Sidetracked Charley

Walking the high bridge Time Magazine in the mid 1980's had a lead article on stress and consequences of it. Some research facility had assigned points to various events in life; so many points for losing a job, moving, getting a divorce, etc.  Those were the big ones.  At the time the list appeared I had been moved by the company I was working for, was going through filing for divorce from an alcoholic husband, visiting a dying parent in a hospital, while temporarily living with my mother facing the eminent death of her husband. The last was not on the list but should have been. Oh, and I was less than a year clean and sober and had a sponsor who said I should not be doing any of those things. If you tallied up just those life events on the list I should have checked myself into a mental institution. Or committed suicide. But I come from a long line of troupers. We keep on keeping on. And are the perfect model of decorum while doing it. There was a t-shirt I saw duri...

The time has come, the walrus said, to speak of many things. Of shoes and ships and sealing wax and cabbages and kings. And typically, as tradition dictates, resolutions for the new year. I don't do resolutions. I have called them commitments and acknowledgments but I seem to avoid the avoid the world resolutions. It reminds me of court room dramas - It is hereby resolved . . . Resolution is defined as 1) a firm decision to do or not do something or 2) the action of solving a problem, dispute or contentious matter.  I think the words firm and action get in my way. A resolution just seems negative like stop biting your nails, stop drinking, or lose weight. Even phrased in the positive (I will do ten planks a day) has negative connotations. And half the time as you are writing them down you know you will not keep them. Not for a full year. No way. And that is assuming nothing gets in the way like a broken leg which makes planks impossible. Or a definite nail bitin...