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A Chicago area girl born and bred, I've lived in Mississippi, Montana, Michigan, and...ten years in the wilds of northeastern Indiana, where I fought the noble fight as a book editor. Now, I'm back in Illinois once more...for good. (At least I intend to make it that way!)

Friday, May 25, 2012

A Thought for Friday...

Life is a lot simpler than most of us make it.

If you think about that for long enough, I bet you'll come up with what to do about that. :-)

More in a bit,
Janny

Thursday, May 24, 2012

Another Thing I Know. :-)

I am not St. Francis.
I may be a combination of a Proverbs 31 woman and the Little Red Hen, however.
"She planteth, she watereth, she weedeth...she gathereth strawberries from the garden to provide good fruits of the earth for her family." 

Not, however, "to feed Brother Rabbit and Sister Squirrel."
Just sayin'. 

A pint has already been picked. Strawberry shortcake is on the horizon!

More later,
Janny

Wednesday, May 23, 2012

Things I Know. First of Many.

I have these pithy thoughts that are sitting patiently at the back of my brain, waiting to be said out loud...some of which people like, some of which people hate.
But, hey, at least they're all mine. :-)

I was thinking of putting them up on Facebook...
...but Facebook isn't the best forum for this kind of thing, either.  
So here they will be, for better or worse. In my sandbox, where I get to make the rules. :-)

They'll come along in no particular order. Except for the first one, which is foundational.

And that first one is...
Your belief of/in, or failure to believe of/in, something does not affect whether it's true.

Or, put another way...
There is such a thing as a "fact."
There is such a thing as truth.
Truth and facts are not flexible, either.
They're not dependent on what you think about them.

Your individual little brain is not the ultimate determinant of anything's validity, and your feelings certainly aren't.
Things aren't "true for you" and "not true for someone else." If something's true, it's true.

If you have gradations and shades of "truth," you don't have truth in the first place. You have opinion.
Opinion is great. Just don't mistake it for a solid foundation of fact.

You need to do more research, dig deeper, and find out whether your opinion is based on truth at all, or if it's nothing more than feeling. 

One of these bases for action and belief is reliable. The other is not. 
You can find this out, if you're brave enough to do so.

Some things to which this applies:
God.
Satan.
Ultimate good, and ultimate evil...and the difference.
Ultimate right, and ultimate wrong. And that they both do, in fact, exist.

All of these things are realities. Kind of like gravity.

You don't have to believe in gravity if you don't want to. You can spend your whole life not believing that gravity is real.

Just don't step out of any tenth-floor windows to defy it. You'll find out that, once you hit the sidewalk, your "belief" in gravity or "non-belief" in it won't determine whether you go splat at the end.

There are lots of other realities in the world, of course.
But the ones mentioned above are pretty much foundational.

You get your head wrapped around the concept that there is truth in the universe, and that it makes sense... and you'll be virtually unstoppable.
You spend too much time with your head wrapped around "relative truth" and trying to determine in every single instance of life what's "true" for you...and you'll die of exhaustion, confusion, and overwhelm before you accomplish anything of value.

Don't make the wrong choice.
And yes, there is a wrong one. Just like there's a right one.

You can absolutely, positively bank on it.

Let's be careful out there.
But let's be smart, too.
And the #1 step in being smart is in realizing that we are not the bosses here. Humanity is wonderful. Complex. Intelligent (at times). Funny. Tragic. Sometimes nasty, sometimes heartbreakingly tender.
But we ain't "all that and a bag of chips."
We aren't, ultimately, in charge of anything.

There's Someone Else ultimately in charge here. He's way bigger, smarter, and more powerful than all of us put together.
You don't have to believe in Him, either.
(Although you may not wish to gamble against going splat for all eternity on that notion. Just sayin'.)
Fortunately, it also doesn't  affect that He believes in you...and has done (and will continue, all your life, to do)  everything He can to make sure you don't go splat for all eternity.

There's a smart choice here. By now, I suspect you know what it is. :-)

So wrap your brain and heart around this for awhile...
There's more to come.

Thoughts?
Janny

Saturday, May 05, 2012

Climbing the Ladder of Success...Braced on the Wrong Building?

It wasn't a banner end of the week around CWC place.
Got a royalty statement recently that was...well...shall we say...less than what I'd hoped for.
The day after one of my freelance contracts dumped me for greener pastures. (Yes, they did pay me, and yes, they didn't damn me with faint praise--but it was a sudden, unexpected "dump" and left me without one of my key income producers of late.)
So instead of "flush with success," I was having one of those times when the writing just feels...flushed.
(You know what I mean.)

BUT...in steps my husband, knight in shining armor, light of my life, yatta, yatta. Smiles at me and says, "You're a working writer."
To which I said, quite suddenly, "I'm sick of being a working writer--I want to be a sitting-back-and-collecting-royalties-writer!"
Uh, yup.
Isn't it a kick when you finally discover your true calling!

Now, how can I make that jump? Preferably yesterday?
(sigh)
Janny

Friday, May 04, 2012

Thought For The Day....



...courtesy of My Prozac Moment on Facebook.
 More later! 
Janny