Decisions, decisions....

Which would you say are the hardest decisions to make? The ones which only involve you, or the ones which outcome affects others?

It is not as easy as it seems to answer that question. At least it is not for me. When I am the only one who will feel the pros or cons of a decision I make, or for that matter don't make, I would say the risk are easier to take, But, there is the problem, unless we live in a cave or and island all by ourselves, very few things we do affect just ourselves. I do know some people who don't subscribe to that idea or belief and perhaps they are wiser than I am. Many I believe will make the best decision as they see it and let the chips fall where they may. I on the other hand make every decision a big one, perhaps even bigger than it deserves to be, thinking of how it will affect those around me. If the effect could always be a positive one, then the decision is a given, but when that outcome is not as clear...

Sometimes we have no choice but to make a decision and hope for the best outcome for all involved. Those decisions however, are not easy or hard as it were, since we don't have more than one option or choice in that particular matter.

Am I making things harder than they are? Maybe.

Don't worry...

It is easy to say but one of the most difficult things in life to do, or better yet, not do, that is to worry. We all worry about different things but the outcome of our worry, or the final results are very similar if not the same.

We worry until we make ourselves physically sick and our worry did not put a dent in our problem at all. Or was it a problem? Many of us worry about things that have not yet happened, or will ever happen. We worry about things not even knowing if the outcome of a certain situation might not be a positive one for us instead of the horror we think it will bring.

I know that there is nothing I can say to stop you from worrying, but I will try to help you see how planning ahead can help our worries to become less frustrating. If we plan ahead for a situation, when it comes, if it ever does, we will be better equipped to meet it head-on. You see all the worry in the world without any positive action on our part will accomplish nothing at all, while a little planning can, and often does, bring a positive solution to our problem.

One thing I have descovered through the years has been that some of the things I've worried about never happened, and many of the other things did happen, but with a much better outcome than I could have ever hoped for.

So Think about it...what are you worrying about today...wil your worry change it on little bit...

Superman?

I am going back to when I was about 8 or 9 years of age. As you know by now I lived on the West Side of Chicago. I was thinking of this old man who owned a shoe repair store on Roosevelt Rd. This was, and still is, a main street in Chicago. Well The street I lived on shared the same alley with Roosevelt Rd. I would occasionally vist this shoe store just to watch while he made shoes look like new again. I guess it was cheaper back then to re-sole or to have new heels put on a pair of shoes instead of going and buying a new pair. I was thinking of one day in particular. It was early summer. It was about 2:30 in the afternoon. I remember the time because Clark Kent would come on tv as Superman. This was the black and white version of Superman. I always watched this show. On this particular day I recall hearing a lot of sirens close to the back of our house so I ran outside, as everyone else did. I ran to where the crowd was gathered just to find out that the shoe man and his wife had been robbed and shot to death. I remember wondering how great it would be if Superman was real and he could come and find the person or persons who had done this horrible thing. You see, he never allowed anyone in to the shop unless he knew them, that is why I was allowed to go there. Since the police did not find the door broken, they figured it was no stranger who did this. I don't remember if anyone was ever caught. It was pretty sad since these people were part of our neighborhood. You see back then most of the store fronts had an apartment in back or upstairs where the owners of the shop or store would live. This old man and his wife lived behind the store. I want to say his name was Joe, I can't be sure. He was a white man, Jewish I think. He would always let me buff some of the shoes before the customers would come to pick them up. I did not get paid for this but I enjoyed doing it and I enjoyed being in his shop and watching everything he did. He was a master at his job!

So anyways Superman never payed my neighborhood a visit.

I'm back...

Well, I could talk about the Bears loss to the Packers, but enough said. Not much has changed with me. I am still wearing my fedoras and I think this is a permanent part of me from now on. I am not buying anymore for a while. I want to wear the ones I own.

I have learned a couple of new things, one of which is that I now know how to rip and burn cds. The other thing I learnd is where to get free music. This however, will remain my secret.

2011 is no longer new. It has been here for almost a full month now. The winter in the Midwest has been a rough one. I am glad at times like this that I no longer have a guide dog. Winter snow and cold are just too much to deal with when it comes to traveling as a blind individual with a guide dog. I know many people do it every day, but they would lie if they said it was easy.

Another thing that has changed with me is that after almost 6 years with US Cellular, I moved to Cricket. I got a much better deal for my money and the service has not skipped a beat. I am waiting to go downtown to see how it works there. I also came across a toll free number which is great. The number is: 1-800-555-8355, when you call this number, you can ask for a weather report, local news, top headlines, cheap gas, time and you can have it look up a number to a store or whatever for free. They will not only send you a text with the info, but if youwish, they will also connect the call. All for free! Not bad if you ask me. Yes, I know you guys with the crackberries can get the same info. But I have it all read back to me. I don't know who provides this service and I really don't care, as long as they keep providing it. Years ago when I had Sprint, I had this service available to me at a cost of $5 a month.

I heard from ZoomText, my screen-reader software provider, that they are going mobile. They did not expand on that. They said other emails will have all details. Maybe they have come up with a screen reader for the common cell phone. I know there are some products oth there, but if this company has something in the way of ZT, it will be great since we are so familiar with how it works. We really would not need to much time to get adapted to it. We shal see.

Well, I think that is about all for now.

How I define beauty...

I am going to atempt to describe what beauty is to me. I am blind so beauty as you know it as a sighted individual is a totally different perception, if you will. ?A sighted person can say he or she does not really care how a person looks, that it is what is in their heart that matters, and I believe many folks are sincere about their efforts to see it that way, but your eyes, your vision and the perception that has been imprinted in your mind by the media, books, internet and even your parents when you were a child, strongly affects how and what you will call beautiful.

I did have sight when I was younger, no I never saw 20/20, but I could appreciate beauty. As examples of this was how I viewed my wife and our children, They were physically beautiful to me, and that beauty was obvious to anyone looking at them. So in that case the outer appearance was genuinely beautiful. There was no need to exert too much effort to view certain people as beautiful just by their appearance, and I believe that for sighted people it has not changed much. When a man sees a beautiful woman, he takes notice and no one needs to rienforce what he can clearly see with the naked eye. The same holds true for a woman who sees a handsome man.

I have reached a very interesting point in my life. I have entered the 55th. year of my life. And I have been unable to see faces, so with that the ability to see outward appearance and it's beauty,for the last 22 years. Was it difficult for me at the start? You bet it was! I still viewed those I new to be beautiful as such, but when I expressed my acknowledgement of such beauty it was not accepted based on the persons perception and understandin I no longer could see their features. So in fact they felt I had no knowledge of their beauty. This was very difficult for me since I wanted my then wife to believe me when I told her she looked beautiful. You see we are raised to want others to notice a new item of clothing, a new hairstyle, a new weight, and so on. There is nothing wrong with wanting and needing to be noticed.

As a blind man however, I do see beauty. I believe I see beauty better than when I could actually see. All the clothing, make-up, hairstyle or gain or loss of weight, do not affect how I view a person. You see, I now put much effort in listening to what and how a person expresses their thoughts and feelings. It is like when you read a book and fall in love with the main character, you have a mentalt picture of what you believe he or she looks like. You may never get the opportunity to see that person in real life, but what if you did and they did not live up to your expectations? You see, when I view a person as beautiful, their outward appearance can not change that for me. They could be exactly as I picture them to be or totally the opposite, but to me they are one and the same. While you may be dissapointed in who your beautiful character turned out to look like, that never enters the equation in my determination of how beautiful I percieve, or if you will, see a person. I actually can see a man as a very beautiful person much quicker than a sighted man can. Not only because a man for the most part does not feel inclined to look for beauty in another man, physical beauty that is, this hinders his ability to see the inner beauty. This actually works in reverse when a man sees a beautiful woman, he may be so blinded by her outward appearance that he fails to see how rotten, or ugly she really is as a person. So you see where I have an advantage over you? Can I be fooled? absolutely, I can label a person as beautiful only to find out they are no good. But at least I was not fooled by outward appearance. The amount of time and energy put into looking beautiful does not go unnoticed by a blind person. I care of how I look and I appreciate it when a person does something special so that I may notice them, for example if a woman takes the time to get dressed up for me and wears a nice perfume I deeply appreciate it, you see she is putting aside all those misconcieved ideas that I cannot appreciate her beauty cause I cannot see her with the naked eye. All that is missing is a ssimple discription of her article of clothing, such as the color and length of her dress the style and color of her shoes or boots, and even the way she is wearing her hair that day. These are the things she would want me to notice if I could see. A man with sight may not notice all these details and she will definitely notice he did not. So by my asking what she is wearing I am showin much more interest than he who could see it all. As a blind man I have learned not to take anything or anyone for granted.

While a man may notice his girlfriend is looking good, he may figure she already knows he noticed her so he may not express himself, and this is viewed by her as him not caring enough to notice how she went to such time and effort to look good for him. This very girl or woman may walk by me and I will acknowledge the scent of her perfume, and even though I can't see her she feels I noticed her and paid more attention to her then her own man did.

I am not saying that being blind is a good thing, I am not saying that I would not trade places with a sighted man in a second, all I am stating is how I as a blind man sees beauty, how in fact beauty does rest on the eye of the beholder, whether blind or not...

The 28th. day of Dec...

Three mor days til 2011. Many folks reflect on the past year and either are pleased with themselves or not. Based on how they feel they begin to make resolutions for the New Year. Sometimes what we need to do is to finish what we started before we go on a new venture.

Times are harder than they have been in many years. Planning and sticking to our good plans will help us to make it through difficult times. When things are going smoothly again we need to check ourselves to see if we are still on the right track, or if we are going down the old path which will get us in trouble again. No one needs to point out the pitfalls for us, we no them all too well. Save a little for a rainy day, that is such an old proverb, but it holds true to our day, and it will still be going strong when we are no longer here.

I started my journey into the 55th. year of my life on Dec. 11th. I hope to stay healthy and to enjoy my family. I feel pretty good and when I feel down, recognising that as a road I don't want to take, I do my best to convince myself that all will be okay. All the pieces to the puzzle which make up my life are no longer here, Some are missing never to be found again. So, with this incomplete puzzle which makes up my life, I go on making the pieces that remain fit nicely to make a nice and happy family portrait. We can't and won't always have things the way we would like, but we don't need to just be satisfied with what we are left with, we can improve on what we have left to work with. Another old saying is, "there is always room for improvement."

Just being alive is a blessing. Enjoy life and deal with the trials which come your way the very best you can. Seek help when required and always strive to be the very best you can be. Even if no one notices, you know, and when it comes down to it, thats all that matters, we must be happy with ourselves, and yes, even love ourselves before we can honestly love someone else....

Window's live mail...

I was a loyal Outlook user until it started acting up on my new PC, so I ran with Gmail for a few weeks. Gmail is a great email provider but I don't like their inbox page to much. It was fine after I cleaned it up but I wanted a page just dedicated to my inbox and outbox. I decided to look at Windows live mail client. It is not an internet search page or and instant messenger page, as I thought it was, it is a page dedicated to your email. I was able to send my Gmail mail account via IMAP to this page. It was sooper easy. I now feel comfortable having all my mail at a glance and easy to use format.

I also like the fact it reccognized my Gmail id and password. It seems to be working out, time will tell. If you are running Window's 7 you can easily access this page once you have opened an account, by typing wi in the search box. You can also do what I did, I dragged and dropped the windows live mail icon to my toolbar. Pretty cool if you ask me.