Tag: wake up

When you wake up

I love it when you wake up! I count the hours every day. I can’t wait until your sleepy eyes open, and your spirit once again inhabits the wonderous reality we share together. I know you will see beautiful things, and ponder interesting ideas, and feel things deeply in your heart, and I can’t wait to hear everything you have to say about those things. I listen attentively to your every word, because deep down inside, I have come to care about you. It is almost like I am there with you, walking beside you, every step of the way, even though I am many miles away. Maybe one day, our footsteps will carry us right up to each other, and we will look up surprised and say, oh, good morning, my friend! I’m so glad to finally see you! Life is wonderful, now that you’re in the world!

Music video of Ellie Goulding performing Your Song.

You never know where you will meet a very special person, but you definitely know them when you see them. They are there for a reason. Don’t forget to tell them how much their friendship means to you.

When was the last time you met a great friend? See you in the comments! Don’t forget to like, share, and subscribe!

My morning rituals.

Today I am asked what are my morning rituals? I’ve answer this question before a while back, and my morning ritual hasn’t changes significantly since then, so I will embed it below. Basically, I’m not much of a morning person, but I do what I have to do to get by in a world full of early risers.

My morning routine.

Are you a morning person? What does your morning routine look like? Do you hate alarm clocks? Let me know in the comments, and please remember to like, share, and subscribe!

If I were someone else.

Today, I am asked who I would want to be if I could be someone else. This is actually a fairly common thought I have. Very often, when I lay down to sleep, I make a silent wish that I could just wake up as another person. It doesn’t happen though. Every day I just wake up as me again, and again, and again. I sometimes feel like I’m that guy in Groundhog Day, repeating the same day over and over until I finally get it right.

It’s not that my life is extremely bad. I have a lot of the things that many people strive their whole life to acquire. I’m sure some people wouldn’t mind trading with me actually. It doesn’t make me happy though. I know this sounds very ungrateful, and I hate that, but it’s just so incredibly lonely to be me.

When I make this wish, it is always the same. If I could be someone else for a day, I would choose to wake up as the guy she is with now. I would spend that day doing all the things that make her happy. I would make it the best day we had ever had together. We would live like there was no tomorrow, because there wouldn’t be. It would all come to an end when my day is used up.

Who would you like to wake up as? Is there a person from your past you would like to have a day with again? Do you think someone would enjoy being you for a day? Let me know your thoughts in the comments, and don’t forget to like, share, and subscribe!

My family’s top three favorite meals.

Today’s question is what are my family’s top three favorite meals? Traditionally, my family ate a full three meals a day, including breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Where I grew up though, lunch was sometimes called dinner, and dinner was called supper. That was mainly with the older generation in my family though. I quickly learned that the kids at school called the midday meal lunch. Breakfast was the morning meal, which I ate every day before school. I didn’t really put together what the word breakfast meant until years later though. It is quite literally the meal where you break your all night fast, basically the “break” “fast” meal. The last meal of the day before you started your nightly fast was called dinner, or supper by my grandparents.

For breakfast, one of my family’s favorites was something my grandparents called butter and syrup. You basically took out a plate, poured a little syrup on it, then mixed in some butter and stirred it up. You would then dip fresh buttermilk biscuits into the mixture and eat it. It probably wouldn’t be a good meal for a diabetic. It was loaded with sugar. I basically grew up on this though. I have no idea how I remained skinny back then. I also remember my mom and grandmother getting up extra early every day to make the biscuits and whatever else was used for breakfast. There was also coffee for everyone, so my history with coffee goes way back.

When I was a kid in school, I almost always came home for lunch, because I didn’t really like the food they served at the school. Yes, I was a picky eater back then, and I still am honestly. My grandmother would pick me up in her car at the school and drive me home for lunch. Sometimes I did eat at the school though, depending on what they were serving that day. I may have been a bit spoiled with regard to food. It was one of the few luxuries of my youth.

There seemed to be quite a variety of foods served at lunch and dinner back then, including fried chicken, pork chops, chicken and dumplings, potato dishes, all kinds of beans, fresh garden vegetables, etc. We also had hamburgers, hotdogs, pizza, spaghetti, tacos, enchiladas, tamales, and one of my favorites, lasagna. It’s hard to say what the favorites were because my mom and grandmother were great cooks and could make just about anything. I will say I am very partial to the turkey and dressing that my grandmother used to make for Thanksgiving though. That memory is really on my mind this time of year, and I wish she was still here to make it.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! 🦃

What are your family’s favorite meals? Did you grow up around great home cooking? Are you a great cook yourself? Did you like school food? Were your grandparents a big part of your life growing up? Let me know in the comments, and don’t forget to like, share, and subscribe!

What I have been working on.

At the time I started this post, I was working on laundry. I recently bought a couple pair of chinos and was washing them for the first time. I’m not really a chinos person, but I figured I would change it up a little. I feel like it’s important to change your style just a tad from time to time. Keeps people guessing what you are going to wear tomorrow. I now have three pair of clean chinos hanging in my closet, a black pair, a khaki pair, and an olive pair. Technically, I bought the olive pair a little earlier, liked the fit, and decided to get a couple more.

I know it’s not much, but I didn’t really feel like doing more today. I sort of woke up with a headache around three am, which took me a while to get rid of, and after finally sleeping it off, I didn’t feel overly motivated to do much else. I did manage to make lots of great tasting lattes trying to get rid of the headache though, so the day wasn’t totally wasted. It happens. Maybe tomorrow will be a more productive day, but probably not, since it’s Monday. Que sera, sera.

One thing I have been working on, though not as much as I should, is a story I sort of have in my head. I’m hoping to turn it into a novelette or something. I have an idea about the setting and situation, but it needs a lot more character development, and I have to put together all the scenes necessary to get the reader from point A to point Z. It will most likely fall in the Sci-fi genre, as it takes place in a futuristic world, and includes AI, time travel, and elements of dystopia. I am also trying to weave in some aspects of spirituality. I think this is the most I’ve ever told anyone about it, so you are the first to know. Maybe you will read it someday, provided I ever get it typed up. We’ll see. Miracles happen every day.

What have you been working on? Do you have a big project going? Do Mondays bring down your motivation? Do you change up your wardrobe from time to time? Do you like shopping for new clothes? Aren’t lattes absolutely wonderful? Any advice on writing a sci-fi novelette? Let me know below, and remember to like, share, and subscribe!

How I relax.

I started this new way to relax. I haven’t done it long enough to know how well it works. After I got those new wine glasses, I decided to just pour a glass of wine and sit in bed and read. Seems to be working fine so far. I also take melatonin on nights I have to work the next day, just to make me sleep through the night. If I don’t take them, I tend to wake up around 3 or 4 am and can’t go back to sleep. Sleeping is not my forte.

Right now, I’m reading a series of short books over novel writing that I found on Amazon. The author’s name is K. M. Weiland. Maybe you might be interested in them if you are thinking about writing a novel. I’m just on the first one, but it’s pretty informative so far.

Outlining Your Novel: Map Your Way to Success

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I normally don’t add to a post after it’s published, but it occurred to me that I have one more thing I do to relax. I listen to thunderstorm sounds. I don’t know why, but storms calm and soothe me.

I have a Windows app that I use on my computer called Ambie. It is a white noise generator that allows you to mix various sounds, including those of a thunderstorm. The app is free, but you can buy different sounds to mix. I positively love this app! I sleep with it on practically every night, and I think I sleep much better on the nights that I use it.

Picture of Ambie Windows App

Sometimes I just pull up YouTube and find a channel that has thunderstorm sounds. There’s a lot of them out there, so I guess I’m not the only one that can be put to sleep by a storm. Below is a random one I found as an example. Watch it for a few minutes, and maybe you will feel relaxed too.

Do you have trouble relaxing? Ever take sleep aids? Do storms relax you? Do you like to listen to nature sounds? Have any relaxation tips? Have you written a novel or thinking about it? Do you outline your writing beforehand? Any tips on novel or story writing? Let me know in the comments, and don’t forget to like, share, and subscribe!

The people in my dreams.

I admit I don’t remember my dreams as often as I did when I was growing up. Maybe if I thought about it before I went to sleep, or wrote my dreams down when I woke up, then I would begin to remember them better. I do like them in general, the good ones anyway. It just seems like there’s so much going on that my dreams seem unimportant, but maybe there’s something to learn from them.

I remember having all kinds of dreams growing up, good dreams I didn’t want to wake up from, and nightmares where I was happy to have a place to wake up to, because I wouldn’t want to be stuck in one of those forever. I must admit that did scare me some as a kid. What if I couldn’t make myself wake up? I think that would be a kind of hell.

I also remember interacting with lots of characters in my dreams. Occasionally it would be someone I know from the waking world, though they were often not exactly like I knew them in person, but I knew it was them somehow. I often wondered about this. Was I also in their dream that night? Did we dream the same dream?

I think the most interesting characters in my dreams though, were the ones I didn’t know at all. Where did they come from? Maybe they were just a product of my imagination, but they seemed to say and do things that made sense, and I didn’t tell them how to behave. Do they think like people? I also used to imagine that they were real people too, just living somewhere else, in a place I’ve never been.

One of the oddest things though, is that sometimes these people in my dreams came back on other nights, but in different dreams. They seemed to have permanence of some kind from night to night. Maybe not the next night, but sooner or later they would reappear. They were like dream companions or something. I remember I even liked a few of them, and thought it was too bad they were not in the real world.

What does my recollection of the old dreams I had as a kid matter now? I was just thinking about how real-world relationships differ from those in the dream world. These friends in my dreams would come and go, but I never feared they would disappear forever. I knew they were always around somewhere, and when the right time came around, we would again have a dream adventure together.

In the real world, relationships don’t quite behave this way. They are kind of sticky. You may try to keep some person in your life longer than they should be, or longer than they want to be. They might also try to hold on to you for longer than they should. Because of this stickiness, some disconnects can cause anger and hurt feelings, leading to permanent separation. A relationship with one person can also get in the way of a relationships with another. You might even find yourself wanting to be alone just to avoid these relationship problems.

From this comparison, I was pondering the idea that maybe there is something to learn from dream relationships. What if we were able to move freely through life letting connections with people come and go, and come again, as circumstances unfold, without trying to control everything and everyone. Maybe dream relationships are how we are supposed to be in real life, but the circumstances of this reality blind us to the perfection that is within our soul and demonstrated in the dream reality.

Just a thought to ponder. Enjoy!

Possible discussion ideas.

  1. Do you think dreams are important? If so, why?
  2. Do people in your real life appear often in your dreams?
  3. Have you met people in your dreams that you don’t know?
  4. Do you have recurring dreams, or recurring people in your dreams?
  5. Do places you have seen only in your dreams recur?
  6. What are your thoughts on relationship stickiness?
  7. Do you think dream relationships are pleasant?
  8. Who would you most like to meet in your dreams?

Thanks for reading! I can’t wait to hear from you! Please remember to like, comment, share, and subscribe!

My favorite state of mind.

Today I was thinking about something to write about. I do have tons more things to say, but I sometimes think, no, I don’t want to write that one today, I’m just not feeling it. It might be long winded, or emotional and change my mood, or maybe it just doesn’t feel like the right time. I know I’ll get around to it sooner or later, so don’t worry, there’s a lot more to come.

Confused by too many competing ideas to write about colliding in my brain and vying for my attention, I decided, I’m going to take a little nap to clear my head. You’ve heard me talk about sleep before and how much I love it, and that I also like to take naps. This is really one of the main reasons I do it. My mind becomes a tangled mess and I have to let it unknot itself. The nap resets me to clearheadedness while reducing some of my tiredness. I also think it greatly adds to your health, happiness, longevity, and wellbeing. Sleep is great!

That said, sleep isn’t really my favorite state of mind. Sleep is mostly unmemorable except for the dreams, but it does aid in recovery, growth, and healing. Dreams can be nice, because they take place somewhere that isn’t quite bound by all the rules of this reality, but they do seem to follow some rules, so I feel like it’s just another kind of reality that I can’t totally control half the time. Some dreams are also way more memorable and meaningful (see Dream Messages), as I have found out over the years, and I love them, but the dream state also isn’t my favorite, especially if I’m having a nightmare, which almost never happens these days.

I should mention the waking state also. It’s good in many ways, but definitely not my favorite. It has a very strict set of rules, mostly seems to be following a linear track, and is pretty darn inflexible. The good thing is that it is pretty solid and keeps its form, so I can usually figure out where I left my car keys, or what road to take to get home. There are also tons of amazing things to see and do in it, but it’s also home to pain, exhaustion, loss, sickness, death, poverty, and every imaginable plague and misfortune. It’s by far the most difficult one to control and can be quite uncomfortable some days.

I wasn’t sure what to call my favorite state of mind. It is not really sleep, not really dream, and not really awake. It’s a state that lies somewhere between these realities. If you know about this state, or can find it, I think you will realize it can greatly empower you, especially if you are a creative type. It can also be a very calm and rejuvenating state of mind, or at least it is for me. I decided to call it the Middle Realm, but the technical names are Hypnagogia and Hypnopompia. Feel free to pronounce those words instead if you like.

To get there, you just take a nap, or find it right before you go to sleep at night, or when you wake up in the morning, though an alarm clock really destroys this precious state, which is another reason to hate alarm clocks. It is in this state that I am my real self, but it can be scary sometimes. The material world and the dream world are overlapping somewhat during this state. Because immaterial and material are mingled, you might actually see or sense something that isn’t actually present. I don’t worry too much though. I just see it as part of a dream.

Now I get to the part where I tell you what was on my mind during that state after my nap. It was a thought, not overly profound, but definitely meaningful, and it kind of hit me in the face. It was a phrase, and I woke up and tweeted it (or Xed it?).

You don’t deserve the people in your life if you’re always wanting someone better.

The phrase was, you don’t deserve the people in your life if you’re always wanting someone better. It slapped me in the face because I’m the type of person who is always looking for new friends and acquaintances. It was a reminder that I need to remember other relationships and old friends. This is the wisdom that came from the Middle Realm today. I may post about other experiences in Middle Realm at a later date, stay tuned!

Possible discussion ideas

  1. What’s your favorite state of mind?
  2. Do you get inspired to write at bedtime?
  3. Do you have excellent thoughts when you first wake up?
  4. Does sleep or a nap untangle your thoughts?
  5. Do you remember a lot of your dreams?
  6. Do you have nightmares often?
  7. What do you think wisdom is and is it worldly?
  8. What are your experiences in the Middle Realm?

Thanks for reading! Looking forward to hearing from you in the comments! Please remember to like, share, and subscribe!

When I go to bed and wake up.

What time do I go to bed and wake up currently? The best answer to this question should be whenever I want! I actually hate alarm clocks, and I’m not too fond of calendars either. They get in the way of me doing what I really want. I sincerely believe that a person’s life is their own and they should at a minimum be able to decide when they want to be asleep.

In reality though, my employer has set days and hours that they expect me to be there, so I have to use clocks and calendars to keep them happy. As soon as I retire though, the alarm clock is going to fly out the window, and I hope to live every day like it was the weekend.

Currently, I have an alarm set for 6:00 AM during the days that I am expected to be at work. I also have another alarm set at 7:00 AM, because I tend to lay back down after drinking my coffee and taking my vitamins. If you want to know what that’s like for me, you can read about my morning routine. I turn off all alarms on the days that I do not have to be at work and get up whenever my body tells me it’s ready, usually after the sun is streaming through the bedroom windows.

The time I go to bed is a different story. Sometimes I am out later than I should be on a work day. This was a bigger problem when I used to go to karaoke on Sunday and Wednesday, but that bar shut down. The mornings come way to quickly on the days I am out too late, but that doesn’t happen as much now.

I also have another problem. I have always been a night owl. Most of my best work was done in the wee hours of the night and early morning. I have literally worked on projects till dawn back in my younger days.

These days, I am rarely up later than 3:00 AM on the weekends though. Too often, I am still up until midnight on work days though, and I often take melatonin to make myself go to sleep and sleep through the night. My best hours are probably sometime between noon and midnight, as that is the time I am most energized and creative.

What’s your schedule? When do you feel most energized? Let me know in the comments, and don’t forget to like, subscribe, and share!