Here's to a Full Life

Welcome! At this point, December 16th 2016, I’ve been at this for six years and a few months.  I posted/published 229 posts and 9 pages. Although I’ve settled into what I want to say and do here long ago, life changes. Since I started this blog in 2010, I’ve gotten married, bought a house, and become a grandfather (a couple times over). With changes to my life have come changes to the blog. When we bought our house I added a new category for Weekend Projects (not enough of those have gotten done). A few years ago I added a new category for short fiction It only has a few short stories, but I’ve enjoyed writing them, and have ideas for more. Over the last couple years I’ve tried to add pages to help me organize what’s here and to track some long term goals.  The pages can be found on the top menu and at the top of the “My favorite posts so far” section.  This blog is likely to continue to evolve as my life does. My posting goal has gone down from a post a week to about 1 post a month. I’d love to have more time to write, but with work, a large and growing family, and a busy life writing more would take away instead of adding to my life. Over the last 6 plus years this blog has kept me focused on planning and living a full life, so I have no intention of giving it up.

Without a doubt writing this blog changed my life. I simply did not live this way before, and now I cannot imagine approaching life in any other way. Life is short and most people tend to drift through it. There are many things that can distract us, drain our energy, cause us to put off living life. Most people haven’t even sat down to think about what they consider to be a full life. For too much of my life I had not thought about it beyond knowing that family and friends were very important to me. I unconsciously knew there were things I enjoyed but I didn’t actively plan to do these things, I didn’t think about how to get the most out of life, I drifted. Life happens, it takes very little planning to meander through it. Regardless of what you are doing, time passes, there is no way to slow it down. So grab life by the horns instead of by the tail. Take charge of what your life will be. Decide what is important to you. Decide what you want to look back on at the end of your life. Will it be a full life? If it is, I’m sure you will be able to look back without regret.

A couple years ago my wife and I took some time to think again about what was most important to us.  A lot of those things were already listed on the “Bucket List” page, but one thing was missing and really could not be added to a list.  We decided we had been so busy the previous 3-4 years that we had to turn down invitations to do things with family and friends.  We decided that we were unintentionally planning away opportunities to do what was really at the top of our list.  So we decided to slow down, just a little.  Leave some gaps in our schedule.  Go to a few less concerts, go away a few less weekends, and make ourselves available when friends and family called.  We also decided to plan more family get-togethers and getaways.  It may take longer to check things off the bucket list under our new plan, but we could not be happier with how things are going with the new/improved plan!

Now a little more about finding things on the blog…  A lot of my posts fall into at least one of these five categories:

Full Life. Actually doing it, living! Most fun to read and some great pictures!
Planning. Need these to “take the bull by the horns”.
Deep Thoughts. These posts are some of the most personal ones. They let me vent, share my thoughts and feelings, and sometimes just share a little of who I am.
Weekend Project – Plenty of projects to do around the house. Blogging about them will help motivate me to do them!
Short Fiction – The Newest addition to the blog. My creative side wants a chance to add to the blog. I’ve posted a few short stories and always have a new one stewing… sometimes it just takes a little longer to put all the ingredients in.