Category: Happy

The Day the Internet Died

Posted on by Kathryn Atkins

reason 8 Fresh EyesIn a way, I envied her.  She didn’t own a computer. She had a cell phone for three months but never used it.  She told her kids to take it back.  She had time to read and do crafts, take long walks, and go to lunch with friends.  She attended live lectures, went to the library, enjoyed museums, picnics at the park, and face-to-face conversations with her grandchildren, who squirmed much of the time, unused to talking without a keyboard and a computer screen as part of the interaction. She could see the kids’ expressions, touch their knees or hands, and help them understand social interplay the old-fashioned way.

Mrs. Manfred didn’t need a computer and didn’t use email or instant messages. She wrote notes to people, did her banking inside the bank, visited friends, and had the bridge club at her house once a month. The book club was on the third Thursday of the month, bridge club on the second Tuesday, and baby quilters on the fourth Friday.  Mrs.M. volunteered at the local hospital stuffing envelopes and helping the cooks put little white cups on the trays for the patients.  She wore a hairnet sometimes, and gloves and an apron for other jobs.  The apron came down to the floor, and the extra small gloves hung off her tiny hands like a four-year-old dressing up in her mom’s clothes. The hairnet was a big blue surgical hat. The hospital purchased them at a huge discount in the tens of thousands, making Mrs. M look like a cross between a blue mushroom, and a very short chef. Her died red hair poked out from under the blue hat, clown style.

She laughed easily. She had a razor-sharp mind and a heart of expanding elastic, especially for children.  Her favorite volunteer work was reading to kids in hospitals, schools, churches, and libraries.  It was becoming a lost art, and she cried when the safety laws required that she wear a badge, get fingerprinted, TB tested, and background checked all so she could have an “aide” in the room while she read to the kids. 

“All I want to do is entertain and teach the children,” she said. The laws had changed, the world had changed, the people had changed.  It became too much of a hassle for her and eventually, she had to cut way back because they couldn’t find the “aide” person. In fact, when she gave up driving for Lent one year, her daughter couldn’t get her to the hospitals, and she had to stop for a few days. It was a loss for the kids and left a huge void in Mrs. M’s wonderfully abundant heart.

When cell phones stopped working, and the internet coughed and faded for a 24 hour period. Mrs. Manfred’s life did not change at all, except the people in the retirement home came down to the central meeting room in a trickle at first and then in a steady stream. Finally, they arrived in a torrent, and the room was awash in blue hairs so that the chattering and laughing brought life back into the home that usually served as the quiet waiting area for an appointment with Death. New acquaintances became fast friends. The internet could stay broken forever as far as they were concerned.

Alas, the internet came back on the next day, and Death and his friend Depression resumed their march. The spell was broken, which ironically spelled a loss for humanity.

Mrs. M. resumed her rounds, but with a little more fervor. She would try very hard to keep things as they had always been. No cell phones. No internet. Just her and her red hair. I envied her. Yes, I did.

Another Way to Write a Story

Another Way to Write a Story

Posted on by Kathryn Atkins

Picture a stick figure in your mind’s eye. Got it?

The stick figure portrays a unique way to shape a story, poem, or song. Anything creative. Starting at the feet…create from the feet up to the head. One caveat: the left foot is the unhappy foot, the right foot is the happy one.

Let’s go.

Feet = Setup
Knees = Propelling
Hips= Escalation
Heart = Climax
Head = Resolution

[Setup.] A person of unknown origins walks along a curb in Any City. They are young. No old. Rich. No, poor. Doesn’t matter. Right foot moves. Left foot sloshes through the dirty gutter water. Step, sploosh, step, sploosh, step, sploosh.

[Propelling.] A truck rolls by. Drench sounds ensue. Our stick guy drips, shivers. Curses. The wind whips the chill down into his fleshless, skinny bones.

[Escalation:] The twigs that form our main character’s right arm break, the elbow crunches, the sticks snap as both the happy and unhappy feet lose traction and slip on oily city grime. Passersby pass by, worried that getting involved would get them overinvolved.

[Climax:] An Any-State Highway Patrol Officer sees our broken stick figure. The patrolman’s biceps bulge as he slows his off-duty cycle to a halt. “Hello,” he says. “Need help?”

Now the passersby cease passing by and stop. Phone cameras roll–as if that helps. The Good Samaritan Highway Patrol lifts our hapless hero from the gutter and whisks them to a hospital. News-at-Seven carries the video story from all angles, thanks.

[Resolution:] Everyone rejoices. The news is good that day… for a change.

:grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:

My Dog

Posted on by Kathryn Atkins

How do you equate dogs and people? I don’t know. In fact, I don’t think you do. Or you’re not supposed to, anyway.


Pepper was a great person!

I do know that I really, really miss my dog. And while I love my kids, who are out of the house, I have a hole the size of Houston in my heart over my dog, whom we sent to the cool dog place in the sky. Tell me they give them treats there all day long, will you? 😃

And walks.🚶‍♀️And play time. 🎾 🎾 And hugs. 🤗 🤗 🤗

It’s been years since my father-in-law passed away. We miss him, too. But after Pepper was gone, I finally understood why my father-in-law used to call Pepper a person. Because Pepper was a person, but he was also a great person.

We dog people are a little deranged but in a good way. I’d say any chance you have to include unconditional love in your life, you’re a fool to pass on it. Dogs love you the way you are. Your kids do, sort of, but there’s so much baggage with kids. Spouses, too. Dogs come with little luggage. They carry their open hearts on their furry sleeves. Their only annoyance? They want to be loved. And that’s their gift. When you’re feeling sad, they say, “Love me, please?” And when you do, you feel better. Voilà!

Thanks for bringing so much love with you, my sweet Pepper. I miss you.

Possibility

Posted on by Kathryn Atkins

I stand at the edge of possibility. It takes my breath away.

Every single moment of every single day, we can choose to be the person we were meant to be. I think it’s simple. Mostly, we have to get out of our own way.

I’m reading The Art of Possibility for the third time. I am convinced that we must commit to being open to the universe, as the authors Rosamund Stone Zander and Benjamin Zander state. We have to be prepared to receive; able to live in the present; willing to slide through our mistakes on our way to a hope (but not a guarantee) of perfection because we are one of the lucky ones that get to do our life’s work.

I love the idea of a happiness that we can obtain by the way we approach our days. Here’s a great suggestion from the book. Rule No. 6 says,

“Don’t take yourself so seriously.”

What a great concept. Yes, but how do I slow down enough to inhale possibility on the days when I am just not feeling it? I can always start by counting my blessings. I have lots.

Then I will close my eyes and imagine myself on the boat pictured below. It’s always there: Possibility.

light sea dawn landscape
Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

 

Enough

Posted on by Kathryn Atkins

 

photography of body of water
Photo by Willian Was on Pexels.com

I Wish You Enough

I wish you enough sun to keep your attitude bright no matter how gray the day may appear.


I wish you enough rain to appreciate the sun even more.


I wish you enough happiness to keep your spirit alive and everlasting.

I wish you enough pain so even the smallest of joys in life may appear bigger.


I wish you enough gain to satisfy your wanting.

I wish you enough loss to appreciate all that you possess.


I wish you enough hellos to get you through the final good-bye.

*

I think we need to talk about “enough” today. I feel like our society does not ever have enough. We don’t have enough money. Time. Love. Youth. “Soul.” Well, that’s simply not true, is it? We have all we need. We can choose to have enough of all of those. We may not know it when our bills don’t get paid. Or we are out of time to do the things we want. We may feel unloved today. Or we may feel old. We may not have “soul” as we approach the written page or the musical paper or the dance floor. “I got nuthin’.”  Or “I don’t have enough of what it takes,” we say to ourselves.

That may be true today. But tomorrow, we may have that glimmer. That spark. That patience. Or we may have a way to save or make money. Find time to do what we want. Or we stop to feel a little extra sliver of appreciation for the few things we have. Even an old beat up pair of shoes is actually pretty sweet if we stop to be grateful, and not compare ourselves to someone down the block or around the corner. We may choose to be glad to have any shoes at all. Or feet.

That’s it. We can do so much if we stop, take stock, and appreciate who we are and how lucky we are. Our attitude determines our life view. And of course, everything is relative. We didn’t know we had enough until we wake up one morning and we’re out of whatever “that” was. Food. Money. Time. Because if you don’t wake up, for instance, you are definitely out of time.  But for today . . .

               . . . you have enough. 

 

The poem above is published in my collection, Giving My Self to the Wind. 

Leave Room in Your Suitcase

Posted on by Kathryn Atkins

apple book break color
Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

So, did you think this post was going to be about travel? Great. It is. But, it’s not.

Hopefully, we are all going somewhere. However, we are not always going on vacation. Or going out of town. Or going on a safari, per se. We are, however, traveling through life. We need to have our suitcase packed, our selves ready, open, and available to step, fly, jump, and fall forward into the next place. Our metaphorical bags should always be packed, as in why slow down to throw in a toothbrush when the next adventure may have toothbrushes waiting for you at the other end? Or better yet, we won’t need toothbrushes there at all. Our teeth will automatically be cleaned by busy nanobots grinning as they scrub, singing happy tunes, and making you happy to boot.

So while the suitcase should be ready to go, it should have room to add stuff. We want to leave space in the suitcase of our minds to put in cool new ideas, experience an image in a way we’ve never done so before, or taste a new aroma, or savor a different apple with a cool name like “Jazz” or “Envy.”

We save a spot for experimentation.  We can pause in the quietness to read an author we wouldn’t have tried without the clarity that white space in a suitcase brings. We can “hear” a not-my-usual color; “wear” a not-my-kind of music. (Not typos: Hear a color and wear music were on purpose.)

I invite you on your next journey to leave room in your suitcase. In fact, I will leave room in mine, too, and maybe we can meet in the middle.

 Always keep a bag packed!

“JOMO”

Posted on by Kathryn Atkins

yellow plush toy
Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

You’ve heard of FOMO… Fear Of Missing Out. I just heard of “JOMO.”

JOMO = Joy Of Missing Out.

That means forgetting Facebook, turning off Twitter, and ignoring Instagram. And evading E-Mail for a block of uninterrupted time. Call it what you will, it’s a way to decrease our addiction to the 24/7/365 bombardment of noise and distraction simply because we’re afraid we won’t know what our neighbor knows. We’ll miss the client’s email or an agent’s answer. They can wait.

JOMO is about allowing ourselves the joy of being in the moment.

Jason Fried, co-founder of 37Signals and maker of Basecamp reads a newspaper now! In a recent interview with Tim Ferriss, Jason said that knowing what’s going on in the world once a day is enough. Imagine.

The universe will continue without our seeing and hearing what happens every minute of every day. We’ll have more time for meditating, writing, painting, making music, reading books and lots more. Let’s call it Anti-Social Media. How’s that for a new term?

Unplug and enjoy life!

Mrs. B

Posted on by Kathryn Atkins

IMG_7947Mrs. B didn’t own a computer. She had a cell phone for three months but never used it.  She told her daughter to take it back.  She had time to take long walks at the park, read, do crafts, and go to lunch with friends. She attended live lectures, went to the library, enjoyed museums, picnics, and face-to-face conversations with squirmy children who weren’t used to ‘talking’ without a keyboard, a cell phone or a computer— even the little ones.  She could see the kids’ expressions, and help them understand social interplay the old-fashioned way. Sometimes she wore a clown nose. I want to be her.

Mrs. B doesn’t need a computer and doesn’t use email or instant messages. She writes notes to people, does her banking inside the bank, visits friends, and has the bridge club at her house once a month. The book club is on the third Thursday of the month, bridge club on the second Tuesday, and baby quilters on the fourth Friday.  Mrs. B. volunteers at the local hospital stuffing envelopes and helping the cooks put little white cups on the trays for the patients.  She wears a hairnet, gloves, and an apron for this job.  The apron comes down to the floor, and the extra small gloves hang off her tiny hands like a four-year-old dressing up in her mom’s clothes. The hairnet is covered by a big blue surgical hat of which the hospital purchased tens of thousands at a huge discount, making Mrs. B look like a cross between a blue mushroom and a midget chef. Her died red hair pokes out from under the blue hat, clown style. I still want to be her.

She laughs easily. She has a razor-sharp mind and an expanding heart, especially for children.  Her favorite volunteer work is reading to kids in hospitals, schools, churches, and libraries.  It is becoming a lost art, and she cried when the safety laws required that she wear a badge, get fingerprinted, TB tested, and background checked all so she could be a chaperoned “aide” in the room while she read to the kids. 

“All I want to do is entertain and teach the children,” she said. The laws have changed, the world has changed, the people have changed.  It became too much of a hassle for her and eventually, she had to cut way back because they couldn’t find a chaperone. It was a loss for the kids and left a huge void in Mrs. B’s wonderfully abundant heart.

One day, all the cell phones on the earth stopped working, (Let’s pretend. Okay?) and the Internet coughed and blinked out for a 24-hour period. Mrs. B’s life did not change at all, except that the people in the retirement home where she lived came down to the central meeting room for a change. At first, it was a trickle. Then walkers and wheelchairs arrived in a steady (if slow-moving) stream. Finally, they flooded the room. The area was awash in blue hairs, and the chattering and laughing brought life back into the home that usually served as the Grim Reaper’s waiting area. 

New acquaintances became friends. The next day, cell phone service was restored along with the Internet. The newly connected oldsters brought homemade, wobbly-lettered placards to the dining area. “INTERNET GO HOME!”

The real Mrs.B is gone now, but I’d still like to be Mrs. B some day. Maybe I can. Just turn off the phone. Turn off my computer. And step into the world where ferns and rocks and leaves wait patiently for me to saunter by. My phone? What phone. Nope, it is Mrs. B now. You may call me Mrs. B if you’d like.