It is failing

As you all probably know I run a small business in a small town. I love my little shop, sometimes more than others but all in all I love it. It gives me a lot of headaches but I know what I am learning is invaluable.
I have a friend who has a fear of failing. Failing is not fun, in fact it is the oposite of fun. This friend asked me what I felt like when I would lose at a competition, I told him I would know I would have to try harder next time. True, but in the moment it usually hurts. Recently I cut my hours back to 50 a week. I was thrilled. I failed. I jumped the gun, the shop couldn't afford the weight of another full time employee I dug myself deep into a hole because I refused to pull out when I should have. I kept thinking 'it will work, if we increase by # by date and blah blah blah'. I knew I was wrong, deep down I knew, but I kept going. So Sunday I made the decision to put my hours back up to 70. I know that this lesson is invaluable to me. I now know what not to do when this question arises again. I now have a better idea of how to succeed. Today a customer said to me "I am so happy you don't have to work all day anymore, must mean business is good and your hard work is paying off." And as I am thinking about that tonight as I am thinking this is going to be hard I am realzing a different side of this little mistake, a mistake that led to a little failure. It's not just me who will know, a lot of people will know. And that is the hardest part of all, to put on that brave face and say to the world (no matter how small my world may be) I failed but I'm not giving up, I'll climb that mountain again.




-- Posted From My iPhone so please excuse the typos!

it is today

(I wrote this in my head whilst driving last night)

Today has been one of those days you would not want to do over. It was grey and rain and ice has been falling from the sky all day. The roads have not been cleared. Taxes were not fun, at all. I made the decision to add back the 20 hours a week I have dropped at the shop to help get through a financial strain. I have had a headache for most the afternoon. My Grandmother was admitted to the hospital and I am now heading to my little shop to mop and move furniture. I am tired, and I wish this day was over. As I am driving through our little down town I'm remembering a blog I wrote about snow, and finding something beautiful in each day. And so I will, today is beautiful because when the ice fell onto the trees, each branch was coated in glass and the whole world shone like a chandelier. Today is beautiful because my picnic table was covered in a lace tablecloth, it edges dripping with glass beads. Today is beautiful because when I walked through my yard I was transported to a fairy land. Today is beautiful because when I finally got to my little shop the patio was covered in a quilt of white, the tables were dressed in lace and glass beads dangled from each tip of the awning and the windows showed signs of Jack Frost's dancing. Today might have been long and tedious and not much fun, but it was beautiful.

it is a late night quandry

a lot of people come to me for advice, i don't know why, i'm not exceptionally wise to the ways of the world. but what happens when the advice giver is stuck with a problem that she can't figure out the answer to. no matter which side i look at it or how i weigh it or how many times i do any of that i cannot come up with a solution to these problems, yes there are a few of them. I've talked to the people i get advice from and even they cannot give me the answer i am looking for. and so it is almost 1 o'clock in the morning and i am sitting here typing to the void that is this blog wondering what i should do. i feel zapped of all energy but yet i cannot sleep. i feel like a piece of drift-wood searching for the shore. i feel like that little chicken or whatever it was wandering around the farm asking random animals "are you my mommy?". my emotional energy is gone and my mental capacity for compassion and understanding is spent. i think i just really, really need to go to sleep and try again tomorrow.

It is cooking

I love to cook. I love being silent and cooking with no one in the house with no one talking to me. I love listening to the sound of the knife as it slices through an onion. I love the sound a tomato makes as you slide through it's skin. I love the sizzle of veggies sauté. I love the smell of wondeful food wafting through the air. Cooking covers me with a sense of true tranquility. The issues of the day seem far away and all I am focussed on is the food.
There is nothing like the sense of acheivement when you create some new dish that everyone says "mmm" when they taste it. The sense of pride that comes over me when my dish elicits hugs and exultations is incomparable.

Today I decided to tackle spanokopita and while I was at it my sister asked me to make tiropita. I now have a greater appreciation for Greek cooks. My little pitas look nothing like the cute little triangles I have eaten at a resturant. But I made them I originated this recipe out of my head and they taste delicious. No matter what disaters I may face the rest of the day I at least know I can do one thing and do it well and that is cook.




-- Posted From My iPhone so please excuse the typos!

It is love

I'm sitting here on a wonderfully snowy day at the little shop on the corner looking out at quilt of white all over the world. Piping through the speakers right now is the song Sunday Kind Of Love. There are 100's of love songs out there. In fact just about all lyrics ever written are about some sort of love. First love, lost love, heartbreak love, passionate love, simple love, God's love, friendship love, mistreated love etc etc. It begs the question why are we as humans so caught up on the idea of love? I cannot answer that right now, my mind is not educated in that way. But maybe someone knows the answer and I bet it's a good one. But I think that we were created by love to love and so we look for someone to love. Our mate if you will. Often we get it wrong we live in an imperfect world so it is only to be expected that we will not know perfect love.

What is love?Love is a lot of things. But love is just love. It is not a fairy tale, it is not a knight who comes to save his fair maiden from the mouth of a dragon. It just is. It makes me wonder if prehistoric man searched for love or do you think they were much more practicle on the matter, I need wife to service my hormones and cook me food and raise children. I would like to think they knew what love was and as they grew to appreciate their wife's cooking and baby raising etc that they somehow, even if it didn't start out that way, eventually loved in their own way. Maybe I'm just a romantic.

Girls in love have it a bit worse than boys. Boys can do something about it, girls just have to wait for the boy to make his move. And let me tell you waiting is no fun, agonizing is more like it. And what if you mess up? What if you are not good at the whole flirting thing and you miss read signs and you inadvertantly turn them down? What then? Jane Austen in her novels always allowed for mistakes by both the man and the woman. Each of them were allowed to fail miserably but they always were allowed to communicate their feelings and explain themselves in the end. I would like to hope that whoever is out there for me will not expect movie magic when we meet, go out etc. But will expect me to fall on my face (figuratively speaking of course) and will allow me to explain myself.



-- Posted From My iPhone so please excuse the typos!

It is finding strength

I had a little breakdown yesterday that was connected to something in my childhood, a misconception of myself and of God. I still am dealing with it today and imagine I will for a bit here in the coming future.
Two nights ago I decided I needed to beef up my practice as a Catholic-Christian feeling a little lost in my faith I decided to start doing vespers before I head off to sleep.
Tonight's reading follows;
(Colossians 1:23)

Persevere and stand firm on the solid base of the faith. Never let yourselves drift away from the hope promised by the Good News, which you have heard, which has been preached to every created thing under Heaven.

And the Psalm reads;
Psalm 143 (144)

The Lord is kindness and strength, and I trust in him.

Blessed be the Lord, my help,
who trains my hands for battle,
my fingers for war.
The Lord is kindness and strength,
my refuge and my liberator.
He is my shield, and I trust in him –
he places my people under his rule.

Lord, what is man, that you should take notice of him?
The son of man, that you should give him respect?
For man is as nothing,
his day is like a shadow that passes.

Lord, descend from your heavens,
touch the mountains so that they smoke.
Brandish your lightnings and scatter my enemies,
fire your arrows, sow confusion among them.
Send down your power from above,
raise me and free me from the flooding waters,
from the power of those of foreign race,
whose speeches are not to be trusted,
who lift up their hands in perjury.


It is amazing how God can reach out a tell us something when the vespers readings are chosen months if not years in advance but somehow at the right time I read this and say OK I'll stay strong, I'll hold to what I know to be true and I'll try to figure the rest out. But I won't lose my faith.

Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit,
as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end.
Amen

-- Posted From My iPhone so please excuse the typos!

it is your heart

Have you ever met someone who tells you everything, and tells everyone everything. Not that this person is a Yenta but they want everyone to know about there problems and they want compassion from everyone, more or less falling into a victim mentality. I have a friend who is going through a rough patch. Family life is crazy, work life is possibly worse and friends are getting tired of hearing the same old woes.

We all have a desire to be known, this is going back to my previous blog, but that is why I blog and am addicted to Facebook. However I do feel that there is a time and a place for who should know and when you tell them and how much you tell them. There is a poem by E. E. Cummings, I believe, and the last line reads, I hold your heart, I hold it in my heart. I believe that when someone shares their experiences and thoughts and dreams and woes and hopes and emotions with you, you are entrusted with a part of that person's heart. I feel that we should be careful who we share our thoughts and sorrows and hopes and dreams with. Because forever that person will hold part of our heart and what they do with it can uplift us, or it can destroy us.

Going back to my friend. This person has put their heart out there for everyone to see, everyone knows exactly what mess this person is in. No one wonders everyone knows. And so this person is heart-wrenched all the time. There is never a moment of peace, there is never a moment of strength. I believe that when you leave your heart open you are vulnerable to so much more pain because your protection is gone and everything no matter how small is able to attack you, nothing bounces off, your ability to analyse and think logically about a situation is gone, everything becomes emotional. Everything hurts.

I guess my reason for writing this out is to warn you about putting yourself, your heart, your soul, out into the world without discernment, with out caution, without protection. For once your heart is gone it is almost impossible to ever get it back.

it is a human right

The other day was Martin Luther King Jr Day a man that stood up for human rights. I have an uncanny ability to remember peoples names, what they do, their favorite sports teams. their dogs, their kids, their struggles, their triumphs and everything in between. A customer marveled at the fact that I was able to recall different aspects of their life. And I began thinking about this ability I have. I am not a memorable person. The people I have seen every day for the past four years, yes they recognize me. But some that maybe I saw an hour or so before and we had chatted about the upcoming test or the stressful day at the office, I won't be remembered out from behind my bar. And that is fine, I served my purpose in their life for that day, that moment, I filled that need.

We all feel the need to be known. That is why I have this blog, am addicted to facebook and post stupid videos on youtube. None of us want to go through life being forgotten, unknown, alone. Now this is where I can tie it all together. I believe it is a human right to be recognized, to be remembered. I don't believe anyone deserves to be forgotten.

Sometimes people share things with me while I am behind the bar that I don't want them to. Often times I know about the same phone call three days running, or the issue with the light bulbs that has been dragging out for two weeks. Sometimes it is hard to help the grieving daughter who just lost their father, or the poor kid on the block who doesn't have a dime to his name, or the drunk who somehow magically bought a computer, or to the mother who is tired of dealing with her rebellious teenager, or the student who just can't figure out college, or the kid who really wants to be all grown up and living his dream but can't figure out how to get there. Sometimes I forget what my purpose is. Sometimes I wish it wasn't my purpose that is was someone else's problem to listen and offer the same advice every day. But it's OK at the end of the day, the week, the month when one person says thank you at the end of our conversation. It helps to get to the next conversation, and the next problem. Though sometimes I am tired and feel that I have nothing much left to give, someone will see me at the grocer and say hi fancy seeing you here. And then I the forgettable one was unforgettable for a change.

it is normal

A friend of mine has decided that they are missing normalcy in their life. What is normalcy might I ask? Who knows what is normal in their life? Do you have a normal life? Do I? When I told her that a normal life is an enigma she said she wished to be God's version of normal. Well the word normal is not in the Bible so how would one find out God's version of normal. In the Song of Solomon he says...but my dove, my perfect one, is unique... and who doesn't want to be that girl? I mean he wrote one of the steamiest books to date all about her uniqueness. What I am trying to say is that why would you want to be average, plain, boring, just like any other bloke. Why wouldn't you want to be yourself,find your uniqueness and stand up on your own two feet and say to the world this is who I am deal with it! I don't feel like I made my point, or if I even know which point I was trying to make. But I'll leave you with this. Be yourself and be proud of yourself.