Make me smile

How do you tickle an ole guys fancy and make his smile real bright?

Get a pesky business deal he's been concerned about and aggravated with for three months, agreed upon and out of the way.

The details have been argued out, agreed upon and it's finally out of the way for at least the next five years. Heck, even made out a lot better than I expected!

So now maybe back to life for awhile. Well, at least a week or three.

I'm sure some dumb thing will pop up that will bring concern into my life, but at least this one big deal is out of my hair and shouldn't be causing too much aggravation for awhile.

For some silly reason or another I somehow thought that when I retired from the construction business and decided to only pursue my lifetime hobby of farming that I would no longer have to deal with business and contracts. Ha ha ha, dense donkey! Think again...

Seems I always get myself involved in some kind of business. I'm almost willing to bet you do, or will too.

Although I no longer want to deal with business of any kind I'm finding it quite impossible not to. You may not have a huge deal like the one I just went through to deal with but there are so many smaller deals we just can't seem to be completely without.

Although they make it tough to keep the smile shining brightly I find it good to keep the smile all the way through these deals.

It keeps the atmosphere lighter when your arguing your point or trying to get what's best for you out of the deals. Making others angry by allowing your attitude to get sour and show to who you are dealing with only seems to get in the way. It makes them angry or in the least puts them on high guard and they're less likely to even want to listen to your points.

But internalizing your own anger can damage you. So I kinda blow off steam in any way I can. Sometimes it does just fine to bitch about it. Other times I find it does a lot of good to grab an axe and split some wood. It's amazing how much steam you can let off with hard work.

And it sure beats having to apologize and make amends later.

Everyone, I believe especially me, has their ups and downs. Mine don't seem to last very long and I do believe it's because of always trying to keep that smile. It may also have something to do with how I don't keep things internalized but have found ways to vent through hard labor.

The one problem is that when I'm complaining but finding my own humor when doing so, it's often taken as depression. It's not.

Maybe someone else is having problems reading or hearing my humor behind my complaining, but it's there. I'm smiling all the time I'm complaining.

I really can't help but wonder just how many people are on some kind of nasty chemical drugs for depression simply because others can't understand their way of dealing with situations of normal life.

Then when their life is back to normal they have to find a way off of the dependency they grew for the man made drugs. And we wonder why today's world is so hooked on drugs.. We wonder why today's kids are so easily swayed towards drugs. Maybe a lot of it has to do with them seeing so many adults around them taking drugs every day.

I don't associate my lows of life with depression. They are simply low periods which anyone and everyone will go through in the course of life.

Keeping the smile and getting through whatever is causing those lows as fast as possible sure seems better to me than drugs.

As I've said before, way back in the stone age years of my teens there wasn't a drug I would pass by without at least trying.

Well I saw to many otherwise good people who had their lives ruined by drugs or worse yet die from the chemicals they voluntarily put into their bodies.

They may have a useful benefit in some cases, but I firmly believe they should never be used until every other possible recourse is tried.

I want my smile and like my smile to be from happiness, not because the circuits of my brain are fried and I'm sitting around drooling all over myself.

Some find simply taking a walk helps. Me, I walk about a mile every day. In most of my mornings I walk well over a half mile to stay with my grandkids until they get on the bus to go to school. Then I have all the walking to the buildings the critters are in. They are not just outside my door.

Many of those walks to my daughters during the winter are more me trudging through knee deep snow and trying my best not to slip on ice. The snow plow rarely spreads salt or anti skid on this road. They normally never get here to plow the road after a snowfall until around ten AM. BY then I'm done and back in the house trying to warm up a bit. Used to be that I was at work long before they got here to plow the snow. I plowed my own way out with the front bumper of the truck.

Even still there are many days I take hikes over the fields and through the woods. Seeing all the wildlife along the way is probably more soothing to me than the walks theirself. Feeding and cleaning up after the critters is something I like to complain about, yet that too I find so soothing I'd never give it up.

Find your outlet that works for you when life hits it's low points. They are there and only you can make the attempt to find them.

Once you do, you will find yourself smiling a whole lot more.