Safetogototown

  It is Christmas time and I am experiencing the usual ups and downs of the season (mostly ups; thankfully).  There are still some minor decisions regarding where and with whom we are going to celebrate the season with.  It all seems to be working itself out.  We have taken a minor covid hit.  Again, it seems to be working itself all out.  This can be a stressful time of year.  Generally, a lot going on and many last minute changes.  We have been somewhat busy here (actually my wife does most of the heavy lifting).  However I have made my contributions.  The bins of  decorations did not climb down from the attic by themselves.  I have also been busy making Christmas presents for my grandkids.  Our Christmas this year is a little low key.  As I have mentioned in previous posts we spent 2 weeks in Europe this year as we celebrated our 40th wedding anniversary.  That provided more than enough spending for the year....

  I started this blog a couple of years ago.  I had just retired from the IT industry and realized that in retirement you had to make many more decisions about your day to day life.  When working 8 - 10 hours a day were consumed.  I obviously had the some freedom to chose were I worked.  It was always a good idea to seek employment that matched a skill set I had.  Still, with travel to and from work and an 8 hour day a lot of my waking hours were spoken for.  When to wake up was greatly influenced by my work hours and travel time.  Most of the jobs I had I did have the freedom to decide how the work was to be preformed.  For the 19 years I was an IT instructor the location of the classes and what classes were to be taught was scheduled by others.  However I did have the freedom to chose the general areas of IT I worked in.  I stayed predominantly in the infrastructure and networking areas.  I was not a coder or database expert....

  Hope I get a car like this. How does one categorize "hope"?  My last post  centered on the decision to be thankful and the Holiday of Thanksgiving.  Similar to the decision to be thankful, does one decide to be hopeful?  If it is a conscience decision to be hopeful how then, does one initiate that decision?  Is hopefulness something we all have within us.  Can hopefulness be associated with a state of mind or is it situational?  What of optimism?  Is optimism a decision?  Does the decision to be optimistic go hand in hand with the decision to be hopeful? These thoughts are not part of my normal everyday thinking.  I do not think of myself as a gloomy Gus or a Debbie downer type person but I have always help hope and optimism in check.  The main reason for handcuffing these states would be disappointment.  Why hope for sunny weather only to be let down by a  rainy day.  I cannot control the weather so why would ...