Discipline vs Motivation

I get several self-improvement emails every day.  Some are spiritual or 12-step recovery based and others are of the positive psychology ilk.   Not a lot of new material, mostly they just serve to remind me and reinforce the obvious. 

One email that continues to provide food for thought weeks later is was to go with discipline for doing the next indicated thing such as exercise or other healthy behavior instead of waiting for the motivation to feel like getting exercise or whatever other tasks I am procrastinating on.

This year I have had a rough go on doing the next indicated thing for a variety of reasons including health care problems.  This week, I am going to use discipline to get back to a healthier routine of more meetings and swimming.  I will go to at least 7 meetings and swim at least 2 times this week.

I am grateful for the self-care skills I have learned to help me live a better life today.

Back to School

My roommate Lea has gone back to college to do a vocational stint to become a phlebotomist.  Her first class is on Tuesday.  That is a huge amount of progress from three years ago having the worst case of incomprehensible demoralization I have ever seen on January 1^st 2013.  She has had to overcome more than most due to physical and mental health issues.

I am proud of the progress Lea has made.  Helping her get a life that works is the nicest thing I have ever done for another human being.  Knowing her has made me a better person.

I am grateful to be able to be of service to others today and for getting to share their success with them.   We will do something to celebrate her progress on Monday.  That is new behavior for us.

Modern Logistics

I do a fair amount of shopping on Amazon and have the $100/year Prime membership.  It is cost effective to shop on Amazon compared with driving around checking prices in real life and vastly more secure than giving my credit card to unknown merchants all over the web.

Today I bought some cat medicine.  While writing this Gratitude blog post, I checked prices.  It is the same price on Amazon as at the local Petco store (according the Petco’s 50% ad on the web…cough…cough…BS).  Before deciding on which medication to get, I consulted some cat health sites and read reviews.  The choice of medication was obvious.  It will be here Tuesday.

Amazon Prime purchases used to arrive in 2 days.  In the last month, some Prime purchases have been scheduled for 3ish weeks away.  My guess is they are shipping from China.  It feels like bait and switch scummy that these items are presented as “Prime” and yet shipped via slow boat.  Definitely diluting the Prime brand with small print about arriving in 3 weeks.

/rant off

My thought in writing is how fast products and services are delivered at low cost in my life.  My sister sent a printed document from Australia that got here in less than a week.   Amazon has a same-day delivery service for a large selection of goods for customers living in selected places including the Seattle metro area.

Email blows snail mail out of the water.  Digital downloads shrank Blockbuster movie rentals from custom built stores to Redbox vending machines in a few short years.

My dad was a pilot and got to fly around the world for work in trips lasting up to two weeks.  Now the world comes to me faster than he could make it to Hawaii and back.

I am grateful for modern logistics including Amazon, UPS, FedEx, the USPS, and the web.  They make informed shopping a lot easier for me.

Changing Seasons

It will be Autumn in four days on the 23^rd at 1:21 AM PDT.  I miss the long hours of daylight. 

This year I am going to get a plant light that I will also use to help mitigate Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) and to keep my plants green, lush and thriving through the winter.   I use the front window as a backdrop for my office/computer desk.   The plants are relegated to a dark corner where they do not thrive.  My plant-killing cats don’t help.  A grow light will make for brighter days for all.

I am grateful for the 23° precession of the earth around the sun.  That gives us a reasonable change of seasons which is vital for life as we know it.

Swimming Again

Went swimming tonight for the first time in 8 months and 2 days.  It felt great to be back in the water.  I was in the pool for 25 minutes.   That was a good start on exercise and a bit of an investigation into how well the skin on my burn and legs would handle the 91° water.  It went well. 

Hopefully I will soon be swimming every day.  That was the plan when I got a 90-day unlimited pass the day before I burned my ankle.  Fortunately, the pool was nice enough to put the plan on hold until I commit to restarting the clock on the unlimited plan.  Tonight I paid the single use fee of $5.

I am grateful for getting to go swimming again.  It took a lot of resources to make that happen including help from Lea and a great place to swim.

Refugees

According to Google (matching donar site) the biggest refuge and migrant crisis in Europe, the Middle East and Africa is affecting the most people since WWII.  The people in the videos I saw were healthy young men that made it to Europe.  By extrapolation, the aged, women and children are being left behind.

One of my favorite quotes on war is “war is a place where old men send young men off to die”.  If those declaring war had to do the fighting and dying, there would be a lot less war.

For my entire life, the USA has spent more money on defense than any other country and usually more than the next 20 countries lumped together.  That was not a good investment in long-term well-being for anybody put the owners of the military-congressional-industrial complex that Eisenhower warned about.

The biggest problem in my locality is the construction noise while the siding is being replaced on my 180 unit apartment complex.   That is a first world problem.

I am grateful to have a stable safe peaceful place to live where immigrants to our local community come to work at Microsoft and Amazon as opposed to fleeing for their lives.

A Gorgeous Late Summer Day

It was a perfect 78° in Seattle on Thursday.   For having had the hottest driest summer on record, trees and bushes are amazingly green around Puget Sound.  Cottonwood tree leaves are starting to change to autumn colors.

I am grateful for a gorgeous perfect day, a chance to spend time with others and for trying to be of service to another person in heinous pain (especially grateful it was not me).

A Friend of a Friend With a Resentment

A common 12-step cliché is that ‘having a resentment is like taking poison and expecting someone else to die’.  My friend of a friend (fof) is living (via casual rental) with a man that started smoking heroin again as of last week.   It is not going well.  The fof is determined to fight it out and emerge triumphant over the man and his addiction.  Pure crazy making insanity.  It is not going well and will only get worse as the battle wears on.

They are not asking for advice.   They did ask for a ride after the bus they were on stopped at an intersection proceeding no further after the light refused to allow for a left-turn for half an hour.  I won’t drive around Bellevue in rush hour traffic if I can avoid it.   For them, I got on the road at 4:50.   Two hours later, I completed what is usually a 30 minute drive.

I am grateful for my housing security.  The place I live is not perfect and I will have to take action to rehab the interior with new flooring and paint.  That is small potatoes compared with living with an addict in active addiction after having pre-payed the rent.

Labor Day

Today is Labor Day.  I owe a huge debt of gratitude to those who fought for the rights of workers in the prior to shortly after the turn of the 20^th century resulting in Washington State’s Workmen’s Compensation Act of 1911.  After getting paralyzed on the job in 1981, I have been on workmen’s comp for the last 34 years.  It is the difference between living in a place of my choice or being trapped in subsidized housing with poor medical care.  A huge quality of life difference.

Until now, I did not even know when WC started in the world, USA, or in Washington State.    Here is a nice article on how it came about in Washington.

I am grateful for my Workmen’s Compensation insurance.  My life would not be the same without it.

Happy Labor Day!