Insidious Adaptation

The sun creeps in and out of the clouds, shining down through the breaks in an otherwise dismal appearance. The ground's saturation, remnants of last night's rainfall. The promise and confirmation off what those dark, lingering clouds mean for the day. All mere backdrops of a billboard to a new sports store opening up in town.  The billboard is nothing spectacular, actually interesting. A few Nebraska Cornhusker fans, oh, and did I mention today is the funeral of Senator and War Hero John McCain start of college football. More specifically, the Nebraska Cornhuskers and their famed return of the prodigal son, Scott Frost. A reminder of leadership as opposed to pompous presentation. A reminder that athletes, no matter how prominent, no matter how talented, follow true leadership. Ask Michael Jordan what he has to say about Phil Jackson.  Leaders, lead.  This isn't about that though, as much as I thew that in for relevancy. For context to the billboard. The young ...

The  flatter  lands outside of the Black Hills are full of culture. A culture that from my perspective and one that was made aware to me by a client I had years ago, is  ultimately  broken. It wasn’t just the free street dance a family of three eastern Nebraskaners wandered into, it wasn’t just the varying Casinos as soon as we entered the South Dakota border, it wasn’t just the faulty, cardboard cutout front of shiny buildings and what was sold as progress in varying areas, or the large BlackHills Gas building that made me take away something important. I wish I could isolate feelings to a single event. It would be great if life worked that way, just wish for one thing to be undone, and then the isolated problem would go away. Like Marty McFly undoing one thing to result in a happy ending. Only, that isn’t life, that isn’t, how does Drake put it, “God’s Plan?”    Life is more intricate than an isolated event, and even though there is typically a peak out a...

Pretty audacious title right? Well, what can I say, living a, "better" life is what everyone is looking for, so might as well cut right to the chase. It is the chase after all, or as I inked on my skin in my early twenty's, "For the pursuit of Happiness..." that we are all active participants in. Even if your race is a passive one-mundane job, spending most time avoiding stress, or distracting from self; we are all in this same race. The only difference is the varying time frames, so we never know who is closer to the finish line until we turn back around and they aren't running anymore. Recently a trip to South Dakota with the family (my wife and daughter of closer to three than two) taught me a most-valuable lesson: to be grateful, yet, I am not responsible for things as much as a part of me says I am.  Gratitude, meaning , " the quality of being thankful; readiness to show appreciation for and to return kindness." T herefore,  being  gr...

"Noooooo!" Screams an almost 3-year old 2-feet from her father's face. "Yes!" Father concedes to the game.  "No daddy!" She is in control now.  "Hey, we are getting this shirt on because I said so." Because, well, I said so, and I am an adult right, so I must know best, father knows best, right?  The game all parents are familiar with, a tug-of-war in words, where a child's ability to take on all possibilities of a situation, including downright refusal, exposes a parent's weakness.  "Look, a butterfly." As she picks her cup up, distracting either herself, or dad, neither of us really know.  "Sweetheart." Dad is calmer now. "We have to get dressed, we don't want to be naked do we?" Yes, rhetorical questioning because, duh, right?  Wrong.  "Daddy, I want milk." She asks, and my first thought is, where is that milk? Only to come right back to, hey, wait a minut...

It was in second grade, Mrs. French had the class line up to go to lunch. The school days seemed longer then, the feel pre-lunch was like a different day compared to after lunch. A problem one may have at 10 AM, a distant memory at 1PM. The lunch line and one's place in it also carried a stress. It wasn't that there was a shortage of food, or that we would receive, "good" or, "bad" seating at lunch, as much as it was simply about placement in the line.  Everyone wanted to be first. Boys were more physical, posturing and pushing to get there. Girls were more scheming. They used friendships and pleasantries to get what what they wanted. Each class in my small-town school had no more than 20 kids, yet, in the tussle, there might as well have been 50. This was not a lengthy line where a position determined when you got your food, for we all went through the line from start to finish in a matter of five minutes. It was the walking down in the order we fought t...

hyphen noun   [   C   ]   US   ​   / ˈhɑɪ·fən / ​ the  mark  (-) used in writing to  join  two words together, or between the  syllables  of a word when it is  divided  at the end of a  line  of  text An amateur writer with so much to learn. So many aspects of writing, of speech, that I am so enamored with that I just want to use them all the time. The hyphen (-) for instance, a continuation of the previous word or thought. To be, like something, the same as something-like.  In the words of Plato: If I put a quote and a picture, am I too considered wise?  "Wise men speak because they have something to say; fools because they have to say something."  Too easy is it these days to simply say something for a large group of people. Too simple is the task to  present behind a keyboard and a screen, when at one time, what we said online would have had us a...

The connection here should be fairly obvious, the message rather clear, however the end game, the product developed in each mind that reads it, may require some adaptation. The innate ability for each person to first, see something that intrigues, click on the link, read the material, and internalize a message says more about what a person was looking for than the answer they found. If I am looking for something to reinforce a bad day, anything can provide the ammo. If I am looking for something to bring me joy, then I can choose to find joy in even the most mundane. If I want to eat something sweet, then, I can determine it to be sweet or not. Try out, "the baby diet," where we eat only what th body knows it needs. Nothing more, nothing less, just enough, and the right stuff. Disclosure: I made that "baby diet" up. Yes, "determine something to be sweet or not," probably something starting to sound a bit heady, but one must consider what sweetness i...