A Smile And A Wave

The Lyric In Fort Collins (Redefining Art House Cinema)

                           Falter Ego, steel & poly resin sculpture by Erick C Johnson outside the Lyric theater

A Bad Night On Kipling

Competing Against The Tendency Towards Inertia

Every so often I think I need a challenge.  A fresh challenge, an undertaking that will force me to confront the things inside me that keep me from learning new stuff (knowledge, knowledge, knowledge), or trying something new.

Except I don't want a new challenge that is just an excuse to do some cliche'd middle-age-misery challenge such as running a marathon or hiking up a mountain. 

No, the sort of challenge that pops up in my head from time-to-time is more of the "Is it too late for me to learn how to bust a move"? or "How much of a chance do I have of learning the bass guitar competently enough to join a surf guitar group?"

Those are just two examples of what I consider a real challenge. If I challenge myself to think about it further, I'm certain I can come up with a few more..

The Snow Queen

                         Like a meteor lighting up the sky
                                For a few brief 
                                Glorious 
                                Seconds
                                    She graced a few pages 
                                           With delicately crafted 
                                           Fearless words and 
                                           Fearless pictures
                                    Just one book of poetry
                                 Was all it took for the world to see
                                 That this blossoming flower 
                                 Who cut her own life short
                          Was a loss for all humanity
                                             So, so young
                                             She became undone
                                             Only twenty one
                                             

Harder Than It Looks

Everything Is Better Than You Think

Get up, drag yourself to the bathroom sink, splash cold water on your face. 

Squeeze one more shave out of a dull razor, dry off with a towel in need of a wash itself.

Dress in clothes that have seen better days, tie laces in shoes with soles that are barely there.

Make it to work in the nick of time, log-in to your company email and wonder how the hell could so many messages possibly appear overnight.

Then stop. Take a deep breath and clear your head of every distraction, if only for a moment.

Try to recall those days of your youth when you were struggling - really struggling, everyday, with everything.

I'm not talking about the days of your youth when you argued nearly everyday with parents, siblings, or authority figures, or the days of your youth when you hated the world and everything in it.

I'm talking about the days of your youth when you didn't understand why you were you, why you had to endure the overwhelming confusion of adolescence and why no-one understood what was going inside you.

I'm talking about those days when adults would remark "Why don't you grow up" or "You just need to have confidence", as if those things were so easy a caveman could do them.

Remember those days? Those days were real, those days were hell.

But those days are also gone, those days are far, far behind you. Let that fact soak in for a few moments.

Today you are the victor over a past that tried it's best to cripple you at every turn, and whether that was real or imagined does not matter. You won. You may not be in the best possible situation, you may think life is an incessant barrage of crap from every side, but that matters not.

What matters is you are a survivor, in fact, chances are you're more than a survivor, you're a thriver.

If you're reading this then that means you have access to a computer that has access to the internet, and that means you have access to the greatest storehouse of knowledge that has ever existed, the greatest research engine, the greatest educational tool, the most incredible repository of all of mankind's philosophical insights, inspirations and aspirations.

It is the most fantastic, useful thing since, well, ever.

If you suffer from self-doubt, there is an app for that. If you suffer from insecurities, there is an app for that. If you just want to learn relaxation techniques, there's an app for that.  

Free yourself from your own prison - it's now more possible to do that then it has ever been. Using this device you can communicate with people all over the globe who have done that very thing for themselves and are willing to share how they did it with you.

A word of caution though. There are also people who use this tool to prolong their own misery. Avoid those people at all cost.