ided it was time to get my life on tract. By that I mean, "get rid of the negative stuff", and work with the positive. It sounds simplistic, but we really do sabotage the things we say we want to accomplish. As I said I thought to myself you knew all of this back then, why did you stop applying it to your own life.

I believe that one of the reasons we set things aside is because it’s just easier to go with the flow. If your friends and loved ones including family, maybe I should say especially family, hear of your ideas or goals, they’ll tell you that’s impossible. Now before you talked to them you thought it was a great idea, but suddenly everyone you trust and respect is saying no you can’t do that, well guess what happens? Nothing is what happens, now your friends weren’t trying to keep you from success, they thought they were saving you the agony of failure. However if we don’t try we’ll never know if we could have accomplished it. I believe that it is better to have tried and failed than to never try.

Let me throw in a little antidote here. When I was trucking a few years ago, well maybe more than a few, there were times when the weather was bad. Now it was easy just to stay in the truck stop and wait it out. Sometimes though you just knew in your heart that it wasn’t all that bad. So you ventured out, guess what while others were staying put for fear you were doing it. That was a feeling of accomplishment that stays with you. Now don’t get me wrong, if it was snowing so hard you couldn’t see the exit of the truck stop, naturally you stayed put. As always common sense applies, you don’t build a spaceship to go to the moon without learning a little about aerodynamics.

I have attempted a bit of writing in the last few years, thanks to spell checker. I started writing political stuff for a little newsletter a friend was putting out. It took me a few years to realize that for me politics was a lost cause. Then about a year or so ago I wrote a few essays on love and relationship that people seemed to enjoy. I then came to a wall and didn’t think I had any ideas on what to write about. Maybe I just started thinking who was I to put out stuff like that. Especially when I let negative thought start ruling my thinking.

As I said the movie “The Secret” got me to thinking about all these things and then hearing that recording just strengthened my resolve. I enjoy writing along with public speaking, which I haven’t done for quite awhile. That along with singing is something I need to concentrate on.

Writing for me is also a learning experience. When I read something that I wrote awhile back it’s almost like I’m reading something someone else wrote. I have come across essays and read almost the whole thing before I realized I wrote it. When you really stop and think about it, life is fantastic. The only limits on the enjoyment of life are the ones we put on it. I believe that I am going to start concentrating on the things that make life enjoyable to me. As the saying goes, you can’t love someone else until you love yourself. Well if you do something to make someone else feel better why not do something for yourself? Now that sounds like fun.

Oh yea, that speech I had recorded back when, I was the one giving the speech.

Charlie