Have you signed up for the Good Morning Polk! Newsletter yet? No? You’re missing out. Make sure to sign up here. Reminder: if you signed up and aren’t yet receiving it, there might be a good reason for that. Check your spam folder. Some folks have been seeing it there…
A birthday break, and back to business
I have a mixed-bag experience around my birthday, and with the season over in my family after spending much of the weekend and Monday doing things I wanted, I consider this year a win.
The weekend was enjoyable, and the well-wishes from friends around the community are appreciated. 36 feels exactly like 35. Which felt like 34, and so on.
I think we all reach a point in life where the years accumulate on us, the experiences become more compact and we recall certain things as a way to gauge the amount of time that has passed in our recent memory.
Good for instance: I was born in the 1980s (85 – the start of President Reagan’s second term and honestly have no real memory of the decade. Many of my readers here have vivid memories of dramatic events of the second half of that century: when the Challenger disaster happened, the Berlin wall coming down, Iran Contra, the recession that happened around the small crash of the market in 1987.
I have a historical memory of these events, but they elicit in me no emotional memory. Whereas the events surrounding my birthday from the 90s onward are there, hooked into every part of my consciousness and called upon when certain things happen and back the feelings of turning eight and the snow piled up three feet deep around where we lived in Ringgold.
The feeling of turning twelve and riding across bay on a frigid March morning on a slow boat ferrying islanders across to get inland for church because the bridge collapsed and cut off the only outlet to where we lived on Fripp Island.
Where I was when the world was glued to the disaster in Japan following the tsunami and disaster at Fukushima – while in the hospital with my grandma, who had fallen in the shower and compound fractured her ankle.
Last year, of course, probably took the prize. COVID-19 shut EVERYTHING DOWN. The world will not be the same after all that has happened.
There’s been good years, of course. Plenty to celebrate and enjoy. Usually when times are quiet, I’ve got to admit that all in all the balance of birthdays over the previous decades have on balance been pleasant experiences. I don’t try to dwell on it too hard for the simple reason that the world has a way of throwing wrenches into the machinery of life.
My message of the day therefore is this, as we get back to normal business: be prepared to react to current events but don’t let them define what is happening to you directly. Emotional responses usually elicit the wrong response to whatever situation we’re facing, whether it be on the individual level or on a global scale. Advice that I surely am learning more every day to apply in my own life.
Take for instance the stormy present I watched out the door as storms passed through well past midnight. Thunder and lightning undertake a real anxiety response in the brain that are triggered from deep within the mind. The physical danger of the electricity in the air driving us to seek shelter.
Yet rationally, what are the actual odds of being struck by lightning? 1 in 500,000. It’s was too cold to go dancing in the rain at midnight, but my rational side tells me that it would be unlikely I’d be hurt in a storm like the one that went through if I had.
The “boy scout” (I made it a little way through cub scouts to be honest) in me says it’s not a good idea to be out in a thunderstorm, so I choose not to do so.
I like to caution people who are thinking of taking risks in certain situations to understand completely the complexities of which they are treading into, and the consequences of doing so. A skill developed over the years is being able to see one way or another how something is going to work out, with no influence on those events taken by myself. I watch from the sidelines as things unfold, and nod acceptance at whether I was right or wrong.
Risks aren’t bad. Life doesn’t give us do-overs on the time we spend on something we have chosen to do, nor does it give us the opportunity to take back disastrous results of decisions made in years far back that we can’t understand, and the impact felt by others who have no connection to those responsible in any way.
This is the butterfly effect stretched out over time. Decisions made long ago brought me here, to this moment in time watching lightning bolts flash in the sky. They remind me as objects of those random occurrences causing me to turn one way or another, conclude in moments of emotion or stoic reasoning what must be done in response to my own actions coming back to haunt me.
I face the music as I am 36, looking forward to what I suspect is just another step along the way of a new chapter of my life I began last year. I have done what I can do so far, and I will continue to do more. I am learning not to fret so hard what I consider “lost time” (the voice in my mind forever tapping his foot and looking at his watch wondering when I’m going to sit back down in front of the keyboard and churn out the words. He wants me working 24-7-365.)
Check back with me when I reach 37 and see if I feel any different.
Today’s forecast
After last night’s light show because of storms moving through, it would be nice to have a break from the wet weather, right? No luck on our side, since mother nature has decided we needed more rain.
Expect at least a half in of additional water to fall across the area today, and a 40% chance the showers will continue overnight.
The potential for more rain is in the forecast for Wednesday morning, followed by cloudy skies and a high of 70. Severe storms return Wednesday night, and the likelihood of more on Thursday before clearing up and giving way to cooler temps. We’ll have temps in the 60s this weekend, and down to the 30s overnight.
Something to Watch this Morning
The thing you don’t want to see on the internet this morning if you’re an official? 150,000 security cameras were hacked. Footage leaked. Oops.
Something to Read this Morning
You just know this story is going to end up a movie one day. (Via the Associated Press)
Former Gov. Sonny Perdue could be the next head of the state’s University system.
So, a scientist wants to put a sperm bank on the moon. Don’t we have to land someone there again first? Maybe let the guy take a dirty magazine with him?
Some good news for Britain’s Royal family: Prince Phillip is coming home after a month.
Oh great, as if we needed A NEW MOSQUITO variant.
