Midnight Goddess

I got the following in my email this morning. I would really love to have serenity in my life. It’s a mindset.

Calmness of mind is one of the beautiful jewels of wisdom. It is the result of long and patient effort in self-control. Its presence is an indication of ripened experience, and of a more than ordinary knowledge of the laws and operations of thought.A person becomes calm in the measure that one understands themselves as a thought evolved being, for such knowledge necessitates the understanding of others as the result of thought, and as one develops a right understanding, and sees more and more clearly the internal relations of things by the action of cause and effect, one ceases to fuss and fume and worry and grieve, and remains poised, steadfast, serene.

The calm person, having learned how to govern themselves, knows how to adapt themselves to others; and they, in turn, reverence their spiritual strength, and feel that they can learn of them and rely upon them. The more tranquil a person becomes, the greater is their success, their influence, their power for good. Even the ordinary trader will find their business prosperity increase as one develops a greater self control and equanimity, for people will always prefer to deal with a person whose demeanor is strongly equable.

The strong, calm person is always loved and revered. They are like a shade-giving tree in a thirsty land, or a sheltering rock in a storm. Who does not love a tranquil heart, a sweet-tempered, balanced life? It does not matter whether it rains or shines, or what changes come to those possessing these blessings, for they are always sweet, serene, and calm. That exquisite poise of character which we call serenity is the last lesson of culture; it is the flowering of life, the fruitage of the soul. It is precious as wisdom, more to be desired than gold, than even fine gold. How insignificant mere money seeking looks in comparison with a serene life - a life that dwells in the ocean of truth, beneath the waves, beyond the reach of tempests, in the eternal calm!

How many people we know who sour their lives, who ruin all that is sweet and beautiful by explosive tempers, who destroy their poise of character, and make bad blood! It is a question whether the great majority of people do not ruin their lives and mar their happiness by lack of self-control flow few people we meet in life who are well-balanced, who have that exquisite poise which is characteristic of the finished character!

James Allen
1864-1912, Author

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Here’s a story that I received in my email this morning. It’s called Love and Loss:

I was lucky. I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation - the Macintosh - a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started?

Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.

I really didn’t know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me - I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.

I didn’t see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT.

I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple’s current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.

I’m pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn’t been fired from Apple.It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith. I’m convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You’ve got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers.

Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking.

Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle.

Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs gave this as his second story of his Commencement Address at Stanford University on June 12, 2005.

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I don’t like to keep things if I don’t have to. I have a few tote boxes with memories of all kinds in them, Office Depot boxes with stuff in them… If I had to pack all the boxes into closets, they would fit in one small two door closet. I would probably still have room in there too. I have a very small wardrobe of old clothes that I wear. Whenever I do my weekly house cleaning, I make sure to get rid of unneeded trash, paper (nothing of importance such as documents), old and/or cheap toys that the kids don’t play (or that I feel is potentially dangerous such as magnets that Jasmine might swallow), old food from the fridge and pantry, and whatever else I don’t need.

Today, I had spent several hours downloading, renaming and organizing about 8 GBs worth of Nintendo DS games that I found on the net. I did that because Mom had gotten Memphis one of the coolest gifts he’s ever gotten: an R4. The R4 allows a gamer to keep a good amount of DS games on one itty bitty card the size of my thumbnail. At last count, Memphis now has a total of over 200 DS games, up from the maybe 10 he had originally. He loves the R4. He’s been playing the DS all day literally. I got a massive headache doing all that for him but it’s so worth it. I was only able to fit about 30 or so games on the card but I saved all 200+ games in a DS folder on my external HD.

I decided to backup all my stuff on my Seagate 150 GB HD. It had about 35+ GBs left of space. I still haven’t touched my 500 GB external HD. It originally came with my computer but suffered a major hardware failure and had to be taken out. I currently have a 750 GB HD in my tower.

After I backed up my stuff (I try to do weekly backups because of my long term experience of losing important data for various reasons), I deleted stuff on the Seagate. It now has almost 60 GBs of space available. I then went ahead and delete a bunch of stuff that I didn’t need from my computer. Amazingly enough I got rid of almost 26 gigs of data. I’m now back down to using 94+ gigs space. I’m absolutely thrilled about that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I’m a geek.

Last night, we had gone to Walmart in Gilroy and bought new shirts and socks for Marty and new socks and panties for me. Marty really needed them because he jacked up the ones he had at work. So today, Marty tossed all his old socks in a bag and I tossed old shirts, panties, and socks in a white bag. It was nice to get rid of them and wear new stuff.

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Ok, this post is a day late. But that’s ok.

I was worried for a few weeks because we’ve been on a tight budget. In fact, we’re behind on several bills. We just barely paid our rent today. Anyway, I wasn’t sure we were going to be able to afford to do anything for Memphis’ 7th birthday. He’s such a sweet, loving, intelligent boy. He can be pissy and demanding sometimes. But all kid have their moments. I didn’t want to disappoint him on his birthday.

I wanted to buy Memphis at least a few things: Nintendogs Dalmation and Friends DS, Buildabear DS, a portable dvd player, Spongebob Season 1, and Wall-E DS. I also wanted to take him to Gilroy Gardens. He had expressed interest in going there since none of us have ever been there before. I had researched it and found out that if we buy the tickets online, it would save us $30. I made the decision to save at least $200 for the gifts.

At the very last minute I was able to save enough for all the gifts. But there was still the question of how to make enough for the Gilroy Gardens trip. However, God was looking out for us. Marty was able to collect enough metal for recyling which would be used to pay for our amusement park trip.

Memphis really wanted a big party like Tyler but one, I didn’t have enough $$$ for that and 2, I don’t deal well being surrounded by a lot of people for a long period of time. I didn’t want to disappoint him which is why I figured taking him to Gilroy Gardens would be a good alternative.

Yesterday was Memphis’ birthday. When Memphis got up and raced to the family room, he looked around the room. I think he was expecting a big party, decorations, a cake, and a ton of presents. I could see a flicker of sadness in his eyes when he realized there was nothing waiting there. I greeted him a happy birthday and gave him hugs and kisses. I told him that when Dad gets back, he can open his presents. He waited anxiously while he slowly ate his breakfast.

Marty then called me up and said that it didn’t take long at Sims and he also found Buildabear DS, the last of the things on my shopping list. When he got home, I quickly wrapped up the gift and dropped it in a large Spongebob bag that held the rest of Memphis’ gifts. When I came out with the bag, Memphis’ eyes grew wide. I snapped a bunch of pictures as Memphis eagerly ripped open his gifts. He was so happy and excited getting all the gifts. I knew that me and Marty did good and that I picked the right ones for Memphis.

After everyone was dressed, we headed to Gilroy Gardens. I had already bought tickets online. It was scorching hot when we got there but there weren’t very many people. I was glad about that and the fact that I made sure me and the kids wore shorts. We didn’t have to wait in line because of the fact that we already bought our  tickets. Plus, there weren’t very many people and we had arrived at 2 pm, 4 hours before the park was going to close for the day.

Gilroy Gardens was pretty cool but I wouldn’t buy season passes. It was interesting looking at the circus trees. I did take a few photos of those. We also got on a few rides that the entire family could get on: Panorama Wheel, Sky Rail, and Backroads. When we had first arrived at the park, we had to walk far just to find the restaurant where we wanted to eat. It wasn’t even a restaurant. It was like a food stand with very few places outside to eat. It was also right next to the water park. A bunch of kids in bathing suits were running around and getting wet. Neither Memphis or Jaz showed any interested in getting wet, thankfully. I did bring towels but they didn’t want to go to the water park. When Marty brought the food over, we tried to sit at the picnic table and eat. But the hamburger tasted nasty. The patty and lettuce were dry and sandwiched between wheat buns. Memphis ate most if not all of his burger. And we kept getting pestered by annoying bees. At one point, a bee landed on my burger and started walking all over. I lost my apetite at that point. That lunch was not worth even half of the $40 we spent on it.

We also checked out a few of the shops. Amazingly enough, Memphis didn’t want to buy anything. I was actually prepared to buy him and Jaz each something. But they didn’t want anything.

We did have fun at Gilroy Gardens. But there was a lot of walking and too much heat involved. I think the worse thing that happened was when we all sat down on a bench to cool off with churros and cold cokes. I wanted to rearrange my bag and nearly had a heart attack when I realized it wasn’t on my shoulder. There was a look of crazed anger in Marty’s eyes as he sped off to the Sky Rail, the ride we were last on. I was panicking because I was afraid of the huge embarassing blowup that I would have to face. I didn’t want this to happen on Memphis’ birthday.

When Marty arrived with no bag, I started to get even more nervous. He told me that a lady over at the other ride said that she saw a black bag hanging from the Panorama Wheel. We looked over and saw my bag hanging on a pole at that ride. I thanked God for looking out for me as I retrieved the bag. I also thanked Marty for not getting mad at me.

We left around 5 pm. Everyone was exhausted from all the heat and walking. Even Memphis wanted to go home. So I wasn’t going to push it. The park was going to close at 6 pm anyway.

When we got home, we just relaxed and Memphis played with his new things. We had a quick and easy dinner of honey BBQ chicken while Memphis had left over pizza. Then we took off for Bart’s house so Marty could get paid for the previous week’s work.

After that, we got home. I baked a chocolate cake that filled the apartment with a sweet aroma. Unfortunately, when I pulled it out, the center was still liquid. So Marty picked up a chocolate cake at Safeway. Memphis put the candles in the cake and Marty lit them up with his torch LOL. We sang Memphis a happy birthday and he blew out the candles. He had made a wish that he can have a puppy. Someday…

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Ok I didn’t have it just now. I had it last Monday when I was all alone in the house. The kids were spending Sunday and Monday nights at Mom’s house so I was getting some much needed time and peace to myself. Of course, naturally I decided to clean house that day to get it over with.

But while I was sitting at the computer that morning, a flood of thoughts came rushing to my head. It happens whenever I have time alone to think. I’m a thinker. There’s no way around that.

Anyway, I realized in that moment that I spent 10+ years bitching, moaning, griping, complaining, whining, regretting… all the negative emotions came flooding to me. I was quite overwhelmed. I realized that I wasted a decade of my life blaming other people and circumstances for all that has gone wrong and continue to go wrong in my life. I was hardly accepting any of the blame myself. I made endless excuses and thought up all kinds of reasons why things haven’t gone my way. Granted, there have been a lot of obstacles in my life. But I haven’t been grateful enough about what I do have such as a great husband who works hard to support us, beautiful intelligent kids who love me dearly and bring me joy every day, the ability to be a stay at home mom to homeschool the kids, a safe place to live in, food to eat, clothes to wear, and some entertainment for all of us. Sure, we don’t have any lavish stuff and we don’t go on vacations. But we have a lot more than people who are down on their luck and are homeless.

I realized that I needed to stop making excuses and blaming other people and circumstances. It’s time for me to do what I need and what to do. Marty needs help with the finances. He has been trying to pay for over $5000 in expenses and bills every month on his own. He needs my help. I want a lot of things… mainly a house of our own, truck and a business for Marty, more clothes for us and the kids, dental and health insurance, money to fund my business venture… As you can see, what I’ve listed aren’t lavish or selfish by any means.

But in order for us to have all those things, I need to start making good steady money every month to help pay for our expenses as well as get all the things that I want for us and the family.

Sooooo… no more excuses.

We got into a huge fight early this morning because Marty had gotten up early to go to a breakfast meeting with the rest of the crew of Master Plumbing. Although the company’s been good to Marty and has helped us greatly in paying for our expenses, it’s greatly hindered him from pursuing his own dreams of running a landscape business. It was a nasty verbal fight that ended in me crying and him not going to the breakfast meeting. I feel real bad because I know he really wanted to go. He’s starving for friendship. He has no other friends other than me, Sean, and Matt from work.

So I decided not to ride his ass about this landscaping business. I’ll help him any way I can in pursuing his dreams. But I won’t bitch at him about it anymore. I’m a fuckin’ hypocrite. After all, I haven’t been helping Marty pay the bills. He’s been carrying it all on his shoulders and he’s under a lot of stress. The best I can do for him is to kick my own ass and pursue what I want and need to get for our family.

I also complain a lot about my extra weight. I know I’m not fat. But I don’t even know how much I weigh. The last time I checked was more than a year ago in WA and I was 120 lbs. I’m probably around that weight now, give or take a few pounds. So I downloaded a DVD of workout videos collectively known as Hip Hop Abs. It was recommended on WWL. I burned it to a DVD late last night and willed myself to try out the first video today. It was actually a lot of fun. The guy leading the video is a pretty cute, ripped black guy but I believe he’s gay. He move’s too female-sexy not to be. But that’s ok. Gay guys are cool. Anyway, the video was high impact, high energy. I was definitely working up a sweat but having lots of fun dancing to the music. I just need to do this once a day. I know I’ll lose at least 10 lbs doing it by the time I turn 29 in October. That’s only a few months away.

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