Perspective

 

These scary giants aren't real. Well, they are real, but they're not alive. It depends on how you define 'real.'

 

 

 

One of the ways I've discovered to make life a little better is to adjust how I look at things. I've found that if you have the right perspective, something that seems bad can become not so bad or even really fortuitous. You just have to decide how you want to look at it.

 

I notice more and more that people lose perspective very quickly or never had any to begin with. For instance this winter - it's been unusually mild. Since Christmas [which was in the 40s] it's been well above seasonal temperatures. We did have a few isolated days where it was in the 30s and windy - and interestingly on those days, the people I encountered were all quick to say how 'brutal' the cold was and how 'horrible' the winter was.

 

Because it was 30 degrees one day in a week of 40-degree days.

 

Last weekend we had our first snow storm of the season. It was a whopper. We got over 2 feet of snow in 24-hours, and the cleanup was exhausting. It happened on a Saturday - which made it fortuitous because we had no plans, nowhere to be and had no reason to go driving or otherwise traveling. We stayed inside for a good portion of the day, warm and cozy with a new heating system just installed, plenty of food and TV to watch. It was the best way for a snowstorm to be. Not that I love snow, because I don't anymore. All I want is for it to be warm enough for me to go out and work in my garden. But that's beside the point.

 

Back at work, we had a steady stream of people who used those words again - 'brutal, horrible' winter. This winter has been 'so bad' they said. The snow was horrendous! It's just been awful and SO COLD. After the snow, it went back up to 40. Today, just over a week later, it's literally in the 50s outside and sunny.

 

Perspective. Why do so many people see one cold, snowy day as the defining moment for a whole season and deem an entire winter to be 'brutal and horrible' when there is no doubt in anyone's mind they've been through much worse? Can we blame the media that reports every storm these days as being 'deadly' and 'record breaking'? Or do people just have a tendency to be completely unable to see the good when the bad is so close by?

 

Today is a gorgeous day, but last week was snowing, so the winter has been 'brutal and horrible.'

 

I try to find the perspective in things, so that I'm not living in a brutal and horrible world but in a beautiful one. It makes life much easier.

 

The Statistical Truth Factory

The Internet is a dangerous place and no place is more dangerous than Facebook, but people don’t realize it.

Every day I go there [I hate it, but I go anyway. I know, that’s my bad] and I see the memes that people slavishly repost and repost, sometimes just with a thoughtless click and sometimes with their own opinions thrown in. About 90% of the time, a five-second search on Google can turn up the evidence to debunk whatever ‘TRUTH’ said meme is disseminating in the form of a poignant photo or a snappy graphic or a falsely attributed quotation.

Yet, no one bothers to check this stuff before they repost. They just bob their heads like bobbleheads and go ‘yup, yup, yup’ and post, spreading the work of trolls who aren’t ‘telling it like it is’ but telling it the way they want people to believe it is.

Today I saw a meme with two ‘satellite’ images of the earth. One supposedly from 1975 when the atmosphere was pristine and pure, and one supposedly from 2013 when the world was covered with a dense fog of pollution. Yup, yup, yup.

But on closer [and not even that close] inspection, it’s clear that the second photo is the MOON with an enlarged picture of the US superimposed over it/under it in Photoshopped layers so the craters look like wispy strands of pollution.

People reposted and reposted and reposted as evidence that we are destroying the planet.

Now, I’m an environmentalist, and I have no doubt that true satellite images might show a definite increase in pollution over the years, but jeez, trolls – there’s not anything better or more true out there to illustrate your point?

Or, is the point of these trolls that people are so easily fooled and brainwashed you can show them a poorly Photoshopped photo of the moon and they will believe it’s earth because you say it’s earth?

Sad. Very, very sad.

I have half a mind to create my own meme about why you shouldn’t believe everything you read on Facebook just because someone made a shiny graphic out of it. [And I actually did make one - seen above. I posted it to my wall. Let's see how many people repost it. Maybe it will go viral and The Statistical Truth Factory will become famous!]

Letting go

 

 

It's no secret that most of our problems in life stem from the inability to let go, and letting go can mean a lot of different things. It can mean making a change, educating yourself, walking away from something, someone or a particular belief. The reason we, as a race, remain gullible and malleable and victimized is often because we cannot get out of our own way and let go of the things that we

 

1) don't believe in

 

2) know we don't need

 

3) don't really want

 

 

We're afraid of loss, even if that loss is by our own choice, so we hang on to things because it's easier than stepping [oh, here I go] out of that comfort zone.

 

I know I just whined about wanting to actually be IN a comfort zone. But I think there are too different kinds of comfort zones. There are the ones that you're actually really comfortable in - that place where you are content, and so much of society is about ignoring contentment as a form of happiness and always striving for MORE because it makes someone else money... and then there are the comfort zones where you're not really comfortable, you just don't want to take the chance that if you leave you will be even less comfortable.

 

 

Example - a friend of mine has been talking about moving for many years. This person is unhappy in their current living situation and dreams of going somewhere else, but they continue to put up every road block imaginable. In addition to a litany of reasons why moving would be really hard, they continue to add additional issues to their life that would compound those problems thus assuring that the act of actually moving to a new place would be even more difficult than it has to be.

 

Letting go is hard.

 

One of the things I can't let go of is my dysfunctional relationship with the internet. I HATE the internet. I despise Yahoo, yet I go there everyday and read junk news. I revile Facebook, but I don't have the courage to actually just shut down my profile and stop caring what goes on there.

 

 

I blame Facebook for helping rob me of my desire to write, because I spend too much time scrolling through other people's useless flotsam. I blame Facebook for ruining a friendship because someone I used to like is a complete asshole on Facebook, and seeing this side of that person makes me less inclined to want to spend time with them in real life. I don't know if that's really a good thing or not. It was perhaps better when I thought this person was a nice person and I enjoyed their company. Now I find interacting with and thinking about this person tends to up my stress level - hence this post. In the past I have disconnected from people who made me feel uncomfortable in my own head - even if all my interactions with them were generally pleasant seeming and friendly, I would come away from every conversation inexplicably feeling bad. Not in the same way the rabid narcissist makes me feel bad, because I couldn't pinpoint anything particular this person said or did that bothered me. I just felt depressed after being around them. That friendship didn't end as much as it simply faded away, and I have never ONCE missed it. So I think perhaps it was a good thing.

 

The friendship in question today used to be my lifeline. But it's been stretched so thin, and provides me with no joy or comfort anymore, only that vague feeling of uneasiness and awkward unpleasantness that I have no need to feel. In this case there are specific things that bother me, but I also feel like there is just a general difference in this person, they've become someone I don't know as opposed to the person they used to be whom I loved and very much needed in my life. For a long time I've felt this person doesn't need me, and I see that I spent a lot of time chasing this person for attention that dried up when I stopped being the instigator of our interactions.

 

Sadly, each day brings me closer to the conclusion that it might be time to walk away from this. If interacting with someone leaves me feeling unhappy - why should I do it if I don't have to? I don't think I'll be missed by them... and while I miss the person they used to be, I don't think that person exists any more.

 

Time to let go...or at least think about it. 

Yet another new obsession

I've discovered needle felting.

Who knew? But apparently you can take very sharp, barbed needles, stab them repeatedly into pieces of unspun wool and turn them into plushy little objects.

 

 

Of course, I went a little nuts and bought some supplies and a kit online.

 

In a few hours I had a hedgehog, whom I shall name Hermione.

 

I then made a creature that might be a cat, or a dog or a bear, and a rabbit with very large ears.

 

I'm now working on a bear-rabbit.

 

It's a fairly simple but versatile craft that's oddly therapeutic, and I can do it while watching TV. [The most important rule of needle felting is don't stab yourself. The needs are scalpel-sharp and nastily barbed.]

 

Naturally I have already gone back online to order more supplies. I have no doubt I can create dozens of furry friends, but the problem is where to keep them. I need a shelf that I can dedicate to my art... that will be my next project.

If not now, when?

Since I’m working hard at getting the negative monologue out of my head, it has to go somewhere. While I’m not fond of ranting posts, I’m going to wax rhapsodic about Oprah’s new money-deal with Weight Watchers.

This is not going to be pretty so bear with me.

The always zaftig Oscar-nominated actress/talk show host/ humanitarian has publicly ‘battled’ her weight [to use industry rhetoric] for decades. She’s done liquid diets and had personal trainers and she’s made sweeping stage entrances looking slim and also made sweeping stage entrances looking like a well-put together fat woman.  I will give her that she dresses beautifully [she can afford it of course] and she always looks professional.

 She’s accomplished an amazing litany of things in her life, and she’s done I’d say 90% of it as a fat woman. Being thin was never a prerequisite for her to become rich or famous or be an activist, a voice for women, a generous giver, an industry talent… but now she’s made a deal that will put yet more money that she obviously doesn’t need into her pocket in exchange for her saying things like how weight loss can be like a game [just count points instead of calories! Isn’t that fun?] and if not now, when? I don’t know – when you’ve made enough money? When you’ve had a long-running award winning TV show? When you’ve starred in a movie? When you’ve written a book?

If you don’t get thin now, when will you do it? Why not do it AFTER you’ve done every other important thing in your life? Because doing it before might mean you will NEVER accomplish anything worthwhile.

I think Oprah has lost count of the number of celebs who have been guests on her show because of their ‘accomplishments’ in losing weight through paid advertising. Most of those guests, judging by what I read on the Internet, are the same people who have lost and gained, gained and lost, dropped one company for another and been dropped by sponsors for not keeping the weight off. Many of those celebs, having ‘failed’ after the sponsorship money dried up, have either denounced their previous weight loss plans or gone on to create their own plans, or simply, having ‘failed’ too many times to uphold the standards of the diet industry are now touting ‘happiness and good health’ as their mantra rather than weight loss at any cost.

I wonder how long it will be before Oprah’s contract runs out, or her patience with yet another gimmick wears thin. It’s very clear, having watched Oprah over the years, that she is a fat woman and will likely always be a fat woman. It hasn’t stopped her from being healthy and successful, and it shouldn’t stop anyone else. I suspect the day will come when she will weary of her weight loss partners and their shady practices and she will either jump ship as so many of her cronies have and develop her own plan, or simply embrace the truth, that weight loss is a bill of goods sold to us for profit.

I hope her disenchantment with this sham occurs soon – and I’d like to ask her, Oprah, if not now, when will you truly see the light?

2016

I was just looking back at last year's New Year's post where I was lamenting about the failure of the 'Last Grand Experiment.'

I was talking almost like one of the diet industry sheep that I despise so much.

This year I start off the new year in a better place. Yoga, rather than a diet, has reduced my back pain and lifted my spirits. Banning the negative inner monologue that ruled my life has calmed my mind and allowed me to relax more.

I've discovered the joy of lying on the floor and very actively doing nothing, and benefitting from it.

That's an accomplishment for 2015.

I still don't make 'resolutions' - but I decided a while ago that 2016 is the year of good health. I've ditched dieting for good, but I want to be dedicated to eating well, so we're clearing the fridge today and looking forward to stocking up on good food. My goal is to be up to handling a real life yoga class by my birthday - but if I'm not, I'm not.

My other goal is to decide how I'm going to proceed with writing. I'm utterly disenchanted with the process now and I'm not sure if it's because it's too easy - what's the point of working hard to put out a great book when someone else can come along, churn out nonsense, slap a cover on it and make bank and I have to scratch for $0.33 cents? I have a lot of story ideas but none of them really excite me enough to sit down and work on them.

I have a desire to create a new world to play in, but nothing is striking me as worth doing. I need a project.

I created my first photo book which should be arriving soon from Shutterfly and I seem to get the most enjoyment these days from taking pictures, but I'm not sure I want to undertake the Herculean task of producing a commercial photo book with no credentials. I don't want to create art that will sit in my closet either.

So I begin 2016 bored and a bit restless. My biggest goal this year will be to redefine my purpose. Off to get started.