Breakfast

 

Is breakfast just a leftover from an outdated era? I rarely if ever wake up hungry let alone thinking I need to make a full meal before I start the day. I usually don’t feel hungry until around midday so I am good to go in the morning with coffee and piece of fruit.

 I remember my mom forcing me to eat in the morning. Breakfast is the most important meal of the day. Studies show you will fail out of school if you don’t eat breakfast.

 I started to wonder if Breakfast is like school, something that is outdated from our industrial\farming past where you might have needed a meal right away because you were doing vigorous manual labor the moment you work up until you were done. Where your body might have needed the morning fuel to sustain the activity of the day.

I sometimes find myself doing the same things to my kids….or feeling like a bad dad if I send them off in the morning without a full stomach.

 How weird is that.

 If you are not hungry don’t eat.  Listen to your body. Listen to your kids. 

 

 

Fathers Day

 It is an odd day for me. I am 10 years older than my father and my kids are still three years younger than I was when he died. I find myself starring in the mirror every so often and wonder if I see traces of him in me. I realize through the interactions with my own children what we missed with his absence. 

I think though on many levels I am a better father for it. Time is really the only resource that matters and it taught be to value time. Go to the game and cheer. Shut off the computer.  Don't put that thing off. Don't wait for the trip to happen. Don't wait until next time because it may never come. 

T.I.M.E 

Today is my everything. 

Lucky

I will forever be the luckiest man in the world that I get to be your dad. The two of you changed my life a a way I will never be full able to thank you for. I am grateful for everyday we have together. I love you.
 

Answered this in my sleep last night.

 

"What do you love doing so much that the words failure and success essentially become irrelevant?"

Writing is the thing for me. 

In Memorial

 Winne the Pooh once said, "How Lucky I Am To Have Something That Makes Saying Goodbye So Hard."

We were the luckiest people in the world to find you Bentley Boo because saying Goodbye to you was one of the hardest things we have ever done.

You ruined every family picture from this point forward but elevated every family moment. Thank you for every walk, snuggle, chuck it and kiss. Thank you for watching over our children. Thank you for being the calm gentleness in our lives we often needed.

While we are absolutely devastated that we had to say goodbye we will be forever lucky that you choose us and we have had all these years and that you have touched so many.

Goodbye Bentley Boo we love you

Goodbye Bentley Boo

 

Good bye my friend. 12 years you never left my side. I will never be able to put into words what you meant to our family. 

You radiated love and greeted everyone you ever met like they were the best thing in the world.  

My heart is broken 

Don't Let the Negativity In

  

There is an expression I love, I admittedly don’t always rise to the standard by try to use it to come back to the center  when I go awry.

 “An entire sea of water cant sink a ship unless it gets inside”

It is not an excuse for tough seas, the need for resetting a course, for denying the difficultly and hardship we are feeling in the storm. For me it is a reminder that when show negativity, when I am blaming,  when I show up without being accountable, I am spacing out the boards on our ship and allowing it to take on water. 

 When I show with sleeves rolled up, asking what can I do? How can I help? When I am at the service of team I bring the boards on the ship closer and tighter together.

 It is an  acknowledgement that as collective captains of the ship we are responsible for the integrity of the hull and seeing it to the destination no matter the storm we must steer it through.

 If there is something we can do to better show up for any of our teams please let us know.

 I am starting today asking how can I tighten the hull?

Changing the People in Your Circle

 

You can’t change the people in your circle but you can change the people in your circle.

 This idea was a game changer to me. The fact that I could actively change the people I had around me on a daily basis. There was a concept that I think is more prevalent in the Midwest that the majority of people you know and interact with are people you have known since grade school or family members. Your friend circle effectively being a proxy of where you were randomly inserted into the world.

 For people who might not have run with the best circle the act of finding a new one had a sense of betrayal and a feeling of freedom at the same time.

 It was a mix of loneliness and empowerment that I felt the moment that I decided to do something different.

 Every once in a while I will run into groups of people out and feel a tinge of envoy at he stories I missed, that they all staid so close but then I remember all the things I have done all the ground I covered all the growth that has happened and I tell you I would not change it for the world.

It doesn’t mean I look badly on the past it was a huge part of what made me who I am today.

 I just look forward to living with intent, working and building with new people and never ceasing to stop moving forward.

Flag Football and Practice

 Few things I am taking out of this weekend and reapplying to my own life again :

The discipline to practice is more important that the outcome of a game

Incorporate something new into each practice 

You have to work on yourself and the team 

Break the complex into the the simple 

Dont let a bad pay turn into a bad game, shake it off

Also I love my son:)

Action

 Creativity is not emotion, it is action. 

"Never has there been a map, however carefully executed to detail and scale, which carried its owner over even one inch of ground. Never has there been a parchment of law, however fair, which prevented one crime. Never has there been a scroll, even such as the one I hold, which earned so much as a penny or produced a single word of acclamation. Action, alone, is the tinder which ignites the map, the parchment, this scroll, my dreams, my plans, my goals, into a living force. Action is the food and drink which will nourish my success."

---The Scroll Marked IX - Og Mandino

I have spent a long time pounding a question of what is needed to act, to move, to do something. There is a wonderful mix of motivation, will, fear, belief , curiosity that come together to inspire and create the environment for action but the culmination of what is that thing that causes me to take another step, pick up a phone, reach out to learn seems to be just beyond the tip of my tongue and edge of my understanding. As I cross the bridge though between my thoughts and actions more frequently and more intentionally I feel its shape filling in.

Expiration Date

 "What makes life powerful and meaningful and substantive is the expiration date"

It is crazy how kids and the perspective of age can bring life into focus. 

Watching them play and feeling my own mortality makes every kiss and hug a little sweeter. 

I used to kick myself for wasting so much of my life without focus and intent until I realized that just causes me to waste more. Do better now, do better going forward. The point isn't cry over what was,  it is to not squander what is.