Choosing Health, Wealth and Happiness
Life in My Little Blue Kayak is uniquely mine. I have chosen to live my life on my terms. I have chosen to pursue health, wealth and happiness my way. These are pretty broad terms so I had to give some thought as what they meant to me. See the About Me page if interested.
I am not one of those people who work 60+ hours per week and make mega bucks. I don’t belong to a gym or participate in extreme sports. I don’t jet away to exotic locations or have gourmet meals delivered to my home.
For those of you who know me, or have been reading my blog over the last few months, you know I typically keep a positive outlook on life. The glass if ½ full, I look for the good in people and in events. When I share my day with my honey, even my bad days, I find at least 1 or 2 good things to share in order to remember it wasn’t 100% bad. I choose to be positive!
The last few days I have been tired, my nerves have felt a bit frayed and I have been feeling under the weather. When I feel like this, it is all too easy to get sucked into the black hole of negativity. One negative thought leads to another into a downward spiral and one bad feeling leads to another. It gets harder and harder to find the positive in any situation. Do you ever feel like that? Do you always feel like that?
Last week my post Getting Energized was about my learning to appreciate that I am not a people person and recognizing that this is OK!. It also got me thinking, what else gets me energized or saps my energy. Everybody is different and what may give me a burst of oomph my drain you to the point of exhausted tears.
Have you ever noticed how some people are talkers? The get energized by conversation and social engagements. They love parties with lots of people and bounce from group to group, easily mingling and interacting with all. These are people people.
I adopted my dog, Fenway, when she was just 4 months old from a shelter in Eastern Massachusetts. She and her siblings had been abandoned in a box by the side of the road. She will turn 8 next month and is starting to turn grey (like me) but she still thinks she is a puppy! She is 25 pounds of pure joy. Continue reading “20 Lessons My Dog is Teaching Me”
Growing up in Central New York, I am surrounded by farm country. I pass more cows, corn fields and farms than cars on my morning commute. We like to think most of our food is grown by our local farmer who sells his product to the local supermarket. Unless you are shopping at the farmer’s market or have joined a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) your food is grown by GIANT corporations.
Seriously that is what I felt. I could feel myself grinning from ear to ear in what only can be described as pure joy!
In previous posts I have written about being raised in a household with 8 siblings and amazing parents. My friend likes to joke that we were like the Brady Bunch. My parents were raised during the depression and nothing was wasted or squandered. There was never an excess of income in my house, but there was never a shortage of fun either. My parents were raising 9 kids on 1 income and making ends meet the best they could. We didn’t have play dates, fancy vacations, summer camp or ski trips. Honestly I don’t even remember ever having a friend stay over night.
In 2010, I started working as an Occupational Therapist with the elderly population in a skilled nursing facility. Most of my patients were between the ages of 75 to 95 and either lived in the nursing home or were there for short-term rehab with the goal of returning home. My goals for these patients were usually straight forward and involved getting stronger to increase independence or to return home.
I continue to work in a skilled nursing facility however the population of people I work with are much younger and in much worse physical health. I would estimate the average age of the population in my current facility is 65. This is likely the average age, plenty of people are younger than this as well. Think about that for a minute. 65 years old in my opinion is not old. Certainly not old enough to live in a nursing home, requiring 24 hour care. Continue reading “Ditch The Processed S*H*I*T”
People talk about getting ahead financially as if it were a race or a game, but I don’t think that is accurate. A race implies that participants start at a set place and have to cover the same distance. A game has rules and instructions that all players agree to follow in order to reach the stated goal. Financially speaking we clearly don’t all start with a set amount of money in life and we don’t have the same end result in mind to identify the winner. Some people are born with advantages that others can’t even fathom. Advantages that put them far ahead before the gun fires to signal the race has started. If getting ahead financially were a game then some players received the rules in advance while other obtained the instructions in a language they do not understand.
