Is it ok to be lonely?

For most of us, the Christmas and New Year's part of the year is one of the most happiest times of the year, a lot of "live" for this two holidays. Giving gifts, decorating the house with lights, mistletoe, a Christmas tree with lots of gifts, parting on New Year's Eve, getting drunk and singing "Old Lang Syne" when the New Year rings in. The family gets together on Christmas, kids get excited and play with their new toys that Santa brings them.
But not everyone has all them. This Chirstmas some people will spend it alone. There are many reasons for this. Some people are down on their luck, some have lost everything in the recession, some have no home, no friends, no family, due to different reasons. Some like me, chose to be alone.
My great-neice is always telling me, "you need to get a girlfriend and get married," but I see not reason reason too. I live my life alone and I am very happy.
My mom die when I was 8 years old, so I guess I never learned how to interact with women very well. During high school I had many crushes, most laughed and teased me when they found out about my crush, except four girls, these four are the ones I really liked, four girls I would never forget, even to this day.
At first I protected my heart because I was tired of getting hurt, now I protect it to prevent wasting my time on another relationship doomed to failure. I protect my heart to such of an extreme, that I would sacrifice my sanity to protect it [something I've done once].
The four girls I mentioned did something that was I thought was impossible, they got through my defenses and touched my heart. I don't know how they did it, but two of them actually did it twice, once in high school and once twenty-five years later.
After my two failed marriages, I decided I had enough. I stay away from parties [I never learned how to deal with large groups anyways], keep to myself, never let anyone close [except the four women I mentioned], and gon on living. I am independent, self-sufficiant, I do have a few good friends I can talk to when I need to talk, so I see no reason to change this.
But most importantly, I am happy being alone. I know I have affected many lives with my witty humor [I'm known for my comic-relief], I also have many, many friends.
Maybe I'll that "one" woman who can accept me for who I am and fall madly in love [if that really exists], but I really doubt it. She would have to be able to what those four women have done, and that it is highly unlikely. I don't know how they did it, something I will always wonder about, mabye it's left a mystery.
As far as those four special women, I talk to two of them almost every day on FaceBook. One knows who she is [and I look forward to her comment on this post, LOL]. the other I don't think she remembers me from high school very much [after all she's blonde, LOL] and how special she is. The third is on FaceBook, but has refused contact with me for reasons unkown. The fourth is still out there somewhere, all my friends from high school days say she just "disappeared". So what is wrong with being alone?

........One last note: Sorry for the blonde reference, just couldn't pass it up, LOL.

Recently I have been listening to my IPod and I have a couple of songs that got me thinking. The first song got me thinking about what I would do for love. In the song, the singer known as "Meatloaf" says, "I would do anything for love, I would run right up to hell and back, I would do anything for love..."

In another song, Bryan Adams says, "You can't tell me it's not worth trying for, you can't tell me it's not worth dying for..." So my question is: What would you do for love?

Love is a very powerfull emotion, there are many different kinds of love, and many different degrees of love. I have been in many relationships, I would have to say the first time I was in love was back in high school. I met a girl from the rival high school at a afterschool activity and eventually gave her my first kiss. She would disappear from my life, but she left an imprint on me that would be permanent. The next girl I fell in love the next year at school had several of the qualities of the "first." Over the next 25 years a lot of women I met and was interested in had those qualities as well.

My next (and last) "real" love was about 5-6 years ago. After my first divorce, I got involved with a married woman I worked with. I broke the first rule of affairs, don't fall in love. When I wanted her to leave her husband, she broke it off.

Ok, back to subject. Bryan Adams continues in his song saying, "I would fight for you, I'd lie for you, walk the world for you, I'd die for you....."

I think that most of the love we think we feel, is really lust and desire. If you were to know that you can feel really true love; what would do for it? Seriously, I don't really know what I would for really true love. I guess we don't really know until it happens.

Oh, one last thing, lately I have been running into long lost crushes from high school, including my first love from high school. Even though she doesn't remember "the kiss" (I guess it wasn't as good as I thought), we have become good friends and talk often.

Day of Infamy

On December 8, 1941, Franklin D. Roosevelt went before a joint congress and uttered those now famous, "December 7, 1941, a date that will live in infamy...."

Almost every person has a "day of infamy" in their lives. For me it was October 3, 1973, the day my mom died. That day my life would change forever. I would no longer be the person I was, but started on my journey to become the person I am today.

I was only 8 years old when that happened, my life would take a spiral turn downward, one that would take me over 20 years to recover from. Not every year now is bad for me at this time, but I am getting better, each year brings me another step forward.

For me, this event brought me to the brink of suicide, the loss of every friend I ever had, and hardship in dealing with relationships. I have been divorced twice, have an revengeful ex who keeps refuses to let me talk to my kids.

But in the recent several years, I have made great strides in recovery, several long lost friends have reentered my life again, one bringing much needed postive influence in my life. Even though I may never fully recover from the tragedy that happened, I hope faith that one day I will look upon all that has happen and be happy that she is in a better place now.

We must never forget what brought us to this time and point in our lives. Everything that has ever happened to me I try to use daily to help others bring order into their lives from all the choas in the world.

And I end this blog with a reminder to all who read this, that at this very point in time, we are the sum of all that has happened to us, both good and bad, and to change just one thing, reguardless of how small or large, we would not be the person we are. Remember God loves us all, and always will. Take care my friends.

IN MEMORIAM

IN MEMORIAM: JOANNE JOYCE SMITH JULY 28, 1938-OCTOBER 3, 1973

Our Wonderful President [Part 1]

This photo was taken by AP news service.

How many of you voted for our wonderful president? I have to admit that I did. Now looking back as to how our wonderful president is doing, I have to say I regret voting for him. Actually I did not want to vote for either him or McCain, basically I voted for Edward Biden for Vice-Presient.

Our economy still has not improved, I know it will take time, and I do believe that it MAY have bottomed out, but that really remains to be seen. Since President Obama was sworn in, he has spent trillions of dollars to buy banks, auto manufactuers [namely GM], insurance companies and God knows what else. If he [and Congress] want to save money, why don't they lead by example, take a pay cut, at least until the economy gets better, show the American people that they are willing to make sacrifices.

Yesterday [July 23, 2009], President Obama went to Chicago [from Washington D.C] to pust his latest spending plan, overhauling the health care system. He flew on Airforce 1, which if he was going from state to state, or spend a few days here, no problem, but he wasted a whole lot of money to fly here [Chicago] spend a few hours talking about health care, visited his house, talked to baseball pitcher [he pitched a perfect game], then flew home, all on the same day. What a waste of money, I know that it is his "private" plane, but it costs a lot of money to fly that thing just for one little press conference. It would have been cheaper to fly commercially, chartering a plane from United, Contential, American or US Airways.

I know I am not an expert on economics, I never attended college, I am a self educated man, but I really think there is a lot of money spent on things that are pointless. If we could cut all that "pork spending" out, we would most likely have the debt paid off in my generation. Oh Mr. President, I know you are not entirely to blame for all the pork spending, your buddies in Congress and the Senate are just equally to blame. I can go on an on about our wonderful President so I will continue this again tomorrow, and I will tell everybody about the letter my dad got in the mail..............{TO BE CONTINUED}

What Photographers Do For A Shot

For the last few weeks I have been getting back into Photography. I have learned that when a photographers go anywhere, wheather they are driving, walking, on the bus, subway, train, they are always looking for interesting shots.

Recently I was talking to a photographer friend of mine. We were talking about the things we do for shots. A few years ago I was at the local beach here. I was way out at the end of the breakwater when a very severe thunderstorm came up. Back then I just had a disposible film camera, but there I was standing on this breakwater taking pictures of the storm, not paying attention to all the lightning strikes hitting the water. I was thinking, "Kevin what a stupid idiot you are for standing in such a dangerous location" LOL.

Yesterday, I was at my sister's house. She was in front of the house and saw a great big grey bag stuck in a bush. She went to grab it and realized it was a large hornet's nest. She came inside and told me. So you think I cared about if my sister got stung or is ok? NO, I grabbed my camera and asked where was the hornets nest. For 5 minutes I kneeled in front of the bush snapping photos. The shot on the left is one of those. She was concerned that I might get stung, but I didn't care about that, all I cared about was getting a good shot, LOL. I told if I was perfectly still, left them alone, and acted like I belonged there, I would be ok. I got many shots, without getting stung.

This shot was taken this morning. I was driving to work and saw the sun coming up over the clouds and had to stop to take a few shots. Luckily there was no traffic behind me as I changed lanes extremely quickly so I can pull over and take them.

As a photographer I find I will do almost anything to get a shot. I won't do anything illegal, but I will risk getting stung, electrofied in water by lightning and crashing into something to pull over. This is my wacky life, it's a miracle I have survived this long, LOL

Fire!!!

What is our fasination with fire? Why do we like to sit and watch a fire burning in our fireplaces or sit around a campfire and watch it burn?

Last night my sister had a few friends over and made a small fire in her fire pit in her backyard. They sat there talked, toasted marshmellows, gossiped for hours. They drank some wine, caught up on girl talk.

I was just fasinated with how it burned. Being a retired volunteer fireman, fire has always fasinated me. I enjoyed put them out as much as watching them burn.

The heat from the fire really felt nice since it was a littel chilly. My niece was toasting marshmellows, she fell asleep watching it. My sister and her friends were talking, enjoying the fire until a little past midnight. The fire in the photo is a shot of the fire last night.

People have been fasinated by fire since it was first discovered, people have been trying to control it, tame it and use it since, but fire is dangerous, no matter how much we try, we will never be able to control or tame it.