I used to be really good at the blame game.

It was super-easy to blame this, that, or the other thing for all the faults I saw in my life. I blamed this for getting fat and out of shape, that for costing me the job, or the other thing for my ongoing dissatisfaction.

Blame is particularly easy when it’s everywhere. Spend just a few minutes online and you’ll see someone blaming someone for something. It gets ridiculous VERY quickly when you look for the blame.

Why is blame so prevalent? I think that we have this false belief that blame removes responsibility. If you blame someone or something YOU cease to be accountable for it. …

We are closing in on having 8 billion people on this planet. Let me write that out — that’s 8,000,000,000 people.

Let’s say you know, personally, 100 people total. Maybe not well, but for the sake of argument, it’s a good round number. That means that you know 0.00000000125 of the total number of people on this planet. That’s a SUPER small number of people.

Each of those people has their own way of thinking, feeling, perceiving, and experiencing life. That’s one hundred unique points of view and ways to be. Now — multiply that by eighty million (80,000,000) times. …

For many people, their job entails a lot of reading. However, there is NO pleasure taken in that reading. They are reading facts and figures for data input; customer comments and complaints; technical manuals; online materials; and other similar, largely uninteresting bits.

For many people, all their reading is done to glean info. This includes the aforementioned manuals, news, social media to keep up with friends and family, and similar. Largely not things that do much to stir the mind or spark the imagination.

This, it turns out, is a really easy trap to fall into. You get caught up in reading only for very specific purposes and don’t desire to read anything else. …

A lot of people think of giving in the material. Giving time, money, donations, and other energetic matter.

But giving is just as powerful — if not, in some ways, more powerful — when it’s immaterial.

You can give immaterial things. This includes smiles, compliments, helpful (solicited) suggestions and advice, and other things that cost you nothing.

But the most powerful thing you can give is gratitude.

All of these and more don’t just empower and increase positivity for other people. Each and every one of these notions come back to you. …

Patience has never been my strong suit. That’s why, after 24 years, I finally named my primary fencing sword Patience.

This is important because it is a reminder that it takes not only perseverance — but patience to get anywhere with anything. When I was healing after getting hit by the car, I persevered and worked my ass off to recover as quickly as possible — and though I was not patient enough for the timelines my doctors gave me — I employed patience to do the necessary work.

Despite being unathletic, overweight, and otherwise unbalanced — I determined I would not suck at fencing. While I am by no means one of the best at my game — I have built a great deal of skill through perseverance and patience. …

It took time to get where you are — so it’ll take time to get somewhere new.

Due to the pandemic, my regular source of exercise — fencing — hasn’t been available for 10 months now.

The type of fencing I do — medieval rapier combat — is intense, a great cardio workout, and a fantastic discipline for the mind. I would attend practices anywhere from one to three days a week.

That’s not happening due to COVID-19. Because my normal exercise routine is missing — and other stressors of the past 10 months — I have gained about 30 pounds. …

In March of 2020, my family gathered at a restaurant to celebrate my mom’s birthday.

The next week, we learned that my sister and niece were living in the next town over from one of the state’s biggest COVID-19 hotspots. The town in which my niece’s aunts and uncles all live.

Upon learning this, I informed my coworkers at my freelance gig that I would be self-isolating and left the office. To all intents and purposes, I never returned to the office to work — and work from home full-time began. Fortunately, nobody in my family got sick.

All-too briefly, the nation shut down. The numbers declined, though not as much as they could have if the shutdown had been longer. Then — the holiday season hit, the schools half reopened, and the numbers started climbing astronomically. …

I love to overthink.

When it comes to just about anything you can imagine I’m super good at overthinking things.

Thoughts, ideas, concepts, notions — I churn through them lots and lots. I tend to run through a multitude of scenarios and “what ifs” at the speed of the Millennium Falcon making the Kessel Run.

Often, this all happens right at the start. I see the issue or idea, then approach it from multiple angles, consider possibilities and probabilities. Then I guess at outcomes and start plans and plots — all in the span of a few heartbeats.

This, unsurprisingly, causes tripping over myself due to unseen obstacles wholly of my making. …