Day 53: Feeling Instead of Thinking

The comment I heard on Wednesday night stayed with me.  Thoughts about kids these days feel, they don’t think in the classroom intrigues me.  My first thought is the old gentleman spouting this is spot on. I think it isn’t just kids not thinking, I believe adults have lost their thinking as well. 

However, at some point in the last couple days, I realized that many times my thoughts get in the way.  I am constantly thinking about the interactions I have throughout the day. I think to to death, to the point of feeling like I have been wronged or I have wronged someone.  I believe I think too much.

I am going to use my sister as an example.  She called me to talk about a situation at work.  She was all riled up. I listened. I understood.  Then like I think most older sisters do, I tried to come back with some words of wisdom.  I thought I heard a little irritation in her voice. After the conversation, I thought about it.  And I thought about it some more. I was doing a lot of thinking. I didn’t hear from her for about three or four days which isn’t typical.  We talk at least every other day. Now, with all the thinking, my emotional state was becoming a little overactive. I could have become way to emotional and acted upon that emotion.

Instead of thinking, because I believe we think all the time, I believe the term should be reasoning or logical reasoning.  Through all the thoughts I was having about the conversation, I reminded myself that my sister is an extremely busy woman. She works fulltime with three kids.  I remember those days. I reasoned in her hectic life, she didn’t realize how much time had passed. As suspected, when I called her later, she had just been thinking it had been awhile since we talked.

Now, instead of silly girl stuff, I will use the example of the Southern border issues the United States has been dealing with in the last years.  We all need to do some logical reasoning. I have listened to pros and cons on both sides. Part of my heart goes out to families who want to make a better future for their children.  Geez, not so long ago, my Norwegian ancestors did just hat by coming to the United States not to mention my Colonial ancestors. I believe in immigration.

With that said, bad people are trying to come into our country under the false pretences of immigration.  They want to bring drugs into our country. They want to bring destruction to our country. We need to logically reason whether the individual immigrant is here for the right reasons.  Not all immigrants are good people. Also, we have to think of the logical issues of financing these people. And a ton of other things to consider when taking people into our country.

Frankly, I have no answers.  I am torn on the issue. I am trying to logically reason what the answers might be to the debates.  And at the end of the day, I believe we need to come together, pushing the emotions aside. We need to logically reason and have a respectful dialog on how to progress.  Unfortunately, people are letting their emotions run wild and instead of being respectful they are yelling. They are doing all they can to make the other side look like morons or monsters.  We need to stop letting our emotions runaway with themselves and take away our ability to reason.

Day 52: Rudeness

A bright cozy fire displayed itself in the gas fireplace.  In the corner, a simple Christmas tree stood vigil.  At the various tables, groups of people sat chatting quietly with one another.  At the large group table that sits eight or more, a young lady worked on her laptop.  Soft music played in the background.  The atmosphere promoted a sense of peace.

I sat at a table for four working on my novel.  My friends planned to join me later.  I like to go early to work on my writing.  In my ears, buds softly projected my latest love on Spotify, a gaming and movie list of compositions.  The volume drowned out any potential snippets of conversation pulling me from my work.  The words struggled to get onto the page at the beginning.  After a time, they began to flow from my fingertips.

Booming through my trance, an old gentleman stood by a table with two women, who had been moments earlier having a nice quiet conversation, talking at the top of his voice about young people only feel, they don't think in the classrooms of today.  I thought the idea pertinent and a potential topic for my blog.  I tapped onto my blog file and jotted a couple of notes.  My novel beckoned me back to continue my play. 

The voice banged on.  I tried to block his words from my thoughts.  Instead, the thoughts went negative.  "Oh, my word, this guy needs to shut up, so I can concentrate on my work.  I hear him over my music that is feeding straight into my ears.  Enough already!!!"

I switched to a louder song and pushed my ear buds further into my ear.  Very uncomfortable.  His voice became a muffled roar.  I dove back into my fiction.  I also sighed with relief when about five minutes later he returned to the other side of the wall to his seat, leaving us all in peace.  Happily, I wrote 1,340 words before my Bible study began.

Day 51: Teaching

If you were to teach as a career, what would you teach?

Funny enough, I have a teaching degree.  After coming back from BASIC and AIT for the Army National Guard, I decided to become an English teacher.  I wanted to be a history teacher, but I thought my chances of getting a job would be better in the English field.  My love of history however caused me to realize part way through school that my major was almost done in the field of history.  I majored in history and minored in English. As I thought, I ended up teaching English for three years.

In the years since, I have taught finance classes for the military along with soldier tasks.  I have taught a couple of Bible studies at my parish. I truly enjoyed my time teaching in all these areas.

Day 50: Yellow

What color do you feel like today?

Once a month I ask myself a version of this question when I go see my nail tech.  Three weeks ago, I had no idea how I felt.  I left the decision up to her.  I came out sporting bronze colored toe nails.  I love bronze.  In two days, I go to see her again.  Since we are in the Christmas season, I will go with red.  But I don't think I feel like red today.

I googled a color wheel to see how my mood applies.  The wheel has both the positive and the negative of the main colors.  I am in a positive mood, so I will ignore that section.  I am wavering between orange: warmth, happiness, flamboyance, fun; and yellow: sunlight, creativity friendliness, confidence, and wealth.  I am rarely flamboyant and some people have said I am boring.  I think I will go with yellow.  It is my favorite color.  I would love a good warm sunny day.  The sun hasn't come up yet, so I have hope.  I am going to write today and am feeling pretty creative.  I am usually friendly.  I am great at faking confidence.  Wealth?  Well, I did hit most of the words!

So there it is.  I am feeling the color yellow.  Granted, I do think of cowardice, but hey, I write everyday.  I am not a coward.

Day 49: Morning Routine

What is the first thing you do when you wake up every morning?  Why?

Well, make coffee of course!  I used to have a magic coffee pot that I could set the timer for 5:00am.  My new pot turns off in two hours, and I can’t keep the heating element on after it switches off without making more coffee, so I don’t use this option anymore.  Thus, I have to stumble to the kitchen and get my wake up juice ready. While it perks, I get ready for the day or go into my writing room to warm up the computer.  With coffee in hand, I write my morning pages, and I am off to the races.

Why do I do these two things first?  Well, I think the coffee is self explainable.  The caffeine helps jump start my everything.  I work my morning pages, journal, right away to set myself up in the frame of mind to write.  If I skip the pages, I tend to get distracted and fail to even get this done throughout the day.  The routine is set with the pages so when Jerry wakes and interrupts, along with all the other interruptions in the day, I am able to go back to the other pages more easily.

Day 48: Used

Write about something you purchased used.

My yellow Nissan Frontier.  We purchased it two years old in 2003.  This bad boy is still running after fifteen years and 190,000 miles.  I love this truck. Of course, he is looking pretty worn out.  The AC doesn’t work any more and it would take lifting the engine out to run new lines.  I don’t think that is too cost effective when I can just drive the car in the summer.  Which, come to think about it, I bought the car used as well.  We have had her going on four years.  When Madelle inherits her, I would like to trade in the pickup.  I am not ready for the payments yet.  So, we will keep JR TUK for another year or two.

Day 47: Oh to Move

City Gate of York, England

Have you ever lived in another country besides your country of birth?  Would you want to?

Reading this first question caused me to chuckle.  I haven’t even lived outside of the state of Montana.  Sure, I went to BASIC training for eight weeks in New Jersey.  I spent eleven weeks in Texas going to medical school for the Army National Guard.  For a month, I learned about military finance in California. Other then these short stints, I have never lived outside of the Big Sky state.

I would love to live somewhere else.  Now, don’t misunderstand, I love my home state with a passion.  I have driven to Libby, Missoula, Bozeman, and Billings so many times I think I could go on autopilot.  I may have gone on autopilot, opps. But for all the thousands of miles I have traveled the state, I never get tired of the beauty.  I love it here.

My Nixon family were homesteaders.  They were one of the first to come to the Colonies back in the day.  They went from Massachusetts to Virginia. I believe they were their when it became West Virginia.  After the Civil War, they headed west to eventually in 1922 land in Libby. I believe with the four generations, it is the longest they have stayed in one place while in the states.  I have that exploring drive, so I would love to live in other places. I long to move down South and stay for a year or two. I dream of living in York, England for a time.

Of course, my roots are deep here in Montana.  With my kids still in the state, I don’t know that I will leave for longer then a month long vacation.  And that is okay. But, when Madelle graduates, if we get a chance to change it up in another state or country, I will be all for the new adventure.