friendship

Yesterday I posted about chasing your dream. Well, it really was more about how I’ve changed over the years and how I’ve tried to dish out advice to others on following their dreams. I ended that post by saying I would share my dream with you tomorrow. Well, it’s tomorrow. I know I haven’t been blogging much, but I made a promise yesterday and decided that it’s important to keep it.

Anybody that is friends with me on Facebook knows that I love Arbonne products. I’ve only been using them for about 10 months, but I love them. It started with an online Facebook party that I attended. I learned about the Arbonne products and their pure, safe, and beneficial ingredients. Arbonne was founded by Petter Mørck. You can read the story of Arbonne here.  http://est1980.arbonne.com/our-story.shtml

The first week of March I became an Arbonne Independent Consultant. My goal was not to sell Arbonne, but just to continue making my purchases with a better discount. However, when I signed up, a box arrived. The box had 10 catalogs and 10 RE9 samples. I put the box away and went on about my business. In just a couple of days, after listening to that box call my name, I decided to just take the catalogs and the samples and see what happened.

What happened is other people were interested. Some people were interested because I had been talking up Arbonne on Facebook. Other people were truly looking for something. Maybe skincare, maybe nutrition, maybe makeup.  What I’ve found in the last 60 days is that I can share my love of a product and maybe, just maybe build my own business.

It’s been kind of a whirlwind, roller coaster ride the last 60 days. One minute, I’m asking myself “What the hell are you doing? Why are you wasting your time?” For every one of those kind of questions, there were probably three comments to myself like  “I can’t believe this!” “This is great!”

It’s working for me right now, because I am actively believing in my dream. What is my dream?

After becoming an IC with Arbonne and after beginning to actively share Arbonne, I began to become more acquainted with some of the people on my “team”. One of these sweet ladies sent me a book entitled “Where Will You Be Five Years From Today?”

Before I even opened that I book, I knew exactly where I wanted to be five years from today. Retired. Our plan is to retire in less than 3 years. Doug has given about all he has to give to his employer. He says that when he retires, I retire. But I’ve had questions about this retirement thing. Like – Insurance? In 3 years I will only be 58. I won’t be eligible for Medicare.

So when I looked at the pretty book tied up with a pretty white bow, I laid it aside and gave it some thought. What came to me was sort of a vision, really just a little glimmer on the horizon. Maybe, just maybe, if I work really hard and follow the plans that have been laid out before me by other women who have already achieved success, I could earn enough from this Arbonne thing to pay for my health insurance.

I’ve got a great learning tool with the Arbonne website. Everything I need to know as an Independent Consultant, I can find on the site. There is a wonderful team of women who have already walked this walk and they are willing to share, mentor, and encourage me. Plus I’m a smart girl, I have a few ideas myself.

One of them was to place a small display of the fizz sticks on my desk. (What are fizz sticks – click the link below

http://www.arbonne.com/PWS/AnnaHibbard/store/AMUS/product/Energy-Fizz-Sticks-Pomegranate-2079,8010.aspx

I also ordered a special glass for my fizz sticks. This is a conversation starter. People are in and out of my office all day. Some people notice, some people don’t. If they ask what it is, I explain what it is. If this opens up the conversation to skincare, makeup, or nutritional products, I pull out a prepackaged sample pack that I put together and hand it to them. I consider this an investment. An investment in myself and my dream. So far this is working for me.

Like any dream, I can’t just sit here and wait for the eager new Arbonne customers to come to me. I have to go find them. Hopefully, I will find others who believe in the products the way I do and I can teach them how to fulfill their dreams.

So if I call you, or text you, or email you and ask you about your skincare products, your makeup products, or maybe if you would like to learn how to eat healthy again, I’m not offended if you tell me you aren’t interested right now.  If you say no to me today, please feel free to call me if you change your mind. Please be patient with me if I call you in a couple of months to share with you a new product that I’ve learned about and I thought of you when I saw it. If I ask you to host an Arbonne party either live or in your home, you aren’t obligated to me in any way, you aren’t obligated to purchase anything. But I will reward you for helping me. You help me by allowing me to introduce this wonderful products to your friends. Plus it’s a fun way to reconnect and meet new people.

All I ask is that you are open to me and willing to discuss your dreams with me. After all, I am a problem solver.

Yes, this year is nearly over. But I woke up this morning, looked at the old woman in the mirror and whispered “Happy birthday lady.” Somehow I have managed to make it to the age of 55. It seems like just yesterday I was 17. Apparently a lot of life happened between 17 and 55. I see it in the mirror, in the lines on my face. I feel it in my attitude. My personality is sort of like a roller coaster.

I wish I was more even tempered, but sadly I am not. I wish I could keep my opinion to myself, but sadly I can not. I wish I liked people in general, but sadly I do not. Even though I don’t like people in general, I find that I am a people pleaser. I guess I just don’t like confrontation. I’m sensitive to a change in tone when someone speaks to me.

But that’s not why I’m here today. I’m here today with the obligatory list of things I’ve learned in the last 55 years. I’ve reflected on these basic tenets and tweaked them into sort of list of New Year’s Resolutions. But mainly, things I need to remember or things I need to strive to be more aware of on my next trip around the sun.

1. Be kind and thoughtful, but don’t be a doormat.

2. Don’t be a gossip. If it isn’t kind or encouraging, zip your lip!

3. Don’t put someone on the top of your list, when you aren’t even on theirs

4. Return negativity with positivity

5. When #4 doesn’t work, remove the cause of the negativity permanently.

6. Rest your mind and body as needed. Your aren’t 20!

7. Don’t be idle. Time is short and valuable. I’m 55, I have far less time than I thought

8. Early to bed and early to rise is a good motto to live by

9. Don’t be silent! Speak for others when they can’t speak for themselves

10. I’m too old to be in a clique. I can only be myself.

I may need to come back to this list from time to time in the next year. After looking back over the list, some of them seem contradictory. Cutting someone out of your circle may not seem “kind”. But time is too short to allow others to bring you down.

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We began forming friendships almost from birth. We’ve all seen a baby or small child respond to our smiles and hellos.  It’s natural to want to be connected to someone and have friends.  We start building those friendships from an early age. We have siblings, cousins, and neighborhood kids. Then we start school and our circle of friends widen. We began working and our circle of friends widen again.

Before you know it you are a multifaceted, well adjusted person. Most of us are anyways, there are some exceptions to the rule. But all in all, we all crave that connection. Maybe it’s a sort of validation, I’m not sure.

Sometimes the trouble starts with that very first friend, a brother or a sister. Before you start school, you are best buddies. You do everything together. Then you start school and widen your circle of friends. Then you discover that you are two different people with whole different likes and dislikes. Sometimes it takes years and years to make the circle to becoming the best of friends. Some people, sadly, never make this circle.

This happens not only with siblings, but all kinds of friends and family. You just grow and mature and discover that you don’t really have that much in common any more. Sometimes you are able to remain superficial friends, but that deep, heart to heart connection is lost.

It’s hard to make friends as you get older. As you age and meet new people, you bring along your past with you. All your fears and disappointments you pack in a bag and strap it to your back and bring it with you everywhere you go. But you are still looking for that connection, that validation.

That’s why it’s hard to change jobs when you’re older. The fear of the unknown. Getting out of your comfort zone. It would have been very easy for me to stay at my old job. It wasn’t a difficult job. But emotionally it was exhausting and belittling. But it was scary starting over somewhere new.

But these people at my new job are no different than people any where else. They want to like me, but they also wait for me to stumble. To let them down. I’ve been here long enough now for them to know that I am trust worthy and I will be here. I will pull my own weight and will help when needed.

But real, true friends, people who you can be 100% yourself and be at ease with, are rare. People who you don’t have to worry about what you say or hold back on your ideas and opinions, those kinds of friends are few and far between.

Occasionally someone will reach out to you for friendship. Later you will discover that you were just being used. This happened to me recently. I felt like I had made a personal connection with someone I met through my former place of employment. While working there we would sometimes chat about things outside of work. It seemed we had a lot of common interest.

So when I left there and came to where I am now, I was surprised to receive an email from this person suggesting we have lunch. I had been gone from my old job for about a month or maybe a little more.

When we met for lunch I was determined not to talk about my old job and just focus on developing a new friendship.  I knew it was a lost cause when she said “I promised myself I wasn’t going to talk about this” and proceeded to do just that.

I’m human, it was nice to hear that the person that came after me made a complete mess of things. She asked and I did share the exact reason why I left there. She made me an offer in regards to my old job (not taking it back, but helping out until they found someone else) and then she proceeded to pay for lunch with her employer’s credit card.

I still believed this was a viable future friendship. I received an email telling me that she enjoyed the lunch. I replied that I did too. That was the last I heard from her. I guess she got the information she needed, made the offer she was authorized to make, and then went on her way.

So I’m back to my original circle of friends. It’s not a bad circle. I like my circle of friends.

I have been at my new job now 86 days. I have acclimated well and feel like a part of the team. It was weird at first, being in a team situation. For the last 14 years I have been in an office by myself, doing my own thing. I sat by myself, ate lunch by myself, and only interacted with co-workers when there was a need or I just wanted to. It felt more like a dysfunctional family than a team motivated work environment.

Don’t get me wrong. I still work with humans and I’m still human. So these new people are not perfect and neither am I. But for the most part they all work well together and make an effort to get things done. This includes things that may or may not be in their “job description.”

I’ve gotten to know these people and feel connected to them and seriously consider them friends. Now, I know that I have not even been there 90 days yet and we are probably still in our honeymoon period. But most of these people have worked together for years and they seem to get along and genuinely care about each other. So I don’t expect that I’ll be any different.

But there is one thing I would like to say about this group. They lied to me on the first day.

The place where I work is slightly secluded from the main drag. So when I took this job I thought – “I’ll have to bring my lunch.” Now that was not a bad thing. It was a good thing. I would not only save some money, but I could eat healthier by bringing my lunch. So that very first Monday I show up with my homemade, healthy lunch. This is where the lie began. I was told, “We usually try to bring our lunch. We only eat out on Wednesdays.” I think that was the only week that I brought my lunch for 4 days and ate out on a Wednesday.

All it takes is for one person to say “I didn’t bring my lunch” or “I brought my lunch, but I don’t want it” and we are off. We jump into a vehicle and drive pell mell all over the Hulen/Bryant Irvin/Crowley area. We have appetizers, desserts, and sometimes 2 hours lunches. I had warm chocolate meringue pie that I dreamt about for weeks after eating it.

In addition to these gluttonous lunches, we have people bringing cakes, pies, fried pies, cookies, cupcakes, macaroons, Whitman’s pecan cluster, and scores of other things. I’m not even going to talk about the bags of candies that are purchased, kept in the office supply room, and dished out in bowls.

This evening I arrived home bloated, swollen, and full. I had been full all day, but had somehow, still managed to gorge myself all day. I literally felt ill. My pants, that were slightly loose 86 days ago, are now just a little snug. I was in a-fib for a couple of hours and had a pain in the general area that the specialist told me my liver was in. So as I lay beached on the sofa, I came to the realization that it’s time to jump off the crazy food train and start my trudge back up the hill to healthy eating choices.

I have a plan in mind. It’s no diet. Just better choices. Tonight when I finally started feeling just a tad hungry, I decided on a brownie with a couple of scoops of vanilla ice cream. That choice will no longer be on the menu. Another thing I have added to my diet in the last several weeks is about four cups of coffee a day and sometimes a pot on Saturdays. This vice I think I will keep.

But in the future, that vehicle zipping all over town will not be caring my great big butt. Well, maybe only on Wednesdays.

My memory isn’t what it use to be.  Yet I have very vivid specific memories.  I remember my very first day of kindergarten at Riverside Elementary.  I recall sitting next to Delia Pulliam.  She had her pony tail on the side of her head, which I thought was very cool.  She was my very best friend all through elementary.

I remember the first day of middle school and how overwhelmed I was.  There were more kids and we had to change classes.  I met Gerda Cole that day.  I couldn’t tell you what class.  But we sat together at lunch and over the years became best friends.  To this day I consider her one of my very best friends.

Then there came the first day of high school.  I felt grown up.  We walked to Burger King for lunch.  Sometimes we smoked cigarettes.  We got our driver’s license.  We danced.  We drank.  We broke a few minor laws.  We began to learn who we were.  We began to think about or futures.  We graduated and all went our separate ways.

Over the years, decisions were made, some mistakes, that affected my life to this day.  We moved away.  We went to college.  We got jobs.  We go married, and some then divorced.  We had children and then some had grandchildren.  We went to reunions, we joined Facebook, we exchanged emails, we reconnected.  My network of Carter Riverside alumni expanded.  I was pleased.

I started to notice something in the last year.  People I know that graduated from different schools don’t seem to have alumni groups on Facebook.  They don’t commemorate their lost classmates with a “Gone but not forgotten” page or a “Silver Taps” page on an alumni website.  They just do not seem to have the bond that those of us who grew up in the Riverside area of Fort Worth and graduated from Carter Riverside High School.  Well, maybe they’re out there, but the people I’ve come across don’t seem to be involved at all.  When I say I’m having lunch with an old high school friend or that a group of us are getting together for a Saturday lunch, they look at me cross eyed!

These sites and pages don’t magically maintain themselves.  There are a group of dedicated people who work to maintain these sites.  They don’t get paid.  They get no special attention.  They do all of these things because of their love for this small area of Fort Worth.  Riverside.

Like most schools, homecoming is a special time.  While I didn’t participate this year, I enjoy hearing about it.  What struck me most was that at this year’s homecoming events it was brought to the alumna’s attention that there were certain things that were needed, but the school district didn’t have money for them.  Rather than sitting around talking about how wrong it was for the district to allow things to deteriorate to such a state, a group was formed.  Click to like Beautify CHS on Facebook and become involved.

This group was formed, meetings were held, and decisions were made.  With a variety of people with different backgrounds a logical and well thought out plan was put into place.  One item of business (if I remember correctly) was obtaining a 501(c) designation as a charitable organization.  Membership dues were set to cover the cost of maintaining a post office box, postage, stationary, and miscellaneous other things.

Meetings are open to anyone.  All suggestions are encouraged and appreciated.  The first project is to replace the stage curtains that have been in place since 1989.  Click to see condition of the curtains.  I have no doubt that these curtains will be replaced in the near future.

Like a lot of others, I’ve moved away.  My life is busy.  I have a long commute to work.  So although I may not be able to be directly involved, I can still help by way of a donation.  These different groups of people who work quietly in the background inspire me.  Different ones may have their differences, but in the long run we all want the same thing.  We want the school that helped make us who we are to excel in the future.  We want the generations coming up to look around them and be proud of where they come from.

If you graduated from Carter Riverside, here a few links to help you get involved.  If you didn’t graduate from Carter, I encourage you to start looking at where you came from, see if you can get involved.

http://carter-riverside-alumni.org/

Carter Riverside HS Ex Students Association Facebook Page

The Beautify CHS Facebook Page

The Carter Riverside Alumni Facebook Page

Another Alumni Facebook Page

The Riverside Middle School Page

The CHS – Gone but Not Forgotten Classmates & Faculty

and just for us ladies The Carter Girls Club

Reconnecting with people and making new friends makes me happy.  I enjoy sitting down with someone and finding out about their life’s journey.  Where they’ve been, what they’ve done, what they’ve experienced.  I’m a happy person and I enjoy being around happy people.  Don’t get me wrong.  I’m not in a blissful state of mind all the time.  Frequently I am pissed off, upset, irritated, and some times just plain mean.  But more often than not, I am in a chirpy, friendly, happy mood.

I understand that we have all gone through difficult times.  Times of trials and tribulations.  I’ve been through my own difficult times and I’m pretty sure that there are more awaiting me down the road.  In my walk through life I have met people who have gone through horrific events and tragedies.  A lot of these people walk through fire and come out the other side with a smile on their face and a story to impart. 

I have friends that are going through very difficult times this very minute.  They are in the midst of their trials.  They need someone to hear them when they cry out for advice, assistance, and understanding.  They have a right to expect their fellow-man to hear them and give them a shoulder (at the very least) to cry upon.  To lean upon for a time.  These are not the sort of people I was envisioning when I started this rambling.

I’m thinking of the people who are constantly at odds with themselves, their circumstances, or other people.  In my experience these whiners usually fall into one of three categories.  Each one worse than the one before, in my opinion.

Bad:  The egotistical whiner.  This person doesn’t necessarily have troubles.  They just don’t understand why “someone” is doing so much better than them.  This could be financially, socially, or a multitude of other reasons.  They say things out loud like “I deserve ‘That’ more than they do.”  “That” could be anything from a particular job, relationship, or just about any kind of success.  Instead of recognizing someone else’s success, they are jealous or covetous of it.

Worse:  The poor me!  This person frequently makes poor choices and decisions and never ever learns a thing from their mistakes.  They don’t understand it and they aren’t afraid to tell you all about their latest problems.  They aren’t aware that their situation is of their own making.  They also may suffer from some sort of selective amnesia.  For instance, they’ve forgotten that they told you how they’ve blown their money in the last few weeks and suddenly don’t have money for the important stuff.  You know the little things, like food, clothing, and housing. 

Worst: The Backpackers – This is the worst of all whiners and complainers.  They take every single tiny “offense” that they feel as been visited upon them and tuck them away for future use.  They hang on to them.  They take them out and caress them.  They dust them off and visualize them.  They embrace what they conceive as a deliberate belittlement or put down. They don’t want to let go of it.  No matter how old it is or when it happened.  They like carrying it around with them.  They pull it out to show you that they are justified in their indignation.

I have found as I’ve grown older that my tolerance for these types of people has dropped to an all time low.  I like to think I’m there for a friend who needs someone to talk to.  BUT if you are constantly bringing your problems to the same person over and over, you might want to reconsider.  You might want to evaluate what kind of friend you are.

If you are the egotistical whiner, you might want to let someone else “shine” for a little while.  Not everything revolves around you.  Friendship is a two way street.  If I find myself withholding happy information from you because I worry about your reaction, I may have to reconsider our friendship.

If you are “poor me” and are constantly sharing your trouble with me, you might want to just keep those thoughts to yourself.  Try to find a balance.  Share some good information with me, no matter how small.  There is enough going on in the world to bring me down, I don’t need a “friend” to do it.  If you can’t solve your day to day problems, I can’t either.  It’s not that I don’t care, I’m just tired of the constant stream of issues.

And finally if you are a backpacker, put the it down and walk away from it.  I think you will know if you are a backpacker if you just think back to some conversations you’ve had with me or anyone else.  If you’ve said “I remember in 6th grade he called me “insert rude name here.” If you tell any friend something that someone did to you ten or more years ago you can not be a very happy person.  Apparently you are keeping some kind of score or record.  I don’t know what.  But its irritating.

All of these people are wallowing in some kind of self pity mud hole.  They seem to take some kind of pride from being a martyr.  A martyr in their own mind.  Stand up, shake it off, put one foot in front of the other.  Try to spread a little sunshine.  And for goodness sake get off the cross, someone else needs the wood!!.

I passed a car on the freeway the other day that had three snowboards attached to the rear of the vehicle.  I thought, “How nice to be going on a winter vacation to the snow!”  Yes it always sounds like fun.  But it doesn’t always turn out that way.

The first time I went sking was in January of 1982.  As young people who did not worry about paying the bills next month, we planned this trip on the spur of the moment.  As an after thought we decided to go the Justice of the Peace and get married before we left.  Lordy, if I could only go back in time and talk to that 19/20 year old girl.  But that’s a whole other story.  So off we went to Red River, New Mexico.  We had another couple on the trip with us and another couple met us there upon our arrival.  They had married while she was still in school and were living in Colorado.  She was at our 30 year class reunion and is still happily married.

I have never been a very athletic person.  So I was sort of leery of getting on that ski lift.  I wanted to stay closer to the bottom on the “bunny trails”.  But John wanted me to get on the ski lift, go to the top of the mountain, and he would “teach” me to ski.  So I was able to hop on the ski lift with no idea of how we were going to get off.  On the way up John tried to give me my first lesson on getting off he lift.  But all I could think was “Holy Crap”!  We spent several hours up on that mountain top, screaming at each other.  I finally told him to just leave me alone.  Finally the ski patrol came to see what the problem was.  The ski patrol read John the riot act for bringing be up to the top with no ski experience, onto black trails I found out then.  They actually stopped the lift and put me back on to go down and stopped again at the bottom to let me off.  It was really very embarrasing.  Every body who passed me on the lift down was asking “What happened to you?”, “Why are you riding the lift down?”, “Are you okay?”  That really should have been a wake up call for how our relationship was going to be, but it was another 3 or 4 years before I admitted defeat.

The second time I went sking was several years later.  I went with a singles group from Glenview Baptist and they were taking a group to Durango, Colorado.  I hadn’t been attending there very long and was talked into going.  This time I had the good sense to schedule lessons the first day I was there, or so I thought.  I think I was the only adult in the class.  The instructor ended up taking my poles aways because she said I was going to kill myself.  Finally she told me to go get a drink, rest, enjoy myself, and stay off the mountain.  So I took her advise and enjoyed the rest of my stay drinking hot chocolate, getting in the hot tub, and just visiting with the rest of the group.  Not everyone in that group skied, so I enjoyed myself.

The third and final time I went sking was with the Glenview Baptist group again.  This time I knew people a little better.  I trusted them a little more.  I don’t remember everyone that I went with on that ski lift, I can only remember Susie.  She was a real encourager.  It was scary, I still didn’t know what I was doing.  But she was a big help.  I did enjoy myself.  I actually skied and had a good time.  My only problem was stopping.  I can’t really get the snow plowing thing down.  I ended up just going around in circle, because my right leg is stronger than my left.  So I would get to going really good, I could make the curves, but then I got scared.  I would think I was going to fast and didn’t know how to slow myself down.  So I would just fall.  They would help me get back up and I would take off again.  I did feel a sense of accomplishment when I came down off that mountain like a normal person.

But I only went up that one time on that trip.  I didn’t want to press my luck.  I figured I had one good day of sking, I didn’t break anything, and I got off the mountain without the help of the ski patrol.  So I was happy shopping, sitting in the lodge and watching everybody else come down off the mountain.  So I’ve hung up my snow skis.  I still like being in the mountains in the snow.  But I have found I don’t need to be in the snow.  I’m very happy to sit in a cozy lodge, with big windows to watch the others doing their thing and drink a cup of hot chocolate.

My sister and I are eleven months apart.  I was born in the last week of December in 1961 and she was born in the first week of December of 1962.  So while my mother was waiting on the arrival of her very fist baby during the Christmas of 1961, she never imagined that a year later she would have two. So it wasn’t just my first Christmas, it was our first Christmas.

Like any two children born this close we were best buddies growing up.  My mother dressed us alike, just as if we were twins.  But there were differences.  I was a daddy’s girl and Trisha was a mama’s baby.  She was more of a tomboy and I was a little more prissy.  She wasn’t scared of much and I was scared of just about everything.  We did enjoy each others company as young girls.

Then we began to mature.  We started to get on each others nerves.  I do have a vivid memory of sitting on top of her, with her arms penned under my knees, having hold of her hair and banging her head on the wooden floor.  I don’t know what caused that, no memory of the argument.  But my sister will tell you she remembers that and to this day she is just a little scared of me.

But the distance grew more as we got into the fourth or fifth grade.  She had her friends and I had mine.  And believe me the two groups of people had absolutely nothing in common.  The biggest mistake my mother ever made was to allow us to have slumber parties on the same night.  My dad worked nights, so my mother was alone and in charge of about twenty girls.  I don’t remember that argument too vividly.  I do remember our two groups lining up on both sides of the sidewalk in the back yard getting ready to rumble.  My mom put a stop to it by threatening to take everyone home.  Some how we made it through the night without killing anyone.

This distance between us continue until some time after we both graduated.  She married and divorced, I married and divorce.  Somehow we found our way back to each other.  It wasn’t too hard.  We had never had a fallen out or an argument for that matter.  We had just gone our separate ways and lived our lives.  I guess as you get older you tend to gravitate to those you have history with.  I think that accounts for the multitude of classmates I have reconnected with from Carter Riverside.

So now we are best buddies again and have been for years.  She accepts me with all my warts, faults, and all my idiosyncrasies and I accept her the same.  We talk, we gossip, we bounce ideas off each other.  We act silly and don’t take ourselves too seriously.  We’ve both been through tough times and good times together.  We cut each some slack.  She bought me the red hat for my 50th birthday.  We’ve talked for years about going back to wearing hats.  So she just took the bull by the horns and bought me one.  Yes its red. It has nothing to do with that red hat club.  That will come in another 15 years or so.  We will probably do that together.  Knowing us we’ll start our own chapter.

With all that being said.  She really is my best friend.  I found the picture below while going through some old photos.  Its a picture of my great grandmother and her sister.  I see a bit of myself and my sister in this picture.  I think this is what we’ll end up looking like to a certain degree.  Sensible shoes and just lovely hats!

If you didn’t notice when you landed here, I have found a new home for my blog, WordPress.com. So if you were following me on blogspot.com I would certainly appreciate you following me here.  I really hated leaving blogspot, because over the past year I’ve built up stats and pages views. By moving I’m having to start all over again.  But I was able to migrate all my past post and comments to this new site.  So we will just wait and see how this works.

I developed a problem with someone who can’t seem to understand that when I’m done, I’m done.  Since this is a public blog, odds are I can still be found if someone so desires.  But this blogs requires a name and an email address in order to leave a comment, so I’m hoping that will at least do away with the anonymous comments anyways.

Doug has helped a lot by throwing away stuff that arrived in the mail unopened.  He has made me realize that I need to hit delete and not read certain eamils.  He doesn’t put up with bullshit and drama.  I, however, sometimes have the tendency to wallow in it.  Especially when someone is twisting the truth, adding events, and using others against me.  I have the very strong desire to point at their falsehoods and double talk.

But I realize now that some people, whether it be mental or just plain meanness, will never admit their transgressions or admit their faults.  So from this day forward I will just simply try to ignore them.  The people who really matter to me know what kind of person I am.  I don’t need to explain myself to them.  Some may think I’ve been whispering to other family members and have insinuated that I have drove a wedge between them.  But, besides Doug, I have only talked about the details of this can worms to my mother and my sister.  I think I am entitled to that.

They accuse me of using this blog to say what I want.  Well yes I do, I use this blog to talk about what’s on my mind, memories that pop up, world events, and a multitude of other things.  All of these things are my memories, my opinions, my outlooks.  They belong to me and I like to share them.  You may not always agree with what I have to say, your memories may be different, and that’s okay.  I do like discussions and  I enjoy a healthy debate.

I will make a better effort to not let the words and actions of others influence me or affect how I react to things around me.  Its hard to lose a friend, all in all I lost a total of 12 friends in the last month.  But if you take into consideration the gossip and backstabbing it really isn’t a loss at all.  You can’t allow negative forces to overtake you.  I have lost enough sleep, I have cried enough tears, and I have spent enough time running the past through my mind.

So let’s be happy, put a smile on our face, and be happy that we have surrounded ourselves with only happy, positive, people.