Based On a True Story

 I was watching Indian Jones, who if you didn't know, is deathly afraid of snakes. In The Last Crusade, a young "Indy" is running from the bad guys on a circus train. For some reason...which is still unknown to this day of why they would have a good section of a box car filled with snakes, Indy falls into them. The fear is real. "Imagine you are bitten by a snake and instead of saving yourself by having the poison removed you chase after the snake to find out why they bit you and to reason with it that you didn't deserve to be bit."  It's a lethal combination to have a hard hitting quote, analogy, Indiana Jones playing in the background, and be past midnight for Mark's blog.  I thought about this quite a bit. I have spent a lot of time working on myself. I have found joy and peace in small hobbies like crafting. I have throughly enjoyed making cards on a Cricut, vinyl stickers, t-shirts, diamond art, sketching, and writing. Some of these hobbies I ha...

 As I continue a constant journey of self-reflection and improvement I sat down to write this post. As many of you know the past few years have been extremely difficult for my family. I say that because the events have truly had an effect on every single person in the family. For some outsiders, I have heard people say, “you guys seemed so happy…” or “you’re the perfect family.” No one is without fault. Looking back, I would have handled so many of the situations differently knowing what I know now, knowing the outcome of my own actions, and knowing the hurt and pain everything would bring. Hindsight is always 20/20. Well I don’t think that is always true. Hindsight with GLASSES is always true. The glasses, metaphorically, represent our lens/perspective as we have grown and gained new skills from the experience. It’s all part of self-reflection. After everything came to be, I thought I had hit rock bottom. I felt like the rug had been pulled from under me. It was a very dark and lo...

*heavy sigh... here we go again... Over the past 18 months, it seems that the ADHD hyper fixation on hobbies has been in full force. I have learned to make balloon animals, pick locks, diamond art, semi-pro coloring, building mechanical keyboards, sewing, 3D printing, handmade popup cards, iron on vinyl t-shirts, vinyl stickers, etc. It makes perfect sense to come full circle and get back to blogging. Life has a knack for tossing lemons at us which leaves me tempted to just pucker up instead of embracing a sweet lemonade. The cynic in me screams, "hey...what about the water, juicer, and sugar? Do you expect me to use my hand to stir it?" I even go as far as wondering why someone would just give me free lemons...what strings are attached? So I digress... already. However, I recently heard a quote that I really like and it goes, " you can't wait until life isn't hard anymore before you decide to be happy ." These words smacked me across the face. As some know,...