Forward to Happiness

 I thought about doing this as a book, but I think a post will suffice. In recent months, there has been a lot of love directed at trans people, and when one died after being bullied at school, there was a rather LOUD silence from the religious community, which makes sense... they are, after all, mostly committed to a religious body more than a loving God.  It's not like they DID it after all... they just didn't object when it was done... or when a religious group showed up to spew hate in the name of their "loving" God.  It's like when the Nazi's said they didn't actually participate in burning jews.. they just kept the trains running on time.  One phrase that I recall that we used to learn typing when I was growing up was "The only thing necessary for evil to triumph in the world is that good men do nothing."  And, the church has a long history of watching as evil was carried out in front of them, from the killing of Christ to the killing of wi...

 Not entirely sure that subject line is the best one, but it will work.  I'm taking the day off, and I finished up watching Devs and wanted to do a post pulling together many things over several weeks that I have been learning from experience and exposure.  I am someone that in general likes to expose myself to different ways of thinking and is one reason I have friends from across the spectrum, other than that they are awesome people.  And, particularly when I feel stuck, I like to do so to try to move forward in my thinking.  Sometimes, the solution lays outside your particular way of thinking or knowledge base.  Anyway... to begin. I posted a meme on my social media some weeks ago of two people riding a bus.  One is looking out one side of the bus and seeing rocks and dark and feeling anxious and depressed.  The other is looking out the other side of the bus and seeing sunshine and bright colors and feeling happy and optimistic.  When I sh...

The 2nd post inspired by my watching Devs, again, is the most difficult for me to write or enact.  Indeed, I went out and drove the afternoon on my day off, rather than write it.  But, I did reflect on it.  It's about letting go of things.  I particularly have a problem doing that.  I'm not talking about letting go of the pain of being hurt in the past, but that is a challenge too.  But, it's much bigger than that in many different ways. For example, my child is almost an adult.  Yes, there is the reality that my ex has in essence kidnapped her by violating our custody agreement.  But, my child will be 18 this summer and can do whatever she want at that time.  But, that will be college and living an adult life on their own.  Yes... I will be checking in and answering any questions that they have.  But, the days of scrapbook picture events and seeing them grow has passed.  That chapter of the book is closing, no matter how much ...

 Taking my first full day off in a while.  As part of it, I am re-watching Devs on Hulu.  I just felt that it was the right time to rewatch it and let it help me process certain things.  It is already having that effect, and I have only watched 3 episodes.    There are two things developing in my mind as application, but one is not done yet.  I'll get to that one.  However, this distinct and separate one is able to be blogged, so I will do that one, now.  I may be blogging again later. In the first episode, the leader of the Devs project says something to another, and I wanted to quote it here... "The universe is deterministic. It's godless and neutral and defined only by physical laws. The marble rolls because it was pushed. The man eats because he's hungry. An effect is always the result of a prior cause. The life we lead with all its apparent chaos is actually, a life on tramlines, prescribed, un-deviated, deterministic... . We fall i...

 Over my many years, I have written many different blogs and books.  One of them, I recall, was called surreal real.  One of my primary driving things that has been consistent in all of my life has been the.. well.. absolute value .. to use a math term for a non math thing.. of being real.  Good, bad, left, right... whatever.  If it is real to you, it is valuable to me.  The blog was focused a lot on that, as I recall.  I would rather know someone that passionately disagreed with me than someone that agreed only because it was popular.  Trends do not grow me, but someone that passionately disagrees with me is... interesting.  Something is driving that passion, and that makes it worthwhile. Why?  Because, I've lived the fictions.  I have seen and experienced and learned alot of the patterns of life that, despite the conviction that they are unique by those that do them, are centuries or millenia old and worn truths that often have to...

Forward to Happiness book got no sales of past blog posts, so I have restored the text of those blog posts fully to their pages, and below are hyperlinks to each blog, so you can read for yourself....   - Unfortunate Lives (poverty isn’t evidence of sin or value) - Hope (it’s own reward in darkest days) - Life Happens (finding peace as you climb Maslow’s pyramid, not after) - Strike While the Iron is Hot (be changeable in times of change) - Finding Forward (consider your options) - Assess the Stupidity (recognize when options fail) - Resonance (seek those who share your interests or values) - Where You End Up (look ahead to where path options take you) - Let People Fail (don’t eat the blame for others or they cannot learn) - Honey and Vinegar (value friends over being right)

 I'm sure that most reading this won't know what the subject line of the post means.  There was an ad a long time ago that asked, "Is it live or is it Memorex."  Memorex was a particularly popular brand of VHS and cassette tapes, and everyone knew of them, then... a sign of how things change.  They were advertising how real sounding something was.. it was almost like the real thing... almost.  But, it was a copy.  It wasn't live... it wasn't real.  It was a recording, which can have flaws. Our memories are like that.  Today, I was reflecting on how a lot of my past relationships failed from an APPEARANCE or an ASSUMPTION of what I believed to be true, even if it wasn't in fact actually true.  I mourned over "losing" what had... in fact.. never existed.  If I looked for times that my ex's wrote romantic notes to me, I would have to look in vain.  If I tried to find the moments in my memory that had them coming up behind me to put the...