jpw23

last year at this time I had spent a few nights in the hospital wondering if I was going to stroke out or have a heart attack. It was all stress related, had to take some serious inventory of my life and find out what was worth stroking out. I found out that NOTHING on that list was worth me dying for. My kids and their respective spouses were not worth my demise, my job was not worth it, all the idiotic things that they did was not worth it.

Since all of this(and this took some time) I have a new outlook on life...there are very few things I have control over...the trick is, figuring out what they are. I have control over me....nothing else. I have control over how I react to things. This reminds me of a quote by Charles Swindoll.

"The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life. Attitude, to me, is more important than facts. It is more important than the past, the education, the money, than circumstances, than failure, than successes, than what other people think or say or do. It is more important than appearance, giftedness or skill. It will make or break a company... a church... a home. The remarkable thing is we have a choice everyday regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day. We cannot change our past... we cannot change the fact that people will act in a certain way. We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude. I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% of how I react to it. And so it is with you... we are in charge of our Attitudes."


My father had a plaque with the above quote in it that we would trade back and forth as circumstances dictated, I gave it back to him when he was diagnosed with cancer 11 years ago. I lost that plaque somewhere along the way and just found it again recently. I still remembered the words though, and after re-acquainting myself with those words, my world slowly started coming together again.

Today, I find myself with a job where I am making more than I have been used to in several years, my married life is better than it has ever been, my kids are still idiots and users. I can't change some things and now I have the knowledge to know the difference between what I can change and what I can not.

If this is of any help to any brother out there, I'm glad i could help. Because of all the stress i put myself through..I now have several meds that I take daily but, that's the price you pay. I have no regrets, I will not look back and I will continue to look forward and put behind me everything that I have no control over.

I wish a very merry Christmas to each and every one of you or whatever it is that you believe in.

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Save a tree...eat a beaver!

Big Dave

You hit on my thoughts exactly. I too was in the hospital about a year ago, February to be exact. Found out I have a bad heart and have to cut out pretty much all of my sodium intake and now take about 7 different pills where before I didn't take any.

It's funny how things work out. I'm making more money now that what I was used to but I worry about things alot less. Sometimes we are thrown a curve ball in life we just have to adjust our swing to make it into a home run.

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Do one thing at a time, do it well, then move on.
www.bigdaveswoodworks.com

joasis

I wrote this yesterday, on CT, and my thoughts were about here also.

I was watching the movie, "The Worlds Fastest Indian" today, and Anthony Hopkin's charachter said "you just never know where life will take you". And I was thinking about the thread about if we knew then, what we know now......and look what the responses were. So I was thinking about a few steps beyond that, and the line above...you just never know.

I graduated HS and Vo-Tech in 1979, and headed out in the oil patch...no college for this smart kid...I just knew it all. I had framed homes for two summers and hated it....hated the construction work I grew up with (remodeling)....bored with the oil field, started a machine shop.....4 years later, sold out and went trucking....out and back into construction...steel erection. Economy collapsed, and into the Army to fly.....out an into a nightclub venture...divorced and broke and headed to college, I was 30. Graduated 3 years later and started teaching plus working on a M.Ed.....5 years was enough, and back into trucking, owned three running flatbed in 48 states....a year later, back in construction. Along the way, I have bartended, dug graves, heavy equipment operator, sold steel buildings, trained machinists, welder and flunkie......and here I am, right back where I started.

The point is, if you had told me in 1979, I would have a good business in construction and contracting, I would have said you are plain nuts!

I once aspired to fly....and then to teach...and to be a trucker....I used to dream about racing motorcycles and luckily, figured out I just didn't have it before I killed myself...raced stock cars on a dirt track for a few years.....expensive hobby...too boring, so I skydived...too thrilling...so now I don't fly anymore, I ride a V Star maybe a few hundred miles a year, I feel the aches and pains of a beat up body every day.....and I am doing what I hated when I was a kid. I will be 48 next month...where has the time went?

You just never know where life will take you!

MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL! __________________

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