Am I Embarrassed

Am I embarrassed when I ask for a comment and don't get one?

Yes, I am.

I am also left wanting.

But I'd rather you didn't comment then to ignore me completely.

Which do you think is the very

• worst of my posts?

• best of my posts?

use "comments" for response

I am:

• willing to consider what the next best step in my life is.
• willing to identify a source of resentment, fear, sadness or resentment in my life.
• willing to keep an eye on the good, better, and best.
• willing to describe why a situation or condition is of concern to me.
• ready to learn to become more aware of the limits of my power within the situation.
• ready and willing to learn to remember how I have dealt with or tried to deal with a similar situation.
• willing to count my my resources and my sources of help, including the best within me.
• willing to remember the healing powers working within me and around me.
• willing to consider the nature of a healing I have seen or experienced.
• ready, willing, and able to be more honest with myself.
• willing to accept the reality of health and wholesome wholeness.
• ready to practice knowing that there is help available to me.
• ready and willing to practice availing myself of that help.
• willing to know myself better.
• ready to learn to know more about myself.
• ready, and willing to learn to know the kinds of problems I have tended to have.
• ready, willing, and able to begin to describe a problem I still have.
• willing to consider a character trait of mine.
• ready to learn to consider a shortcoming of mine.
• willing to reconsider the nature of my motive.
• ready willing and able to practice admitting a wrong of mine no matter its source.
• willing to take appropriate pride in a better character trait of mine.
• willing to better know how to right a wrong.
• good for me.

Is it Serious?

Lives there a woman who suffered violence as a little girl?
Can it be that she does not know the nature of that violence?
Is it possible that, that happening is effecting her life today?

Is it valuable to be able to articulate ones feelings?
Is it valuable to be able to formulate ones resentments?
Is it valuable to experience ones rage?
How did anger get here?

What does it mean to get through ones trauma?
What might it mean to discover ones true feelings?

What have you paid to get your bit of life?

What does it mean to trust the rightness of life?
Does the baby trust in the rightness of life?

When may loneliness begin?
Who has been responsive to your signals?
Who has noted your pain?

Does a baby benefit by being held and moved about?
How is your need for touch satisfied?

Is there a feeling of abandonment?
How is it expressed?
Have you heard a baby express it?

Can it be true that nature does not make clear signals that someone is being tortured unless it is the case?
Is it precisely as serious as it sounds.

Terrorists

If you are an America, as I am.
If you believe that we still have a republic, as I do.
If you believe that we have had pretensions to democracy, as I do.
Then, can you think of any way we can reasonably claim that we are not terrorists?

Travel Decision

This travel decision has turned out to be a greater challenge than I expected.
Once, when we were children, I informed my sister that I had a headache, she, showing a fine grasp on the situation, responded, "Oh, Richard, it's all in your head." It is all in my head and uncomfortable.

There are some facts to go on:
1. I want to get "on the road" now. Very few preparations remain, if one discounts reservations, tickets, visas, and the like.
2. I can afford to spend only about $60 a day or $1800 a month at home or abroad.
3. I know I can travel and live comfortably enough in most of the world within that price-range.
4. I know that there are parts of the world in which I cannot travel comfortably within that price-range. Those parts include Japan, Western Europe, and the good old U.S. of A.
5. I manage to live well enough here at Camp Thunderbird on my available $1800 and put aside a bit!
6. Keeping to a pre-arranged itinerary is neither easy nor satisfying for me.

Some other points of information are:
1. Kevin, a friend who knows Thailand, would like to meet me there in October. Great!
2. My sister, Gerry, has offered to put me in contact with a relative in Norway who is a historian interested in our family history. Great!
3. Rex, a good friend whose birthday is close to mine has invited me to stay at his place for a week in mid-month ant the time of his birthday. No gift expected and we'd be able to explore a bit of the State of Mississippi. Great!
4. Top travel "destinations" of the moment include: China, Germany, Colombia, Sweden, Uruguay, Switzerland, and Japan.
5. I'm thinking that traveling around Us for a time briefly touching base with family and friends in about 10 locations. I wonder what my brother, Dorian, is doing.
6. I want to travel more restfully, in shorter hops, with more companionship than I have in recent years.

Can I do it all? Can I start?
Yes, it is all about me.

Damn!

I seems I used to enjoy my travel with a kind of good old "I don't' give a damn!" attitude or a "Damn the torpedoes and full speed ahead!" attitude. It was my 'thought.'
Now I am more concerned with 'true motives,' even though I'm not sure what they are.

I've just been practicing some conscious inner dialoguing. Inner dialoguing is fairly new to me. I used to want to talk things out with others. The less sure I was of what those 'things' were, the more I wanted to talk them out; usually. I still like to talk things out. But I've noticed that others are not always interested in all of my problems. They seem most uninterested I discussing those problems I had yet tried to identify. In fact, I didn't want to talk to myself about them.

You have thoughts about talking to ones self? So did my father. He said talking to oneself was fine and often useful. He did say that it should be kept within certain limits. He said that it was okay to talk aloud; that it was eve okay to answer oneself. He did caution me to take special note when I caught myself saying "Huh?" in these conversations.

Now, I have been doing a pretty good job of taking care of business, of myself, and, on occasion, of others, for well over half a century. Even so, a guy can still learn.
Just now, during a little inner dialoguing, I think I discovered some motivation for my lack of travel decisiveness.
Maybe it's better to say I discovered obstructions to decision or obstructing motives. Anyway, I discovered that incompletely acknowledged fear of spending too much money might have been slowing my decision a bit. However, other motives loomed larger. More fear. It seems that I have feared that I will drive too far, too long and too much. I feared that too much driving would lead to too little fun and too much fatigue. I have feared that I would spend too much time on buses and so expose myself to pain, fatigue, and boredom. I have unconsciously feared that I would book unpleasantly long flights. Excellent earphones, great movies and decent food, even in business class do make long hours in the air fun. In the recent decade my ankles swell. I once thought it good to have swell ankles. It's a minor fear, but I was also reminded that long layovers at airports are downers for me.

My dialogue led me to identify some problems and potential problems. What is an early step to solving a problem?
Now I am saying, mostly to myself:
I am willing to arrange to drive less than five hours in a day.
I am wiling to arrange to travel less than five ours on a bus. )An exception might be on one of those wonderful buses found in southeastern South America which provide completely horizontal full length sleeping accommodations with good fresh coffee in the morning.)
I am willing to plan to avoid any flight of more than 9 hours. (that doesn't provide the sleeping accommodations of those excellent SA buses)
I am willing to avoid airport layovers of more than two hours. I'll be very open to taking a hotel and enjoying the city and country of that layover so as to spend less than two hours that airport.

I think that this talking out has been a help.

Travel Decisions?

These travel decisions are not easy.
My '97 Astro Van is still in pretty good shape It's in the garage now being kept in 800 $ good shape. I can sleep in it. I put a futon mattress on the floor. On a driving trip I'll sleep in it about half the time. I imagine that each night in the Van adds 50 + $ to the gas budget. It is also my escape from a noisy motel or hotel.

So, I could start this trip in the Astro. I probably would not drive it to Finland or Turkey.

What I have done is start driving and then sell the vehicle at the shore or airport to be rid of an encumbrance and to finance my onward journey. I've sold two vehicles in Miami and one in Tegucigalpa.

Maybe someone going 'my way' would drive. Loves come and go. My love of driving is going.

I suspect that a lot of the Astro comes from Japan. Maybe I could drive it there. Driving to Japan may nor be a good idea, but going to Japan sounds very good at the moment. Just watched and old movie about American baseball players in Japan. I don't play baseball, but I can see myself at a quiet country inn with easy access to a hot water spa. I see myself eating wit a fork.

I still have not decided in which direction, or to which destination I will turn my first step. I am putting obstacles in my own way. I am a bit farther from transportation centers here, than others are elsewhere. Which thought suggests that I am feeling sorry for myself for the slight added difficulty and expense of beginning a trip from here. My goodness. Weaknesses and fears of age and fixed income are raising their ugly heads.

I have begun to put a few things in a suitcase.