Tag: family

A Story to Start or End with Wheels

A story from a prompt:

Imagine this: a room filled with the hum of creativity, the scratching of pens against paper, and the occasional burst of laughter as ideas collide.

That’s where you’ll find me, well by zoom since I moved to the country, a proud director of our small but fiercely passionate Writing Group in my old hometown.

This week? Oh, this week is special. The challenge is simple yet brimming with possibility: craft a story that begins or ends with a bicycle.

A single object, two wheels, infinite potential. Will it be a tale of freedom, of mystery, or perhaps of heartbreak?

The group is ready to dig deep, to wrestle with their imaginations and see where the humble bicycle takes them.And you?

You’re about to get a front-row seat to the magic that unfolds. Buckle up (or should I say, hop on?). The journey is just about to begin.

The following is my story from a somewhat childhood memory, and an imagination, as a girl with freckles and red hair is a part of the story.

The Bicycle and the Bay Mare

The summer Thomas turned twelve, the world smelled of hot asphalt and cut grass, and his blue Schwinn bicycle was the finest thing he owned.

His father had rescued it from a yard sale for eight dollars, sanded off the rust, and painted it the color of a robin’s egg.

Thomas rode it everywhere: to the creek, to the library, to the little store on Miller Road where Mrs. Halvorsen sold penny candy that hadn’t cost a penny in thirty years.

That Tuesday afternoon in July, he was flying down Ridgewood Lane with a paper bag of licorice ropes bouncing in his front basket.

The wind pulled at his hair. His legs pumped in perfect rhythm. He was, he decided, the fastest boy in the county, possibly the state, possibly the world.

He was thinking exactly this when a horse came around the bend.

It was enormous, a mountain of muscle and gleaming chestnut hide, hooves hammering the pavement like a blacksmith’s anvil.

Thomas had just enough time to see the flash of a red-gold mane, both the horse’s and the rider’s, before he yanked his handlebars sideways and sailed straight into Mr. Peterson’s hedge.

The Schwinn went one way. Thomas went another. The licorice went everywhere.

“Oh my gosh, are you alive?”

A face appeared above him, upside down through the tangle of privet leaves. Freckles. Green eyes. Hair the color of a maple tree in October, spilling down in wild waves that seemed to catch every scrap of sunlight and hold it hostage.

“I think so,” Thomas managed. A leaf was in his mouth. He spit it out with what he hoped was dignity.

“I am so sorry. Dolly spooked at a plastic bag. She’s a total drama queen about plastic bags, and I couldn’t get her to …”

The girl paused, tilting her head. “You’re bleeding.”

Thomas touched his elbow. He was, indeed, bleeding. It seemed a small price to pay for continuing to be looked at by this person.

“I’m Ellen,” she said, offering a hand streaked with horse sweat and dust.

“Ellen Brennan. We just moved into the yellow house on Fox Hollow.”

“Thomas,” he said. His voice came out slightly strangled.

“Thomas Kepler.”

She helped him up, retrieved his bicycle (which had a new and interesting bend in the front fender), and gathered up as many licorice ropes as could be salvaged.

The horse, Dolly, watched all of this with the mild, unimpressed expression of a creature who had caused chaos and considered her work done.

“Come by the stable sometime,” Ellen said, swinging back into the saddle with an ease that struck Thomas as miraculous.

She clicked her tongue, and Dolly wheeled around and cantered off, and Thomas stood in the middle of Ridgewood Lane holding a bent bicycle and a bag of dirty licorice, and knew with absolute certainty that his life had changed.

He waited three days. Three days felt appropriately casual.

Three days felt like a boy who had many important things to do and only happened, in passing, to remember there was a stable on Fox Hollow.

In truth, he thought about it every waking minute.

The Brennan place was set back from the road behind a row of oaks, with a weathered red barn and a paddock ringed by white fencing that had gone gray at the posts.

Thomas leaned his Schwinn against a fence rail and walked toward the barn, and there, in the shadowed doorway, was Ellen, not in the jodhpurs and boots he’d half-expected, but in cutoff jeans and a t-shirt with a hole in the shoulder, mucking a stall with a pitchfork nearly as tall as she was.

“You came!” she said, and her whole face lit up in a way that made Thomas’s ears go hot.

“Come meet everybody.”

Everybody, it turned out, was not just Dolly.

There was Dolly, yes, the chestnut mare from the road, but also a stocky black gelding named Pepper, a spotted pony called Bandit who had, according to Ellen, “opinions,” and an ancient white horse named Mr. Biscuit who was thirty-one years old and, Ellen said solemnly, the finest gentleman she’d ever known.

Thomas offered his palm the way Ellen showed him, flat and steady, and Mr. Biscuit breathed onto it with a warm, hay-scented sigh.

Something inside Thomas’s chest turned over.

“You should ride,” Ellen said.

“I don’t know how.”

“That,” she said, “is exactly why you should learn.”

He came back the next day. And the day after.

Ellen was a patient teacher and a merciless one.

She made him groom Mr. Biscuit for a full week before she’d let him sit on the old horse’s back, and even then, only at a walk, in circles, in the corral, while she called out corrections from the fence.

“Heels down, Thomas!”

“They are down!”

“Down like you mean it. Like gravity is your personal friend.”

He fell off twice. The first time he landed in soft dirt and Ellen laughed so hard she had to sit down. The second time he landed in something considerably less soft, and Ellen laughed so hard she cried, and Thomas found that he didn’t mind at all, because when she laughed her whole face crinkled up and her freckles danced.

By August he could trot without bouncing.

By September he could post.

By the time the leaves turned, Ellen let him ride Pepper, and the two of them went out along the trails behind the Brennan property, ducking under low branches, Dolly and Pepper’s hooves whispering through the fallen leaves.

The Schwinn stayed in the yard, propped against the fence.

Years unfolded the way years do: quickly, when you look back at them; slowly, when you’re inside them.

Thomas grew tall and lean, with a rider’s hands and a rider’s seat.

Ellen grew into her freckles.

They rode through four autumns and three summers together, through a hundred sunsets over the ridge, through a season when Mr. Biscuit lay down in his stall and did not get up, and Thomas held Ellen while she cried into his shoulder for the finest gentleman she’d ever known.

There was the winter Ellen’s father lost his job and she came to school with red-rimmed eyes, and Thomas learned that sometimes the most useful thing a person could do was simply be present, and quiet, and steady, the way Mr. Biscuit had once been for both of them.

There was the spring Thomas’s mother got sick, and Ellen rode over on Dolly every single afternoon, and sat with him on the porch, and didn’t try to fix anything, because some things can’t be fixed, only witnessed.

There was the first kiss, under the oak tree by the corral, when Thomas was seventeen and Ellen was seventeen and a half and had never let him forget the half.

There was the college years, and the long-distance letters, and the summer they both came home and knew, without saying it, that they were done pretending to be uncertain.

There was a small wedding in the Brennan’s front pasture, with folding chairs borrowed from the church and Dolly, gone gray around the muzzle now, watching over the fence like a chaperone.

The blue Schwinn stayed leaned against the fence rail where Thomas had first left it.

At first, someone would move it. Ellen’s father, when he mowed; Thomas himself, when he remembered. But the years wore on, and the bicycle wore down. The tires went flat. The chain went orange with rust. Ivy found the wheels first, then the frame. A morning glory climbed the handlebars one summer and never really left.

A robin nested in the basket the year Ellen turned twenty-four, and the year after that, and the year after that.

Nobody moved it anymore. It had become part of the fence, part of the yard, part of the place. A blue-green ghost of the boy who had once been the fastest in the county, possibly the state, possibly the world.

It is a Saturday afternoon in late June, and Thomas is thirty-four years old.

He and Ellen are down by the lake behind what used to be her parents’ farm and is now, deed and mortgage and all, theirs.

A red plaid blanket is spread on the grass beneath the willow. The picnic basket, her grandmother’s, the wicker frayed at the corners, one hinge held together with baling wire, sits open and mostly empty.

There are the last crusts of a sandwich. A jar with two swallows of lemonade. A peach with two bites taken out of it, one small (hers) and one large (his).

Not far off, in the shallow slope of the pasture, two horses graze in the slow, unhurried way of horses who know they are home.

One is a bay mare with a white star. The other is a chestnut gelding whose sire, if you traced the papers back far enough, was a mare named Dolly.

Ellen is lying on her back with her head in Thomas’s lap. Her red hair, still absurd, still catching every scrap of sunlight it can find, is spread across his knee. He is twirling a piece of it around his finger, the way he has been doing for fifteen years, the way he suspects he will still be doing when they are eighty.

“Do you remember,” she says, eyes closed, “the licorice?”

“I remember the licorice.”

“It was disgusting. The licorice.”

“It was covered in gravel.”

“And you ate it anyway.”

“I did not.”

“You did. I saw you. You ate a piece with a leaf stuck to it because you were trying to seem casual.”

Thomas laughs. Somewhere up by the house, on the other side of the pasture, leaning against a fence rail nobody has repainted in twenty years, a blue Schwinn bicycle is quietly dissolving into the landscape. Weeds have grown up through its spokes. A morning glory is in bloom on its handlebars. If you didn’t know it had once been a bicycle, you might not guess.

If you did know, you might think it looked less like a ruin and more like a small, patient monument. To a boy who rode too fast around a corner. To a girl on a horse who couldn’t stop. To the exact and unrepeatable accident of two lives colliding on a summer afternoon and choosing, ever after, not to come apart.

Ellen opens her eyes and looks up at him. The freckles are still there. The green eyes are still there. Everything, somehow, is still there.

“Thomas,” she says.

“Yes.”

“I’m really glad you didn’t die in that hedge.”

He bends down and kisses her forehead. The horses graze. The lake laps at the shore. The picnic basket holds its small ruins with dignity.

“Me too,” he says. “Me too.”

A Whisper from the Past, a Chance at Redemption

If that little taste of my writing intrigued you, then you won’t want to miss my novel, Nothing But Time.It begins with a letter…a letter that arrives three weeks after Jack Harper stopped mattering.Jack gave everything to his career.

His marriage slipped through his fingers. His daughter grew up without him. Forty-one years of sunsets went unwatched, and the roses? Never smelled.

Now retired, redundant, and utterly adrift, Jack is left wondering if it was all worth it.

Then, out of nowhere, he inherits an old farmhouse from Ed, the friend who once tried to warn him.

Ed, who escaped to Vermont years ago, died alone, and left Jack with one simple instruction:

“Tend the roses. Stop and smell them. Live.”

But the farmhouse isn’t what it seems. The radio crackles with broadcasts from 1943. The roses bloom when Jack kneels in the soil. And at the edge of the orchard, Ed keeps appearing—smiling, waiting, calling Jack to finally understand what he refused to see all those years.Some second chances come with instructions. Some come with ghosts.

Are you ready to discover which one Jack will choose?

Nothing But Time

Your Voice Matters

If this story resonated with you, don’t hold back, leave a comment!

Your thoughts, your reactions, and your support are what keep this journey alive. I know you’re out there, and your presence means everything to me.

Go ahead, share your voice, and let’s keep this connection alive.
Have a blessed day…you’re the reason I do this.

-Scott

Nothing But Time: A Story About What We Lose When We’re Too Busy to Notice

There’s a particular kind of silence that fills a downtown apartment at 3 PM on a Tuesday. It’s not the peaceful quiet of a weekend morning or the contemplative hush of a late evening. It’s the silence of a man who suddenly has nowhere to be, and worse, no one waiting for him to arrive.This is where we meet Jack.

The Weight of an Empty Calendar

For forty-three years, Jack’s identity was stitched into the fabric of a company logo. He knew the precise angle of morning light through his corner office window. He could recite quarterly projections in his sleep. His fingers knew the keyboard shortcuts of Excel the way a pianist knows Chopin.Then came the merger.They called it “restructuring.” They handed him a plaque, a modest severance, and a handshake from someone half his age who couldn’t quite meet his eyes. Just like that, the man who built departments, mentored executives, and sacrificed weekends for deadlines became… what, exactly?In “Nothing But Time,“ I wanted to explore what happens to a man when the thing he traded his life for suddenly decides it doesn’t need him anymore.

The Ghosts That Live in Silence

Jack sits in his sleek, expensive apartment—the one he bought because it was close to the office, not because it felt like home—and the memories arrive uninvited.His wife, Diane. The way she used to leave dinner in the oven, then eventually stopped. The way she’d ask him to come to bed, then eventually stopped asking. The night she said, “You’re already gone, Jack. I’m just making it official.”His son’s baseball games he missed for board meetings. His daughter’s wedding, where he gave a toast about “investments and returns” because he didn’t know her well enough to say anything personal. The grandchildren whose names he sometimes has to pause to remember.He built a monument to his career.He built it out of the people who loved him.

The Letter That Changes Everything

And then, one gray morning, an envelope arrives. Heavy paper. A law firm’s embossed seal. An roomate from college left him a farm, acres of rolling green somewhere far from spreadsheets and quarterly reports.What does a man who has spent his life optimizing efficiency do with soil, sky, and silence?That’s the question at the heart of “Nothing But Time.”

Why I Wrote This Book

I didn’t write this novel to entertain you, though I hope it does. I wrote it because I’ve watched too many good men and women trade the irreplaceable for the replaceable.Here’s the truth nobody puts in a corporate handbook:

The company will replace you before your desk is cold. But your daughter will remember the recital you missed for the rest of her life. Your son will remember whether you showed up. Your spouse will remember whether you were present or just physically in the room.We chase the watch. The title. The bonus. The corner office. We tell ourselves we’re doing it for the people we love, while the very act of chasing it takes us further from them.And then one day, the chase ends. The company merges. The title evaporates. The watch stops mattering.And what’s left?For Jack, what’s left is a farm and forty years of regret. What’s left is the possibility—maybe, just maybe—of learning a different way to measure a life.

From a large city to a small town Jack Harper gave everything to his career.

Now he’s retired, redundant, and utterly lost.

Then he inherits a farmhouse from the friend who tried to warn him, the friend who escaped to Vermont and died alone, the friend who left behind one final message: Tend the roses. Stop and smell them. Live.

But something strange is happening at the farmhouse. The old radio plays broadcasts from 1943. The rose garden blooms when Jack kneels in the dirt. And Ed, his dead friend, keeps appearing at the edge of the orchard, smiling, beckoning, waiting for Jack to understand what he spent a lifetime refusing to see. Some second chances come with instructions. Some come with ghosts.

An Invitation

If you’ve ever wondered whether you’re building the right kind of legacy… if you’ve ever looked up from your desk and realized the seasons changed without you… if you’ve ever felt the quiet fear that the people you love are becoming strangers… then Jack’s story is your story too.“Nothing But Time” is available now. It’s a novel about loss, yes, but more importantly, it’s a novel about what we can still choose while we still have breath.Because here’s the thing about time: we all think we have more of it than we do. Until one day, we’re sitting in a quiet apartment, holding a letter, realizing that time is the only thing we ever really had.And the only question that matters is:Who did we spend it with?

Don’t chase the watch. Chase the people. They’re the only thing that ticks back.Get your copy of “Nothing But Time” today—and maybe, tonight, call the person you’ve been meaning to call.

Investing in Our Youth: A Call for Change

I have been giving a lot of thought to the recent criminal trials in this country. Consider the Charlie Kirk trial, in which the defendant sits laughing in court with his lawyers, or the case of the child who killed another child at a track meet. Then I see the news, where we are trying to fix the world’s problems, and I note that we have brought in twenty million people from third-world countries who were unvetted. Something needs to be done, but what?

Walk through any high-crime neighborhood and you’ll find the same story repeated. A boy grows up with no father, a stressed or absent mother, a school that’s given up on him, and a street corner that hasn’t. The gang doesn’t recruit him with force. It recruits him with belonging, protection, status, and money — the very things every human being needs and that we failed to give him. Researchers point to the same root causes again and again: poverty, social isolation, discrimination, limited educational opportunity, and low parental monitoring.

These aren’t mysteries. They are the predictable results of communities we chose not to invest in.Here is the hard truth about how we’ve responded: we spend a fortune on the back end — after the damage is done. Locking up a young person can cost well over a hundred thousand dollars a year, often producing worse outcomes than community programs at a fraction of the price. We are paying premium rates for failure. As one blunt observer put it, there is no purely legal solution to gang violence — the only way to end it is to disincentivize the gang money and offer something better.

So let’s offer something better. And let’s pay for it by looking honestly at where our dollars already go.

The argument writes itself. We send billions overseas to prop up other nations’ security and development. Meanwhile, our own veterans sleep in doorways, our own addicts wait six months for a treatment bed, and our own kids are left with idle summers that gangs are happy to fill. As Americans debating this very question.

Op-Ed: Bring the Money Home — Rebuild Our Kids, Redeem Our Lost

We keep exporting stability to the world while our own communities burn. It’s time to invest in our people first.

Every year, America sends tens of billions of dollars overseas — to shore up foreign governments, fund distant development projects, and manage crises on other continents. Meanwhile, a fourteen-year-old three miles from my house is being recruited into a gang because it’s the only place offering him belonging, protection, and a paycheck. We have our priorities exactly backward.This isn’t a call to abandon the world. It’s a call to finally do right by our own — the wayward kids drifting toward crime, and the adults our system already lost decades ago. The money exists. It’s just pointed in the wrong direction.

The Failure We’re Paying Premium Prices For

Here’s the uncomfortable math. We spend roughly $80 billion a year incarcerating people, and a single juvenile detention bed can run $100,000 to $200,000 annually — often producing worse outcomes than community programs costing a fraction as much. We are paying luxury prices for failure.And it is failure. Research consistently shows the roots of gang membership are predictable: poverty, social isolation, discrimination, drug use, limited educational opportunities, and low parental monitoring.

And this figure does not include those with LEARING CENTERS scamming those who see a problem and toss tax dollars at it with zero audits or accountability.

We know the warning signs. We watch kids fall through the cracks in slow motion. Then we act shocked and reach for handcuffs.Even ordinary Americans see the connection. As one online commenter bluntly put it, we could fund real solutions “if we didn’t send all of our money to Ukraine and Israel and Palestine” — money that could instead go toward “better funding of education and funding of mental health programs” and “tackling the root cause(s) of why people join gangs in the first place.”

Why Gangs Win — and How We Beat Them

Gangs don’t recruit through force. They recruit by offering what we’ve stopped providing: family, status, protection, and money. The evidence is clear that there is no purely legal solution to gang violence — you can’t arrest your way out of it. As even blunt online debates concede, “the only way to end gang violence is to disincentivize gang money.”

That means offering something better. It works when we try. Structured activities and sports “keep children out of trouble and also give them something to work for,” though they require “extra resources and teachers willing to coach/mentor teams.”

It means encouraging kids to create positive goals — helping them build “realistic and attainable personal, educational, and career goals outside of gang involvement.”

And it starts at home: experts across law enforcement, schools, and community groups agree that educating and equipping parents with real skills “is necessary and critical if the growth of gangs is to be curbed.”

The framework already exists. Federal research distinguishes between prevention programs that “target youth at risk of gang involvement” and intervention programs that “provide sanctions and services” to pull kids already involved back out. We know what to build. We just refuse to fund it at scale.

The Group Everyone Forgets: The Lost Adults

Here’s what most policy debates skip entirely. The at-risk kid of today is almost always the child of the lost adult of yesterday — the one who never got the mentor, the trade, or the second chance twenty years ago, and who now cycles through prison, addiction, and unemployment. You cannot save the child while ignoring the broken adult raising him. Fix both, or fix neither.So a domestic-first agenda must do two things at once:

For the lost adults: fair-chance hiring, trade certification in fields that can’t be outsourced — welding, HVAC, trucking, electrical — and addiction and mental-health treatment available now, not after a six-month waitlist.
For the kids: full after-school and summer programming in every high-poverty zip code, family support, and credible-messenger mentors.

And here is the beautiful symmetry: the redeemed adult becomes the mentor for the next kid. The man who did his time, got clean, and rebuilt his life is the single most credible voice a drifting teenager will ever hear. He isn’t a lecture — he’s living proof. Foreign aid builds roads in other countries. This builds people in ours, and each rebuilt person rebuilds the next.

Answering the Critics — and Winning

Defenders of foreign spending will say aid is a small slice of the budget that buys strategic stability. Fine. Then find the money in the other 99 percent — the point stands that prevention at home is starved relative to its proven return. This was never about isolationism. It’s about a simple principle: put our own house in order first, and lead the world by example rather than by check.Public safety and human redemption aren’t opposing goals. Policymakers should prioritize public safety by curbing gang activity and restoring order to communities — for the sake of families “still living in fear” — precisely by investing in the opportunity that makes gangs obsolete.

The Bottom Line

We have the resources. We have the research. We have millions of Americans — kids and adults alike — waiting for someone to bet on them instead of writing them off. Bring the money home. Rebuild the kids. Redeem the lost. And watch the redeemed turn around and save the next generation.That’s not charity. That’s the smartest investment this country could possibly make.

Comment below if you have thoughts on this.

Thanks for the hug!

Why are hugs important?

Hugs are part of a more complex subject, “Love Language.”

Recognizing and understanding love languages can significantly improve relationships. It helps partners communicate their needs more effectively and fosters a deeper emotional connection. When both partners understand each other’s love languages, they can express love in ways that resonate most with one another, leading to greater satisfaction and harmony in the relationship.

Love language doesn’t stop in your home. In our increasingly social world, we tell people we barely know happy birthday. How does social media affect the fabric of the human condition?

I want to discuss five different aspects of the love language. I want to focus on the fifth one specifically.

Words of Affirmation: This language involves expressing love through verbal compliments, encouragement, and affirming words. People who resonate with this love language feel valued when they hear kind words.
Acts of Service: For some, actions speak louder than words. This love language emphasizes doing things for your partner, such as helping with chores or running errands, to show care and support.
Receiving Gifts: This language is about giving thoughtful gifts that show you are thinking of someone. It’s not about the monetary value but the sentiment behind the gift that matters.
Quality Time: This love language focuses on giving your partner undivided attention. Spending meaningful time together without distractions is crucial for those who value this form of love.

I want to expand on this form of expressing love. Without going into a lengthy explanation, let’s talk about what it means to be “without distractions.” Kindly disable the phone and store away any other electronic devices. When I say quality time, I truly mean it. You are important to me, and I truly want to hear about what’s happening in your life. How many times have you interrupted or been interrupted by something on some electronic leash? Have you done it to people? Are you guilty of putting them in some lower class of person by elevating a Facebook post or reel? It’s important to put them first, period.

Physical Touch: For many, physical affection such as hugs, kisses, and holding hands is essential. This love language emphasizes the importance of physical closeness in expressing love.

The first four are self-explanatory, and we can accomplish many of them through social media. We can also do the opposite through an unkind word. I have told many people never to drink and drive and never to drink and get on social media. While you might not kill someone on social media, your words can cut like knives (yeah, I know it was in a song), and the damage your thoughtlessness can do is far-reaching.

What about physical touch?”

Not that many years ago, I topped a hill at freeway speeds to meet head-on with a drunk guy in a Cadillac that his wife had just bought him because he promised to stop drinking after he drove his truck into a tree. True story…you can read about it here…

Beeping monitors, wires, and tubes mixed with needles, and the sterile odor of a hospital is only part of the process. The thought of never being held or holding someone again sets the stage for an emotional roller coaster.

To live through an experience like that makes one appreciate life and its simple pleasures.

Why physical touch, why hugs?

The truth is you have no idea what someone else is going through. People don’t fake depression, they fake happiness. When you ask someone how they are doing and they say “fine,” do you buy it? We are all going through stuff. We also know that when someone asks us how we are doing they rarely want to know the truth.

“Fine great. Did you see the Cowboys?”

“What if we asked, “No, really…how are you doing, and then listened?”

A simple hug can do that. I care about you and I don’t know what you are going through but this hug is my way of showing…not telling you…that I care about you. If you need an ear or a shoulder, I am here.” Would the world be so much better if we showed more people that we care about them?

Are we that kind of friend? So, why hug?

Hugs play a significant role in our emotional and physical well-being. Here are some key reasons why hugs are important:

1. Emotional Connection

Hugging fosters a sense of connection and belonging. It communicates feelings of safety, love, and support, which can be especially comforting during difficult times. This emotional bond is crucial for mental health, as it helps reduce feelings of loneliness and isolation.

2. Physical Health Benefits

Research indicates that hugging can have tangible health benefits. For instance, it promotes the production of oxytocin, often referred to as the “love hormone,” which acts as a stress buffer and can enhance overall well-being. Additionally, frequent hugging has been linked to reduced severity of infections, highlighting its role in bolstering the immune system.

3. Stress Reduction

Hugs can significantly lower stress levels. The act of hugging can help ease feelings of anxiety and depression by boosting the release of feel-good hormones, which can improve mood and emotional resilience.

4. Pain Relief

Interestingly, hugging may also help reduce physical pain. Touch, including hugging, is a powerful form of communication that can convey comfort and support, potentially leading to a decrease in pain perception. Were you aware that your state of mind has an effect on your general health?

True story time:

We had a blood drive at work. One of my employees got a call from them telling her to check with her doctor, something wasn’t right with her blood. This girl had never missed work and was always up. She was delightful in every way. Two weeks after she got the news that she had cancer, she died. Her brain shut her down.

What if she had positive support from just a few hugs? There are cancer centers that focus on treating the whole body, not just the disease. I believe in something I call PMA or a positive mental attitude. There is scientific evidence that your mind is powerful. How could we develop more PMA in people we know? It’s like the butterfly effect, ripples in a pond. The media for whatever reason wants us at each other throats, scared of everything. Would hugs be the middle finger to the talking heads stoking fear and hatred? I think it would be worth a try. Whatever happened to Flower Power?

Did you know there are different types of hugs?

Hugs come in various forms, each conveying different emotions and meanings. Here are some common types of hugs and what they typically signify:

Bear Hug A bear hug is a strong, enveloping embrace that conveys warmth and affection. It often signifies a deep emotional connection and is typically shared between close friends or loved ones.
Side Hug In a side hug, two people stand next to each other and wrap one arm around the other. This type of hug is often seen as more casual and can indicate friendship or comfort without being overly intimate.
Romantic Hug This hug is characterized by a close embrace, often with bodies pressed together. It signifies romantic feelings and intimacy, typically shared between partners.
Back Hug A back hug occurs when one person hugs another from behind. This type of hug can express protection, affection, and surprise, often making the person being hugged feel cherished and secure.
Polite Hug A polite hug is usually brief and may occur in social situations where a more formal greeting is appropriate. It often lacks the emotional depth of other hugs and is more about social etiquette.
Comforting Hug This hug is given to provide support and reassurance during tough times. It is often longer and more enveloping, conveying empathy and understanding.
Group Hug A group hug involves multiple people coming together for a collective embrace. It signifies unity, friendship, and shared joy, often seen in celebrations or moments of camaraderie.
Lift Hug In a lift hug, one person lifts the other off the ground while hugging. This playful gesture often signifies excitement and joy, commonly seen in romantic relationships or among close friends.

I am all for meaningful hugs. The gift of a hug, a genuine hug, is worth more than just about anything you can think of. When we draw our last breath, everything that we own stays behind—all the money, cars, collections, clothes, friends, all of it.

What do you take with you?

I pray we take the memories of the kindnesses we were shown.

The Mormons believe they group around their family members. That is one reason they are so adept at genealogy. I guess they want to know who is waiting for them.

The love language of kindness, touch, empathy, and caring for another person is a selfless act and a treasure that one takes with them, I hope.

Always resolve conflicts before going to sleep and make a point to express appreciation to your loved ones. Nothing compares to the impact of a warm embrace over verbal communication.

What if we incorporate the phrase in our daily walk, “I may not agree with you, but I love you anyway?”

Words to think about.

-Best

Timedok

What is it, and why does it have that name?

The premise is this: Years ago, I was one of those inquisitive kids who took things apart to discover how they worked. When I was old enough to push a lawnmower, I learned that many in my area didn’t like mowing grass. This was long before there was such a thing as a lawn service. Why? I fought to collect $2 for the front and $2 for the backyards. That includes raking, edging, and so on.

Pop refused to let me use the ‘family lawn mower.’ Had that been my kid, I would have encouraged it. Pop failed to see the value of teaching kids leadership through stretching their wings. The cost of that ‘family mower’ was nothing compared to the growth potential of his son…me.

Fate or God intervened. On the way home from school one day (via the alleys on garbage day), someone was discarding an old mower that had seen better days.

I brought it home, went straight to the library, and found a book on small engine repair that helped me fix the troublesome item.

The journey had just begun, and at the ripe old age of eleven, I had to learn not only about the care of a lawn mower but also about marketing and business.

I grew that business by purchasing used equipment at garage sales and, yes, being mindful of taking the alleys home on trash days…just in case.

Fueling my interest in electronics, I embarked on a self-taught journey into radio and TV at the age of eight. I proudly earned my first amateur radio license at thirteen, becoming a certified operator.

You guessed it: I purchased a broken color TV at a garage sale. I fixed it, and I had the first color TV in our household. It wasn’t just a TV, mind you; it was a Curtis Mathes console entertainment system. The $50 I spent back then I earned by mowing yards was a huge chunk of change for the 60’s.

In the days before the Internet, the library acted as my personal Google, where I could find answers to any question. In those days, computers and electronics were filled with more tubes than transistors, creating a maze of wires and glowing glass.

I built the transmitter for my ham radio activities from used parts gathered from cannibalized radios and TVs that I bought at garage sales or brought home on garbage day. One man’s trash is another’s treasure, and this was not lost on me, even at that tender age.

We only had a few channels back in the day, and they went off the air after the nightly news. Books were my escape from reality when not working on something outside of the home.

Fast forward a few years, and the world around us has changed drastically.

Church had become a prominent fixture in my life, providing me a sense of community and spiritual fulfillment. I only say that to weave the tapestry of the Timedok story together.

At church, my reputation for being able to fix things, quickly spread. Despite all the VCRs and other items I repaired for my church family, I never received any payment. I never once requested that of them.

To this day, I consider them family, and the bonds we formed then are still strong.

One of my friends approached me, holding a broken file marker date stamp machine, and asked, “Could you possibly repair this?”

I shrugged, and from that simple gesture, Timedok was born.

Since that day in 1995, I have repaired thousands of them, spending countless hours tinkering with their intricate mechanisms.

I stopped marketing the business because word of mouth alone keeps me busy enough. The machines that make it to my shop, after failed repair attempts from other ‘companies,’ always take the longest to fix. The reasons are simple, not just anyone can fix these things.

Even though the original concept design dates back to 1939, these machines are still indispensable.

Despite technological advancements, the need for them has not entirely disappeared, and unless there is a significant shift in government practices, it is unlikely to ever happen.

Every year since I became a dealer for Rapidprint, they have consistently increased the price on all their products by at least 2%. Those machines have increased from around $500 to over $1000.00.

Their competition has not followed suit in drastically raising their prices, which leads me to believe that Widmer will eventually gain a more significant portion of the market share as Rapidprint prices itself out of the business of file stamp machines.

Even though future price increases may occur, Timedok has chosen to keep its labor prices unchanged.

Over time, the cost of goods and services has been steadily rising.

The freight charges from Connecticut to Dallas for one machine are upwards of $65. These companies are likely facing financial difficulties and are increasing prices across the board to generate more income.

Small companies like mine were adversely affected by the economic downturn caused by COVID and the subsequent shifts in the business landscape.

Point of this blog post….?

If you need assistance or plan to buy a new one of these machines, be sure to do so before the end of this year. Right after you folks (the government) get your new budgets, they conveniently change their prices. dok At Timedok.com

When not working on clocks, I focus on my writing career because it complements my lifestyle.

Stay tuned for the latest updates on my novels and short stories and my work as the Executive Director of The Carrollton League of Writers.

My latest novel, Earth’s Last Hope, can be found at this link.

-Best