Birds, still captivating

 Two years ago I wrote a blog here about the birds in my backyard, how fun they are to watch, how they all have a different style of scratching for birdseed and how much I like spying on them from my kitchen window. Two years later I am still tossing seed out.  Because it is winter and there isn't a lot of field activity happening, the birds are incredibly grateful for any birdseed that gets thrown their way. (Of course, this is simply my anthropomorphizing them; they probably don't even know what gratitude is, being creatures of very small brains and no human emotions. But still...)

There is a small vole who shares the space with the birds, although they swoop in when seed is present and the vole actually lives there, not a swooper. But he creeps out of his (or her) hole in the ground and very quickly grabs a seed or a grain and darts back into his underground condo and no doubt hides it away in its vole pantry. The vole is a delight to watch and it makes me happy that my bags of birdseed are keeping it well-fed.

The time I spend watching the fauna outside my kitchen window is like my own private National Geographic show. The local feed store has a program when you have purchased ten bags of birdseed, you get one for free. Talking to the owner of that store, I mentioned something like "...maybe feeding the birds keeps them from hunting for food on their own, maybe it's not the right thing to do for them."  His reply was perfect: "We should do things that make us happy and if they make other creatures happy at the same time, everyone wins."  So I continue to enjoy the show and I will scatter birdseed until spring brings more plants and bugs and seeds and everyone wins.

Buy some seed. Scatter it.  See what happens.  We are living in a time when happiness is becoming difficult to find. Watch the birds, be happy with that one, small thing. 

Empty

 Nothing seems important enough to write about because everything that is currently happening is too important, too weighty, too catastrophic, too disappointing, too depressing and so, so frightening. How our country and our world got to this tragic moment is incomprehensible. I can read books and watch movies and have dinner with friends but none of those activities are of any importance when I compare them to real life. And by "real life" I mean what is happening minute by minute in the power structure of America.  I am deeply worried about the future. We all should be.

Over and out for now. 

Here We Go

 So far, not even a week in,  2025 doesn't feel any different than 2024 except more ominous. We have a very large monster waiting behind the stage curtain, eagerly anticipating its own power. That's reason enough to approach this year with caution and wariness and fear. Combined with other unresolved evils (wars, famine, poverty) there aren't a lot of positive incentives poking us forward. So we need to create our own.

Resolutions usually fail because (in my opinion) they are too grand or they imply character defects (i.e. need to lose weight, read more books, cook better food, be nicer) that are not going to change just because you tell yourself it's time for that change to happen.  Instead of a resolution, perhaps we need to embrace uncertainty and hesitation. Instead of insisting on getting more exercise, for example, one could simply say "maybe I will go outside now and then and look at the birds." Nothing major there, just a hesitant idea of looking around the yard. Or instead of planning on eating less processed food, one could say "maybe I will start reading the list of ingredients before I buy anything."  Not even deciding NOT to buy the product, just adding an action (reading the ingredients) to the process of shopping.

Maybe I am just blowing smoke here. But sometimes life is difficult, every day, day in and day out, and making a resolution and then failing at it will only make life more difficult. And send you down another spiral, another bout of depression waiting at the end of that tailspin. No one needs that, of course.  What we need is to be lifted up out of that tailspin. We need hope and a tiny bit of happy and some calm waters ahead.

So my resolution this year is the same as always: absolutely no resolutions. Just an idea or two to change the routine a tiny bit, to get out of the rut, to not let the swamp of current events (and the dungeon of events to come) kill us. More smelling the flowers, more stopping for a coffee, more daydreaming.  That's the ticket!