By Lisa McClung

Got this shot of the moon Tuesday night from my deck.

Hey ya’ll I hope your week has been wonderful and you are ready for a great weekend. I do have some fun plans for Sunday I will share later with lots of pics.

I will have to say I have been on the struggle bus this week.  Going back to work after being off for two weeks left me with a lot of catching up with work and co-workers. I always love getting back and hearing what everyone has been up to.  We have a couple of things coming up at work that we are preparing for. We also have a gift show coming up in a couple of weeks and that will involve a quick overnight trip to the Gatlinburg, Pigeon Forge area.

Kitty Kitty had to spend the night at the vet clinic on Tuesday night.  She was spayed and came home the next day very quiet and unlike herself.  I couldn’t wait to hear her romping through the house again. After a few days she is starting to get back to her old self.

Tuesday night I went to see my mother in law at the assisted living center and we decided to get a hamburger.  She has a really hard time getting in my car so as we were struggling to get her in the car I put my car keys on top of the car.  You know where I am going with this, right?  My car has keyless entry so we took off through town to Sonic.  We like to get hamburgers at Sonic because we can sit in the car and eat.  As we were waiting for our food I noticed a strange red blinking light on my dash. It was shaped like a  car key.  I thought well that’s odd my key is right here.  I reached down and no keys,  it hit me like a ton of bricks I had put my keys on top of the car.  I jumped out of the car in a panic and ran around to the passenger side and believe it or not, my keys were there.  I couldn’t believe it.  I have a rack thing on top of my car and I had put them on the inside of the rack.  Whew.

On Wednesday I stopped by the gym where I work out so I could pay my fees. The owner is a body builder and very strict about his eating and working out. He told me he hadn’t seen me in a while and I told him I had been gone most of the month. I told him I had really been slacking on working out and had been eating terribly.  He ask what I had eaten that day and I just couldn’t bring myself to tell him about the meatball sub and fries I had just had for lunch. He said you can’t use traveling and eating out as an excuse to not eat right. Only you can take care of you.  It all comes down to you. Wow, words of wisdom I really needed to hear.   We talked for awhile and he worked out a routine for me to do 4-5 times a week. It is a bit grueling and about an hour each time. We are going to concentrate on cardio for awhile  before I move into the weights. He helped me plan a diet that will give me a lot of protein and cut carbs.   I am really excited to have someone to be accountable to.

Sooo on Thursday morning I got up at 4:00 a.m. I like to work out early and get it out of the way.   I had to charge my iwatch so I could keep track of my steps and calories etc. I could not find my earbuds anywhere so I decided to stop by Walmart on my way to the gym to get some.  I headed out about 5:00 a.m, it’s a 15 minute drive into town, 20 if it’s foggy and it was.

Walmart at 5:20 in the morning is a bit interesting, just saying. Found some ear buds that I thought would work. As I was walking through the store I noticed I had a strange thing going on with my underwear, I know TMI but I’m just trying to explain the struggle. With every step my underwear was slipping down and if I hadn’t had my pants on I guess I would have dropped them right there in Walmart. That probably wouldn’t be the first time that had happened to someone there Ha!!!!  I think it was just the combination of the type I was wearing combined with the slick leggings. Too bad I hadn’t noticed this before I left the house.   Anyway I got to the car and pulled those things up practically to my chin to stop that from happening.  Luckily there’s not many cars in the Walmart parking lot at that time of the morning.  I couldn’t get the ear buds package open. I had to get a tool out of the back of my car to open it. As I was trying to get the package open it flipped out of my hands and landed somewhere in the back of the car. After searching for a few minutes I found it. I got the package opened and they were not the right ones for my phone.  At this point I almost went back home and blew off working out. But I didn’t. I did my workout and was soaking wet with sweat at the end and it was awesome.  Totally worth all of the trouble.

This morning I had to take everything out of the garbage can, and it was full, to look for my iwatch that had been missing since Thursday night. Me and Mark had looked everywhere for it.  I found it about 10 minutes after I emptied the garbage can.  I found it upstairs, not in the garbage can.

Some really awesome things happened this week too.  My sisters and I met up for lunch on Wednesday with some cousins we rarely get to see, two of them from Texas.  That’s when I ate the meatball sub shhhhhhhh.   Got caught up with all my coworkers,  snuggled with my fur babies and started a new workout program.  Also got a great picture of the full moon Tuesday night.  I found my iWatch, I didn’t lose my keys.

One of my favorite places to be.

I tell you all of this because I like to keep it real and say that even with these struggles it’s nothing compared to what some people are going through in their lives.  Just keep going!!!

Have a wonderful weekend!!!

Love your day your way!!!!

I used to know a woman, still do as a matter of fact, who could never act on life but simply reacted to life.  Oh yes there is quite a difference.  She is now 75 years old and just lost her husband about a year ago.  She never knew how to make decisions she always let her husband or her children do that for her.  She didn’t even know what she liked.  It was as if she had to ask them before she could give you an answer about anything. I don’t think she can tell you what her favorite flavor of ice cream is even today.  She always waited to see what would happen at work, in life etc.  She simply reacted to whatever life handed  her.  There was not a lot of planning by her.  I have actually known a few people like this and to a great extent we may all have some of this in us.

If you wait until things happen good or bad and you don’t take the bull by the horns, so to speak, then you could be reacting to life.  I think this is someone, and by someone I often mean me,  who maybe doesn’t have the confidence or courage or just the ability to act.  Maybe you wait to see what will happen.  Maybe you wait to see what others will do.  This can be some of the most dangerous things anyone can do.  Maybe you think a situation will get better if you just leave it alone and wait and wait and wait.  Oh hello 2025 how did you get here so quickly? you might become lazy by not acting, you might let your health and well being start to slip.  I think sometimes when I get this placid if feels as though things have become so enormous I just don’t want to deal with it at all.

You could actually spend hours, days and months sitting around worrying about something that might never happen but by golly when it does then you will react to it and not one minute sooner!!!  But it will be there in the back of your mind lurking about when all it might take is a few minutes of your time to handle it and act on it.

When you react to life this way you have no choice but to react because you have waited until the last minute or not at all and as you know life waits for no one.

I have found myself reacting to life lately instead of acting.  I don’t like it.  I feel unprepared when I do this.  I feel like life is sneaking up on me and I am not ready.  Bam!!! in your face ready or not.  I think this happens for me when I am stressed, overwhelmed by work, feeling indecisive and insecure.  Will I make the right decision? What if? What if? What if?

I used to be more of a worrier than I am now I guess that comes with age.  I had this little “what then” game I played.  What if my house burned? what if I lost my job? what if me or my husband got really sick? ( I never played that game about losing a loved one because I have lost and there is no what if about that, you just deal with it whatever way you can)   With this game I would imagine if this or that particular thing really happened and then what would I do.  I would say and then what would I do? and then?  I played out the entire scenario until I had an answer,  This often helped me alleviate some of the worry and anxiety I felt.  At this point you’re probably questioning my sanity don’t worry I do all the time.    I say all of this because sometimes worry keeps us from acting on life instead of having to react.

When I have something difficult that I know I am not dealing with I try a few different things.
1. I break it down into manageable doable steps.  Even if that first step is grabbing a piece of paper and making a list of the steps that need to be done.  This helps me to realize that as I complete each step the task is getting more and more doable.  You should have a notes feature on your phone.  This is where I keep a lot of my notes so that I can glance at them frequently and maybe take care of something while I have a few extra minutes.  If it takes you a lot of time and steps, so what? you are getting it done you are acting instead of reacting.

2. If I am really worried about something that seems to be on my mind a lot throughout the day I plan a worry time for this.  I know it sounds silly but I was given this advice from a good friend long ago and it really works.  Sometimes we feel guilty if we are not worrying about something that we think we should be worried about.  This will give you the freedom to put it off until later and then you may find it isn’t even worth worrying about as much as you thought it was.

3. Stop procrastinating!!!! I know this is so much easier said than done.  I am the Queen of procrastination.   And it really helps to “Eat That Frog” first thing in the morning.  Check out this book and my blog post about it and you will understand what it means to “Eat That Frog”

4. Take a mental health break.  Take a walk, pet some fur babies, lay on a blanket in your yard and look at the clouds, read a book.  Do anything that will help you regenerate you enough to want to act on your life instead of simply reacting to what it brings you.

So do you think you act or react to life?  How so?

All of the beach pictures were taken last year on my trip to Wrightsville Beach near Wilmington North Carolina.  I love this beach me and my husband go every year.  We will be going in October this year a little cool for a beach vacay but I can’t wait!!!!

Love you day your way!!!