What I’m Blogging

When things in your life seem almost too much to handle, when 24 hours in a day are not enough, remember the mayonnaise jar and the 2 cups of coffee…

…pay attention to the things that are critical to your happiness…

A professor stood before his philosophy class and had some items in front of him. When the class began, wordlessly, he picked up a very large and empty mayonnaise jar and proceeded to fill it with golf balls. He then asked the students if the jar was full.

They agreed that it was.

The professor then picked up a box of pebbles and poured them into the jar. He shook the jar lightly. The pebbles rolled into the open areas between the golf balls. He then asked the students again if the jar was full. They agreed it was.

The professor next picked up a box of sand and poured it into the jar. Of course, the sand filled up everything else. He asked once more if the jar was full. The students responded with a unanimous “yes”.

The professor then produced two cups of coffee from under the table and poured the entire contents into the jar, effectively filling the empty space between the sand. The students laughed.

“Now,” said the professor, as the laughter subsided, “I want you to recognize that this jar represents your life. The golf balls are the important things-your God, your family, your children, your health, your friends, and your favorite passions — things that if everything else was lost and only they remained, your life would still be full. The pebbles are the other things that matter like your job,your house, and your car. The sand is everything else — the small stuff.”

“If you put the sand into the jar first,” he continued, “there is no room for the pebbles or the golf balls. The same goes for life. If you spend all your time and energy on the small stuff, you will never have room for the things that are important to you. Pay attention to the things that are critical to your happiness. Play with your children. Take time to get medical checkups. Take your partner out to dinner. Play another 18. There will always be time to clean house and fix the disposal. Take care of the golf balls first — the things that really matter. Set your priorities. The rest is just sand”.

One of the students raised her hand and inquired what the coffee represented. The professor smiled. “I’m glad you asked. It just goes to show you that no matter how full your life may seem, there’s always room for a couple of cups of coffee with a friend.”

Please share this with someone you care about.

Received by e-mail. Author unknown

I‘m back. Back in the saddle. Once more into the breach. Mired deeply in the world of “Cubeland”. It’s not just a place, of industrial beige walls and small 6x6 areas of personal restriction. No, it is a state of mind, a soul crushing surrender to the inevitability of gravity’s pull.

It is, however, a gravity of my own creating. I could choose to do something different. I could decide that I’ve had enough. My issue is that there are so many restraining lines that I’m tethered to. Child support. Medical expenses. Back taxes. All have lines holding me at the dock in this safe harbour. Casting off involves tremendous risk which in turn plays upon my fears that keep me where I am - a ship in the harbour. Ships in the harbour are nice, but that’s not what ships are meant to do.

So I ponder what it will take to release me from these thoughts and fears? How will I achieve the escape velocity? Let’s hope something presents itself soon.

Clutter grows. It grows every time we just leave something to be taken care of later. Clutter can be both physical and virtual. The former is easier to clean up because you can see it. The latter is much more difficult because after two or three years of blogging and joining discussion lists you’d be surprised at how much cyber clutter you accumulate.

…perhaps this is how monotheism got it’s start…

Today is cleaning day. I’m opening up the lid on my cyber persona and am sweeping out the cobwebs. Deleting mail accounts here, changing discussion groups there. My goal? To simplify all the things I have had to keep track of. Perhaps this is how monotheism got it’s start. Too many darned gods to keep track of. Take that Yahoo! You too MSN! No longer will I worship at the multiple alters of your Internet services. For now I’ll stay with the Google until I feel the urge to be my own domain. “I am the Lord your Google and thou shalt have no other ISP before me.”

It’s the birthday of the novelist P.G. Wodehouse, (Pelham Grenville Wodehouse), born in Guildford, England (1881). His father was a magistrate in Hong Kong. His mother traveled back and forth between England and Hong Kong, so Wodehouse was raised by a series of aunts. He wanted desperately to go to college, but his father went bankrupt and couldn’t pay for his education. Wodehouse got a job as a bank clerk instead and started writing humorous stories and poems on the side.

…like being in heaven without going to all the bother and expense of dying…

It was as a journalist that Wodehouse first came to the United States - to cover a boxing match - and he fell in love with America right away. He said, “Being [in America] was like being in heaven without going to all the bother and expense of dying.”

He moved to Greenwich Village in 1909 and started to write stories for the Saturday Evening Post about an imaginary cartoonish England, full of very polite but brain-dead aristocrats such as Bertie Wooster, who was looked after by his butler Jeeves. The first Jeeves book, My Man Jeeves, came out in 1919, and it was followed by many others.

People who knew P.G. Wodehouse said that he was incredibly dull in person, not a funny man at all, and did not seem to have any emotions. But he authored some of the funniest books in the English language.

P.G. Wodehouse wrote, “It was a confusion of ideas between him and one of the lions he was hunting in Kenya that had caused A.B. Spottsworth to make the obituary column. He thought the lion was dead, and the lion thought it wasn’t.”

From the Writer’s Almanac by Garrison Keillor
Available by e-mail daily.

Further hillarious reading available at Amazon Canada, US and UK

It’s the anniversary of the Battle of Hastings in 1066, in which William Duke of Normandy came across the channel from France and defeated the army of Harold II of England. The Normans became the rulers of England, and French was introduced into the English language. William had an army of about 7,000 cavalry and infantry. Harold had about as many men, but many of them untrained peasants. It was a close battle until William Duke of Normandy pretended to retreat and drew the Englishmen out of their position in pursuit and then turned and annihilated them.

From the Writer’s Almanac by Garrison Keillor
Available by e-mail daily.

Further historical reading available at Amazon Canada, US and UK

It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.

Theodore RooseveltCitizenship in a Republic,Speech at the Sorbonne, Paris, April 23, 1910

Procrastination n 1: the act of procrastinating; putting off or delaying or deferring an action to a later time 2: slowness as a consequence of not getting around to it. This is were I’m at. This is the neighbourhood where I live at the corner of ShillyShally Ave. and Cunctation St. The cup of my dilatoriness runeth over, slowly, but over nonetheless.

…Memo to me, get on with it….

I can’t seem to get into gear on any new undertakings. I’m trying my best to gear up for NaNoWriMo but I’m bored. The book said this would happen. The book said that It’s the tell tale sign of the “pre-creative urge”. If you ask me it’s just annoying.

I spent the day at home. Sick. Wife is sick too. I had a vast resevoir of time with which to do something. Write an outline. Do some character bios. Think about a plot line. But did I make use of any of that resevoir? Nope. I let the resevoir go to the dogs.

I spent the day fiddling with fiddly bits. Update some HTML here, change a logging parameter on a router there, surf a few blogs here and there. Fiddling. Time burned away, and at the close of the day? Nothing to show.

Memo to me, get on with it.

Here is a little Meme I discovered over on Rachel’s Blog. It’s pretty straight forward, write down your name and what you need. Fifteen entries should be considered a minimum. Let it be a stream of consciousness thing and you may find something of value in it.

What do you need?

Ric needs time to reflect.
Ric needs really spicy Thai food.
Ric needs 100 acres and a cabin in the woods.
Ric needs a good thesaurus.
Ric needs a stiff drink.
Ric needs to know why.
Ric needs to keep his own counsel.
Ric needs to call his friends.
Ric needs to call his Mom.
Ric needs it to be June 1^st 2008.
Ric needs a plan.
Ric needs help planning.
Ric needs a shave and a haircut
Ric needs a muse.
Ric needs to be free.