Heads up

Worry never robs tomorrow of its sorrow, it only saps today of its joy. - Leo Buscaglia

I'm a pessimistic person by nature. Surprised? No? I didn't think you would be. It's just who I am. I will always prepare for the worst possible outcome of any situation, even if that situation is a day at the beach. I will prepare for a shark attack and a case of sun poisoning. I mean, I'm still fun. At least I think I am, I try to be. I love to laugh and I think I have a pretty darn good sense of humor. But, for better or for worse, I tend to notice a lot more of the bad and evil in this world than the good. While some people will always see the glass as half full I will always see it as half empty and another friggin dish to wash.

Don't get me wrong, I'm still joyful, still love hearing heartwarming, positive stories and I enjoy life. I know that life is filled with amazing things and amazing people and I am surrounded by a lot of them. It's just that there are times I get overwhlemed by this world and all of the bad in it. I struggle with not wanting to be ignorant about things happening but also trying to find a balance between being educated, doing my part and still finding the joy and goodness in this world and in myself. It's easy for me to end up depressed thinking about the kind of world my son will grow up in and to fall into what Shane Hipps calls, "Empathic Overload" and "Empathic Paralysis".

I saw Shane Hipps speak at a Catalyst conference a few years ago and he said something that has stuck with me (even though I can't remember the exact quote and will probably screw it up). Basically he said that we as humans were designed to be empathic but we were not designed to know about all of the suffering in the world all of the time. But as media and technology have progressed that is exactly what has happened and there are positives and negatives to this development. The positive is knowing what is happening and being able to make a difference globally and the negative is that we get overloaded and overwhelmed and eventually become desensitized to it and paralyzed thinking there's just too much to fix so we just don't do anything at all, globally or locally. After Googling Shane last night in an attempt to not completely screw up what he said (what would we do without Google?!) I found this great article speaking about Shane Hipps and what he says about this. You can read the article here RLC-Article-Shane-Hipps And you should read it. It explains all of this much better than I can.

So for me, I'm still working on finding that balance and avoiding "Missional Paralysis" (another thing Shane speaks to). I'm working on tipping the scales to the side of life giving thoughts rather than life draining ones and doing what I can instead of becoming paralyzed. But to some extent I am who I am so when I sit down to write, more often than not my focus goes to the negative thoughts vying for attention in my head. So, good or bad, that's probably the direction some of my posts will go in but I promise I'll try not to linger there :-) I guess I just felt like giving a heads up. Jeeze, I sound so depressing!! And this is me AFTER I've found hope in Jesus Christ and I know that this life is not all there is. Can you imagine what I was like before that...poor Jim.

Everything's amazing and nobody's happy.

Recently I flew back home to Illinois from California and it was a great trip filled with amazing, heart clogging food, great friends, teeny, tiny, beautiful babies, bad dart playing and creepy clowns. I'll write more about my trip later but right now I would like to write about my flight, or the thoughts on my flight home to be more specific.

After boarding my flight (window seat in an exit aisle, awesome), I made the perfect amount of small talk with the guy next to me. You know, the amount that says "Hi, I'm not interested in talking to you for the entire 4 hours that we'll be sitting next to each other but I will talk to you for three minutes to show you I'm also not a complete jerk." We confirmed that we were both flying home to California and not on vacation and then joked about all the extra leg room we have in the exit row and how I required none of that extra leg room (cause I'm short), good times, good times.

Now that all of that was out of the way it was time to take off and now I'm finally getting to point of this blog post. Haha! Gotcha sucka! That's a complete lie. There is no point to any of my posts. Anyway, we take off and I am amazed every time I fly that this whole flying thing actually works. Because in my mind, it shouldn't, this 2 trillion ton contraption should not be flying through the air no matter what any smart person says. It is amazing! And while this is happening everyone on the plane looks bored or annoyed or like they have better things to do instead of acknowledging the fact that we are hanging out in the clouds. Of course I also look bored and annoyed while staring out of the window because I wanna fit in, but inside I'm on a roller coaster with my hands in the air screaming "Ride the G!".

All of this made me think of the hilarious little YouTube video people know as "Everything's amazing and nobody's happy" by Louis CK. I'm pretty sure everyone has seen this but it's flipping funny so it's worth another watch. Seriously, the bit about the rotary phone, so funny!!

P.S. I almost watched a movie on Netflix or posted this while on my flight since I had free inflight wireless but I chose to read a book instead. A paperback book. Crazy, I know. Now watch the video. Watch it!!

Rant, anyone?

The other night I was watching a new show that I enjoy called Franklin and Bash (What?! Me watching tv?! Cheesy, bad tv?! Imagine that.). Franklin and Bash are two "hip and cool", "up and coming", fight for the little guy lawyers who have just been hired into a firm full of stuffy, no fun havin, follow the rules, bring in the big bucks lawyers who have a kookie boss who likes to shake things up. (I smell highjinks.) We know Frannklin and Bash are the hip ones because they play COD, wear board shorts in the office and use phrases in the courtroom like "tap that". Textbook hip lawyer stuff. Franklin and Bash are played by Mark Paul Gosselaar and Breckin Meyer. AKA Zach Morris and that skater dude from Clueless who loved little Brittany Murphy and her drawings of Marvin the Martian just the way they were. You know, before she was all "Rollin with the homies".

Anyway, F&B were going to be trying the case of a girl who claimed she was fired from her job for being too beautiful and therefore too much of a distraction in the office. After being briefed on the details of the case they head to the lobby to meet said beautiful girl. Now, because of years spent watching after-school specials and Saved By The Bell I knew to expect a poor misguided, delusional "unpretty" girl waiting for them in the lobby. The typical poor ugly duckling that hollywood usually portrays by gussying a girl down with ill fitting clothing, massively thick glasses, terribly frizzy and unruly hair (sometimes a ponytail) and maybe a few giant zits to top it off. But to my surprise the girl turned around and she actually was beautiful! No zits, no ill fitting clothing, no frizzy hair, no bad glasses...What?! I did not see that coming. And to top it all off she was sweet, likable and good at her job.

Now, to try and paint a better picture here I'm going to do something that is going to cause me to be annoyed with myself and that is to say that she was not what I perceive the general population has deemed beautiful. Meaning she was not a size 00 (size 2 is no longer skinny enough. Now your clothing has to be made by elves and fairies who use thimbles as a guidline for waist circumference), there were no DD's in effect and her legs were not perfectly sculpted, smooth stilts. But let me tell you, she was beautiful.

So this is where I got annoyed. F&B excused themselves to go discuss her appearance with a colleague and said that the case was a lost cause because the client was in fact, not beautiful, not pretty and, get this, "not even last call in Alaska pretty". What the hell F&B?! I thought you were my boyz (that's right, boyz with a Z sucka). It was at this point that I paused TiVo (I love you TiVo) and took a minute to gripe to Jim about all this... and now I'm griping to you about all of this... whoever "you" are... is...

Seriously, I know this is nothing new and people have ranted and raved about this for a very long time but this girl was beautiful and they are flat out calling her ugly. It's like the bar for beauty keeps getting raised and unfortunately most of us girls do care at least a little bit about being able to reach that stupid bar. Now, we're not striving to do chin-ups on the bar but we at least want to have a chance to attempt a chin-up and then dangle there awkwardly when we don't make it.

At least when tv shows used to use an "ugly" girl they made an attempt to make the "ugly" girl look like maybe she wasn't having the best hair, skin, clothing day. And even hearing me say (write) that annoys me. That there is even a standard for what would make someone appear ugly. Why do frizzy hair, bad clothes and a not so great complexion have to be deemed ugly? I know my life would be a whole lot easier if hairy legs, zits and frizzy hair were in. I'm just sayin, I may have cured cancer or solved world hunger if I wasn't spending so much time shaving, plucking, exfoliating and straightening.

I'm not saying that I'm never guilty of being judgmental, of course I am. We all are. I just hate it. That's it. I hate judgeyness. I hate it when I see it in myself and I hate when I see someone being negatively affected by someone else's assessment of them. That's all.

Oh yeah, cause I know you(re) all dying to know. In the end F&B realized that once they got to know their client they really liked her and they decided that they were going to find a way to win the case for her. Not because they thought she was beautiful but because she truly believed that she herself was beautiful. Kind of feels like a back handed compliment but whatever. I'll totally watch it again next week, ugh.

Allow Myself to introduce... Myself

There are moments, here and there, sprinkled throughout my days when positive thoughts about Me enter my thought process. But, while I’m having these positive thoughts there is a saboteur waiting to pop up and spoil everything. It's Myself. Every time I turn around Myself is badmouthing Me for no good reason. If we're being honest, Myself is kind of a bully. Every time Me accomplishes something Myself is there to tell her it was a fluke, whenever Me receives a compliment Myself follows it up with a critique, when Me looks in the mirror Myself is right there to tear her down. Nothing Me does is ever good enough for Myself. It seems like Myself has had it out for Me for a very long time. And I feel like Myself didn't like Me before Me and Myself ever really got a chance to get to know each other. Which is too bad because Me is actually a really nice person and I think that Me and Myself would really hit it off if I could just get Myself to give Me a chance. I think Me could win Myself over but Myself has just been too set in her ways to give this relationship a chance.

I don't think Myself really wants to hate Me, she just doesn't know any other way to feel about her. Myself is just treating Me the way she was taught to treat her and believing what she was taught to believe about her. Myself has a few unresolved issues from the past (doesn't everybody) and she's working on them. And It. Is. Hard. Jeeze. But, I is not not giving up on getting these two together (At least trying not to give up, they can be exhausting, and don't even get Me started about We and Us.). I is determined that one day Me, Myself and I will get to sit down and have a nice, friendly conversation while listening to great music, watching Keegan play, eating great food and TiVo'ing some cheesy TV to watch at obscene hours of the night. Some of Me, Myself and I's favorite things.

Laugh

It was a long day. I wanted to laugh. Once again, enter YouTube. These two videos always make me laugh. Enjoy :-)

First one, funny. And the lady is laughing at the end so I don't feel too horribly bad for laughing along with her.

Second one, funny. Kangaroos are awesome...and dangerous...and sometimes appear to be drunk and belligirent. I do feel a wee bit bad for the people getting punched but if you wake a kangaroo up early to come one your morning show (I hear they like to sleep until at least 9:00am), attach them to a leash and put boxing gloves on them, well then, you're basically just asking them to punch you in the face.

Unstop-A-Bulls...

It's over. Actually it's been over for a bit now but I've been avoiding it. The Bulls are done for the season. I blame myself really. I wasn't able to watch most of the games in this last series and they undoubtably felt my absence and it affected them more than I thought it would. I give you my sincerest apologies. I'll try harder next year. To deal with my sadness and disappointment I've been reminiscing. Thinking back to the days of the Unforget-A-Bulls, the Unstop-A-Bulls, the Unbeat-A-Bulls. The days of Jordan, Pippen, Stockton, Kerr, Grant, Cartwright, Harper, Kukoc, Longley, Armstrong, Rodman, man, I loved them. I have always been and will always be a Bulls fan but I seriously loved. those. guys. My room was covered in Bulls paraphernalia, I watched every game, saw them in action at the United Center more than once, acquired boxes of b-ball cards, had several conversations that revolved around them and many a mood that depended on them. I was heavily invested. If the Bulls lost, you didn't want to be around me for a while. Especially if you were a Jazz, Knicks, Lakers or even worse... a Pacers fan. I mean, Reggie Miller?! Ugh, seriously just, ugh.

Anyway, I'm choosing to remember the seasons when things ended the way God intended, with a Bulls championship. But we live in a fallen world and so things don't always work out the way they should and sometimes Jordan gives not so great speeches at Hall of Fame inductions but again, let's not think of those things. Instead let's watch some highlights of the Dream Team courtesy of YouTube and bask in the Awesomeness that was the 1990's Chicago Bulls. AND the video is accompanied by a little diddy called I Come Off by Young MC... Young MC!! Man, I miss those days!! I'll stop living in the past... eventually. Thank you to YouTube and to those individuals who take the time to upload almost anything I have any desire of ever seeing ever, because my VHS player is broken... yes I still own VHS tapes... shut up.