Watching For It

Like most people, I go through peaks and valleys from week to week, month to month. Unlike some, I am fortunate that the peaks far outnumber the valleys for me. I sincerely believe that part of that is because I try and focus on the positive. Negative people and thoughts bring me down, so I try and minimize them in my sphere. I've been known to hide Facebook friends who are continually negative or crass. People griping in person are hard enough, I don't need to see it on social media. 

Anyway, this week on several occasions (usually while walking the dog) I was overcome by feelings of gratitude for the direction my life is going. By this I mean the people I call friends, my beautiful wife and kids, my job and my church. A few encounters I had this week served as reminders.

  • On Monday, I went before the Village of Wales Board for my monthly poetry reading. This is a great privilege for me - something I look forward to. This appointment to Poet Laureate was brought forth by a poet friend/contact of mine. 
  • Tuesday, I went back out to Wales, across the street from the Village Hall at Mama D's Coffee. This was to meet with a (relatively) new friend who asked to meet and talk about writing. She would like to write her memoir and wanted to pick my brain. We talked a little writing and a lot
    about our upbringing and our pasts...for two and a half hours. Her story was heartbreaking and redemptive all at the same time. All it took was for me to show up. And it made me realize how far I've come with recognizing that we need to lean into people's lives to make our own richer.
  • On Thursday I had coffee with my normal Thursday guys at Cafe De Arts. These outings sometimes start slow, but by the end of them I am always disappointed that we have to leave. We talk about deep topics on God, culture, politics and how we are supposed to interact with the world. Great guys who challenge me to think and press my faith to new levels. Oh, and coffee that rockets me through my morning.
  • I never cease to be amazed by the fact that I have four books to my credit. This week I saw a preview of my cover for my forthcoming chapbook, On a Road (10/21/2018) and it just kind of hit me that here I am doing what I'd always wanted to do, and low and behold, it's actually working. I still tell people I'm just kind of making it up as I go, because I am. I don't know what the hell I'm doing, but it sure is fun.
  • Last week was spent training a new employee. With the recent retirement of my boss and the moving on of another employee, our office was decimated to half the staff it once was. At first it was initially incredibly stressful and overwhelming. Recently though, I have come to realize that I am as happy as I've been at the County in a long time. We are developing a new GIS team, a new rapport and an overall healthier work environment. What I once feared and dreaded has turned out to be all good.
  • The people in my church community never cease to amaze me. Always watching out for one another. This week when my mom was admitted to the hospital, they made a point to pray for her at a Wednesday meeting. I've been to all sizes of church, but the one that makes me feel the most connected to other people of faith is this one. Small, house based communities of people who care about one another and the world they live in trying to make a difference.
So, sorry this post was so happily positive, but like I said, I try and focus on what's right in my life, because there's enough wrong out there without me adding to it.

Keep your eyes open for the good in your week, this week. Because it's out there.

Blogging off...

Comments

Jo Balistreri said…
Keep it coming, Jim.

Postive attracts positive. I'm with you.
June 10, 2018 at 6:10 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

National Poetry Month: Issue 18

In a rush, a poem from Richard Brautigan from,  The Pill Versus the Springhill Mine Disaster. A Good-Talking Candle                    by Richard Brautigan I had a good-talking candle last night in my bedroom. I was very tired but I wanted somebody to be with me,    so I lit a candle. and listened to its comfortable voice of light until I was asleep. Blogging off...
Read more

New Chapters

Image
 As many of you know I retired last week after almost 27 years at Waukesha County. It was a bit of a shock to some, in part because I am only 61. Nevertheless I'd given it much thought and talked it through with my family and determined it was time. I wanted to get out while I am healthy and perhaps more specifically just do something different. I am lucky enough to say I've loved my work over the past 37 years. GIS and mapping has been my passion since college and I was fortunate enough to get paid to do something I loved.  I'll be honest, while I looked forward to the date of retirement, I was not looking forward to the celebration. Like my daughter, who is more like me than not, I do not like being in the spotlight. While I've become more comfortable being in front of people in part because of my writing and its related promotion and readings, deep down I'm still an introvert with extrovert flares, as they say. But dreading it as I did, it turned out to be a spec...
Read more

Local Level Need

Image
A week and a half into retirement and I'm here to report that life is good on the other side. I've kept fairly busy so far, in fact when my wife was questioned by friends on "how Jim's retirement is going," she said, "He hasn't sat down." I think I'm still in the manic, must-get-stuff-done mode that happens when people get a week off of work. Gotta cram it all in. Well, I am starting to adjust to the fact that it will all be there tomorrow and next week, and if I don't get to all of it today, it's really okay. It's been a strange adjustment for sure, but one that I am beginning to appreciate more and more.  Before I decided to retire, one of the things I wanted to commit to was a regular stint of volunteer work. When I mentioned it to a friend who works for Frieden's Food Pantry, he suggested I look into helping in one of their four locations. They vary in the number of families that they serve, but they turn over a huge amount o...
Read more