Be Content

Good Morning My Confidants

What is a something that you can do that makes you happy?

A simple something, not too expensive (a coffee at Oddly Correct and sitting amongst humans), or even free (having my coffee at home, with my dolls close at hand, expanding my imagination) and you don't even have to really do all that much (sitting on my front porch and watching my street)?

Something that makes you content?

I'm very blessed in that I don't have to work anymore and I can pursue whatever I want to do. Well, not "whatever," but I am no longer constrained by having to be at a "job."

I do, now that I'm finally getting my s*** together, need to start actually getting something done each day. I think it's okay to bend your show every now and then, but get something accomplished. That's one of the things I really like about my relationship with my friend Belinda. We help each other do things, even housework. She helped me get the house ready for my birthday party, and I helped her get ready for her anniversary party.

But back to something that makes you content.....

I found that in the nearly fifteen years that I had that job that was just a hell hole that there were little things I could do to make me content. I actually had a supervisor or lead or two who literally did their best to block me from those things sometimes, but I found little things that I could do. It just somehow made me feel a little bit better.

There's a game I play on my phone, sort of like Scrabble, called Wordscapes. That was fun. It made me use my brain. I've mentioned in my writings that if I look at a messed-up words, I read what is there. And then it's hard for me to get my brain to turn it into whatever it's supposed to be. So if I'm playing Wordscapes, and I see my choices of letters are SHATWC, it's very difficult for me to see anything but "shatwick." And so, I really have to focus and finally I'll see "swath," and "cast," and oh! "watch!"

For all of those of you who just immediately saw those letters and came up with 25 words, your brain works differently than mine. Our brains do not work alike. I've clearly clearly seen that with two husbands. We all three things very differently. I was finally slowly coming to that conclusion when it was simply me and RBear. I was putting that together. And now that there's three of us? Who all been very differently? Our brains work differently? Oh yeah I see it. So, for all of those of you who just immediately saw those letters and came up with 25 words, that's not me.

However, I got better at it. By playing that game I got better at it. And it has helped me with so many things I would have never suspected would help me. That doesn't mean that there's still days that I open up my game and all I see is EMSSLII, and there's little I can do to change that except press the scramble button and then by God I still see "shatwick."

Is that weird?

But sometimes I look at SHATWICK and to my astonishment, suddenly. word afterward after word, after word, afterword comes to me. That makes me happy.

So I could sneak off to the bathroom stall, because of course we couldn't have our phones out on the production floor for some reason (the true reason being that they didn't want us to have any enjoyment in life and just be slaves), but in that stall I had five or so minutes I can play the game. And I could play it on my breaks. And I was a little more me, and a little less than them.

I read in social media about people talking about their jobs and how much they love them. Last night I was talking to a group of people and one of them was saying how much she loved her job.

I really never once LOVED a job. I have liked a few jobs. I've even really liked a few jobs. I liked working Waldenbooks, although December was hell. Nasty cranky cantankerous customers. They usually like to turn on my charm and make them smile, and that actually made me content.

I really like working at the music store, I'd say record store, but even nearly 40 years ago records were starting to go out and CDs were starting to come in. We still had lots of cassettes though. Do you know what a cassette is?

If it wasn't too cold, if the temperature hadn't dropped under 50°, I could go outside on my breaks when I worked. That made me content.

As my daughter would say, "Google is your friend."

The thing is, Ben was supposed to be a Rockefeller. LOL! Seriously though, I can work, I could go to a job, I can be responsible and be there on time every single day for years and years and years. I can get the job accomplished. Most of us have to do that.

But what a lot of people don't understand, RBear and my mother are two of them, are baffled by, is that it's usually near torture for me.

I know people who have built up their entire lives around their job. But that's who they are, their job.

I've watched people retire, and die within a year afterwards because they had no idea what to do with themselves. They actually went into a deep depression because they no longer had any identity. Their identity had been their job.

My job has never once in the nearly 50 years I worked been my identity. I have liked a few jobs, I liked working with books and records and music, I made good friends, but even at the best of my jobs, what I really wanted to do was get the hell out of there and go home.

Some people luckily, I think most people, just don't question it. You get a job. Hopefully one that you like that gives you a sense of accomplishment and you do your best and it pays for the things that you need in life (when you're not at work), and that's all good. They never once wonder what life would be like if they never ever had to work. That's just the way it is. And "Oh you silly silly Ben, the things you say! Don't you understand that if you're going to be able to one day relax and enjoy the last few years of your life, you have to work your f*cking ass off for years and years and years and smile about it?"

Well, that last sentence is rarely said, but it's there.

I guess what I was trying to say, when I simply started this off by asking you all, and hoping a few of you would answer, "What makes you content?" is that if you're like me, and you don't enjoy working, and sometimes you have a job that sucks the very soul out of you, is that there are things that we can do that help us.

And if we're not going to go simply insane (some of you may remember that I worked with a guy who literally went insane from the pressure of having to work and stabbed somebody to death!), remember this, your life doesn't have to hang on your job. Your sense of accomplishment doesn't have to come from your job. Your sense of identity does not have to come from your job.

It's okay!

But please please please, don't live for the weekend either.

Don't hate Mondays, don't make Friday's the best day of your week. When I was with my ex, I would burst into tears on Friday because I knew I had to go back to work on Monday. And one particularly awful incident I can remember, I didn't even hate my job!

I wonder how many hours, and days, and weeks, and years, I lived for the hours that I didn't have to work. So many opportunities lost. So much time wasted. What might my life be like today if I hadn't been so frivolous with those days?

I've joked for years about God holding little tiny baby me in the palm of his hand, looking down and stroking his long white beard, wondering, "Should I make him a Rockefeller or a Thomas? Hmmm.... Rockefeller or Thomas? Rockefeller or Thomas?" Suddenly he smiled, stopped stroking his beard, raised a finger and declared, "A Thomas! Yes! A Thomas!" And I'm lying there, that little tiny baby and the palm of his hand, crying my eyes out because I wanted to be a Rockefeller!

I truly think that cultural structure has just never been my bag. I don't like rules either. Stupid rules that is and don't get me started on that right now because this is already rambled on far far longer than I expected, and I could write a book on rules.

So my concept in this was to find contentment even if you were one of those people that God made a Smith, or a Jones, or a Martinez, instead of a Rockefeller, and you don't like your job, there are little ways to be content.

And to remember what I keep talking about here with the Four Noble Truths. Life can be suffering. But are real suffering happens because of the way we think about what's happening to us.

Don't do what I did and spend every hour at work wishing you were home.

Do what I did when I found little ways to be content when I worked. Those years were so much better. And I would set up these ripples of the Law of Attraction and have really good days.

Don't get to sixty-four and realized how many opportunities you missed out on.

I am very happy to report that for the most part, I'm pretty happy with my life. Even those times that I had to go through they were sh*tty, they help make me the person I am today. And I like me.

The bad, the good, the exciting, the boring, the dangerous, the boring, all forged me into who I am.

And when I hold the good in one hand, and the bad and the other? It is easy for me to see that I have tons more good than I do bad. It's just that every now and then the hand holding the bad gets really tired and it starts to ache and so I start focusing on that and forget all about the fact that the hand that holds the good holds Who I Really Am.

My request for you today is to focus on Who You Really Are. Know that nobody can take that away from you. That you can be you no matter what.

And you can be content.

Be content.

It's so much better than the alternative.

Contentedly yours,

Namasté,

BG "Gentle Ben" Thomas