All tagged NFL
The other day I felt a bit jealous of the friend who was giving me a mani/pedi. I’ve known my friend for only fifteen months but in this time frame I have learned that she routinely calls her family on her way to and from work every day. Not just every once in awhile, but every day she has someone that she calls. This may not be earth shattering news or something you would be jealous about but I think it is thoughtful and worth mentioning.
When I consider writing about a topic for this blog, sometimes I have to check to see if I have already written about it. While I was on the blog ThoughtfulPinch.com, I typed in the keywords “Thank You” and about eight posts came up. The post that I wrote in December 2020 is really good. Yes, I just bragged about my own post. That post is very helpful for those who need a little guidance on writing thank you cards.
There is definitely something stirring inside me. Again, the catalyst is because of a book. This is the second post in a row that pertains to a book. Which makes me think that written thoughts do matter and words have the ability to influence people beyond who we write them down for. When I listened to this book, I was alone and I found myself nodding my head, slapping the steering wheel, verbally agreeing and snorting with laughter. The title of the book is Unbreakable and it’s written by our friend Jay Glazer. We call him Glaze.
So there is connection and then there are connectors. Two totally separate nouns that I’m writing about in my “Connection” blog post series. What would the discussion about connections be without connectors? Connectors are instrumental in putting us on paths that ultimately change our lives. For the sake of thoughtfulness and the awareness of silver linings, the connectors that I am referring to in this post are for those who change our lives for the better, not worse.
When we were in our twenties, my hub had a term that he would use when he was finished drinking at the bar and wanted to go home. He would say that he was going to the bathroom but slip away without saying goodbye to anyone. He called that move the “Casper.” He made like a friendly ghost and disappeared. In other words, he Caspered.
For the last fifteen of the 25 years that my hub has been in the NFL, I have stayed put for the holiday season. I was pregnant with our first child 15 years ago and once she came into the world, I became a mom so I didn’t travel anywhere for the holidays because logistically, it didn’t make sense. However, this year, for the first time since I became a mom, I am not home for the holidays.
Humans have an intrinsic desire to help others. No matter how small or large the contribution - in the form of time, energy, talent and/or financially - when we help others, it makes us feel good. Simply put: we volunteer because we hope that our help will help. Inevitably, we walk away feeling like we’re the ones who benefitted from the experience.
There will be a thoughtful point to this post but it may take a story or two to get us to it.
I got married later in life, I was thirty-three. I once had a career in advertising and I made three times the amount my boyfriend (before he was my hub) was making during that time. But a year or two before we got married, because of total burn out, I became a pre-school teacher. It actually cost me money to be a teacher because my income was practically nothing after my expenses. {SIDE NOTE: the Thoughtful Pinch blog exists because teachers are special people}.
Surprisingly, leaving Denver after our 18 day visit was tougher than I thought it would be. Prior to our trip, the Type-A in me envisioned being there checking off a lot of boxes and getting things done. And we did.
I thought about sharing my journal entry from January 11, 2021 because on that day, I wrote down 51 hurdles that were effecting my life at that time. Some hurdles are deep and personal while others are not a big deal at all. Nonetheless, they are all hurdles. The main reason why I wrote them down in my journal was because I knew that if I saw each hurdle on it’s own line, I would see that each and every one of them was something I could handle. On that particular day, it just so happened that I was experiencing them all at once. Even though I captured the moment in my journal with written words, it has taken me awhile to put those words into context, explaining the mental gymnastics that my brain performed at the beginning of 2021.
