Writings

Value your life for the importance of it. Do not devalue it through self-deprecation. You are worth everything to at least one person in this world, and that is all that matters. My values include creativity, compassion, honesty, knowledge, and kindness.

Being creative isn’t often easy. I get sparks of originality throughout the day and night. I enjoy being eclectic and interested in many things, and I am not focused on one or two things. You can borrow and copy someone else’s work but change aspects of it. Do not duplicate it precisely and create plagiarism or copyright violations.

I get much of the work I do to copy from the public domain or in creative commons, accessible to anyone. If you borrow work, change its details in the work you copy. Make it personally yours. If all you do is trace an outline of original work, that is okay, and you don’t have to attribute the creator most of the time.

Value Your Life Because There Is Someone That Values It More

Compassion or empathy isn’t a good value for all circumstances. Some people prey on those that give too much of themselves. They can rob you blind before you even know it happened. I know that compassion made me gullible for a big part of my earlier life.

It’s better to give than receive. During my only marriage, I gave way too much to my former wife and stepson. As my ex-wife indicated before divorcing me, I lost much and became unhappy. During those two years, I had suggested that I wasn’t ready to be part of that family or consider it my own. She asked me to walk away months before the divorce.

Compassion Can Work Both Positively and Negatively for You

Other people took advantage of me too, but only at my fault and naivety. At a much older age, I know better. I started being truthful with myself, leading us to my next value of honesty. I learned that I don’t have to remember much if I’m sincere.

I lied much in my youth, especially to myself and others faking who I was. I wasn’t being authentic. That is another value I didn’t mention. Almost anything you attempt anymore isn’t original. The only thing where this is not true is in art. Artists have a unique style that they only do. Not everyone is going to like your class.

Knowledge is vital for me, and when I turned forty-seven, I started back to college after many failed attempts after high school. I received the honor for all semesters in junior college. When I started back to a four-year college I attended before; it took much work to erase much of my previous failures at that same college of the University of Arkansas at Little Rock.

Be Virtuous in Everything You Do Because It Pays Off

I earned both an Associate of Applied Science and Bachelor of Science degrees. This coming fall, I will be working on a Bachelor of Arts degree. I value learning and knowledge. However, I know and believe that knowledge is power and can change the world for the better.

I exemplify kindness and wouldn’t be anything else but pleasant. Kindness is a deal-breaker for most people. They don’t want to be around mean or malicious people. The best example of an unkind person is a narcissist.

All-in-all, value your life because it could be of better value for someone else’s life.

Finding love should be available to anyone that wants it, but it isn’t always. It is like a challenge for some and going out to chase and compete for it. I won’t find love this way. Love, at first sight, was more common not long ago, but now it isn’t.

My only marriage was superficial. I was fifty-fifty at the time and both at a high and low point in my life. My mother and last surviving parent died in August 2013. I earned a bachelor’s degree in May 2014. I got married in August 2014, less than three months after we physically met.

I only saw the physical beauty of my now ex-wife. I didn’t find love or at least the real meaning of what love is. Worldly love is on the surface, and deep down, because everything happened so quickly, we didn’t love each other.

Finding Love Isn’t Something I’ve Ever Done Correctly

Love addiction became a term back in the 1970s, but there was no way to measure it. A study around 2019 published in the International Journal of Mental Health and Addiction reports specific psychometric characteristics of having these dysfunctional love relations ships[1]. My marriage was an addiction that was nothing but physical.

Why do relationships break apart so easily nowadays? The dynamics of marriage and love have changed. Even long marriages end in divorce more today than even ten to twenty years ago. Love must see through the “hogwash” of a person, honestly. If a husband or wife doesn’t accept the faults and failures of the other person, it won’t work. A couple doesn’t experience the devilish side of their spouse at first.

You Can Find Love at Any Age

In an article from Essence magazine, two women found love after sixty, which shows it’s possible at any age[2]. I thought me as a man who thought he found love at the age of fifty-five, was an excellent accomplishment for waiting so long to marry. Then when the honeymoon phase of two years was over, the marriage was too.

Finding love is easy as well as falling in love with someone. The hardest part is staying in love with them through good and evil. Even for couples who have cheated, sometimes forgiveness is all it takes to stay together. It may be as simple as a dislike of one of their relatives for other pairs.

[1] Costa, Sebastiano, et al. “The Love Addiction Inventory: Preliminary Findings of the Development Process and Psychometric Characteristics.” International Journal of Mental Health & Addiction, vol. 19, no. 3, June 2021, pp. 651–68. EBSCOhost, https://doi.org/10.1007/s11469-019-00097-y.

[2] Miller, Mitzi. “Finding Love at Any Age.” Essence, vol. 48, no. 9, Feb. 2018, pp. 101–03. EBSCOhost, https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=shib&db=a9h&AN=127282165&site=ehost-live&scope=site.

Blazing your path is something we all must do. It is only the one we'll take alone. Some people will see your trail's aftereffects and possibly follow you to get to know you. Of course, any person that finds you can easily deceive.

Be ready for anything to happen, and don't expect it to be a bed of roses. I have occasionally created phantasms of life and women in my mind. I minded my thoughts too much and failed in relationships.

I am almost sixty-three and a veteran. I loved my momma even though worrying her to death most of the time. We were together for nearly forty years, longer than she was with my dad and stepdad. I made an ignorant decision and found myself in predicaments unworthy of anyone throughout this time.

My path was rocky at a much younger age. There were hurdles I could not make. The blockades sometimes put me at a standstill without direction. My mother was there to help me through so much.

Blazing Your Path Will Not Be Easy to Build Great Character

You are the only one that makes steps toward your future. Your mind creates a dream of purpose and will make you the person you should be.

The courage it takes to navigate life sometimes is quite challenging. If you find people who want to remain, you have those who want something from them and usually leave after they get it. Parts of you get stolen, and you must fight to make yourself complete again.

No one walks in the same footsteps, but there are times when you get carried by those of service helping you. We carry a person's burdens when we love them and help them through thick and thin. You have friends and family that secretly loathe you, but they know they must participate somewhere in your life.

You blaze the trail of your destiny and make haste, not waste your own life. Sometimes the seeders or breeders are only there to plant, and they will leave without thinking twice. They do not care about anyone but themselves.

Burn your path and merge into someone taking a similar way of going through life together.