Reload and React

Many days and many times I run out of energy. I am made of energy and everything I do requires energy -  energy to move, energy to dig in, energy to keep going, energy to talk, energy to feel, energy to stay positive, energy to work, energy to play, etc.  ON the downside, it also takes energy to cry, energy to hurt, energy to worry, energy to stress, energy to fret, and energy to be angry.

 Energy is the strength and vitality required for sustained physical or mental activity. Motivation is stored positive energy. Inspiration is the birth of energy. Isolation is my way to protect my energy. Procrastination is the reluctance to expel or use energy.  It’s the source of my vitality, it what animates my life, it’s what fuels my passions, stirs the fires within my soul, it strengthens my desires, is the source of my strength and stamina.  It’s another name for drive-desire-determination. 

So what happens when I am empty? When I’ve made decisions in my life that expel and use more energy than I produce and store?  My gas tank runs dry, my guns have no ammunition, and my reserves are empty.

Life is about balance.  ALWAYS balance.  If I want something different to happen in my life, I have to do something different.  If I want to use energy, I must learn to store and build the same amount of energy. But often I’m unbalanced, using more than I stored, burning my gears, becoming exhausted. 

Love is energy, but that too has to be in balance. If I love more than the amount of love I receive, I’m unbalanced and will burn out.  If I receive more love than I give, I’ll become complacent and take advantage and become dependent on its source.  But, then what happens when that love disappears from my life because it’s been exhausted? Will I have anything stored?

That’s not how energy works.  That’s not how love works. Neither has a shelf life. It’s a force that needs constant motion or movement, it’s always building or breaking, growing or dying.  The more I pour in, the faster and harder I can go – in the present. I can’t store it in now and expect to use it in 20 years. Stored energy needs to be used quickly and soon. Stored love is to be used in the present. 

At some point I have to learn to pour in, to build, to store at the same time, and with the same measure I’m using and consuming. I want energy in my body, so I make decisions in my life that help me build energy on a daily basis to balance out my daily workout routines that require a lot of energy, especially this new routine my boyfriend created for me. I want to be productive at work every day, so I have to make sure I get rest the night before – every day.  If I don’t build and store every day, I won’t be able to work out every day.  If I don’t work out every day, I won’t get the results I need. If I fall asleep at work every day, I will eventually lose that job.

So, don’t forget to reload – everything you will need - every day. But don’t just reload.  Once you’ve got your daily dose, REACT – use the energy you’ve built for the thing you’ve built it for.  Don’t look at me like you don’t know what I’m saying. Some of you just realized you don’t have, or you can’t, or you stopped, or you failed …because you haven’t been reloading your reserves. You’ve been wondering why there’s some emptiness in your life or why something isn’t working. You won’t get to the gym diligently everyday if you’re not being just as diligent in your diet and sleep – everyday. If you’re not loving, respecting, appreciating others, then don’t fucking expect it in return. It’s insane to expect something for nothing, yet we live in a society that believes in that fairy tale. I see it every day. People want healthy fit bodies AND eat pizza while sitting on their asses all day playing video games.  They want money, but not the job required to earn it. If you want energy, build energy.  If you want POSITIVE energy, then put Positive measures into place and be positive, even when the rest of the world is a bitter asshole.

Till next time,

~T.L. Gray

Keeping it Balanced

Balance is the key to just about everything. As Einstein once wrote, “For every action there is an equal, but opposite, reaction.”  As human beings, we get off kilter, off center, off emotionally and off physically when we don’t have balance in every area of our life.  We need our Yin-Yang in balance and operate from a centered position. 

If I don’t eat a balanced diet, I will become unhealthy. Each of our bodies are different and have different responses, metabolisms, and digestive systems.  It is my responsibility to understand my body, and become a good steward of it.  It is my temple. It is my duty to nurture and protect it, and treat it with respect and dignity. While it is perfectly okay to treat it with delicious delights that tantalize my tongue, I must balance it with the nutrition and dietary supplement it needs. I have a slow metabolism and vitamin deficiency.  It is MY responsibility to make sure I eat the right foods to give me energy and nutrition, and take the vitamins I need to keep me healthy.

If I don’t get a balanced workout when I exercise, I will either not see the results I need or see too much results in what I want or don’t want.  My body is a machine and needs constant maintenance, and that is my responsibility.  It’s no one else’s job to get me to workout.  I love encouragement and support, and having a workout partner helps keep me on track, but it comes down to making a choice and seeing it fulfilled.

I have to balance work and play.  If I work too much, that makes me a work-a-holic and neglectful of my body and soul.  If I play too much, I neglect responsibility and accountability.  I must balance the two.  It’s important to have a job or career that gives a sense of purpose and pride and sharpens the skills within me to help me provide for my wants and needs.  It’s also important to chase my dreams and passions. They are important too.  Having a sense of purpose is important. Having drive and passion are important, but I must keep them in balance or they will become the harbingers of destruction or addiction.  Nothing hurts worse than having no purpose.

And then there is love and friendship … and those too must remain in balance. There are extremes from neglectful to obsessive, from fantastical to practical, and from underwhelming to over-bearing. Balance is key.  Love and friendship are important.  Any good relationship must have reciprocal feelings – a balance of give and take.  When there is unbalance, it becomes painful and destructive to both sides. 

Take time and look at life and see if things are in balance. If it’s too good to be true or just underwhelming – then it’s not in balance.  Seek balance in everything.  When someone tells you they are afraid to feel something, afraid to do something, or afraid to commit to something – run because there is no balance and there will be no peace.  They’re vampires – dead things seeking to such the life out of you until you are dead too.  Many people speak balance – but where there is no love, no passion, no drive, no responsibility, no faithfulness, no diligence, or no duty … there is no balance. Try driving on unbalanced tires - that’s how an unbalanced life feels.  I’m seeking balance.

Till next time,

~T.L. Gray

Make Me Laugh

Want to steal my heart? It’s not hard. It’s simple - make me laugh.  Be silly. Make funny faces. Do silly dances. Share silly memes.  Dress up in silly costumes. Stay clever shit.  Look at the bright side. Snort when you laugh. Pee on yourself if necessary, but laugh.

Life is hard. Every day is a struggle to fulfill our responsibilities to ourselves, our friends, our families, our communities, and our world. We grind and grind and grind and grind. It’s our curse. It’s our burden to bear. 

Life is full of struggles and atrocities and sometimes pure evil. I feel all of it down to the very center of my being.  I grieve for the broken, the abused, the neglected, the tortured, the hungry, the homeless, the fatherless, the orphans, the elderly, the sick, the disabled, the forgotten, the battered, the lost, the weak, the addict, the dying, the bullied and the rejected.  I feel the pain, I taste the earth’s salty tears. I’m not blind to them. No, I am very aware of them – and because I feel so deeply and love so passionately, I’m often overwhelmed with grief. 

So, make me laugh.  Show a little kindness. Stand tough, stay firm, fight the good fight, and do what is necessary to protect, to guard, to save, and to defend – but don’t forget to live, to laugh and to love.  Power to love and to laugh in the midst of this cruel world is the greatest power.

Don’t be idealistic.  Don’t be unrealistic. Don’t be a bleeding heart and shut your eyes to the truth to embrace an ideological fairy tale with unrealistic expectations. Leave that shit for the fantasy books.  Make REAL observations. See the UGLY truth. Do the hard shit – so that there can be a REAL solution. 

Rev. Daniel Patrick used to tell me, “Confirmation of new information, without consideration is ignorant and arrogant in the highest order.” Don’t be stupid, face the truth and then find something good among all the ugliness. Be a hero, make me laugh.

Laughing in the moment isn’t denying the pain – it’s facing it - it’s being balanced. The only true thing that can conquer hate is love, loneliness is being friendly, selfishness is by being selfless, being in need is by giving to others and addressing other’s needs, and being sad is by laughing.

Want to steal my heart? Make me laugh.

Till next time,

~T.L. Gray

Budgeting... Our Resources

We should always count the costs before we do anything. Once we’ve made a decision of what we want to do, what we want to accomplish, what goal we want to achieve, we need to count the costs, the true costs – the money, the time, the devotion, the requirements. This requires taking a good, hard, honest look, and then set realistic expectations of what it’s going to take to accomplish what we want to do. Can we afford it? We have to be able to budget our resources or we will find ourselves building a house with no nails, no hammers, and no blueprint. Good intentions never built anything, but have been the root and path to much destruction. Ever heard the phrase the road to hell is paved with good intentions?

In order to create a good budget, we have to take an assessment of what resources are assured, what resources are needed, and then what we are capable of covering. We can’t budget on possibilities. We have to budget on certainties. We can’t buy groceries with hope, promises, or luck. We can only purchase real food with real money.

Let’s get to the foundation. We can’t build the roof of our dreams, hopes, wants or desires, before we’ve set the foundation. This is the hard part. THIS is the part where the budget falls apart for most people. We have to ask ourselves, and then be honest about it, what do we really have to work with? Not what we expect – but the lowest, the base, the minimum of what resources we have. We can’t budget of what we hope we will have. If we work a job that we ‘sometimes’ work overtime, get bonuses, dividends, we CANNOT set our budget on that part of our income. Our budget must be set on our concrete “hard” income based on 40 hours a week NET pay. The MINIMUM of what we bring home every week, two-weeks, month, or year. If we budget on fluid “soft” income, we will find ourselves underwater. Life will make sure of it. If we make $15 and hour, based on 40-hours a week, our gross pay is $600, and our net pay after deductions is about $450.00, our budget isn’t based on $600, but $450.00 – set as the cap, the maximum. NOT the minimum. Live within our means, what we have, not what we expect or hope to have. Don’t spend money we don’t have. 

Don’t use credit cards. If we can’t pay for it, we don’t need it. Learn to say NO.

So many times I’ve tried to help people write and set budgets, only to see them determined to set a budget on money they expected, but couldn’t guarantee. And, I’ve watched them fail time and time again. I’ve done it. It doesn’t work. SOMETHING or someone will always come in to eat that seed right out of our hands. That’s life, that’s what happens. We have to be smart and cover the basics, and then allow room for flexibility, because life happens. Our car will break down, someone will get sick, lightning will strike the tree that falls on our house, a power surge will fry our computer, our kids decide to play the guitar instead of the triangle, we get a flat, we fall and twist our ankle, our kids come home from school with lice and we have to fumigate the whole house, life happens… shit happens. And we have to have some flexibility in our budget to be able to absorb life. When we don’t, we fall, because life is still going to happen whether we set a proper budget or not. How we budget determines how we face that life. If we live from paycheck to paycheck, we’re not living, we’re surviving and life controls and dictates to us what we can and can’t do because we are being reactive instead of proactive.

I have this saying I tell people sometimes: I plan my spontaneity. I schedule my freedom. What I mean is this. I love to be spontaneous, just have a whim to want to do something and then just go and do it, because I felt like it. However, I can’t LIVE like that. I have to buckle down during the week, make a schedule, make a plan, and stick to that plan – I work, workout, take my lunch every day to work, do my laundry, chores, my grocery shopping, schedule my time to get as much productivity done during the work week. It’s hard, it requires a LOT of discipline, devotion, and dedication, and the ability to say no, because life will send things my way in order to disrupt that schedule. I get tired, want to be lazy, and tempted to get off my schedule from family and friends. BUT, keeping to and being faithful to that budgeted schedule gets the things I need done so that when my weekend comes, I am FREE to do what I want, I have the opportunity to be spontaneous, not filled with a bunch of responsibilities I let go during the week. Because I budgeted my time, my money, and my goals to do what was required during the week, I have the resources to do what I want on my weekends. I planned my spontaneity. I scheduled my freedom. With my base pay I schedule to take care of my base needs, so that any bonus or overtime I get, I freely use to spend on my wants and desires.

Let’s take dieting as an example. Everybody’s body is different and requires a different amount of effort and energy to be successful. Some people have good DNA and don’t have to do much in order to stay in shape and filled with the energy they need to live a lifestyle they desire. The majority of us have to work hard in order to maintain a healthy body to enjoy a healthy lifestyle. That’s not fair. But, suck it up buttercup. Life has NEVER been fair. It doesn’t matter what the requirements are for someone else. Throw that shit of your head. Look at yourself, your life, your requirements, your need, and then make budget for YOU. Or don’t.

Listen. I’m not here to tell you how to live your life to MY standards. I’m trying to help you. This budgeting series is for me, to remind me of the goals, plans and dreams I’ve made for myself. It’s reminding me that nothing comes without a cost, that nothing good comes easy. If you listen to what I’m trying to stay, it can help you. But, WE are ultimately the only one that can help us gain the success we want to achieve. We’ve got to want it. We’ve got to be honest with our self about where we are, what we have, what we need, and what we need to do to get where we want to be. Our biggest obstacle is that person staring back us in the mirror. We’ve got to love ourselves enough to do the hard stuff, to say no, to dig in, to do what is necessary to protect and budget our time, our goals, and resources.
 

If necessary, we have to tell some of our friends to go away and leave us alone because they’re vampires that suck the lifeblood out of us - they waste our time, detour our goals, and consume our resources. They depress us with all their woes and problems. They take, but never give. Their lives are ALWAYS filled with drama and one disaster after another. Those are not real friends; they’re opportunists with sad stories and trails of chaos. Good friends know the plans and dreams we’ve made for ourselves. They recognize our needs without having to tell them. They become a support, a cheerleader, a coach, and a guard to help us see the truth of our circumstances, assist us in fulfilling our needs, and being an inspiration for us to achieve our dreams. THAT’s a friend. A friend tells us the truth, even if it hurts our pride, and loves us just as we are, but doesn’t put up with our excuses or bullshit. A real friend isn’t afraid of telling us the hard stuff. They don’t eat our groceries when they see our refrigerator is empty. They don’t use our electricity, or take advantage of our hospitality, while sitting by watching us go without a phone or internet.  They don’t invite us to stay out all night on one of their adventures knowing we have to work the next day, yet make no time to join us in our adventures on our time.

And true friendship requires us being able to be and do the same support for them. Do we encourage our friends and family, or make fun of them every time they try to do something? Do we give them hope, or talk down to them and try to talk them out of the dreams they have? Are we a pessimist and point out the negative to everything, only the negative come out of our mouths even in joking? Or are we an optimist and see the potential in ourselves and our friends and family? Do we think the world is just full of bad people, misery, hate, selfishness, judgment, etc.? Or do we see opportunity, potential, even when we recognize the bad, but also see a way to turn it around for good? Cut the negative bullshit excuses and people out of our lives. They’re toxic to us, to our budgets, to our dreams, to our hopes, and to our success. If we don’t cut this bullshit out of our lives, we can only blame ourselves for our failure.

Tomorrow is the last day of my budget series. I didn’t plan this series out, it’s just happens to be where I am in my own journey at this time. I hope I can tie all these different budgets together had have been able to create a clear path, a clear picture, and inspiration that will help any who read it.

Till next time,

~T.L. Gray

Good Morning, World - 04-28-2014 - Masters of the Universe