October 12, 2024
I haven’t written a Thoughts paper in a while. Actually, that’s not true. Why am I lying to you? Because I can. I should say I haven’t written anything unplanned. Patti and I took a Route 66 trip that I wrote about, but I didn’t write the entries on the date I was writing about. Past me would have said this was cheating. Current me was excited I’d found a new way to write my thoughts. What I did during the trip was take pictures. Later, I used the pictures to remember what we did and what happened. I feel like I discovered a new way of writing that works perfectly for me. Of course, a picture is worth a thousand words says the same thing. Visual thinking!
This way of writing works with my skill of remembering images. Each picture brings me back to the moment I took it and leads to other memories. I can add even more details than are in the pictures themselves. My thoughts on something become even more vivid. This is good for Patti because I won’t have to interrupt our vacation to write about it. All I need to do is take pictures of it. Using this technique will not work for my regular day-to-day thoughts because taking pictures throughout the day is awkward and undoable most of the time. It only works when you can take pictures.
One thing I didn’t write about from the vacation was my dash cam falling off the windshield on our first day. The suction cups holding it on came loose. The plastic part that pulled against the rubber part had worn completely away. I just unplugged it for the rest of the vacation. When we got back from the vacation, I ordered a replacement for the broken part. It’s back on the windshield and working now. Before it came down, I got footage of us driving in the middle of nowhere and us talking about it. It would have been nice to have it on some of the winding roads. The Petrified Forest was one of those roads. At the very least, it could have made some cool sped-up footage.
Patti is already talking about our next vacation. She currently wants to go back to Jamaica. This means flying. The best part of driving to your destination is not having to fly. I’m sure Patti will follow my snobbish rule of only flying first class, but dealing with airports is never fun. She mentioned going back to Couples Sans Souci. It’s the smaller resort we liked the best. The one downside to it was the drive from the airport to the resort. It takes about two hours to get there. I know this is Patti’s least favorite part because she doesn’t like the roads and the way they drive. For me, it’s just the time it takes. I’ll probably suggest a resort closer to the airport just to avoid this.
October 20, 2024
What the hamster shell is on my mind today? The heat of summer is finally going away. That’s good news for our electric bill. I had a freak-out moment at the beginning of the month. I misinterpreted the bill and thought over $1000 was due. My anxiety grew even more when I also misinterpreted our insurance bill. The electric bill was half what I thought it was. The insurance was for Patti’s truck and her responsibility. Her payments are due quarterly and mine are due monthly. The electric bill came right after our Route 66 trip. I thought it was higher because Patti set the temperature too low while we were gone. She gave me money so I wouldn’t panic myself to death. I gave it back when I realized my error. She needed it to pay for her insurance.
It’s good to know a financial crisis can still send me into a panic. Actually, it’s sad that the possibility of one could affect me like it did. For a time, it took over my thoughts. I played Wordscapes way too much because I needed something to distract me from my anxious thoughts. My anxieties are less than they used to be, but I can still be triggered easily. Sometimes, I forget I perfected life years ago. I slip back into old anxious habits. A little bit of research could have saved me from swimming in anxious waters. Knowledge always wins over belief.
Let’s talk about emotions. Someone in a book I was listening to said they had wounded emotions. This struck me as wrong. It just didn’t sound right. I thought damaged emotions would have sounded better. As I regularly do, I saved a note on my phone so I could talk about it later. I looked at the note before I started writing this paragraph and mixed up the one I didn’t like. The argument was already forming in my head. Wounded emotions sounded better than damaged emotions. Checking the note again, I realized my error. The actual point of this note was the arbitrary nature of our word choices. I’m sure my writing word choices cause the same annoyance in some of my readers. Why didn’t I say irritation instead of annoyance? It makes you wonder if I said it on purpose to get a reaction from the reader. Perhaps. Who knows?
Thoughts from Life 
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