An obvious, non-apparent truth...

Talk about taking one in the solar plexus, I was thumbing through Jeffrey Gitomer's Little Platinum Book of Cha-Ching when I stumbled across a theme that's well known to me, to the effect that your mental attitude is determined by you and not by others. No surprise there.

Then Gitomer starts talking about life's little frustrations, and about how they keep getting in the way. "You tell yourself that your life will be more complete when your spouse gets his or her act together, when you get a nicer car, a new house, a raise in pay, a new boss, or worse, when you retire."

That made me sort of sit up, because I am prone to this kind of "Things'll be better when..." thinking. Then I read this:

For a long, long time it had seemed to me that I was about to begin real life. But there was always some obstacle in the way, something to be gotten through first, some unfinished business, time still to be served, a debt to be paid. Then life would begin. At last, it dawned on me that these obstacles were my life.
    - Alfred Souza

Now, I'm fortunate in that I haven't been a total pile of "reaction" waiting around for things to get better. On the other hand, there are some improvements in my life that I expect to occur once some obstacle is eliminated, where I haven't given much thought to how, exactly, said obstacle will disappear.

I must raise and maintain my consciousness of this attitude.

Cheers...

Drawn back into the fray...

After declining work multiple times over the past couple of months, I now have a swimmingly overloaded plate for September, so much so that our tentative plans to go to New York have been put on hold. This state of affairs does not take account of some promised work, but promised work is a lot like that second bird in the bush.

According to Mushrooms and Truffles of the Southwest, by Jack S. States, the variety of mushroom I have been calling a member of the Suillus family is starting to look a lot like Lessinum subalpinum, another edible species. The ginormous Lessinum cap I harvested the other day formed the basis for a pot of soup I made today that is currently in the fridge in anticipation of company coming over tomorrow night.

Cheers...