THESE DAYS, BALANCE EACH ONE

These Days was a Jackson Browne song from years gone by.

It’s a downer from a self-proclaimed loser with a CW beat.

All these years later it still hits just right:

Well I’ve been out walking
I don’t do that much talking these days
These days
These days I seem to think a lot
About the things that I forgot to do
For you
And all the times I had the chance to

 

Those are the days every day.

Jackson’s reflective tone at the age of eighteen or so was a strange comfort.

These Days still makes sense fifty years later.

When it comes to singular voices from the past I like Paul Simon just a little bit more, but I owe Jackson his flowers.

 

Well I’ll keep on moving
Things are bound to be improving
One of these days
These days I’ll sit on cornerstones
And count the time in quarter tones to ten
My friend

 

Gladly Moving On 

 

As a young boy, fourth grade, I spent a few days in the North Bend hospital after falling out of a backyard tree.

I remember scrambling up this huge alder trunk and grabbing the same branches I’d always grabbed.

One stump from a broken branch snapped and my upward momentum flung me backward bouncing off branches and landing on a wood pile. I remember that broken branch, then nothing,

The next thing I know I’m wrapped up like a mummy in a hospital bed with some weird glove on my left hand.

“You fell out of the tree. Your brother saved your life.”

Yes he did. He ran into the house and got our dad who knew how to handle injured people in high stress situations.

Turns out I had a broken finger after falling thirty feet, maybe twenty. It was up there.

But for the luck of timing, how I landed, and my brother’s quick response time, that would have been as far as I got.

It sunk in even further after I left the hospital and went back to school wearing a huge finger splint.

What followed in the ensuing years was a variety of injuries. I was that kid.

Get knocked back, then step up again.

 

Full Grown Man These Days

 

Now it’s called adversity, and what do you do with adversity?

You overcome it, or die trying.

“Adversity is a learned skill.” (Hey J)

For me, the main skill is learning which adversity is the ‘die trying’ kind and which isn’t.

It can’t be all of them, can’t be none of them.

Now I hear you ask, “But Blogger-D, are you talking about balance?”

Balance? We talkin’ ’bout balance?

As much as life feels like a runaway locomotive these days, the small things still and always will matter.

From making a promise and keeping it like I did for M: I said I’d get my hip fixed for our first baby. Ta Da.

This stuff never ends, making promises and keeping them, but it’s not supposed to.

The important, most important, part is who you make promises to.

My promise effort goes toward shifting into longevity mode, which is the same as a ‘fat boy’ call-out. A promise to myself.

Fat Boy buys a bag of dark chocolate malt balls that are mostly chocolate. Wife notes caloric intake.

Fat Boy buys sack of Rainbow Trailmix. Wife notes caloric intake.

Now that that’s out of the way, I’m cutting back for the long haul.

I’m doing it for brighter days and joyful moments.