Author: S R Janssen

Monday, March 21, 2022

S R Janssen

DON’T WORRY, BE HAPPY

Sunday was a big day for me! A very big day! I decided to live a happy life right now: this very minute. There is simply not enough time to accomplish those objectives that would make me happy or grant me the right to be happy. If I want my epitaph to read “Lived Happy” today is the time to start.

I’ve decided to be happy despite of goes on around me. Step One is stop trying to fix the people (including the animals) around me. When I go to bed, I fall asleep when my head hits the pillow instead of lying awake worrying that “Person A” is not eating right, or “Person B took should have acted differently, or the cat is refuses to eat the “good food” instead of that awful dry food he has eaten his entire life.

The required action is changing the nature of my thoughts, ten thousand of which whiz through my mind life shooting stars. Of course, that many thoughts are beyond my control, but I can manage the thoughts on which I focus my mental energy. Not so long ago, much of my time was consumed dwelling on angry thoughts about a family member. I was creating a rift where I wanted a friendly relationship. Each time I caught myself with an angry thought (which had become the knee-jerk). I immediagely shifted my thinking to something more upbeat. In short order that “heated issue” that seemed so important dissolved into thin air: all sound and fury signifiying nothing.

Out of time to be continued

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SPINNING MY WHEELS AND GETTING UP TO SPEED

S R Janssen

“IIi

“I ain’t dead yet!”

Although I am sure that the handful of my followers certainly think so because I haven’t posted for how long? Let me count the years: one, two. Think I will don the green eyeshades of self-delusion and pretend it hasn’t been longer. My “end of days” plan was to write, write and write even more. The plan execution was avoid writing, avoid writing and avoid writing even more.

Here I am (with new driving gloves) reeving the engine, pulling out of the driveway, and entering the fast lane. It has the be the fast lane because I must increase my speed to 75 miles an hour to catch up.

The Thanksgiving when I was seven, I suddenly announced to the tableful of relatives that I was going to marry when I was seventy. To this day, I haven’t the foggiest what prompted that declaration. Here I am, past seventy, rarely a bridesmaid, never a bride.

So here’s the deal. Having no grandchildren (Holy cow, I am at the age of great-grandchildren) to justify my existence to myself, needs must hustle my butt to claim a better epitaph than

SHE ARRIVED, SHE LEFT AND HAD NO FUN ALONG THE WAY