Month: May 2010

This week starts my foray into the world of guest posting – I’ll be handing over the link to to my post at Bryan Allain’s blog in a second.  Bryan’s a friend I met since moving back to Pennsylvania, and we like to meet for breakfast where I eat unhealthy food and he orders things like spinach and feta omeletes. He’s got a great thing going on at his blog, and I’m privileged to have my post about living in Amish country appear there today.

So since I’m already posting over on Bryan’s site, I thought I’d throw a few random thoughts your way:

1) The most visited page on my blog is the first post in the story of our move from a nice house in Virginia to my parent’s also-nice basement (but not ideal for 6 people)  in Pennsylvania.

2) The most contentious post was my list of ten of the all-time best types of candy.

3) Some time in the near future I will have, as a follow up to my review of Tyler Stanton’s book Everyday Absurdities, a list of 10 questions answered by the one and only Tyler Stanton.

4) on Friday this week I’ll be guest posting at my friend Andi’s blog, and she’ll be guest posting here  about Ray Bradbury, Transformers, and settling for less than the moon

5) I’m thinking about sharing a series of stories about people on their journey of identity.  If you or someone you know has an interesting story about a decision you made regarding what to do for a living, or  how you make time for the things you are passionate about, or how you traveled a fascinating life journey to get to wherever it is you’ve gotten, let me know.  Maybe I’ll blog about it.

Now get on over to Bryan’s blog and check out my post.  Make yourself at home.  He’s funny.  And if you like Lost, you’ll probably love his Tuesday Lost series.

But, as he likes to remind you, I don’t watch tv, so I wouldn’t know for sure.

I love Tuesdays: a day for us to put down our differences and agree that my opinions are always right.

Today I’ve assembled the Top 10 snack foods of all time. As usual, I’m sure you’ll bow to my list as the premier compilation of (in this case) snack food.  Just as everyone agreed with my Top Ten  ice cream list and Top Ten candy list.

Sort of.

Well, here we go – the top 10 snack foods of all time:

10) Chocolate Weetabix – it’s a UK thing, and it’s so good it kind of defies convention – is it a cereal?  Is it a candy?  Is it snack food?  It’s all three, and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that.

9) Sun Chips – the flavor that radiates from these chips is where they got the name.  Genius.  And now they come in a compostable bag.  Since I recently started a compost pile, this is very handy (I’m not being sarcastic; I really did start a compost pile).

8) Smart Food White Cheddar Popcorn – the only drawback to these is that when you are finished eating there is a slight film of cheddar covering your fingers.  But any snack worth its weight in calories will have you licking your fingers when you’re finished, so this is not a big deal.

7) Andy Cap’s White Cheddar Steak Fries – I discovered these while living in Virginia.  They’re like french fries, but crispy, and they come in larger portions than what you would typically get at a fast food restaurant (not that I eat at those places . . . ever . . . not even once in a . . . well, maybe occasionally).

6) Pretzel Rods – the classic snack.  When I was a kid this was as close as I could get to even pretending I was smoking a cigar.

5) Wheat Thins and Easy Cheese – what could be better than small, thin squares of who knows what?  How about taking those small squares and covering them in the most completely processed cheese of all time, the kind of cheese that comes out of a metal tube and spits at you when there’s none left?  I know, sounds gross, but for some reason I love it.

4) Pita Chips with Spicy Hummous – probably the healthiest option on this list.  I should have put it at number one, if I cared about what people thought of my diet.  And because it’s healthy, I’ve probably also misspelled it.

3) Combos – I love pretzels, and I love cheese, and this snack does the combining for me.

2) Corn Nuts – this should be on everyone’s top 10 list.  Corn nuts are crunchy, taste like popcorn, and are made of nothing but corn, vegetable oil and salt.  Artistically simple.

1) Chocolate Covered Pretzels – I could eat these 24 hours a day.  Yes, I sleep a portion of that, but if you put a box of these beside my bed I will eat them in my sleep.

So, what do you think?  I know I shouldn’t even have to ask this question, but what have I missed?

Ads, a friend of mine from England, left some challenging questions after my post last week where the guy who gives bad names showed up and tried to convince me to get a job instead of trying to make it full time as a writer.  A few of Ads’ questions, which can be found in full in the comments of that day’s posts, were as follows:

*****

“Are there not some answers to be had from weighing up priorities and whats actually important?

Maybe the guy peering over your shoulder is giving some welcome guidance?

Just because you were looking for work, were you actually losing faith or adapting to the current situation in the most logical way?

*****

First of all, great questions. I love comments like these (unless they have to do with sweet tarts) because they really make me look back AGAIN and think through what I’ve written.

Secondly, I do believe in practicality. Many times the things we need are right there in front of our faces, and if we just slow down enough we’ll recognize them.

So in my situation, why shouldn’t I have continued looking for a job while I was writing?  That seems like a practical thing to do, right? Great questions, Ads.  I had to really stop and think about this.

The following are some things that I try to keep in mind when making life-direction-type decisions, and hopefully you’ll see why I’m still so angry at the guy who gives bad names, especially when I see how he deceives a lot of my friends.

1) What is my prime motivation? In the late months of last year and even the beginning of this year my prime motivation for finding a new job was to make more money and to be emotionally comfortable.  I already had enough income lined up to live off my writing for a few months.  More money is not inherently bad, but more money when it comes at the expense of time to fulfill my identity is ALWAYS bad.  Mr. Bad Names guy was playing off my weakness for more money and trying to divert my focus from writing.

2) Will the result of my decision put me in a place of comfort or a place of challenge? Most people I know who live their lives in a place of comfort for significant amounts of time begin to experience physical, emotional and spiritual atrophy.  What if you chose to live life in a place of complete physical comfort, like a bed or a recliner?  Your muscles would atrophy.  Same goes for your emotional and spiritual life.  If you choose comfort over everything else, all the time, those parts of you will grow thin and anemic.  As Anne Lamott’s father wrote, “a life oriented to leisure is, after all, a life oriented to death, the greatest leisure of all.”

3) Don’t make decisions based on lies. The voice in my head trying to persuade me to get  a job was basing his argument on a few key lies that struck a chord with me: your family is suffering (not true), you’re out of money (almost true but not quite), you can’t write full time and make a living (untested so neither true nor false), if you try to write for a living you’ll live in your parent’s basement forever (not true), a job would give you more security (not true – I know plenty of people in this economy who were unexpectedly laid off – working for someone else is one of the largest providers of a false sense of security in our world today).

4) Don’t make decisions based on fear. In my opinion there are two types of fear: healthy fear and unhealthy fear.  Healthy fear is based on facts and always motivates you to productive action (for example, you take a wrong turn at the zoo and wind up in the gorilla enclosure, leading you to get the heck out of there as soon as possible). Unhealthy fear is based on worries about the future that might not happen and paralyze you  (ie you take a wrong turn at the zoo and THINK you might be in the gorilla enclosure, even though you’re in the petting zoo, and just the thought of that situation makes you fall to the ground and curl up in the fetal position).

5) Seeking God and trusting his leading. This might sound a little hokey to any of you folks who are not Christians or who do not believe in God.  I apologize for that (you can just stick to the first four if you’re more comfortable with those). But for about 6 months before Maile and I decided to move to Pennsylvania we prayed and studied scripture and asked God what he wanted us to do.  Certain specific circumstances, as well as an overwhelming sense of his peace, led us to the decision that I should give writing a try for at least 6 months.  So when I started feeling doubt and worry about halfway through that time, I knew it wasn’t God talking.

Wow.  Really long post.  What do you guys think?  Am I nuts?  Are there things you try to keep in mind when making big, life-altering decisions?  Or do you just go with whatever the Magic 8 ball suggests?