Day 2953: Join us on our mission!

I received this mission message yesterday on a bag of salty but relatively healthy snacks:

I didn’t read about their mission because I thought I was doing enough for their mission by buying and consuming their product. Also, I’m on vacation this week, so my mission is to relax, focus on self-care, and re-energize for my work as a group therapist during these difficult times.

So many people are asking me to join their mission these days, that I have to choose my missions wisely. For example, when I chose a birthday fundraiser on Facebook this year, I wasn’t sure which mission to join. There were so many worthy missions I considered, from racial justice, to environmental activism, to animal protection, and so on. I eventually joined the same mission I joined for my birthday fundraiser last year, Everytown for Gun Safety.

Join us on our mission to

• improve the world, one step at a time,
• focus on self-care, so you have the energy to engage,
• accept all feelings,
• set and maintain clear and healthy boundaries,
• let go of worry, guilt, shame, and harsh judgment, and
• observe and appreciate all you have.

Reply requested, and please listen to “Mission Impossible” while you consider choosing to accept the mission of joining us in the comments section, below.

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Join us on our mission to express gratitude and love, every day!

Day 1187: Fools

Here are some foolish associations with the word “Fools,” on April Fools Day, 2016:

1. On April Fools Day, 2015 (as documented in this foolish post),  I was fool enough to meet with an arrogant fool of a cardiologist,  who did not fool me or my doctors with his declaration that I was a doomed fool for not consulting with him earlier.
2. Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.
3. My son, Aaron, born of a foolish mother, is foolishly happy  he will soon be attending the University of Edinburgh , whose alumni include fools like Charles Darwin, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Robert Louis Stevenson, and J.M. Barrie.
4. Because I’m a foolish mother, I naturally believe that any college admissions offices that do not accept my  son into their schools are fools.
5. According to psychologist Carl Jung, the most developed and highly evolved archetype is The Fool,  as described at a  website discovered by this foolish daily blogger:

The Fool/Jester archetype urges us to enjoy the process of our lives. Although the Fool/Jester can be prone to laziness and dissipation, the positive Fool/Jester invites us all out to play–showing us how to turn our work, our interactions with others, and even the most mundane tasks into FUN. The goal of the Fool/Jester is perhaps the wisest goal of all, which is just to enjoy life as it is, with all its paradoxes and dilemmas. What causes most dread in the Fool/Jester is a lack of stimulation and being ‘not alive’.

I have no foolish photos to show you today.

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April Fools!

Here are lots of pictures recently taken by Ann Koplow, Fool:

 

 

 

I hope you are fool enough to make the foolish choice to leave a comment on this April Fools Day.

Foolish thanks to all who helped me create today’s post and to you (be still, my foolish heart!) for visiting. No fooling!

Day 1164: Choose

I choose to begin today’s post by listing all the times I’ve used the word “choose” in a post title before:

Day 285:  How to choose a doctor

Day 963: How to choose the title for a post

Day 1083: How to Choose a Post Title

I choose to state my surprise that I have chosen to use the word “choose” so seldom during the past one thousand, one hundred and sixty-odd days of my daily blog, since we all need to choose so often, every day.

Why did I choose the title “Choose” today? Because yesterday, in therapy, somebody talked about how to choose when balancing personal needs with the needs of loved ones.

If you choose, please share what “Choose your battles” means to you.

I now choose to share all the other photos I took yesterday.

I choose to explain that last photo, as follows:  Yesterday evening, I chose to drive my chosen friend and co-worker Megan home. As we made choices driving to Megan’s home, she spotted the car her mother had chosen, directly in front of us.  When Megan chose to call her mother on her chosen cell phone to reveal this choice coincidence, her mother chose to suggest that Megan get out of my chosen car and get into hers, in order to make things easier for me. After Megan chose to get out of my car and get into her mother’s, I chose to snap the above photo and also chose to text this to Megan:

I miss you!

Megan chose to text me this back:

I miss you too!!!!

Luckily, since Megan chose to join me at work a few months ago, we can choose to see each other  very often.

I now choose to share this song by Sting, about the multiverses created whenever people choose:

What would you choose to say about all I chose to share today?

Finally, I choose to thank  Megan, Megan’s mother, my patients, Sting and you — of course! — for choosing to visit my blog, here and now.

Day 1152: Votes

Four days from today, my home state of Massachusetts, USA, will be casting votes in a presidential primary.

I vote to tell you today that those votes on Tuesday will include the votes of:

• my boyfriend Michael,
• my son Aaron, who votes on Tuesday for the first time ever since turning the voting age of 18 three days ago, and
• me.

In the spirit of all these votes, I shall now ask my readers to cast votes for two Year(s) of Living Non-Judgmentally ballot questions.

Ballot question #1:  Which is your favorite photo?

 

 

Ballot question #2:  Should Ann reintroduce music into her daily blog posts?

The voting choices are as follows:

1. Ann should include music in every post.
2. Ann should continue leaving music out of her blog posts.
3. Ann should include music daily unless doing so would make her late or otherwise inconvenienced.
4. _________________________ (write-in vote).

Please vote on both ballot questions with your comments, below.

Finally, I vote to

• end this post and
• express thanks to you for voting “Yes” about this blog with your visit, here and now.

Day 1083: How to Choose a Post Title

Even though I’ve chosen a similar title before,  I think “How to Choose a Post Title” is a blogging topic useful enough to revisit.

Do you agree, dear readers? How do you choose a title for a post, or for anything else you create?

Obviously, there’s no single right way to do so.  One technique is to consider the images you want to include in a post for possible title candidates.  For example, today I’m considering the following post titles:

• “Unlikely Friendships”

• “The Best Bostonians of All Time”

• “Enjoy Life’s Simple Pleasures”

• “Wisdom/Mistakes”
• “Fake It Until You Make It”

• “That’s Foolish!”

Now this may be foolish, but I have a lot of trouble making decisions, especially when there are so many good choices.

Actually, “Making Decisions” might be another good post title.

Aaaarrrgggghhh!

Whenever I struggle with decisions, it helps me to ask for assistance from others.  Therefore, which title would you choose for a post like this one, based on all the other photos I took yesterday?

 

I hope you choose to let me know your choice, in a comment below.

Choice thanks to all who helped me create today’s post, including my son Aaron’s classmate Emma, shown holding the guinea pig (which my boyfriend Michael titled “Cheryl.”) And special thanks to you — of course! — for choosing to visit here, today.

Day 1003: Not a choice

After all these months of my blogging once a day, it’s not a choice whether I’m going to create a post. It IS a choice what I’m going to write about.

It’s not a choice that I sometimes have trouble realizing what my choices are and then deciding what to choose. It is a choice that I tolerate that discomfort and eventually choose.

“Not a choice” was a lyric I heard yesterday, as I made the choice to listen to “Loving You” from Stephen Sondheim’s musical Passion. It’s not a choice for me — at this point in my life — to love Stephen Sondheim’s musical choices. It was a choice, though, which version of that beautiful song to share with you all, today.

I just made the choice of showing you that version by Donna Murphy, from the original cast of Passion.

I’m also making the choice of including this quote, from the first comment on that video of “Loving You” on YouTube:

Today we celebrate Broadway from the 80’s and a few shows from the 90’s. “Passion” ran for 280 performances, making it the shortest-running musical ever to win the Tony award for Best Musical! There is a fine line between obsession and passion. Obsession connotes the feeling that the person is emotionally and mentally ill. Passion, conversely, is supposedly the healthy emotion which two people reciprocally feel for one another.

What might you choose to say about what David’s Broadway Station chose to write there?

This is what I choose to write, here and now. It’s not a choice for me to be:

• a little obsessive about making my blog posts — and other things in my life — “good enough” to meet my own standards,
• passionate about this blog, my work, and the people I love,
• living in Boston, Massachusetts, despite my feelings about the weather here, because my son is a senior in high school and I get all my medical care in Boston for some complex health issues, and
• going to see my Primary Care Physician, Dr. Laura Snydman, today, after a morning at work facilitating a therapy group.

Actually, most of those things ARE a choice. And I’m making the choice, right now, of making that choice point in this post.

It’s not a choice (or is it?)  that I’m going to include some photos here. It is a choice how I present them.

Hmmm.  My Apple devices have been making some unexpected choices, lately, regarding how they choose to share photos between them.  These kinds of unexpected choices  resulted in my blogging from my iPhone for several months earlier this year. I REALLY don’t want to make that choice of typing on that friggin’ phone keyboard any time soon, so let’s see if there’s another choice for me, now, to access yesterday’s photos quickly and easily.

It’s not a choice that I tried to prepare adequately for this last night — those choices are in the past.   Is it a choice how much anxiety, concern, worry, disappointment, or frustration I might feel about this unexpected blogging wrinkle, in the moment?

I’m making the choice to breathe, right now, and let go of any investment in how this post is going to turn out, photographically and otherwise.

I am now choosing to replicate the steps I took, last night, to make photos from yesterday accessible to this blog when I’m on my laptop. Therefore, I am making the choice to save this draft and restart my computer.

Drat! My photos from yesterday are NOT there when I choose “Add Media” and “Upload Files.” I don’t know why WordPress, my iPhone, and/or my laptop are choosing to limit my choices this morning. And I don’t have the choice to figure out that unexpected problem, if I choose to be at work on time this morning.

Actually, one photo from yesterday is available, for unknown reasons, so I shall choose that one:

That’s a photo I took during a therapy group yesterday, when we were all making choices about what topics to discuss.

I am also making the choice to include the first few photos from my choice of available photos, this morning:

You have a choice, as always,  to make whatever comment you choose about my post.

Choice thanks to all who helped me create this post this morning and to you — of course! — for making the choice of visiting here, today.

Day 321: The gift of mortality

When I was in my 20s, I was talking to a friend where we both worked, at a high tech company.

That day, we were talking about mortality.

He, who was also in his 20s, declared that people of our age could not possibly have a sense of our own mortality.  We could not  really understand, said he, that we would die some day.

I had heard that before, but that was not my personal experience.  I was born with a congenital heart problem, received my first cardiac pacemaker at age 10, and was definitely aware of mortality issues, in ways my friend was not.

This is my recollection of the rest of that conversation:

Me: Well, that’s probably true for lots of people. That’s not my experience. I’m very aware of mortality issues. I know I’m going to die, and I think about that a lot.

Him:  I don’t believe it. You might think you know you’re going to die, but you don’t really know that.

Me: (pause, not knowing what to say to THAT.)

Him: Look, if you really knew you were going to die, you wouldn’t show up to work here every day. You’d be doing things you REALLY want to do.

Me: (Laughing out loud)

Him: What’s so funny?

Me: I have a lot of trouble showing up here every day.

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That conversation has always stuck with me, because it represents something important.

I have always had trouble spending time on something that doesn’t feel like a “good enough fit”, because I am sooooo aware that my time is limited.

I think that has served me very well.

It has guided me, continually, in improving my situation, at work (through career changes), in love, and at home.

I’m not saying my progress has been perfect or linear, in any way.  (See this post for more about that.)

However, increasingly as I’ve aged, my presence indicates an active choice to be there.*

Every day, when I post, I am choosing whole-heartedly to be here.

I may never know what form the post will ultimately take, but I trust in the process of creation.

That’s how I feel about life, too. I don’t know the course, and how it will end, but I am committed, as much as possible, to every moment.

Okay!  It’s time to choose an image, to end this post.

(Pause, while I check my iPhone for a photo that’s a “good enough fit”.)

Okay!

When people in therapy report progress, strengths, or anything worth celebrating, I sometimes say, “If I had some confetti, I would throw it.”

Here it is:

Thank you for celebrating with me, here and now.

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* With some exceptions, of course. I never want to be present when it’s time to do my taxes.