Transcription
12-23-16
How Do You Deal With Life's Anxiety's
Having started this article within seconds of the prompt being selected I quickly came to a realization: I haven't been dealing with life's anxietys very well, as of late. Despite this fact my very pridefully proud ego wanted to write this great sermon of sorts. Wanted to tell a lil smaller grain of salt lie about my being kiltered when it comes to dealing with the worrys that accompany my life; my very existence. This me craved to be able to say - boastfully - that I overcome anxiousness by, reading my Bible, meditating, praying, & enjoying the Sabbath day of rest. & not just on Sunday, but parts of Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, & Saturday (which was the original one. Guess it still is...) Yae. Would've loved to tell you that I take regular "pit stops" & or spend quality time doin nothing. Well maybe a lil organizing , TV watching, or music listening to. Maybe I would've told you a stretched truth of my taking multiple 12 second moments to enjoy life & just let it all go. I mean that's what Jesus would do. After all he told his disciples & future ones - "Do not worry bout tomorrow for sufficient for the day is the evil thereof." It is with this in mind that I confess. I'm not a very good follower. You see I been a worry wort mainly since I received a personal prophecy on Easter Sunday of 2015. Since 5:30 am that morning God's still small voice has been ever present speaking to me about my doing 20yrs in prison. I started my 20th year on 9-11. Unclear on the exact date of my departure I worry about that, while wishing I knew so I could tell everyone, my daughter 1st & foremost. She been begging to keep track of my release date since 2012. The thoughts of being married weigh me down like 5 gallon buckets. Coupled with thoughts of who would want me? An ex-con. A felon. A stereotypical black man, who came to prison at 18 for shooting somebody. Then I got no pension, no health insurance, no experience, no resume, no knowledge of the internet! So I don't know how to text, tweet, chirp, or whatever else. I don't even have a Facebook page & I'm 37. On top of that I often wonder - can you google Google? I digress. Back to my fictional wife who only exist on TV, cause it seems the woman of my generation aren't the type of women that I'm looking for. Looking for a God-fearing woman, not a diva. I wonder if I did find MRS. Right how will she explain me to her parents? I worry bout getting out & being revoocated for nothin or being falsely accused then convict simply cause I been to prison. Yet the story behind the headlines is that the 2 weeks leading up to this essays completion has shown me an important truth. I deal with life's anxietys - BY CREATING MORE.. This fact is heavily prevalent in my being a writer. One that doubts he can even write. This despite the fact I've been published & have a book being considered right now. Any who I deal with the worry of "if I'm good enough" by writing more & more. I'll start writing one book only to worry if I'll be accepted. As doubt creeps in I start another book with an even brighter idea. When doubt creeps back in I go to the library, check out a book, then try to write down a million potential publishers, see what books they publish, then go start one in that category. Why? All because I wanted to pen a best-seller from the chambers of Redgranite. Figured they'd have to parole me then. At times I forget my release date is in God's hands. So be it. Oh yeah that's the meaning of Amen: so be it. So be it as it may I also add stress & sleepless nights to my day by worrying bout my career as a fashion designer, I have over a hundred thousand designs to prove it. Yes I worry about success, it's the American way. Yup, my accomplishing the American dream lingers in the back of my tiny lil peanut head. Then prison has me more worryed bout how to "kill time" rather than how to make the most of it. There's not much to do here so I'm especially bored. So I go from one thing to the next. I'm exactly like that when it comes to worry. I WORRY BOUT SOMETHING THEN GET BORED & MOVE ON TO WORRYING BOUT SOMETHING ELSE... Will I go home today? When will I see my family? Where's my daughter? Who is Lauren. Does true love exist? Is there a woman out there who knows what love is to appreciate it? Can I do all that I believe I can, or am I just egotistical & suffering from delusions of grandeur? We're bout to freeze to death so I'll sum this up. Thanks to this prompt I been consciously taking baby steps to calm down, move more slower, relax & overcome life's anxietys. Like not rushing to sower after rec, but taking time to pray first. Then I'm back to practicing the art of being last (mmm a book title) I've also been speaking wisdom to anxious people who try to push their religion on me. Then I'm getting back to just laying in the bed relaxin & reading. Plus I just been confessing that God will introduce me to my wife I inherited in His beautiful times & seasons. A wife now would add to the anxiety. Lastly God is telling me to tear down all the barns I built. After all life is about character not accomplishments. Luke 12:15-32.
& This just in 6:56am today. WORRY PREVENTS YOU FROM ENJOYING LIFE, RELATIONSHIPS, & A RELATIONSHIP WITH GOD, if you have one. I'm done being a workaholic. Amen.
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Replies (27)
All the best, Julia
thank you for your thank you. I did google google. But the first results are in dutch and german, because I use those languages most, and also the english stuff coming up doesn't look interesting. So I did put google in wikipedia. This is the intro:
Google Inc. is an American multinational technology company that specializes in Internet-related services and products. These include online advertising technologies, search, cloud computing, software, and hardware. Google was founded in 1998 by Larry Page and Sergey Brin while they were Ph.D. students at Stanford University, in California. Together, they own about 14 percent of its shares, and control 56 percent of the stockholder voting power through supervoting stock. They incorporated Google as a privately held company on September 4, 1998. An initial public offering (IPO) took place on August 19, 2004, and Google moved to its new headquarters in Mountain View, California, nicknamed the Googleplex. In August 2015, Google announced plans to reorganize its various interests as a conglomerate called Alphabet Inc. Google, Alphabet's leading subsidiary, will continue to be the umbrella company for Alphabet's Internet interests. Upon completion of the restructure, Sundar Pichai was appointed CEO of Google; he replaced Larry Page, who became CEO of Alphabet.
The company's rapid growth since incorporation has triggered a chain of products, acquisitions, and partnerships beyond Google's core search engine (Google Search). It offers services designed for work and productivity (Google Docs, Sheets and Slides), email (Gmail/Inbox), scheduling and time management (Google Calendar), cloud storage (Google Drive), social networking (Google+), instant messaging and video chat (Google Allo/Duo), language translation (Google Translate), mapping and turn-by-turn navigation (Google Maps/Waze), video sharing (YouTube), notetaking (Google Keep), and photo organizing and editing (Google Photos). The company leads the development of the Android mobile operating system, the Google Chrome web browser, and Chrome OS, a lightweight operating system based on the Chrome browser. Google has moved increasingly into hardware; from 2010 to 2015, it partnered with major electronics manufacturers in the production of its Nexus devices, and in October 2016, it released multiple hardware products (including the Google Pixel smartphone, Home smart speaker, Wifi mesh wireless router, and Daydream View virtual reality headset). The new hardware chief, Rick Osterloh, stated: "a lot of the innovation that we want to do now ends up requiring controlling the end-to-end user experience". Google has also experimented with becoming an Internet carrier. In February 2010, it announced Google Fiber, a fiber-optic infrastructure that was installed in Kansas City; in April 2015, it launched Project Fi in the United States, combining Wi-Fi and cellular networks from different providers; and in 2016, it announced the Google Station
Alexa, a company that monitors commercial web traffic, lists Google.com as the most visited website in the world. Several other Google services also figure in the top 100 most visited websites, including YouTube and Blogger. Google is the most valuable brand in the world[5], but has received significant criticism involving issues such as privacy concerns, tax avoidance, antitrust, censorship, and search neutrality. Google's mission statement, from the outset, was "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful", and its unofficial slogan was "Don't be evil". In October 2015, the motto was replaced in the Alphabet corporate code of conduct by the phrase "Do the right thing".
Bitterly funny? Bitterly, because it's bitter you don't have internet access. It's also sad it's so remarkable for you to read your name.
Have a good day, Antoine!
Warm greetings, Julia
thank you for your long answer! And you too have your way with words :) When reading about what you wrote about technology nowadays, a book came to my mind, it's Dave Eggers - The Circle. It's a dystopian vision on facebook and "social" media. This year there was also a movie, with Tom Hanks and Emma Watson, do you have access to television? Anyway, the book is better.
I'm not part of the betweenthebars crew, but I saw someone continuing blogging after release, so it is possible I guess... Are you expecting to be released anytime soon? And how is your foot, all good I hope?
My mothertongue would be German, the first language I learned at school is French, which I like a lot, Dutch and English are close to German which makes them easier. Anyway, I think it is nice to know more than one language, it broadens something in your mind. Some things you just don't have a word for in another language, and if you don't have a word for something, you can not think it, right? So it can also be confusing, actually.
Have a good day, warm greetings, Julia
nice to hear from you again. Funny that the Circle just was on tv. Do they just repeat one film for a certain time? The scene you describe, the chased "criminal" is a "criminal" because he wants privacy, and privacy is theft in this dystopian future.
Well, fingers crossed for your next parole meeting!
Considering the mixing of languages, I mostly do that when speaking to other Germans in the Netherlands, some Dutch word of expression will sneak in easily. But this almost 50% switching I observe here (western Europe) doing second or third generation Turkish or Arabic folks do. It's fascinating to me. I've not yet dared to ask people how it works, it's a bit rude to ask, but I'm curious.
Well French - it does sound beautiful, and you can play with that language. It's a bit dramatic, and it's poetic.
Yes, the Bible is written in several languages, but still, even if you knew Hebrew, because in that language there are no consonants, there still is discussion about the meaning of several words. But isn't that also a positive thing? That you have to wrestle with the texts and their meaning?
Have a good day, Antoine!
Greetings, Julia
thanks for your letter! I think we are in the same boat concerning technology, though it's not like doing the dishes or vacuum cleaning is my hobby... Let me just drop two nice quotes about the subject, one by Martin Luther King, who said: "Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men." And the Swiss author Max Frisch said: "Technology is the knack of so arranging the world that we don't have to experience it." Well I'm happy I grew up without social media and the internet...
Concerning the crossed fingers... thank you that I can uncross them in case of pain. I am able o cross all neighbouring fingers. But I am not able to count one two three four five going thumb to little finger, I have to jump, going thumb, index, middle, little finger, ringfinger. So when I show the number four, my ringfinger is down.
Thank you for the Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. Well well, my answer took me apparently really long... I hope the New Year started well for you.
Well, what is Western-Europe like... I'm used to it, so to me it's what I know. Compared to the US, quite small countries over here, densly populated, the Netherland e.f., its twelve times more densly populated than the US.
It's interesting what you write about travelling after parole... you need a pardon to get out of the US? I mean isn't it up to the country where you go to to give yo a visa or not? Getting out of the country of course was a problem for everyone in Eastern Germany when the wall was still there (in Berlin) and the borders closed. Quite a special history I think.
I've never been to an african country, but I'm quite sure the continent is presented wrongly in the media. If you see pictures of big cities centers like Lagos or Nairobi, it might as well be in a Western country. Or South Africa.
I can imagine that in a stressfull event it is difficult to speak proper English if its not the "mothertongue". Are you familiair with the author Toni Cade Bambara? I do have a book by her, short stories, I just drop what wikipedia says about it: Her first book was Gorilla, My Love (1972), which collected 15 short stories, written between 1960 and 1970. Most of the stories in Gorilla, My Love are told from a first-person point of view and are "written in rhythmic urban black English. The narrator is often a sassy young girl who is tough, brave, and caring and who "challenge[s] the role of the female black victim” Bambara called her writing upbeat fiction." A friend of mine translated it to German, which is difficult as there is not really an equialent to urban black English in German. But this kind of struggeling with language in translating is something I also like. Translating poetry would be something difficult too, as wel as writing it in the first place. Having written a poem I'm content with is something that gives me fulfillment.
Thank you for the designs. Any news about your date? Warm greeting Julia
Thank you for your letters and sorry for not reponding earlier. I'll just respond to the last one... I had to google (back to the original subject ;) ) bell of the bluff and I coulf find a video of the group. Sounds a bit funny. Never heardof bell concerts before.
Sorryto hear one pen pal's down and your spiritual mom gone mia, I guess that is missing in action?
So right now, it's a bit late and thought provoking thoughts are be missing in this letter, but just a hello and more to come...
Take care, and greetings Julia
but most importantly I hope you are having a wonderful day. and if you have any questions for me feel free to ask. I look forward to hearing from you again- Kyla Johnson
the next Gorilla should have a bill included...
hope your doing fine, thank you for the letter, I enjoyed reading it and will respond.
Warm greetings, Ju
1.ive been reading your post for a few months
2. I was just looking up penpals and your blogs were inspiring
3.after school I usually go to work. And then in my spare time I hangout with friends
4. I realized I wanted to be a counselor after all of my friends told me that I'm easy to talk to and they could trust me with anything. It inspired me to wanna be there for others
5.i chose the criminal justice system because even though I'm only 1 person I believe we need better rehabilitation and if I could make a difference in only a few lives then at least I know I accomplished something in this life. Everyone needs someone to talk to especially in prison, all you have is your thoughts.
6.i would describe me as caring, it's a good and a bad thing because sometimes I can care way to much and then get treated like I'm nothing.
7.if my employer said I was to caring i would honestly laugh and agree with them, I dont take constructive criticism well, either j take it as a joke, or as an insult
8. I have a few more years, I'm still waiting to graduate from high school, I'm making up some credits
9.i want to be a counselor because I've grown up sheltered and I know that's not a bad thing but when I eventually isolated my self for awhile and I had noone to talk to so I can only imagine what other people go through and I would like to help
10. The last book I read was milk& honey it's a poetry book.
I hope I answered all of your questions thoroughly. I'm still getting the hang of writing letters. But I have some questions for you
1. How long have you been incarcerated?
2. What's it like, how do you spend most of your days?
3. Are you able to confide with your counselor and be able to feel comfortable?
4. What are some of your favorite shows?
5. What kind of music do you listen to ?
I hope all is well, and I look forward to hearing from you soon.