“Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”
Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland
Since I’m doing intermittent fasting these days, I often have to believe a lot before breakfast since I’m usually eating it around lunchtime.
Sometimes I also have to make impossible decisions before breakfast/lunch…if only there was a word for having those together.
It’s mid-July and we are slowly crawling out of The Year of Living Dangerously Afraid (™).
I’m halfway through my treatments and looking forward to our August week at the beach. In whirlwind of events last week we lost our free house. My wife and sister-in-law spent two days finding another location. Perhaps the last vacancy on the Eastern seaboard. But, we’re going.
Yesterday, in an exciting return to live theater, my one act “Mama at the Window” premiered as a staged reading with Richmond Playwrights Forum and Henrico Theatre Company.
At long last, the stage is coming back. Get out and support your local theater companies that have struggled to survive.
Here at home, the principle of “If you give a mouse a cookie” was in full swing as Friday I pulled a box from under my desk with the question “wonder what’s in here?”
By Saturday evening I had pulled out every box under the desk as well as every box, costume, book, stuffed animal and wrapping paper container out of my office closet. The problem was that, while I got rid of a lot, I still don’t have the space I need.
For example, I have a stack of painted canvases with nowhere to hang them. If your art gallery wants to show some amateur work, hit me up.
Along the way I made some decisions. You know I’ve talked much about decisions and priorities over the last
few weeks and months.
While I was sorting through years worth of accumulated stuff, making decisions about what was really important to keep, reading goals and plans I’d written down thirty years ago, I made three decisions.
More correctly, one decision about three things.
There’s no need to share the details. From my prior writings you may be able to figure it out. Let’s just say I’m setting aside a few things for the remainder of the year.
It was liberating.
Even in the midst of radiation I was able to say “wow, this is what not being overwhelmed feels like.”
I’d encourage you to give it a try.
With the office cleanout (the attic, garage, and shed are still to be done), I’m getting rid of a lot of things that might have meant something at the time I stored them, but that I no longer need to hang onto.
I kept enough to spark some memories, but, to my wife’s dismay, she won’t have enough to write my biography. So, she can make stuff up and make me sound really good.
If the pandemic, and in my personal situation, cancer, have taught us anything, it’s about learning what is really important in life.
I can tell you it’s not boxes of stuff. And, for a season anyway, it’s not a list of projects that consume all of my time.
I’d encourage you to think about doing a similar purge. Do you really need that stuff? Do you really need to be involved with that particular project?
I can’t answer those questions for you because that would only put something back on my own list of projects.
But do it.
Make some decisions. Get rid of some stuff.
I promise you it won’t hurt.
MUSICAL INTERLUDE
WHAT I’M READING
RANDOM LINKS YOU SHOULD READ
Cubans Denounce ‘Misery’ in Biggest Protests in Decades
The New York Times
MIAMI — Shouting “Freedom” and other anti-government slogans, hundreds of Cubans took to the streets in cities around the country on Sunday to protest food and medicine shortages, in a remarkable eruption of discontent not seen in nearly 30 years. Read More.
School ‘Lost Its Way’ To ‘Woke Culture’: Couple Who Donated $1.35 Million To Catholic School Sue For Money Back
Daily Caller
Last week, the Scarpo family filed a 13-count, 45-page lawsuit for their donation to be rescinded, the Tampa Bay Times reported. They said the school has “lost its way” by welcoming a divisive “woke culture” with a focus on “gender identity, human sexuality and pregnancy termination among other hot button issues,” which is being seen in schools across the country. Read More.
ANALYSIS Biden-Harris administration plans to force Americans to fund abortions through the ACA
Live Action
“Abortion is not healthcare and taxpayers should not be subsidizing it,” Sen. Steve Daines (R-Mont.), chair and founder of the Senate Pro-Life Caucus, said last week. “This is another move by President Biden and Secretary Becerra to promote their abortion agenda above following the law, and is even more alarming as Democrats look to increase taxpayer subsidies for Obamacare.” Read More.
Sunday Firesides: Be Not a Consumer of Life
The Art of Manliness
But there are aspects of life that have an intrinsic value that has nothing to do with our personal preferences. It’s not the thing that must shape itself to our desires, but our desires that must shape themselves to it. Read More.
PODCASTS I’M LISTENING TO
BENEDICTION
The Lord bless you and keep you;
the Lord make his face shine on you
and be gracious to you;
the Lord turn his face toward you and give you peace.
Numbers 6:24-26