Tag Archives: mental-health

Right?

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Daily writing prompt
If you had an unlimited budget for 24 hours, what would you do?
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Now this is gonna be fun.

Just so you know, since there seems to be an element of magic and make believe in this scenario, my quest will rely upon those components. When all is said and done, my hope is that it touches all else with that same quality. Besides, you know me by now.

Since I know I have an unlimited budget, then I will assume I determine the timing of such a blessing. That makes this even funner. You will understand why when we get closer to the end.

First, I would need to recruit about a hundred or so people to be a part of my unlimited budget distribution team. I think once they know what I am up to, they would just do it just to do it. But I think their time is as valuable as their hearts of gold. So, as compensation for being my vaunted teammates, each would have every cent of their immediate and extended family’s debt vanquished. Cards, bills, mortgages, loans – “See ya!”

Then, together, we would embark on a venture touching many aspects of life.

We would fully fund all churches, synagogues, mosques and other houses of worship within our immediate area for the forseeable future. Any schools affiliated with each of them would also be taken under that wing so that they could teach and grow others without worry.

Every children’s hospital, cancer care entities, hospices and rehabilitation centers – whether for physical, mental and emotional, or addictive challeneges – would also be fully funded for the unforeseeable future.

Wounded warriors of all makes and molds; soldiers, police officers, firemen, medics, ER doctors and nurses and anyone else watching over us at their danger, could all retire fully funded and supported.

Food pantries, homeless shelters and facilities that house those who lost theirs via nature or a sudden change in life, would be funded like Buzz Lightyear; “to infinity and beyond!”

Student debt?

Adios my friend.

Farmers won’t have to give up the farm to feed us.

Puppies and kitties will be cared for until the right one comes along.

My team is really smiling and loving this. I think they are in a Teams meeting now thinking of new recipients of gifts. I can’t think of everything. I know they will help show me the way.

The only stipulation I will make for any of this?

“I – (state your name) – will honor these gifts by doing the same for anyone that may have been missed, now or later. I will do it not for me, to be on a plaque, have a day with my name, or to be seated higher than anyone else.

That seat is taken.

I will do it just because.

I can, so I will.

What has been gifted to me will complete the loop and be given back”

Signature:_____________________________ Date:___________________

Maybe I am a little optimistic about everyone doing it.

But if only half did, wouldn’t that essentially raise the whole thing up? And the riches actually realized in this prompt driven endeavor have no currency or denomination that can be banked, bit coined or IRA’d.

It is purely an overdue investment in others.

Just because.

So what do I get ?

Glad you wondered about that.

Like I said, being magical and make believe, my team and I would burn the midnite oil on one specfic day to make all of this happen.

That day?

Christmas Eve.

You all know what happens next when they wake up the next day.

Right?

Don’t need to carry around that fossil anymore.

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What I felt like sharing today: what will I try to do better today than I did yesterday?

Not that I don’t like the prompts. I just felt like talking about this is all.

The past week has been trying to say the least. Some metamorphosis going on me thinks. Figures, it is spring afterall. Allegedly.

I am looking to find some peace of the internal variety. After spending so much of my life over functioning over everything, a dozen or so steps need to be taken backwards. Not so much to start over. More so, to remain in the here and now is all. Some days, I might find myself in a pair of soles from the 70’s or 80’s. Other times, I was in something so far ahead that they hadn’t even made it out the designer’s noggin yet.

That being said, there is a definite need and value to just staying right here. I may get a little agitated by the desire to go futz in the yard or design some screen to keep leaves out the window wells. The former comes as an aside when I got a spare twenty minutes. The latter is still on the drawing board. They are just fulfilling distractions.

But those have never fallen into the “over” category. More so antidotal by nature. So for today, I am going to remain right here. In my thoughts. Definitely in my words. And finally in my actions. I aim to avoid the crisis I can create within the top floor, that spills out of my lips and ends up being made into a mess.

Hallow happens to have a two week journey embracing peace and serenity. And if todays ten minutes is anything like yesterdays, then I am on a pretty dang good path.

So with regard to the actual prompt from today, my aim is to minimalize my over side into extinction.

Don’t need to carry around that fossil anymore.

Wherever.

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When I got it going this morning, the prompt was one thing, albeit a wee bit of deja vu in it. Since then, my noggin has been in overdrive down that path of prose. But alas, it to has changed. But what the heck. It did prompt me to offer something. So gird your loins.

I mentioned that it was sort of like a rerun, something to the effect of how you like to be active or participate in the community. I recall sharing something about my experience in youth sports, Boy Scouting, publicspeaking and the like here at home. But a pot or so of coffee and about 150 miles later, I arrived at this perspective. Whoa, that pun arrived right on schedule. Like it was in Maps.

Community goes far beyond where one lives. It is situated all over. Where, how and what we are meant to be when we just simply live. We are all different in some fashion. That is just the way it is. But in reality, we are all the same. The mold is essentially identical. From a Master drawing perspective, it is still rev. 1. Has been for, what, thousands of years? The only difference is how we come out of the finishing department. Exteriors aside, we all have the same engine, frame and suspension systems.

So you can be traveling on business, to say Pekin, Illinois and your rev. 1 model will then become a part of their local inventory. How you go about embracing them and their way of life in the Land of Lincoln even if for only that one overnight stay casts impressions that may extend far beyond your time there. Both on them and on you. What you do as a foreigner in that foreign land of Cardinal fans can be defining in many ways.

Say you check into the Holday Inn there on Kelly Ave. and no know strangers, they will likely respond in kind. In a few minutes of shootin’ the feces, you can become one of them. Like a Bears fan in Wisconsin, meeting a Cubs fan there will stoke a great rivalry conversation. Steer clear of 1969.

Smile and share puns and open doors. Say “thank you” for their help and dropping their guard. Make friends. Maybe they have kids graduating or getting married too. Perhaps they just lost a parent or a sibling. Could be that this is there side gig during retirement or their first job out of high school. And should the tunes in the background elicit a response or sing along, share the concert you went to growing up. Your favorite kind of music. Or how you love to listen to Led Zepplin at “11” on I55 with the windows down.

For some strange reason, we forget that we are all one. As one. The only difference is a zip code. Don’t matter where, how or what.

Just be active in them.

Wherever.

I am worth it.

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Daily writing prompt
What’s a mystery from your own life that you’ve never solved?
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A mystery.

Hmmmm. Let me see….

I don’t see any Poirotesque connections in this one. Plus, how in the heck does he make his moustache stand at attention like that. Good God. One booger search, sleeve sneeze or an asiago bagel piled with cream cheese and that stache would be histoire. I wonder if I could do something like that with my 4/0 eyebrows. Mon dieu, mais je m’éloigne du sujet….

At this stage in the game, it appears as though my personal search discernment party has found it self at a cross road. There are still acres to be trod and perseverance to be deployed, but sense is being made regarding this life mystery. Not that I know the answer. Just that I am getting better acquainted with the question.

For some reason, that still lay outside my grasp, I have allowed my value and worth to be determined inan open and albeit unconcerned market. To ensure “proper consideration” through out this external assessment process, I then add to the calamity by using “over” as the requisite prefix to every thought, word and deed I enjoin.

Over-functioning is how my counselor termed it. Figures, since it fits perfectly with all manner of functions. Like – thinking, – trying. – doing, – extending, – caring, -carrying, – attempting, – giving, and so on, ad nauseum. When unleashed into a field with no fences, this fuzzy little guy just wants to run all over, seeking a look, some attention, a semi-smile, heck, even a passing pat on the noggin. Should those affirmations be of short supply, then it had to be something I did or didn’t do that produced that level of inattention, disaffirmation and neglect.

So fill up the tank, get off your ass and get back to it Hahn.

Over, and over. And over.

And over.

And over.

The Hercule en moi is still pondering this one.

But by the grace of God, I at least have a starting point. That may take me to its origins. To “why?” Maybe. Or perhaps its take was to simply make me aware, so that I can just learn, appreciate the value of its lesson and begin to leave it. At the very least, I am now aware of its dissonance when it starts approaching me from a distance. I can gird them, remain in the moment and make some much healthier choices. Protect myself for once. And just let me be.

It took some time to unravel this mystery of my life. Still a few more layers to go. But I do know one thing with absolute clarity and certainty.

Pour une fois.

I am worth it.

Wait, is that a smile?

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Daily writing prompt
What’s a moment you wish you could freeze and live in forever?
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First off, I have lived in the Midwest pretty much my entire existence, so there has been ample opportunity to freeze and live in forever. Don’t get me wrong, we get all four seasons, in no particular order, but shorts and a T to jeans and a down coat the next day is life in these parts.

That being said, I would drop the vernacular and replace “freeze” with something more temperate. Like the perpetual warmth that accompanies rapture. A being carried away by intense and loving sense of delight, joy, bliss and euphoria. (Sorry Syd, not you.)

Maybe this better captures my thoughts:

Awe.

‘Cause then I get to use a word I made up, allegedly, in some other tome; awe-full. To find yourself full of awe. Bet you never guessed any of this was going happen in this prompt. Funny where life takes you. Especially when this guy is driving the bus.

That being said, or rather all of this being said, I think I would be inclined to want to find myself in awe over and over again. At random. Not always or every time. Then it could become redundant. The same old, same old. That would deplete it of its lustre, lower the “what the…??!!!!” aspect of its sudden appearance and transform it from a gift of grace to an exercise of expectation. In short, it would be aweful.

So knowing and appreciating the centering, healing and resurrective essence of awe, perhaps I would ask that I could somehow became more open and aware of the circumstances that lend themselves to bringing it all about. Not that I need to make that happen or want to be the sole creator of those moments. I turned in my resignation for being in charge of everything a little while ago. A weird hybrid schedule.

But if I could somehow be better equipped as a human to nourish the circumstances leading up to it, and then witness its birth, then I would be one happy camper.

Living an awe-full life.

A wish come true.

Wait, is that a smile?