You can’t build on regret

You can’t build on regret but you can learn from it. So learn from the past, prepare for the future, but live in the moment….by the way…if you are doing ANYTHING produtive and meaningful with your life, there are a lot more regrets along the way so don’t waste your time on them. 

....and don't forget to be happy....like this guy...

Don’t doubt yourself

Don’t doubt yourself because you’ll be taking work away from the people who don’t like you. That’s their job.

I promise

How humiliating would this be?

It’s never too late to be what you might have been because what or who you are now or what you were in the past doesn’t have a damn thing to do with who can become later on.

It’s never too late to be what you might have been because what or who you are now or what you were in the past doesn’t have a damn thing to do with who can become later on.   

When I was young I wanted to be a writer and a college graduate. But I was a poor and a high school dropout and for me, back then, becoming those two things was a larger than life dream. Grand things.

You have to aim high and when you are as broke and busted as I was when I was young, there’s no difference between dreaming about having a decent place to live and being a nuclear scientist. They both see impossible. But I held on to my dreams and my plans.

 I gave up hope more than once, especially as I neared my 30s. But I kept dreaming and tried every possible angle to put those dream to work but most of those schemes failed.  I kept trying. I was aiming high but I figured that if I failed, I failed greatly. As my idol Robert F. Kennedy said   “Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.”

Keep trying because the greatest failure is not to try.

One day, I realize that the special things that we want to achieve in our lives, no matter what they are, are going to take time. I think that’s because as we get older we develop a better grasp on time, of understanding what it is. I published my first book at 43 and I graduated from college at 57.

I write full time and I love what I do. I absolutely love what I do. I’m a lucky man. However I will never be a successful writer and I can live with that. I’d rather be a failure in something that I love than a success in something that I hate.  I am a lucky man.

It’s never too late to be what you might have been. How long it takes you to get there doesn’t matter.

it’s all about unlearning fear

For those of us on a spiritual journey, it’s all about unlearning fear.  Unlearning fear and replacing it with the love it took away, the love and the happiness and the good nature that we are born with.  

Of course that’s easier said than done. You gotta have faith that you’ll win. Faith in yourself, faith in the power of goodness.

A childhood in foster care has left me filled with fear, and anger and hate and suspicion but with all of that I’m one of the lucky ones.  It hasn’t killed me. But it has killed others and it continues to kill them, by the thousands every year. Of the 20,000 kids who will age-out of foster care this year, about half will fall to homelessness, jail, drug addiction, lack of opportunity, lack of education, teenage pregnancy, no support on any front and it all takes its toll.

Still, I struggle every day to lose the fear and it is an epic war within my soul and honestly, I lose more battles than I win and it’s discouraging and I have never known peace.       

Do you know the saying “Be kind, for everyone you meet is a fighting hard battle”?

Well, it’s like that.

But I keep trying.  I know the verse from somewhere in the bible that reads “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the course, I have kept the faith”

When my time is done that’s what I want to be able to say about myself. I unlearned hate. I never allowed fear to win. I fought the good fight.

We, you and I, are fellow traveler, so I’ll let you know how it goes and I wish you nothing but victory in your own struggle.

ee cumming .................

Positive!

Learn to overlook things

Learn to overlook things. Make a practice of it. Trust me on this, I spent a life time shooting myself in the foot or placing the same damn foot in my mouth because of my inability not to overlook the glaring stupid, the lies, the crass and hypocrisy that is much a part of daily life.  

The stupid, the crass, the lair and the hypocrite will not, I assure you, appreciate your pointing out the obvious. Believe me, you are not the only one who sees but by not overlooking, you’ll be the only one bringing pointing it out and the only one making enemies.        

It’s not our job to decide the way a person wants to live their live. Overlook it, mind your affair and be happy with that.  

.....and remember to have fun

What we see

What we see, in all things, depends mainly on what we look for. So look for the good, the positive, and the fun. It’s not always easy to see but it’s good for your state of mind and the health of your soul.  

Action Vs. Intention

We become what we believe so believe that life is good and worth living and your belief will help create the fact.  In that same vein, we are what we do, not what we say will we do. So although it is human nature to judge ourselves by our intentions and other by their behavior, they, the others, are judging us by the same standards.   

.........................and remember to have fun

  

The case for living a thinking persons life

“Modern life means democracy, democracy means freeing intelligence for independent effectivenessthe emancipation of mind as an individual organ to do its own work. We naturally associate democracy, to be sure, with freedom of action, but freedom of action without freed capacity of thought behind it is only chaos” John Dewy

 “The use of our intelligence quite properly gives us pleasure. In this respect the brain is like a muscle. When we think well, we feel good. Understanding is a kind of ecstasy.”   Carl Sagan

Time

Here’s something to remember; as much as we sometimes need it to be true, God is not on our time clock. But have faith. As hard as it is, have faith.  Faith in God includes faith in His timing. So hold on. No matter how bad it gets, hold on. It will all work out. You're going to be just fine. 

Give this kid an A

This cracked me up

How I feel when I have to edit something I wrote and how I feel after I'm finished with it

Ok

Negative people

Negative people….and they are EVERYWHERE…..are usually bastions of mediocrity and inferiority who are determined to drag superior, happy people down to their level.  Here’s some good advice, when you recognize a negative run like hell. Don’t walk, run. Distance yourself from the negative in this life and watch all the beautiful things that will happen when you do.  

Get it right

Young people, here’s how the game works; you always get another chance to get it right. That’s what tomorrow is. It’s a second chance to start over, to get it right.

And it’s okay not to get it right.  The first time or the second time. It’s okay not to get it right. What counts is that you recognize that you didn’t get it right.

Give yourself a break, you’re young. You learn as you go and more often than not you’re going to learn by your goof up’s and you have a lot more life in front of you and a lot of goof up’s to come along.

And that’s okay. Just keep going.  There is no rule that says you have to have it all figured out to move ahead.  

Try this; every day do something that will create a better tomorrow, to create chance to get it right. That’s the best you can do. That’s how the game works.  

Foster Care news and Updates: Read you're way out

Foster Care news and Updates: Read you're way out: “Books require titles; reading them doesn't” ― Alan Moore, Lost Girls

What Box?

At some point in this life, someone who doesn’t know you well is going to say to you “Think outside the box.”

Here’s the answer to that……whoever says that to you is showing you the limits of their own thinking. “The box” is just a metaphor for people who need a defined space to think creatively. Don’t be one of those guys.

Don’t limit your vision.  Think like there is no box at all.

Case closed

Tis written in the stars

"It's written in the stars"

No it isn't. That's not true at all. Nothing is written in the stars. Their just stars. That's all they are. 

Your destiny isn't written there.

No one's destiny is written anywhere except in the mind of God who has given you free will.....in other words the good Lord gave you a mind to use to determine your own path, to decide your own destiny.

You, and only you, have control over that.

“The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves.”

—	William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar

Patience

We don’t have patience and the ability to wait for something isn’t patience. It’s just the ability to wait for something.

Patience is a form of style, a show of class that one learns because patience is how we act while we’re waiting for something.   

“Who am I?”.

There is no answer to the question “Who am I?”.

In fact, because it has no answer, it isn’t even a question at all.

Instead, think of it as a device. A wonderful, free device and with it you can explore and learn and grow and change.

What it takes to be a hero

That's what it takes to be a hero, a little gem of innocence inside you that makes you want to believe that there still exists a right and wrong that decency will somehow triumph in the end. -- Lise Hand, describing Irish journalist Veronica Guerin, who was killed as a result of her investigations of Irish organized crime.