Tag Archives: KISS

One Day At a Time – Again

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So … 80 wildfires are burning in 9 states. Hurricane Irma is heading to us. Two MORE named storms behind that!

When I am looking at something that is heading my way that is 450 miles wide, with a sustained wind speed of 185 mph, it scares the hell out of me.

Will Irma hit my area directly? Hopefully not. Even if not, it will still have a substantial effect on me.

The thought of losing my home shook me for a couple of days.

40 years of my art and photography, that my wife was kind enough to frame after I had stopped dragging it around the world with me after I retired from the military. It’s  irreplaceable, as is the artwork of my mother and father that hangs in our home as well.

Most of all, there is the house. This house is our dream home. It is perfect for us. Never in our wildest imaginations did we think we would ever have something this well suited for us, this comfortable, in our lifetimes. One of my wife’s greatest joys is working in the yard, fussing with this or that, and fussing with the inside of the house as well.  It is our refuge from the world. We love it.

And it could all be gone in an instant. Forever. All of it.

Here are the realities:

I can only do what I can do to prepare, and then, it is no longer up to me.

As long as I have my wife, I have everything I need.

Starting all over at 57 would positively suck, but I would still be better off than most.

It is a living lesson, reminding me once again, that life truly is “One day at a time.”

The First Rule: KISS

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Today I got a lesson in the most basic rule of stress-free living: Keep It Simple Stupid (KISS). I was trying to figure out a problem with this new website; I only had one bar in the edit view and no “Visual” tab. So after poking around for an hour, and then looking through numerous forum pages, I was resigned to the fact that I would have to download yet another plugin and deal with that. Then a friend suggested the obvious: “Google ‘No Visual tab in edit view’ or something like that.” Well, DUH! So here it is I am getting myself all in a tizzy and halfway into freakout mode and then, wham! So being a good little boy, I Googled and found the answer. Then I followed the directions and it worked because … RIF (Reading Is Fundamental).

So there you have it folks; another example of me having to cuddle a problem and wrestle with it, and accomplish nothing instead of stepping back and seeing the big picture. (You know, the obvious.)

Every now and then we get so caught up in what we are doing, and trying to resolve an issue, that we miss the obvious solution that is right in front of us. Is this because we are not happy unless we are miserable and in the mist of some form of crisis, no matter how minor? Is it because if some endeavor of ours goes off without a hitch we feel cheated and guilty, like “That was too easy?” Is it our need to complicate everything to feel like we are accomplishing something of value? Do we have an innate need for constant struggle against the universe; especially those of us with abusive and/or addiction backgrounds? Or were we just being a dumb ass and missed the obvious?

Well today, I missed the answer right in front of me because I failed to look and “Keep It Simple Stupid.”

Barry K