One More Time

Daily writing prompt

What strategies do you use to cope with negative feelings?

I regularly endure negative feelings, but weirdly, I consider myself an optimist.

Dealing with negative feelings, though, had to be, um, dealt with. By the time that I was in my teens, I knew that I tended to be negative. I’ve always felt like an imposter, less capable, less intelligent, less talented, than others give me credit for being. It’s difficult for me to accept praise. I literally cringe from it.

I found answers in books. From them, I evolved some coping mechanisms.

One, I write down the worse that I think can happen from a given situation. Somehow, writing that down like that lays bare my concerns. It helps me visualize that the likelihood of many of my fears are not as great as they loom in my mind. Secondly, writing them down helps me develop insights into how to counter these fears and make them less likely to come about. It also helps me perceive the emotional side, where my negative feelings reside, and the intellectual side, where the wherewithal to learn, try, and succeed, actually resides.

Next, I learned to grit my teeth and accept that I will not succeed at everything I attempt. I will often fail. But if I don’t give up and try again, then I can learn from my mistakes, keep trying, and maybe, just possibly, succeed.

Third, I let myself rail at myself. I do this alone and I’m pretty hard on myself. But after railing, I feel an emotional release. I’m ready to take a deep breath and try again.

Lastly, I let myself procrastinate. I know that probably sounds flimsy as hell, but giving myself time to find the right energy to take things on has proven to help me overcome my fears and worries. Along the way, hand in glove with that, it gives me time to think back on similar situations where I thought I would fail or something bad would happen, but then ended up with a good outcome. That fosters encouragement that maybe this isn’t as bad as I’m making it out to be.

And now, really, lastly, I learned to laugh at myself. To not take myself and my failures or my successes too seriously. I learned how to have fun while trying these things, to admit that I screwed up, to mock myself for screwing up.

That always made it easier to try one…more…time.

March 15, 2025 1

Wenzda’s Wandering Thoughts

“Watch out for those stairs.”

My wife and her friend are telling me this. Going down some steps, I’m wearing the blue and white flat sandals forced on me by my lymphedema wraps around my feet and lower legs. They’re a little clumsy to walk in but after five days, I have the measure of them.

“Be careful,” they tell me, hovering around me like I’m a toddler taking their first steps.

“Watch the snow and ice,” they proclaim as I step outside. “There’s a clearer path over there.”

Their concern strikes me as condescending. I mean, they’re with me for ten minutes; what do they think I’m doing for the other twenty-three hours and fifty minutes of the day?

“Are you okay to drive?” one asks me.

I smile and nod. I mean, I drove over there. I’ve been driving every day with these things on several times per day. Really, their concern says more about them and their fears and worries than it says about me and my condition.

February 12, 2025 6

The Power Dream

I wasn’t sure how to label this dream.

I was in bed. Tucker was beside me. He’d awakened me with a couple claw taps to my hand. This is what he does when he wants me to pet and scratch him at night. I obliged him.

It was 4:50 AM. Dim light was skirting in and around the blinds but the light had an unusual, lemon-green hue. It seemed pixelated with black static. That black static seemed to be closing in on me like a malevolent hand reaching out to seize me.

I wanted to cower under the covers but I felt like I had to get up and check a noise heard elsewhere in the house. Clenching my jaw, I forced myself out of bed.

The black immediately gained mass, pouncing on me like a swarm of angry black insects. I could feel its anger like a growing breeze. Waving it off, I said in my head, “I’m not afraid, you can’t stop me.” I then amended that, “Okay, I am afraid but I’m still not going to let you stop me.”

The black drew down on me and slammed my head like a hurricane wind. I held fast, resisting being pushed back or knocked over. After some seconds of this, I pushed forward toward the door. The black burst apart and vanished.

I woke up. I was partly out of my bed. Surprise held me; “That was a dream?” It seemed so real and intense that I stood there, half out of bed, remembering and thinking before wondering, had there really been a noise? I went to check.

Just in case.

February 11, 2025 1

January 24, 2025 0

Munda’s Wandering Political Thoughts

Maya Angelou wrote On the Pulse of Morning for President Bill Clinton’s 1993 inauguration and read it during the ceremonies. I particularly like several specific lines from the poem.

Lift up your eyes upon
This day breaking for you.
Give birth again
To the dream.

Women, children, men,
Take it into the palms of your hands,
Mold it into the shape of your most
Private need. Sculpt it into
The image of your most public self.
Lift up your hearts
Each new hour holds new chances
For a new beginning.
Do not be wedded forever
To fear, yoked eternally
To brutishness.

Yes, “Do not be wedded forever to fear, yoked enternally to brutishness.”

h/t to Poets.org.

Sometimes we need to look back to look forward. Thank you, Maya Angelou.

January 20, 2025 0

Sa’day’s Wandering Political Thoughts

It’s a gloooommmy glooommmy day here. All rain and descending swirling fog. We’re getting less of it up by my home but the weather down toward the valley floor is icky yuck wet, as a meteorologist would say.

Daily Kos delivered a bright ray through the gloom. Furious Democratic Rep COMPLETELY NUKES Trump’s “Modern McCarthyism” They’re talking about Rep. Melanie Stansbury, NM-D, and her magnificent comments about JD Vance’s bill. As Rep. Stansbury highlights, the bill essentially creates a blacklist of who can’t work for the Federal government, based on their perceived loyalty to PINO-elect Trump.

“Welcome to the new House Committee on Un-American Affairs and the new McCarthyism,” she said. “We have arrived here today with this bill.”

The bill has the support of the Heritage Foundation — the conservative think tank behind the notorious Project 2025 policy plan — which issued a letter of support, Stansbury noted.

Led by Project 2025 and the Heritage Foundation, supported by Trump and his MAGA base, the United States is goose-stepping back into less free, less democratic times. We’ve been led down this path before. The attached video (same one from Daily Kos) has part of Edward R. Murrow’s editorial about McCarthyism in it.

This is no time for men who oppose Senator McCarthy’s methods to keep silent, or for those who approve. We can deny our heritage and our history, but we cannot escape responsibility for the result. There is no way for a citizen of a republic to abdicate his responsibilities. As a nation we have come into our full inheritance at a tender age. We proclaim ourselves, as indeed we are, the defenders of freedom, wherever it continues to exist in the world, but we cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home.

We can substitute Trump or MAGA or Project 2025 or the Heritage Foundation or the GOP for ‘Senator McCarthy’. The policies they pursue and the campaigns they use fit McCarthy’s brand of divisiveness, political repression, and fear-mongering.

Good to know that individuals like Rep. Stansbury has our backs.

December 28, 2024 2

Saturday’s Wandering Thoughts

My computer was struck by one of those scams that declare my computer was infected. Which was BS. Easy enough to spot them because they’re a phishing effort to get you to download something or call someone, and they put multiple popups up. Anyone who has dealt with a true anti-virus program and a real virus knows that’s not how these things go down.

Anyway, I use several browsers on my ‘puter. This one struck Chrome. That made it easier to get rid of. Just a quick and simple reset took care of that. Worse part of that was the time it took to reset, and it signed me out of everything. But those are small struggles compared to the annoyance of having those fake things trying to instill fear in me. See, that’s how they play: trying to make you afraid of what has happened.

Just like at a Trump rally.

October 19, 2024 5

Bravo!

Guess who came to dinner?

Keith captures my thoughts on it. The difference in values and optics between the Republican and Democratic conventions is striking, highlighted by the current and former Presidents appearing and giving rising speeches, along with notables such as Oprah Winfrey, Pete Buttigieg, Wendell Pierce, Josh Shapiro and Andy Bashear, and a performance by John Legend with Sheila E. to introduce Gov. Walz. Then Gov. Walz spoke about true American values of service, community, and inclusion. We’ve worked hard to become inclusive as a nation. The GOP now want to tear it down.

Former President Obama captured the essence in the difference the two parties and their visions. Trump’s MAGA-dominated GOP is interested in outing people, excluding those not like them. They use hate and fear as their tools to manipulate voters. As Barack Obama noted, Kamala Harris and Tim Walz and the Democratic Party will work with you, even if we disagree with you.

And that, friends, is a significant difference.

Vote Blue.