Reminiscing
I'm guessing today would be a travel day for many folks heading to Grandma's house for Christmas. Of course, last Friday afternoon was probably a popular time to leave for those on weekends off.
When I was a young man with a home mortgage, a family, and trying to keep a couple of raggedy cars running, I usually volunteered to work on Christmas since I got double pay for working holidays. I considered working a holiday easy money. I wasn't expected to do any more than just be there, and since there were no honchos around, being there was not a problem.
I'm always amazed when I look back at my life and see what I did to keep my bills paid. Living in Miami, which was a fairly expensive place to live, and trying to keep affording a middle-class life, sometimes I worked a full-time job, a part-time job, and was paid to go to college at night on the G.I. Bill. And my wife was working on top of all that.
As lazy and unmotivated as I am, I often wonder how I accomplished what I did. But having bills to pay is a wonderful motivator for those who don't come by it naturally. But I think most of all; I can thank my six-year hitch in the Air Force, four years active duty, and two years in the reserves for providing me with a small check to go to school at night and the VA loan on my house in Miami which got my foot in the door of home ownership, without the VA loan I doubt I could have come up with a required down payment on a house.
I know I was none too happy as a teenager being dragged off, kicking and screaming, into a brand-new military life that didn't involve fishing and skin diving like my Miami life did. But it worked out in the end, and now I'm even more dependent on the VA to keep my health problems in check.
Theboondork
Walking is one of the few things I can do here. Even though walking is not one of my favorite things to do, I find it rather boring unless I’m doing something interesting. Taking pictures as I walk gives me a reason to walk, telling myself that I’m not going for a walk; I’m going out to take pictures.
Sunrise at the City of Rocks.
This is a screenshot of my computer while I was working on that last video. I use the latest version of Da Vinci Resolve, which is far from the most difficult video editing software I’ve tried, but it’s nowhere near the easiest. To me, Da Vinci is a good balance between doing anything I need it to do and not doing much of anything.
But I need to challenge my mind, and that’s one of the reasons I wanted to do more videos; I’m not normally doing things that challenge my mind, and that needs to stop before I have no mind left to challenge.