Monthly Archives: January 2015

Playlist of the Moment: Wintry Mix

A few years ago, for a friend’s birthday, I made her a mix CD where every song had “winter,” “snow,” or “cold” in the title. We’d been joking about doing a snow dance to make it snow.

As I’m sure you’ve heard, we recently got a couple of feet of snow dropped on us by the blizzard that the Weather Channel called Juno. Much like the dog it shares a name with, this Juno DEMANDED everyone’s attention. But I don’t mind- although it can sometimes be a pain, I really love snow and I’m happy that we have so much of it now.

For those of you who are not so lucky, here’s my snow dance/”wintry mix” playlist:

1. Let It Snow, Dean Martin

2. It Snowed, Meaghan Smith

3. Snowfoot Waltz, The Divers

4. In Time It Snows, Nedelle & Thom

5. Snow Like This, The Softies

6. Winter Wonderland, Tony Bennett

7. Your Winter, Sister Hazel

8. Sister Winter, Sufjan Stevens

9. Song for a Winter’s Night, Sarah McLachlan

10. Whisper in Winter, Frame the City

11. A Cold Wind Blows Through Your Door, Bill Ricchini

12. Cold, Nakia

Asking the Internet for Advice

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I’ve been thinking too much, as I sometimes do. And there are a few things I have on my mind, because they’re things about which I’ve never really heard any advice given. They’re all things that I’ve been told, directly or indirectly, that I should be doing—but what I haven’t heard is how.

So I could use your advice on these three things, Internet. I’m interested in EVERYONE’S thoughts on these, whether I know you or not, whether you’ve commented before or you just lurk, whether I met you in real life or on the Internet, whether you want to share your name or be anonymous. If you have thoughts—any thoughts at all—please comment.

How do you stop comparing yourself to other people?

This advice is given on the Internet so many times it’s almost a cliché. “Want to be happier? Stop comparing yourself to others!” “Not satisfied with where you are in life? Stop comparing yourself to others!”

But I’ve yet to find any practical advice on HOW to stop comparing yourself to others.

Because here’s the thing: almost everything in life is designed to encourage comparison. Look at high school—you spend all of high school competing for the best grades. The winning time in the meet or the most goals scored. That leadership position you want to put on your resume. The lead in the play, the first chair in the orchestra. All this so that you can beat out other people for spots in the college you want to go to.

And it never really ends. At work now, I’m in sales, and comparing yourself to other salespeople is a built-in part of the job. You see where other people are in life and use them as yardsticks for where your life should be, or could be.

All the advice I’ve ever read on the attempt to stop comparing yourself to others is really vague and general. So…do people who don’t compare themselves to others really exist? And if so, how do they do it?

This kind of goes hand-in-hand with my next question:

What do you do when you’re not happy for someone and you’re expected to be?

So let’s say someone in your life has some good news while your own life is…not going so well lately. And while you know it’s fairly normal to be happy for someone while also being jealous…what about when you’re 0% happy and 100% jealous? And you feel like the only thing that would make you feel happiness for this person would be an improvement in how things are going in your own life?

Jealousy is ugly and it’s kind of a shameful thing to have to admit to, but I feel it all the time. But I don’t know how to put an end to it. When someone gives the advice to be happy for the person’s good news, to me that sounds like, “Even though you didn’t like that (fill-in-the-blank…could be a movie, book, song, food, etc.), you should just change your mind and like it!”

I honestly don’t think I can just decide to be happy for someone and make my percent of happy higher than zero. I have tried and it really didn’t work. But other than working to improve my own life, in hopes that it will decrease my jealousy, what do I do?

And one more thing:

What do you do when someone won’t forgive you for something you’re truly sorry for?

I’ve never really talked about this, on this blog or anywhere else, and even now I don’t want to go into too much detail.

About two and a half years ago, I said something I shouldn’t have said, and the result was the end of more than one friendship. When I apologized to the person I’d hurt, she didn’t accept it and essentially said that she’d never forgive me and didn’t want to talk to me ever again.

It is not an exaggeration to say that I think about this every single day.

It’s not the only misstep I’ve made, either, and was not the only thing that led to the end of these friendships. I’ve spent a lot of time retracing my steps, thinking of how things might be different now in my relationships with people if I’d made different choices. The fact that I’ve hurt and upset other people absolutely kills me.

I see so many people in my life who are actually good people, people who don’t hurt others, people who can go to bed at night knowing that they are actually not terrible human beings, and I wish so much that I could be one of them.

When there’s not the slightest chance of being forgiven, is there any chance you can forgive yourself? And if so, how do you do it?

Please comment. I really want to hear what people think about any or all of these questions.

Produce More, Consume Less

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I cannot believe I’ve let this much of January get away from me without blogging. This definitely does not fit in with my goals for the year, which include a lot of things I want to do with this space. But more on that later.

My tendency is to aim high and make too many goals for the year so that when I look back and see what I’ve accomplished and it’s more than half of them, I can shrug and say, “Eh, not half-bad…literally.” The thing is, though, there are always so many things I want to do and so little time (which reminds me of the Willy Wonka quote in the video up there). I want to write fiction: short stories, the novel I started, another novel I’ve had rattling around in my brain. I want to redesign this blog and have more posts and regular features and just generally do more with Pure Bright Fire than I’m currently doing. I want my writing to be published on other sites. I want to exercise more, cook more, and eat healthier. I want to volunteer and do more with my church and donate platelets more often. I want to travel and spend more time with my friends. I want to read a lot of books and watch a lot of movies and binge-watch a lot of shows. Oh, and I also have to work and hopefully get 7-8 hours of sleep a night.

I’ve found that a lot of bloggers, rather than New Year’s Resolutions, pick a word that’s their word for the year, something they want to focus on. I can’t do that because I can’t decide on a word, funnily enough. But as I was pondering what I want to do in this new year, a certain phrase popped into my head and I can’t get it out: “Produce more, consume less.”

Now, that doesn’t quite work for all my goals–exercise doesn’t really produce anything except sweat– but it’s fitting enough that I’m keeping it as a mantra of sorts.

I want to produce more fiction, more writing for other sites, more content for this blog and produce a new design.

I want to consume less of the useless crap I read on the Internet- especially when I decide to raise my blood pressure by reading comment sections.

I want to produce more of my own food- cooking healthy things, trying new recipes.

I want to consume less sugar, junk food, and takeout.

It doesn’t work so well for exercise, like I said, and time with friends, traveling, and other fun things don’t really fall into easy produce/consume categories. And there are definitely more books, movies, and TV shows I want to consume, but I want my media consumption to lead me to produce good writing.

But it works well enough that I’m going to try to abide by it. We’ll see how I do.