I've decided on 60. Seems a good number. Just over one a week. Gives me space to read some longer works, doesn't make me feel like I need to do a sweep of the board books section to catch up. This one I wouldn't even worry about but Goodreads does their yearly challenge and I honestly hate having a blank space instead of goal greet me every time I log in.

Weight/fitness--I am going to keep up with the gym, pretty much at the pace I've been doing all year. I really do need to lose those 10 pounds that I've needed to lose for a year. I still haven't figured out how I am going to do that, but I am going to do that. Really. I mean it. Though without a plan of attack it's going to be complicated. Leaning toward trying out the Mediterranean style diet and see if that works for me. Now that I've been cooking more maybe it won't seem as daunting as it has in the past.

Picture of the Day--I know, I know. I talked about how this didn't bring me the joy that it did before because Facebook tweaked it and I don't get the interaction I used to. Well, I decided that I don't care. I'm not using the Fat Mum Slim prompted pictures. I'm going back to the original way I did it, which was just taking a picture during the day and posting it with a little story as to why it made picture of the day. And if you all decide to comment, great, that's more fun, but if you don't, that's fine as well. I still made the point to take the shot, to think about what it means to me and to put it out there.

Which brings us to the writing...

So in the past I've set goals of number of blogs to post by the end of the year. Number of fiction pieces vs. number of non-fiction pieces and in more than one year to have something published by year end. Which is a horrible soul crushing goal. It's really awful. I mean really awful. You send out a piece and most of the time you don't hear a word back. Nothing. Zip. Nada. You don't even know if anyone read the piece. If they sort of liked it. Sort of hated it. Laughed at you. Nothing. And the whole time your goal of getting published slips away. Which is why it's a horrible goal to set. I cannot control that at all. So this year my goal isn't to be published. It's to submit pieces to be published. See the difference? I cannot control if they will be published, but I can control if I submit anything. I am going to submit 6 pieces. Yes, I know, that seems like a lot, but I write A LOT. Like more than you all even see, and you see a lot of it. So 6 pieces. To contests, to journals, online, magazines, publishing houses. Any place that accepts pieces I will consider. Six pieces by the end of the year. Just submitting. I have no control over the next part, but I have control over mine.

And that brings us to the last goal of the year.

This is more like a standard New Year's Resolution, which I normally stay away from. Those are typically such nebulous things. I like goals. Concrete, do x get y sort of things. But this one I see looming and I really want to make it top of mind for me in the coming year. I cannot control the world around me. I can only control how it affects me. That's it. I need to remember as we hit what is going to be an ugly political year that stupidity and hatred are going to be out there, but I don't have to carry it with me. I need to remember that not everyone is going to be kind, but that doesn't mean that there aren't kind people out there. I need to remember that your opinion of me is your opinion of me and I have no control over that. I only have control over myself. Over what I think. Over what I do. Over how I feel. And that is all I can do.

And if that means that my life looks like a rut to the outside world then that's okay.

I like my rut. It's a pretty sweet groove to be in.

Year in Review...

So the first blog of the year was a list of the goals I wanted to accomplish this year, figured a recap of how I did would be a good end cap blog.

I had a handful of them, and I did okay on some, most really, just one big miss.

Picture of the Day! I went back to doing Picture of the Day. Taking pictures and interacting with people about them makes me happy so this was a fun one for me to take back on. Or at least it should have been. Facebook didn't do me any favors with this one. With their new algorithms only a small percentage of what you post is seen by your friends and for me that meant that most of my pictures nobody saw. So half of the enjoyment of them was gone. I did it for 6 months and then realized without the play together aspect of it a daily picture wasn't all that fun. It really was a two step process for me. First to decide what I wanted to take a shot of, I still was using the Fat Mum Slim prompts, and second to talk to other people about them. Without that second part it was kind of dull so I stopped.

Cooking! I wanted to do 3 meals a week. And until Brent's schedule changed I was actually ahead of the curve on this one. Usually 4 and some weeks even 5. But once he started traveling it got to be kind of a hassle. I need to figure out what to do about this one in the new year. Not sure if I will keep up with Blue Apron or just start to branch out on my own. Though I have to say that they have been really fun to use. We have tried a lot of new things that we never would have otherwise, and just having the food delivered and in the fridge took the "maybe I will skip it" out of the equation.

Books! I wanted to read 85 books this year. I read 87. This one was a stretch and if it weren't for a few smaller books I might not have made it. But that's because I also read a few 1000 page books. It's hard to get those numbers up if you are reading really long books. But I pulled it off. Thanks to short books.

Blogs! I wanted to write 180. Today marks 185. I talked about reaching this goal once before so I won't bore you with the back pat again.

Weight/fitness! I wanted to lose 10 pounds. As of today I weigh...exactly the same that I weighed on January 1st. No shit. Exactly the same. I basically lost and gained the same 4 pounds all year. Once I got as low as 5 pounds but that was after being sick so it really shouldn't count. There is a caveat to this one. I am in better shape than I have been in a really long time, possibly ever as far as pure muscle goes. I have biceps. This is a good thing. However, I am still heavier than I would like to be, and more importantly than my doctor would like me to be. It's been frustrating to say the least. I've tweaked my nutrition, I've added and subtracted workouts, I've tracked, not tracked, obsessed and ignored and I am still right where I started. Though the fat to muscle ratio is better.

So over all it wasn't a bad year for goal reaching. I set some smaller ones through the year that helped keep me moving along. Not awful. Not perfect, but life is never perfect so that's just fine.


So what about 2016? I don't really know. I have one in mind for writing but I haven't committed to it yet. I've only mentioned it to one person, they were all for it, but I haven't yet made it public so I haven't yet locked myself in. I will mull it over this weekend and decide by Monday. Fitness/Weight is a do over. I really do want to lose those 10 pounds but I don't want to lose my muscles so I need to work on food/workout combos for that. Books to read? I don't think I am going to set a real tough number this year. Maybe 52. One a week. That gives me the leeway to read the monster length books on my list without feeling like I am going to let the end of year me down somehow.

The biggest goal for 2016, I think, is going to be making it through with my sanity and belief in the goodness of people in tact. The past year has rattled my faith in mankind more than once and I am truly worried that the upcoming political season is going to send me scurrying under a rock.

So there you go, 2015 done and in the books.

Happy New Year! I hope the year brings you joy and challenges and accomplishments and surprises and love and happiness. Always happiness.

Darkness...

I've always taken comfort in the first day of winter.

We mark it as the beginning but it's really the end.

The cold might still be coming.

The snow might still be on its way.

But the darkness is already lifting.

We mark it. 

We notice it.

But we've already made it through the worst of it.

The first day of winter really means that spring is on its way.

Sunsets will come later.

Time will lengthen back out.

The darkness will fade.

I've always taken comfort in the first day of winter.

Waves the White Flag...

Okay, I give up.

I've waited and I've waited.

I've tried to help it along a little.

I've faked it.

I've ignored it thinking it would come on its own.

And now I just give up. It's not happening and I'm okay with that.

The Christmas Spirit is not visiting me this year.

It's just not here.

I don't know if it's the weather; we've had RAIN for 23 days in a row. Not our normal light rains but huge downpours. Flooding and muck and nastiness. The kind of rain that makes it unpleasant to go outside. So no urge to go see the Zoo Lights or go to the Grotto or even walk around downtown and look at decorations.

I don't know if it's because we traveled over Thanksgiving so we didn't have that holiday and then the Christmas kick off didn't happen. Normally we watch Christmas Vacation on Thanksgiving night and start decorating the house the day after Thanksgiving. We didn't come home until Sunday and then Brent and I both had colds so we were kind of low key, then we were doing something else, then finally it was two weeks before Christmas and I forced myself to decorate. But just a little. And only inside; see massive rain.

I finally convinced Brent that I am serious about not exchanging Christmas gifts and this year Christopher needed a laptop more than a random collection of things which means a bare tree. I decided last year that it was the last year for the Christmas Letter so I didn't do that. McDonald's didn't do their egg nog shake so we didn't do that. I didn't do extra baking this year. Brent has been traveling a lot and I have been struggling with my weight enough as it is. Didn't need to be alone with a dozen cookies in the house. So no extra Christmasy treats.

I'm not sure if it's all of those things or if it's the massive negativity that is happening right now. Our political discourse has turned into the ugliest of the ugly screaming at each other. Our Peace on Earth Goodwill Toward Man has turned in to turning away refugees and yelling for more boots on the ground and no fly zones. It's depressing. It's disappointing. It's not very heartwarming.

I'm not sure if it's because Christmas itself has become so polarizing. I cannot stand that whole War on Christmas nonsense. Never have been able to put up with it. It's manufactured outrage and it's stupid. It's just gotten worse and worse every year and now it's as much a marker of the season as Christmas Carols in October...

Tomorrow, as long as the weather co-operates, Christopher will come home and we will do our Christmas Eve traditions so maybe there will be a last minute appearance. But I'm not really counting on it. And I really will be fine with it. Maybe next year I will be feeling more festive. Maybe the break after what will surely be a horrible political season will be so filled with relief that it's over that I will be brimming with Ho Ho Hos. We will see.

For this year I'm okay with the fact that I will get a few days with my boys to hang out and eat good food and watch good movies and enjoy each other's company. No extra holiday spirit needed.


But you know, Merry Christmas to you, or whatever...

Safe Spaces...

I've written before about my frustration with Trigger Warnings and Safe Spaces and Being Easily Offended and claiming that your bigotry is justified by your religious beliefs and blaming the PC police when you are just being an asshole. It all makes me crazy. There is a real lack of intellectual honesty in the world today. Many people, maybe even most people, don't like their belief systems challenged to the point where they will find ways to avoid the discussion, claiming a need for a safe space, claiming that they aren't being offensive you are just being too PC. Whichever way it goes you are shutting down discussions that could possible challenge your way of thinking.

People my age and older look to college kids as the ones driving this movement. Oh these kids today...

Nonsense.

You know how I know it's nonsense?

Because you all do it too.

Look around. We've created a world that is just our safe space. We have news channels that only tell us what we already believe to be true. We have news websites that only report on stories we want to read. And not only that but make sure to spin the information in such a way that it caters to our already set beliefs. And we read them and nod along saying, "See? I was right." No you weren't necessarily right. You just found someone who agrees with you.

We don't look at issues deeper than what can be expressed in a meme or a tweet or a sliced and diced sound bite. We believe what we believe and we find people who agree with us so we can continue believing those things without challenge. We are all subsisting on pablum. Nobody is making us chew.

There is a thing on Facebook right now where you can search, "Show me my friends who like..." and then you can see what or who they are following. When it came out at first people were using it as a joke (poor Nickelback) then a few weeks ago it made the rounds as a way to find which of your friends like political figures you don't and then you could defriend them. What? You aren't defriending them because they post offensive things, you aren't defriending them because you just don't really like them anymore, you are going to defriend them because of who they might possibly vote for? Really? You know that's sort of insane right?

I mean, I get it, I cannot understand how anyone is seriously considering voting for Trump. But have you engaged with those people? Or did you just draw the line. You don't agree with me, you damage my safe little circle of same thought, so you must go. And there is a difference in these things.

I have levels. I have hidden people (used to be an option to "show me less") I have defriended and I have even blocked. I use the handy little button to the right on a post that you can click and say, "Never show me posts from this website" for things that I know are always going to make me grit my teeth and think badly about the person on my friend list who liked it and made it show up in my feed. And it's not just the ultra conservative sites I've blocked, I block the ultra liberal ones too. I have no patience and no tolerance for encouraging willful ignorance. And those sites that post sliced and diced quotes that really don't mean what you think they mean when you read the whole paragraph of text instead of just the 10 words they pulled out? Well, I have nothing for them.

I've also mostly hidden some IRL friends from my feed. People who I know I KNOW are decent human beings who have some really wacky beliefs. Things I would have never known if it weren't for Facebook and that damned public posts thing. When they comment on a friend of a friend's post with a rant against poor people, or liberals, or conservatives, or Obama, or guns, or whatever I just shake my head and wonder, "Do you know we can all see this? Not just the person here who you agree with but all of us because it was a public post so now it's in my feed too?" Because, and this is the sad or hopeful part depending on how you are looking at it, people aren't worse than they used to be, they just say things in public now that they would never have said in front of you before.

I'm a progressive. My friends know this. They know that I believe in social programs. They also know that I am fiscally conservative in that I believe we need to help people who need help but we need to figure out how to pay for that help before we pass that bill. Now my more well off friends don't like my way of paying for things. But that's not been a secret ever. HOWEVER...some of my co-workers and clients had no idea what my political beliefs were. I represented some very wealthy people at times who truly believed in tax breaks and shelters and keeping what was yours never mind you got an awful lot of help getting to where you are. I just kept my mouth shut. When the talk turned to politics if it was a client situation I just stayed quiet. It was appropriate to the situation. Now that I'm retired and some of my clients and co-workers are on my friend list we are discovering that we don't really agree on a lot of things in that area. And that's still fine.

Though sometimes it's shocking.

And sometimes it actually makes me sad.

And I'm sure I frustrate the hell out of them as well.

But as long as it isn't hateful? Well then it's fine. Hateful is where you get the defriend.

Because as much as I rail against them I have a safe space I've created as well.

My safe space includes people who are able to have a discussion about what they believe in without using derogatory terms to describe people who disagree with them. My safe space consists of a lot of context. Context is important. My safe space lacks talking points and sound bites. The world is complex. Issues rarely ever have simple answers. Tl;dr doesn't really work for my safe space. My safe space has people who are vastly different than each other in a lot of ways. My safe space doesn't have room for hatred or ignorance or cruelty. My safe space has room to learn, to change and to grow. My safe space is challenging. No pablum allowed. If you cannot defend your belief, you don't really believe it. That's my safe space.

Life!

I plan on living to be 100.  It's a stretch goal, I know, but that's my plan. I also am planning on Brent living to be 100 as well. My family history leans a little more toward me making it than him, but I've still decided that this is what is going to happen. One hundred seems like a good solid number of years. It's long enough to actually be impressive. Sixty is way too few. Seventy isn't much better. Eighty or 90 are a little better but still not quite enough. One hundred is good.

My grandmother's twin sister did this. She decided she would live to be 100. And she did. Plus a few years. She actually lived on her own until she was 100 as well. She spent the last 3 (I want to say it was 3) years of her life in a retirement home more than a little ticked off because she was now ready to go, but still. It's pretty impressive.

My great grandmother also decided when she would die. It was after my great grandfather died. She wrapped things up. Called all of her kids to say goodbye and went to bed and didn't wake up. No assistance, no pills, no outside influences, just her deciding she was done. She didn't want to live without him and so she wouldn't. When Dad died I think we all worried Mom was going to do the same thing. But she didn't. She decided to keep on living. But it wasn't out of the realm of possibility for any of us to believe that if Mom decided to die she would. We are a strong willed bunch, the women of my family.

But even though my plan is to live to be 100 I also am not afraid to die. Just not. It's going to happen. It happens to all of us eventually. And I'm just not afraid of it. And that, I think, colors my world view as much as anything else does.

Watching the news and talking with friends and acquaintances and reading online comments (though I'm done with that again for awhile, too horrible right now) the biggest motivator in the world seems to be fear. There is fear of refugees, of terrorists, of mass shooters homegrown, fear of being armed and not being armed...all of it basically a fear of death. I don't want to die so I am going to project this big giant fear on all of those things. I don't have that fear. Do I want to be shot by some crazy person with a vendetta? Absolutely not. But am I afraid of it? Not really. The odds of it happening are very small. I know people don't seem to believe that, but it's true. Terrorist attack, either domestic or foreign, isn't the way you are most likely going to die.

For most of us it's choices we make for ourselves that are going to take us out. Eating poorly, drinking too much, not exercising, driving drunk, texting while driving. These are the things that are more likely to kill us. I made a Facebook post about that awhile back and was met with push back. Even though statistically we all know what I am saying is true, people aren't afraid of those things. They should be, if they really are afraid of dying, but they feel like because those things are in their control somehow that makes them less scary. To me, because those things are in my control, I try to mitigate their damage. I work out, I don't drink and drive, I don't use my phone while I'm on the road, I swear I will eat better just as soon as I finish this brownie...

But that's just because I know, due to family and health history, the things that are most likely to kill me are heart disease and cancer. Those are the big looming death possibilities on my horizon. That and dementia. That's the real terrorist for me. Which I've talked about before, if I have warning that I'm fading, I will take care of that before I end up a shell with no "me" left. Because I'm not afraid of dying. I'd just rather not until I'm 100.

Here is the life lesson in this whole thing. Don't be so afraid that something bad is looming out there that you become scared to smile at strangers. That you stop helping those that need our help. That you start believing those that want to make you fearful. Ask yourself why they want you scared. Is it really to protect you or is it to benefit themselves? Ask yourself why in the world you would want to be scared all of the time. You want to fight terrorism? Don't give in to the terror.

Fear makes you stop listening to logic.

Fear makes you do things that you regret later.

Fear can be used to manipulate you.

Don't be so afraid.

We are all going to die. It's inevitable. Don't be so afraid of it that you forget to live.