Month: May 2016

You don’t disappoint me; my own choices in life have already done that.

~ K ~ Leave a comment

Yes, we all make poor choices once in a while (or everyday for some of you dear readers).   Maybe you picked up that stray cat and it peed all over your new carpet; not a good choice.  Perhaps, you forgot to order flowers for your spouse on an anniversary; again not a good choice.  Just remember that your choices are the ones you made for a reason that seemed (at the moment) to be the correct decison.  They may have seemed logical to you at the time because of the situation you were faced with, however when you look back at them, you realize it wasn’t really it was a good choice.

Please remember: You can’t beat yourself up for those poor choices you made.  Sure, it wasn’t a good idea to marry that motor cross biker from Florida (because it turned out he was a big kid at heart and would never support you). Perhaps you should have given it a little more thought when you bet your plane ticket money at the roulette table and now you’ll be missing your mom’s fourth marriage to a guy named Phil (who likes to party because he’s old, but not dead yet).

You can also regret the choice that your spouse is “finding himself” by listening to the latest podcast of a self-help guru named JuWanka.  Sure, JuWanka was a failed used car salesman from Tacoma, Washington but maybe selling cars wasn’t his true calling and that being a self-help guru is his true calling. And if you think about it, if you can sell an used car, you can probably sell some self-help crap to people as well. (Oops, there goes my career as a self-help guru).

Now, we all know we have some disappointments and regrets in our lives. I regret having jalapeñoa on my burger last night.  Yet these disappointments help to shape and mold our characters. No one’s life is easy (except for maybe Donald Trump), and we become better people because of the failures and knowledge we gain from our life experiences.

So as I eat my double chocolate ice cream this evening, I can tell you that you aren’t a disappointment. Life has given you the disappointments, you just need to learn from them.

Why it is OK to Scare Kids…(and other big babies)

~ K ~ 9 Comments

My wife tends to disagree with me on some of my parenting theories.  She thinks that I shouldn’t be the big, bad, scary and intimidating father to my daughter’s (who is age 13) friends.  I, of course, disagree.  I’m not mean, big, bad or scary to my daughter’s female friends…just to her little male friends.

I want those kids to fear me.  I want them to know that if they mess with my little girl that they will have to deal with me.  Is that really wrong?  To be honest, I’m not threating them or verbally scaring them….I just look scary.  That is the key…look scary to future suitors.  Nothing wrong with looking scary, right?

Sure, I’m a very articulate individual who enjoys a good conversation but sometimes the best thing to do is to keep your mouth shut.  He who talks first, loses right?  I want to be that father that is sitting in his chair when the daughter comes in with her friends and the boy just looks at me and knows he should be fearful.  He should think “Hmm, I probably don’t want to upset her dad…he just looks scary.”

It isn’t like my daughter is dating so I shouldn’t worry….yet.  However, why not plan for the future and lay the foundation now.  The farmer doesn’t wait until the summer to plant his crops; he plants his seeds in the winter.  I’m planning for the future.  I’m planting the seeds of fear and respect in the minds of these 11 year old boys now so they know not to mess with me (or my daughter later).  Hopefully, when they get into middle school and high school my reputation as a scary, frightening father grows into an almost unbelievable legend that will be passed down from generation to generation.

Of course, my professional as a school photographer isn’t exactly a job that scares kids.  I also don’t have any tattoos, nor do I talk “ghetto” or “white trash”.  The best I can do is speak Hawaiian Pidgin English from my school days on Kauai.  Furthermore, it’s not like I’m from SEAL Team Six or on the SWAT team. The only scary thing about me is my bald head and the fact I practice aikido (a non-violent martial art).  I suppose someone unfamiliar with it could possibly think I am a weapon of death and destruction.

Any thoughts on making myself a little bit more intimidating to the youth of today?  Any tips, suggestions, ideas?  Come on….leave a comment or two!  And thanks for reading!

Regrets, Regrets, Regrets

~ K ~ 5 Comments

 

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How did I not see that big yellow bus full of nuns?

We all have regrets.  We regret eating that extra piece of pizza last night.  We regret buying the neon yellow polo shirt in 9th grade.  We regret running that yellow light and hitting that school bus full of nuns while eating a burrito from Taco Bell.  We regret sleeping in on Saturday.  We regret our career choices.  Regrets are all around us.

Do you have regrets?  Most people with a conscience have something they regret.  Whether is about their life choices or the day old sushi they ate, regrets are all around us.

However, you need to let go of your regrets.  You can’t predict the future.  So if you knew now that making a certain choice in the past would turn into a regret later on, you wouldn’t have made that choice.  Fairly simple, right?  You didn’t know it would be a regret so why beat yourself up about it?  Let that regret go.  Acknowledge it, learn from it, move on, and let it go.

Why are regrets important?  Regrets help to improve your critical thinking and your decision-making abilities.  Your experience, whether it is good or bad, helps to lead you on a path of self discovery and awareness.  (Man, that does sound like I know about regrets).

6 Tips to Make Your Life Regrets Disappear!

  1. Don’t think about them.  Why does everyone dwell on the past?  You made a mistake, you learned from it, now get over it.  Let that crap go.  Unless you’re my wife, then you hold onto it forever and remind me about it all the time.  That’s called “Life Coaching” your spouse.
  2. Don’t settle.  Stop your whining.  If you want that mega yacht, then figure out a way to be a huge success and buy it. (Hint: Don’t have a Worthless Advice Blog; it doesn’t pay anything).  I don’t have a clue on how to buy or steal a mega yacht so you are plum out of luck with me helping you.
  3. Use Positive Affirmations.  Because using negative ones won’t be getting you into Camp Happy Thoughts.  And at Camp Happy Thoughts you can put a positive spin on anything!  You wasted five minutes reading my blog but it was for research purposes so it was really an adventure into educating yourself.  See?  You are a winner already!
  4. Set Deadlines and Goals in the Future.  Isn’t that a stupid statement?  When else would your deadlines and goals be?  In the past?  I like to set unrealistic goals like “I’ll move to the country and retire in five years.”  Notice I didn’t say in 2021 that I was moving or retiring.  If I give a solid year date, then I might actually have to do it. This way I am planning but not really planning.  I won’t be disappointed when I forget about that goal.
  5. Eat an Elephant.  How do you eat an elephant?  One bite at a time.  Every task starts with a first step just like that journey out to your car when you need to get to work.  How do you take on those huge, insurmountable tasks?  I don’t know about you, but I set up a deadline that I’ll ignore (see #4).  Then I tackle that task one step at a time because that sounds like I’m doing something smart.
  6. Find a Mentor.  Or in your case, the drunk at the end of the bar will do.  Mentors are great, if you can find one.  I had mentors and they helped me become the successful advice blogger I am today.  Successful…ha ha…sure…really successful with imaginary stalker Cyndi as my only true follower.  Find someone that is mildly more successful than you is easy.  In fact, they only need to appear to be successful.  You can listen to them, feel awesome that they are sharing their nuggets of wisdom with YOU, and become the awesome individual you were destined to be.

Make your regrets disappear.  Get over them.  Forget them.  And enjoy your life!

is
Probably should have watched where we were going….

Why You Made a Mistake Marrying Your Husband

~ K ~ 2 Comments

I recently finished watching a comedy show on Netflix and came to the conclusion that I’m pretty much a failure.  Yup, hop on the loser train, because the next stop is disappointment and resentment.  

Now, most husbands would surmise that their life isn’t that bad.  You might have a spouse that also works so you have a duel income.  I’m sure you have decent cars, a fairly nice house, and the school down the street your kids attend isn’t that bad.  Maybe your kids give you a hug once in a while. As a husband, overall, it looks like a fairly normal life.  You listen to your wife and kids about 36-45% of the time, you don’t have any feelings so they can’t hurt you, and you remember most of the important dates you should know (birthdays, anniversaries, etc.).  Yet, if we talked to the wives and kids of these husbands (yes, I’m talking about your wife and kids), we would hear a much different tale.  We would hear a story of broken dreams, shattered promises, and unfulfilled desires.

Now let’s take those results back to the clueless husband and fathers (again this means you), you would learn that you (as the supposed breadwinner) are an utter failure.  If reality TV has taught us anything (and it has taught us a lot), you should be a much better person than you are.  How can Dr. Phil and Oprah be wrong?

But are men the ones to blame?  Certainyl as a woman, you should have been smarter and married the guy with higher earning potential, a happier attitude, and a better understanding of how you work.  You should have seen that your life wasn’t going to turn out the way you thought it would.  Would you have switched out the train engine at the roundhouse if you knew what your life was going to be like?

Whoa, hold on a second, Mr. Worthless Advice, my life isn’t full of doom and gloom, right? Or is it? Aren’t you regretting your choices? Doesn’t your husband work too much? Doesn’t spend any time with you?  He neglects the kids?  He plays too much golf, stays up too late, works out in the yard on the weekend.  This isn’t what you expected when you signed up.

If you had picked a better mate in the beginning, then you could have switched careers yourself.  You were probably a successful up and coming female executive.  You could have made the move to a being a housewife. Or a stay at home mom.  Now, that stay at home housewife idea might make you sick because (at one time) you enjoyed working a career and having a dual income household.

Sure, I understand your husband should have been making more money, you should have had a spa day every Tuesday, yoga on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays at 10:30 am, a haircut every three weeks on Thursday.  You definitely deserved to be driving a new Lexus to the gym everyday day.  That yoga mat isn’t going to roll itself.

As you read this from your lounge chair, I hope you are enjoying your vacation.  You do like vacation trips to Hawaii and Europe? Yeah, I bet you do. I bet if you had married someone better you could have stayed at the nice five star resort.  But you didn’t.  Life is rough, suck it up.

I’m Trying to Make My Advice as Worthless as I can

~ K ~ 2 Comments

Really, I’m trying to make my advice as worthless as possible but it is hard.  Writing this stuff is hard.  If I go off the deep end like I did the other day about “Marrying your husband was a huge mistake” post, people think I’m depressed about my life.  I understand my sense of humor is a little off.  After watching Oprah and Dr. Phil all these years, I thought I would be much better off in my life.  You would think after reading all those Tony Robbins and Zig Ziglar’s books, I would now be larger than life.  They clearly should have produced a powerful man living the dream instead of a mild manner worthless advice blogger.

However, because I don’t have a 100 foot yacht docked on Lake Union, I can say without reservation that my Worthless Advice Blog is a damn good one.  If my advice was actually helpful, all four of my devoted readers would be living in waterfront mansions on Mercer Island and be showering me with praise.

So here we all sit at the computer, reading about nothing, and learning nothing.  It’s all in a days work here!

 

 

 

Oops…wrong date…

~ K ~ 1 Comment

I live my life by my Google Calendar. Our family is intermixed together on various Google Accounts to make sure we don’t double book ourselves. However, today I messed up and thought it was Wednesday May 4. Today is Tuesday May 3.

Well, I didn’t mess up on the day…I thought I was meeting my cousin John for lunch today but I’m actually meeting him tomorrow.

So, I’m sitting in the correct restaurant at the right time; but on the wrong day. Silly me.

I might have to pull out my Adult Coloring Book and just fill in some pretty pictures of apples and oranges.  Coloring relaxes me and fulfills my meager life with vibrant colors. Sort of fulfill my life through drink and good comfort food. 

 

Which is worse? Adult Coloring Books or Watching Reality TV?

~ K ~ 6 Comments

One has to wonder…which is worse?  The insane trend of Adult Coloring Books OR watching Reality TV? Neither one is a new concept, but both waste a great deal of time.

Coloring Books:

Sure, some people claim it is very relaxing filling in a pattern with color pens. You know, stuff you use to do in 1st grade when your teacher needed some quiet time to nurse her hangover from a very raunchy weekend. Is the coloring the relaxing part? Or is the wine you are consuming as you are coloring that pretty butterfly (made by some 10 year old Indian artist) that makes it relaxing?

Reality TV:

My boring suburban life isn’t exciting enough so watching rich asses get into verbal fights is what really fulfills my day.  To be honest (because I’ve been lying to you all the various times before…I have to stop saying that..anyway….), I enjoy the insane swimming pool contractor show and the fix and flip shows. I can’t stand the “Southern Charm” shows or any of the “Housewives of _______” shows.  Just ridiculous characters thrown together with staged fights so I can think “what the hell am I watching??” 

 Thanks for reading and commenting on this post. I’m off to read a book (not a coloring book).

Social Media: Why your Wife Hates You!

~ K ~ Leave a comment

Social Media…isn’t it so darn fun? Old folks are the only ones that use Facebook (don’t worry; I’m in that “old folks” category) so I’ve been told by the younger and hipper folks.  I guess Twitter and Instragram is where everyone else hangs out.  Nothing like writing short posts and showing off selfies to get the party started, right?

Then you have the bloggers who write a lot of something blogs that no one reads. At least my blog posts are read by my cat Mr. Whiskers and my imaginary stalker Cyndi.

What is one to do with all these competing platforms to express oneself?   Certainly even belly dancing would be a better hobby than adult coloring books.