YAY GOD

So many times we roll our eyes when someone says we should be grateful – sometimes it’s hard to stay positive in a culture that tells us if we only had THIS we could be happier, and if we didn’t have THAT life would be better – we are bombarded with messages that we don’t have enough, and we are told if we are not HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY 24/7 something is wrong with us, and we had better get more while we still can. Yet when we stop to count our blessings suddenly the day looks brighter.

Many years ago I was complaining to a friend about my job – the conversation went something like this:

“ugh I hate my job!”
“you have a job??”
“um, yeah…”
“wow! And they pay you??”
“um, yeah, but…”
“and how do you get to work?”
“you know I drive to work!”
“you have a car????? AND a license to drive it???”
“well, yes, but…”
“and where do you park the car at night?”
“very funny – I park it in the parking garage at my apartment…”
“you have an APARTMENT????”
“yes, I have an apartment…”
“WOW!! You have a job, a car to get you there, a license to drive the car, and an apartment that is yours to sleep in when you get home!!! Did you have ANY of that six months ago??”
“uh, not exactly…”
“It sounds to me like your life is pretty incredible!!”
“Well, yeah, if you want to look at it THAT way….” 🙂

So… for my friends and readers who are thinking to themselves “damn little to be grateful about that I can see”…or “ugh are you REALLY going to do gratitude for the WHOLE month of November????” I would like to ask a few questions – questions that I ask myself when I find I am taking life for granted. I realize not everyone can answer yes to all of these, but maybe they will be enough to help you start a list of your own… so here goes! The official YAY GOD Gratitude List Starter Kit!!

1) Do you know where you will sleep tonight?
2) Did you eat today? Are chances good that you will eat tomorrow?
3) Do you have indoor plumbing?
4) Do you know where your children are?
5) Is there more than one choice of outfits in your closet/drawers or are you wearing everything you own?
6) Do you have electricity? Heat? Internet? (obviously if you are reading this, at least one of these is a yes!)
7) Do you know how to read? Write?
8) Is there toilet paper in your bathroom? (<- one of my personal favorites – I have not run out of toilet paper in 25 years)
9) Does your spouse/partner know you love them?
10) Do you realize it is never too late to tell them if you are both still breathing (see #9)

May you contemplate your many blessing today, and hang with me as we start the gratitude alphabet tomorrow – maybe you can start an alphabet list of your own!
YAY GOD ❤

Well I see that early in the year I vowed to be more consistent in 2013 than I was in 2012…. so yay me for being so consistent! I was consistent, I was consistent, I was consistent (in the spirit of today’s politicians I am trying the “if you repeat it often enough it is true” method)….

OK, so I wasn’t consistent! But the year isn’t over yet! So here I am again… back for another shot at things! In the interim, I have launched a new free-lance writing business (Beth Hartley Writes, Inc) – no website yet, but there is a domain and email (beth@bethhartleywrites.com) – brochures, rewrites, proofreading, marketing materials, newsletters, ghost writing, web content… hopefull with God’s Grace (and some hard work on my part) I can move toward working the creative side of my brain on a more consistent basis (there’s that word again).

In the meantime, to get back in the swing, gratitude often comes up in November so let’s try to get grateful together – one (blog) per day starting on November 1st – each with a letter of the alphabet – so November 1 will be “A”, November 2 will be “B”, etc – after we get to the 26th, we can either make up four more letters, or wing it for the rest of the month!

Tomorrow, as a pre-exercise, I will take a look at the effect of gratitude on my life…

Everybody ready? Think Olivia Newton-John (you have to be old enough to remember the 80’s)…. let’s get consistent! Consistent! I wanna get consistent! Let me see my blog talk… my blog talk….

Now, where did I put my leg warmers???

As is often the case (at least for me) what started out as a joke, which was intended to be an offset to much unpleasantry, has ended up being a wonderful addition to my life.

I have, for the most part, always managed to stay above the (political) fray on Facebook… until the past election cycle. Against my better judgement, I engaged, and quickly found that there is an endless supply of CRAP on both sides of the aisle – and, that we have mostly all made up our minds, will unlikely change our minds based on someone elses posts, and mostly post to make ourselves feel better. That being said, the fact remains that as the election got closer, I found myself getting more and more agitated (I would say annoyed but that would be a vast understatement).

Now, before I go any further, let me say that I have always been a bit of a talk radio fan, AND I have found that after a few weeks of talk radio, I always find myself driving more aggressively. I don’t always see it as it starts, but about the time I hear myself screaming at some JERK who CAN’T DRIVE FOR GOD’S SAKES, I say… “oh yeah…. time to go back to Christian radio!!” But, I digress….

With vitriol flying in all directions by mid-October, I made the public promise that, WIN OR LOSE, I would post nothing but pictures of fluffy bunnies for two weeks after the election. And so it began…

It has been nearly three months, and I am still finding bunny pictures – some days I have a little “slip” and make political comment, which is ended with “bunny to follow” but I have found the most amazing thing…. pictures of fluffy bunnies put a smile on my face!! Looking for pictures of fluffy bunnies puts a smile on my face!! And, apparently, they are putting smiles on other peoples’ faces as well.

After a few weeks I started seeing comments on other peoples’ walls like “this really makes me mad…. I think I need  Hartley bunny” (and I am happy to oblige!) – and now bunnies are appearing on my Facebook page from other places….

Now I know you are going to say “pffffffffffffffffffft duh Beth… bunnies DO tend to multiply!!” <grin> but I have to tell you, I am really beginning to love the furry little creatures! And it makes me wonder…. maybe if we had more bunnies, and less commentary, everyone’s blood pressure would lower a bit….

So, if you have had a particularly crappy day, try a bunny!! Try more than one! Ping me, I will be happy to share some of mine! And don’t be surprised if one mysteriously (or not so mysteriously) appears on  your page if you are having a bad time of things… maybe one day we’ll see more bunnies and less criticism of others…. who knows – maybe even a “Facebook Bunny Day”…. putting smiles on the faces of others is a nice way to spend an ADD break. How ’bout it?

Bunnies for everybody!!!

I was driving the other day and, while waiting at a red light, found myself behind an average looking car. By the time the light turned green I had surmised that the vehicle belonged to a divorced (or widowed) dad with two sons, a daughter, and a dog, based on the stick figures in the back window. And it got me to thinking (I don’t know about you, but I do some of my best thinking in the car), that here was a guy who I have never met, who I will probably never see again, and I can tell you how many family members he has…why?

It seems to be part of a bigger shift in things….from “tell me about you” to “let me tell you about me!” We have Facebook, we have decals for our cars, we have blogs, we have Pinterest, we have Twitter… all ways to tell people about US without ever really having to listen to anything about anyone else unless we make a conscious decision to do so.

We can create our own (pseudo)celebrity status with our Twitter followers, imagining them hanging on our every word. We have proof of our popularity with the volume of Facebook friends. Heck, on Pinterest we don’t even really have to be bothered with anyone else’s stuff, we can just revel in our own world waiting for others to come discover and agree with our picks.

And I know you have been pacing the floor wondering what I’m having for dinner! Luckily I can snap a pic and have it on my profile before the waiter has left the table!

Welcome to Planet Beth where I can delete anyone who ruffles my feathers! Wow did I need this in grade school….a delete button for every day life!

But…and there’s always a but, isn’t there? How big is my world, really, when it’s all about me? How much do I miss because I simply don’t take the time to stop and listen? When I ask how you are, do I really want to know? Or do I want you to hurry and stop talking so I can tell you how I am?

I have never been big on New Years resolutions, but since it’s January, what the heck, let’s go with it…this year I would like to be a better listener. This year I would like to learn something about YOU every day, something I didn’t know before. This year, I would like to be more open to new ideas and to be more teachable.

When I see you, or meet you for the first time, I hope I can say “hi there, nice to meet you! Please, tell me about YOU” instead of “wow, great to meet you, now let me tell you about ME!!!!” Who knows, I might be able to reconfigure “Planet Beth” into a multi-person environment!

Anyone out there want to come along for the ride? Let’s make 2013 the year of the listener, and see what happens…

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

The new Boeing 787 Dreamliner can carry about 250 passengers. This blog was viewed about 1,600 times in 2012. If it were a Dreamliner, it would take about 6 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

In this season of Thanksgiving it is easy to look around and see what is right in front of us that deserves some gratitude. Recently though, it came to my attention (one of the sane voices in my head finally grabbed the gavel during a “committee” meeting) that there are some thanks that are long overdue…. so this is dedicated to my mom:

Thank you for teaching me how to read maps. I was rather ungracious at the time, but it has saved me over and over and over again. I really like knowing where I am! <grin>

Thank you for driving not only me, but the groom’s best friend to Tennessee on the spur of the moment so that I could stand up for my best friend (we were both 16) who was eloping, when she got married the next day at the Justice of the Peace.

Thank you for staying up late at night, after a hard day on your feet working retail, to sew clothes for me so that I could have the material I wanted on the style I wanted, because “Bethany’s mom sews HER clothes”…. never mind that your retail work was in a children’s clothing store that you OWNED and I had my pick of any top-of-the line clothes in the store.

Thank you for never missing a swim meet.

Thank you for holding down the fort at home during dad’s problems, all the while being treated like a criminal (by me) because I thought he was the hero and you were the mean one.

Thank you for finding a way to give me the best opportunities even though we didn’t have a lot of money (Culver, college, etc)

Thank you for somehow managing to put a family vacation together every year, no matter what.

Thank you for always going the extra mile for holidays, even the ‘smaller’ ones – holiday plates and napkins, greeting cards, etc. My love of holidays comes directly from you.

Thank you for giving me a job, which turned into a career, when I was essentially unemployable.

Thank you for a love of reading.

Thank you for saving my children from a life in the system.

Thank you for teaching me the value of a well-written (and timely) thank-you note (even though this one isn’t so timely).

Thank you for loving me when I was quite unlovable.

Happy Thanksgiving Mom. I love you 🙂