Since childhood my heart beats passionately for dogs, and it always will.
Category: Question
“Closing The Loop”
Over a decade ago: At my last place of employment we had training seminars fairly regularly, some more valuable and productive than others. One of them stands out specifically, it was called “closing the loop”. I remember my team members and myself being annoyed because we had so much work piling up at the time, that we really ‘did not need’ a three day seminar to put us even further behind with regard to our already existing workload. And it wasn’t until years later, that I truly understood the importance and benefits of this job training…
Present day: How often in everyday life do you find yourself thinking “well that wasn’t thought through to the end”, or something similar? It begins on the personal level. You don’t want to know, how many times I get cross with myself, or my mom for that matter, because we started doing something, without thinking it through to the end first [closing the loop]. While the task or project is in progress, I discover that what I planned on doing won’t work out the way I thought it would.
Take that thought process to the next level. Our ‘detached-from-reality-politicians’ make plans and decisions, that have negative effects on many people. Regrettably, most often those affected people are the ones who struggle for one or more reasons to begin with, and don’t have the means most well-to-do politicians have. Because the thought-loop is not being closed, all too often we find ourselves in unpleasant, challenging circumstances, that may have been avoided.
In closing: What bothers me increasingly is, that decisions, ideas, laws, new processes, etc. are not carefully enough evaluated and thought through to the end. I am thankful, to have had that “closing the loop” job training. Every day, in all different aspects of life, I notice time and again how important, time saving and valuable it is to think things through to the end before [potentially] making avoidable mistakes, that may have negative effects and consequences not only for ourselves, but more importantly for other people.
At Odds
It doesn’t make sense to me, that any one person seeks security or adventure exclusively. Is what you need necessarily what it is you truly want? Allow me to try and explain my conundrum…
If the above mentioned thought is broken down to a personal level, that surely applies to me. Due to Asperger autism and Misophonia, routines, schedules and structure throughout the day create necessary predictability, which in turn makes me feel secure.
At the same time, this security [or hamster wheel, if you want] bores me to tears and I want nothing more, than to break free from what ‘keeps me safe’ and some-form-of-happy. Another example: When I had to move from one apartment to the other, within my mom’s house [don’t ask, the story is annoying], a part of me was excited, because this created new opportunities with regard to decorating and organzing everything [adventure]. Yet it would disturb my need for order and structure [security] because chaos is my worst enemy, well one of them.
My apartment is my fortress and highly valued safe space [security]. Yet, that little whisper deep within tries to convince me, that I’m not ‘the stationary type’. I’d much rather grab Lilly, a few necessities and take off into whichever direction the wind blows me, to stay there however long I like [adventure]. I guess where I am trying to go with this is, that I’m always at odds with myself. And in the end, to answer today’s question, I would have to choose security over adventure. Because venturing out into the world to discover, no matter how much desired, won’t be enjoyable without the above mentioned ‘safety measures’, to get me through the day with the least amount of meltdowns, angry fits and tears. How did the Rolling Stones sing it? “You can’t always get what you want”, and that sure is true. Happy Sunday!!
Small, Positive Changes
Since June 12th, when Lilly moved into my heart and home, my schedule changed slightly. Instead of crawling out of bed around 8:15 AM, the day gets going a bit early at the moment. Due to the toasty summer temperatures currently, I get up around 6:15 AM so we can enjoy our morning walk before it gets too warm for her paws (on the pavement ) and her overall comfort.
Instead of being parked in front of the TV a good part of the evening, we have our late night walkies around 9:30 PM. When we return, I may end up checking out if there’s anything of interest on TV. Most often I doze off anyway. Around 11 PM Lilly wants to turn in for the night and I follow her lead. If I’m not quite tired enough, I read a few pages to help me get sleepy.
These small changes truly have a positive effect. Since beginning the day with fresh air and movement, I feel better and more productive. Also my sleep has improved. All thanks to a little cutie, who won’t accept any excuse to skip one of our excursions ❤🐾
Me, Me, Me
I would have to go with egoism, on an individual level as well as universally. As a whole we’ve grown to be quite self-centered. Take the climate change for instance. We are concerned about the future of young people, yet we are not willing to give up the SUV in the garage, and flying to foreign places for a vacation. Now, speaking for myself, I’ve enjoyed the experience of a cruise, twice! Sometimes it seems, that we ‘preach’ one thing and do the opposite. The greater good is most important, but working towards this common goal only values high, so long as it does not interfer with our personal needs and wishes. I think you get the idea. And back to the personal level, I could do a whole lot better on that front as well. Less ‘me-me-me’ and more focus on the needs and challenges of people in my community. What could I do to help make a difference? Well, I could go to the senior citizen residence and spend time with the elderly, who feel forgotten about and unimportant. I could go to the daycare centers and help out the exhausted and overworked teachers. The list of things to be done is long, but then again, I’d rather spend time with my dog, do craft projects, play Sims 4, etc… Do you see the pattern?
Pessimistic Outlook
To be perfectly blunt, I would have to dig deep to find any excitement for the future. With the climate change, that ridiculous political circus, wars and other conflicts around the globe, as well as the social and economical challenges we face, having a positive outlook takes way more optimism than I can come up with at present.
Country Tunes, Please
⭐️👢🎶 My favorite music genre and great comfort is contemporary American country.
Tell Me Why
Daily writing prompt
If you could host a dinner and anyone you invite was sure to come, who would you invite?
Knowing full well, that this idea would probably backfire on me, I would invite my “enemies” from the past. This includes people from childhood who only pretended to be friends, a couple of teachers who embarrassed me in front of the entire class every chance they had, two guys who claimed to love me but had manipulative, controlling and emotionally abusive ways of “showing their love”. And finally, I would invite a few former co-workers from my last two places of employment, who jointly bullied me, including my immediate supervisors.
Sometimes, distance and time can change your perspective on a situation or problematic encounter. My objective with this dinner invitation would be, to have a conversation with these mentioned people. I would (hopefully) calmy and politely ask them, why they did what they did to me at the time. Or what made them hate me so much? What did I do to them, to deserve such treatment? Especially from teachers and supervisors.
Not certain, that my guests would give me the time of day with regard to the uncomfortable topic of conversation, it would be most important for me to share with them how absolutely horrible they made me feel. I long to tell them how much of an impact these moments/situations/behaviors had on me, some of them still do to this present day. They really should know, and I deserve the chance to tell them. In theory this seems to be a good idea to find closure and make peace with the past. Reality would be quite a different story, especially if it doesn’t work out as imagined. Luckily I will never know.
Buried Deep
Romance. That’s a topic I should steer clear of, actually. Because when you find yourself in a bad relationship with the wrong person, your top priority is how to get out of that situation instead of coming up with sweet and thoughtful ways about how to romance such an undeserving guy.
I guess the well known classic examples would be a Valentine’s Day Card, a candlelight dinner, or a romantic weekend getaway….[don’t ask a single girl 🤣].
In closing, perhaps there is an ounce of romance buried somewhere deep within me. It just takes the right person to re-ignite that romantic spark, and melt away the ice block around my heart.
Downton Abbey fans, do you remember Matthew saying to Mary “I would never be happy with anyone else, as long as you walk the earth”? Followed up by their closed-eyes-kiss at the door [and Mary peeks anyway]. Aw…I love that scene so much 💗 The YouTube clip I found is a bit lengthy, sorry about that, but let’s enjoy it anyway.
Kestrel – Falcon
This certainly is one of my personal favorites. Because it was so well received by you before I gave my blog yet another “do-over”, I wanted to share it one more time. I hope you enjoyed this little musical snack and will have a happy, successful start to your week. Thanks for checking in 🧡
Trivialities & Intricacies 
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