Month: April 2018

Life Suggestions

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“Life is but a dream for the dead.” – Gerard Way

Have you ever thought, who am I?  What am I doing here?  Is there a purpose for me to be here?  If you are like me you have thought of these and several more.

I think most of us have seen the movie “Its A Wonderful Life“.  George Bailey is shown the lives he had touched and what would have happened if he had not been born.  “A Christmas Carol” depicted a miser with no compassion, who is visited by three spirits and shown the error of his ways.

Now back to real life.  You pretty much don’t have any control of your birth, so the beginning of your life is pretty much controlled by where the birth canal you come out of resides and the owners outlook on life.  Until you leave home your parents are pretty much in control of your life.  Your parents are a crucial part of your road to adulthood.

“The anguish of death hangs over and leads the human spirit to wonder about the mysteries of existence, man’s destiny, life, the world.” E. Morin

So you finally make it to adulthood.  Your prize: work your arse off to make ends meet.  Now you are going to spend the next 40 to 50 years of your life going to work and dreaming about retirement.  Life is grand.  Really it is.

There you stand at the beginning of the road of life with some big decisions.  May I make some suggestions?  First off I am not a psychologist, or the owner of any big degree title for that matter, but I have graduated from the school of hard knocks.

  1. Are you happy with your life?
  2. Are you harboring any grudges or bad feelings toward anyone.
  3. Do you love yourself?
  4. Do you keep a journal?
  5. Do you take me time?

If you aren’t happy with your life take a step back and figure out why.  Once you have figured that out then devise a plan to fix it.

If you are holding a grudge or any ill feelings toward anyone, STOP!  Drop it!  Forget about it.  FORGIVE them.  As long as you are holding a grudge, that negative energy is holding you back keeping you from being what you are capable of being.

You can be the type of person that loves everyone but don’t love yourself.  Why don’t you love yourself?  Do you not think you are worthy of your own love?  You have to figure this one out.  I am a firm believer that life holds those back that don’t love themselves.  This is a very toxic negative energy.

If you don’t keep a journal may I suggest you keep one.  You don’t have to write a book.  Just keep track of your thoughts for a day and 6 months later go back and read it.  You may learn a lot more about yourself.

If you don’t take time for yourself then please start doing so in the very near future say, like yesterday.  There is so many ways you can enjoy “me time”.  Yoga, meditation, reading, fishing, drawing/painting etc.  Just find something that you enjoy, love doing, something that oozes of positive energy.  Take this time to clear you mind, body and soul of the negative energy that has hitched a ride with you, trying to bring you down.

Don’t get caught up in it.  Focus on the positive energy.  The only one who will hold you back in life is you!  Have fun and enjoy life.

I hope you enjoyed my blog.  Thanks for taking the time to read it.  I appreciate it very much.  Make the world a better place and spread the love.

“Death is not the greatest loss in life.  The greatest loss is what dies  inside us while we live.” – Norman Cousins

 

 

 

 

Duality

/ doubledacres / 7 Comments

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Duality is found everywhere in nature. We usually call it ‘yin’ and ‘yang’.
Yang is the energising, activating and motivating principle of life. Yin is the nourishing and building principle of life.

Here some examples: 

  • driving the car, playing sports, multitasking, drinking coffee, eating spicy, making deals/business is yang activities. It is also hot, bright, fast, dry, aggressive, male, daytime, sun. 
  • sleeping, mediating, getting massage, eating oatmeal is yin activities. As well as it is cool, dark, slow, soft, stable, moist, female, night, moon. 

So if we’ll look at our hormones in the body, we’ll see that stress hormones are yang and sex hormones are yin. They are also harmoniously balanced and complement each other perfectly, because they are actually aspects of the One. 

makyaj-sanati-11If you remember I’ve told you before that every human being has a life force or energy (you can call it Soul…

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Change; Good or Bad?

/ doubledacres / 9 Comments

“Every human has four endowments- self awareness, conscience,  independent will, and creative imagination.  These give us the ultimate human freedom… the power to choose, to respond, to change.” Stephen Covey

Once we squeeze through the birth canal and leave the warmth of the womb and take that first breath there is no turning back.  Our “life clock” has began ticking and we have so much to learn and everything we learn is subject to change.  Sometimes change is good and sometimes it isn’t.

Life experiences are responsible for defining our character and preparing us for adulthood.  The leaders of life experiences are parenting and schooling.  One prime example of change is parenting.  Parenting of the 50s and 60s was a whole lot different than the parenting of today.  My life clock began in 1954 and I have seen parenting change for the worse in my opinion.  Schooling has changed immensely also and all I have to say is I am glad I was a child of the 50s and 60s.

“Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.” – Nelson Mandela

Unfortunately as we are rolling along down life’s highway with adulthood in our sights, we can pick up something like “bigotry” or other negative energies and they pollute our hearts and minds and if we let it, it will pollute everything around us.  Therefore we need some kind of filtration system and be smart enough to identify these negative energies.

My filtration system is Mother Nature.  It might be camping out along the river, kayaking the river or sitting on a high spot on a ridge watching the sun set or rise.  Mother Nature does a good job of absorbing those negative energies that have hitched a ride with me.  It doesn’t have to be Mother Nature but should be something you love doing.  Shedding those negative energies is a positive change.

“If you don’t like something, change it.  If you can’t change it, change your attitude.” – Maya Angelou

I don’t think we understand that “egos” cause a lot of problems and changes.  I call it the “hungry beast” because it seems like it needs to be fed a lot.  I know some people who are constantly feeding their egos without realizing how much damage that massive ego can do.  It can be a person’s worse nightmare.  It can completely change a person from well liked to a person who can clear a room by just walking into it.

Sometimes society goes head first in the world trying to change things.  A lot of times they do this without thinking it through and not taking the time to envision what these changes are going to do in the long run.  What impact is this change going to have on the highway of life?  Is it going to be full of speed bumps or is it going to be like gliding down a toll road?  We really need to start looking at the full impact of changing something before we do it.  Just this humble bloggers opinion for what it is worth.

“Just when I think I have learned the way to live, life changes.” – Hugh Prather

Thank you for taking the time to read my blog.  It is deeply appreciated.  A big shout out to all of you who follow me and read my posts.  I finally broke 200 and I thank everyone of you who made it possible.  Remember, spread the love.  It will make the world a better place.

Technology; Friend or Foe

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“Technology is a useful servant but a dangerous master.” – Christian Lous Lange

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Photograph provided by Pexels

Is it just me?  Am I just old school?  Is technology infallible?  I am sorry but the way we have become so dependent on technology makes me nervous.  We store everything on hard drives but have no real hard copies of anything.  That works great until something happens.

Maybe I just don’t understand technology well enough but if the power grid were to go down for some reason what would we do?  Computers run the power grid and computers run off the power grid.  What would happen if someone attacked our power grid and took it out?  I mean computer glitches grounded some airlines for a while disrupting the travel of thousands of people.  What if it would have been the power grid that went down for five or six hours.

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Photograph provided by Pexels

I can see you shaking your head at me.  Another old fart who just doesn’t get it.  There are safeguards built into our system to protect us from that thing.  Really?  Well listen up.  They said the Titanic was unsinkable too.

Please remember I learned to count on an abacus.   Actually did, and still do, math problems in my head.  We didn’t have those fancy little calculators.

“Technology can be our best friend, and technology can also be the biggest party pooper of our lives.  It interrupts our own story, interrupts our ability to have a thought or daydream, to imagine something wonderful, because we’re too busy bridging the walk from the cafeteria back to the office on the cell phone.” – Steven Spielberg

Technology is so easy to become dependent on.  I use to know everyone’s phone number and had them memorized.  Not anymore.  They are all in this little ole phone now where you push a button and abracadabra, phone number has arrived.  One can live in St. Louis, MO and be vacationing in Mexico and see in your living room and check to make sure everything is ok.  However, if you are flying you still end up in Dallas, Texas and your luggage ends up in Chicago, Illinois.  We have driverless cars but they still need to work all the bugs out of that idea.  Yet at a fast food restaurant when you order a hamburger you never get one that looks like the one in the picture on the wall.

All we can do is hope that nothing causes our system to go down for a long time.  Hope you enjoyed my post and thank you for taking the time to read it.  Spread the love.

Bonne Terre, Dragstrip

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“If you want to make a million dollars racing start with two.” – Ken Shrader

For many years the ground that Bonne Terre Dragstrip sits on was a place to pump tailings and water from the mines.  Eventually it was turned into a 300 foot sand drag strip.  After a lengthy time of sand drags the track changed hands many times then finally closed down.

Then it was given a new life when Jarrod Keen purchased the property and made several improvements to the property.  One of the improvements ended the chance of ever having sand drag races there again.  An eighth mile track was built and a drag strip was born.  That was in 2014 and it is still going strong.

“I’ve been upside down, backwards, and on fire, faster than most people will ever think of going in their life.” – “Big Daddy” Don Garlits

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Bonne Terre Dragstrip is located at 7640 Blackberry Lane, Bonne Terre, MO.  Presently racing is on Sunday and gates open at 10 a.m.  Friday nights is “Test and Tune” and starts at 6 p.m.  Admission is $10 at the gate.  Kids 12 and under admission is free when with an adult.  I have been there a couple of times and it is well run and a great place to take the whole family.  They do have a cook shack and the food has been good and priced right.  Make sure to check them out this summer.

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The world of drag racing is very exciting and if you have never been to a drag race, by all means put it on your bucket list.  Hint: You may want to take some ear plugs with you.

Thanks for taking the time to read my post.  It is really appreciated.  Remember to share the love.

 

Experience/University of Life

/ doubledacres / 4 Comments

“No one is the same, and we all have different life experiences.  It’s not my place to judge them or  for them to judge me.  We should all be accountable for own lives.” – Joanna Krupa

Experience can be a direct observation of or participation events as a basis of knowledge. It can be practical knowledge, skill, or practice derived from direct observation or participation, or the length of time of such participation, something personally encountered or lived through. It can also be defined as the conscious events that you have lived through.

Our lives are a collection of experiences that starts as soon as we are pushed from the warmth and darkness of our mother’s womb into the bright light.  We live a life full of different experiences and there are those who have had near death experiences that say they were drawn toward a bright light.

There are good and bad experiences.  Experience builds character and can give you an edge in making some decisions.  I have always said that experience is life’s education system.  Book learning is good but when you learn something from experience you tend not to forget it.  Experience has a way of etching a lesson in your mind permanently.

“We are all born with a unique genetic blue print, which lays out the basic characteristics of our personality as well as our physical health and appearance…And yet, we all know that life experiences do change us.” – Joan D. Vinge

Unfortunately we can’t choose our experiences.  We have to take them as they come.  Parenthood is quite an experience.  We experienced childhood and went through many changes.  The day comes we find out we are going to be parents and we say we are going to use a different approach of rearing our children than our parents because we think we can give our children a better experience.  Then that fateful day arrives, you turn into your mom and say “If you don’t stop crying I am going to give you something to cry about!”

“Character cannot be developed  in ease and quiet.  Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success achieved.”  –   Helen Keller

Thank you for reading my post.  Spread the love.

 

 

 

My Thoughts on Fishing

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“Many men go fishing all of their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after.” – Henry David Thoreau

I have been fishing for a lot of years.  I had the big bass boat with the big gas guzzling motor on it.  I fished bass tournaments, mostly held on lakes.  Then one day I was diagnosed with melanoma and had to have it cut off.  They didn’t get all of the cancer cells so they cut some more and this time got it all.

Growing up we always fished the rivers.  So I decided to sell the bass boat and head back to the river where I had learned to fish and I have no regrets.  I bought a kayak and started fishing with ultra-light gear.  I prefer a spinning reel loaded with 4 pound test line.  I like a medium action rod.  If you catch an eight ounce fish on this rig it feels like it weighs five pounds.  I have a lot of fun with this set up on the rivers.

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Two of my favorite crankbaits, Wee Craws by Rebel.

“Fishing provides that connection with the whole living world.  It gives you the opportunity of being totally immersed, turning back into yourself in a good way.  A form of meditation, some form of communion with levels of yourself that are deeper than the ordinary self.” – Ted Hughes

My favorite way of fishing is with a fly rod and reel. set up.  Personally I have a difficult time trying to cast from the kayak.

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Minnow and shad look- a-likes that I love to use on the river.

There are all kinds of different artificial baits one can pick from.  There are soft baits, jigs, crank baits, spinner baits, top water lures, just to name a few.  For those of you who would prefer using real bait there are worms, crawdads, minnows and crickets.

Here in Missouri I would say the 4 most sought after fish are large mouth bass, small mouth bass, crappie and the catfish.  In Missouri we are blessed with some great places to fish.  I fish the Big River and the Missouri Department of Conservation has designated several miles of the upper part as a Small Mouth Trophy area.

 

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Large mouth bass

 

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small mouth bass

 

“There’s a fine line between fishing and just standing on the shore like an idiot.” – Steven Wright

I hope this post helped inspire some of you to pick up some fishing equipment and head out to the river or lake.  It was short so feel free to ask me any question you might have.

I hope you enjoyed my post and thank you for taking the time to read it.  Remember to share the love.