About a year ago, I was at a REALLY bad point in life. I allowed a number of REALLY bad things that happened take up mind share. Thinking about them over and over again didn't solve any problems. It just compounded them and my mind and body simply responded by shutting down. I mean the kind of shutdown where your head is full of negative thoughts going round and round in a sea of constant noise while you feel like you're in a dark room with no light and your body is chained to the floor. The constant feeling that you’re not good enough to do anything and that it might be better not to have to do anything at all, if you get what I mean. The question “is it EVER going to end” seemed to be my mantra.
I had no control over some of the things that transpired. They just happened. Like getting struck by lightning. Don’t do that. It’ll mess you up and then you have to go spend lots of time and money figuring out why some of the things in your mind and body that used to work don’t anymore. If you’re interested, you can find that story here (https://timberbronze.com/blogs/news/the-story-of-the-cone). And then once you do find a team of people, the work begins…
Or two summers ago when the entire town of Wallowa, where we live, suffered the ravages of what amounted to a tornado that was throwing baseball-sized hailstones at 200 miles per hour… Listening to the roof come off and windows breaking in a recently purchased property that you don’t have insurance on yet… Going home to find that your only two modes of transportation had literally been destroyed…homes, livelihoods, most anything tangible…gone in 15 minutes.
And then to back it up both my wife and I losing our jobs at the same time because the company we both worked for was sold and they no longer needed anyone at our location…we’re still working on that one.
From what I gather, that would take a toll on most anyone.
I don’t know what the point was when I did this, but I decided to reach out for professional help. I couldn’t do this alone. You know the old adage about doing the same things over and over again expecting a different result. Ask me if that works…I decided that I had enough. Whatever it took, I was going get back up. No more Instagram face where everything is perfect. There is a time and a place for that because not everyone needs to know about what you’ve been through or what you’re currently going through. Some simply DO NOT care. And those aren’t the ones that I want to play with. I’m looking for those who are in the hunt and are not only making the best of every situation they can, but are trying REALLY, REALLY hard to be proactive and make things better, not only for themselves, but for those around them.
I came to the realization one morning that I was not the only one affected by the storms of life, by illness, by financial insecurity, by the ending of a relationship…I could either keep feeling sorry for myself or get back up and do something about it. It wasn’t punishment for anything I had done, the things that happen are most times just things that happen. What we DO have control over is what we think about the situation and what we’re going to do about it and what we can learn from it. And that was the part that I was missing.
So that’s what we’re going to do in this blog. I’m going to share what my wife and I are doing to get ourselves out of this mess, both mentally and physically. But more importantly, I’m going to share stories about you…the ones who are going through life’s paces, whatever they may be. From those who have dealt with cancer, or loss of loved ones to those starting off on new adventures like new relationships, new businesses, new places to live, new experiences.
The reason is basically selfish. I need to know what you know. I want to know what you know. I also came to the realization that if I wasn’t the only one who went through the storm here in Wallowa (you have to realize that this was such a HUGE deal because we NEVER get really adverse weather), then I’m not the only one who longs for the knowledge that we’re all in the same boat together, whether we want to admit it or not. All but very few have the same thoughts, emotions, feelings, wants, needs, desires that everyone else has. We want to make it better. And we want to be better…
If you want to join us, feel free to head over to our website at https://timberbronze.com/ and sign up for our newsletter. While this may feel like a promo for the stuff we produce, honestly, it isn’t. I’m just not tech savvy enough to figure out how else to do it. The blog portion came with the website package, so I figured “why not use it”?
Oh, by the way, we’re going to center this whole thing around olive oil…that’s just a little teaser to get you to come back. That part is a promo…lol.
