Just

Have you ever wondered how many bugs you kill in one day?

I'm not trying to be gross or silly or anything; I'm being completely serious.

The thought occurred to me as I was driving home tonight. Here in the south, on summer nights, ---especially on country back roads where there is not much traffic--- bugs come out and fly, hop, crawl, flutter, buzz, and drift across the road and inevitably, but usually always wind up splatting against my car as I make my way home. I must kill tens, if not hundreds of bugs during a summer drive home at night. And what about when I cut the grass? I have about four acres of grass to cut. That's four acres of grass metropolis for bugs. Ants, grasshoppers, crickets, spiders, ticks, worms, just to name a few; they're there going about their daily business when along come the steel tornadoes. The bugs' skyscrapers of grass shredding and being blown around violently into a vortex of destruction under the mammoth blades. Many bugs make it out unscathed, but still many more die from severe blunt trauma and smushing.

To us, we're just going about our day, doing the things we do without much thought to the rest of the living things around us. We rationalize that they are just bugs, or more than likely, we go without really thinking about them at all. The grass must be cut, and we must have transportation. Too bad for the bugs. They're too small and insignificant for us larger lifeforms to even notice or care about.

What if large moving machinery the size of several city blocks randomly took out entire neighborhoods, and we were left helpless to do anything about it, other than continue to go about living on in our existence?

This is what the bugs have to contend with.

But how do they contend with it? They reproduce like crazy.

You think there are a lot of people on this planet? Well, there's roughly 6.8 billion of us here.

That's a lot... to us.

For insects that's nothing. At any time, it is estimated that there are some 10 quintillion (10,000,000,000,000,000,000) individual insects alive.

That's more than 1.4 BILLION BUGS for every ONE person.

So I guess it doesn't make a difference how many bugs I kill in one day, one month, one year, or my whole lifetime. There's just so many of them, it will never even put a dent in their numbers. Several hundred of them killed while driving, or thousands killed by cutting the grass is insignificant compared to their total number.

No wonder they are thought of really as just bugs.

Five Years???

I am finding it hard to believe I have been randomly posting to my blog for a little more than five years now. How time flies.

I need to do a recap of everything that has happened since I first started posting. I'll save that for another post.

Speed Thrills

I really shouldn't even be writing about this, but I think someone should.

The old saying goes, "Speed Kills".

I totally agree, but then again, so do a lot of things.

I am almost embarrassed to admit that I have exceeded 160 mph on my motorcycle. I usually go over 120 on most days when I am on the interstate. Except for the 160 incident, all the other times are simply from being comfortable with speed and not realizing how fast I am traveling. When I am on the interstate and everyone around me is doing 80 mph, it doesn't take much (a slight twist of the wrist) to accelerate from 80 to 120 on the bike. Usually I am just trying to avoid other vehicles on the road all together, so when I near one, I accelerate to pass it so that I can always maintain a safe distance away from it. These are the times when 120 doesn't feel like 120. I guess having a jacket that dissipates the wind like a golf ball doesn't help either. I would think the sheer wind force would clue me into how fast I am going. Nope. It doesn't.

I do make amazing time when I am trying to get from point A to point B.

I think just writing about this is going to make me start using side roads and back roads more often. It doesn't feel safe going really fast down roads like these, and because of that, I take it easy.

One note worth mentioning about the 160 incident. When I looked down and the speedometer was registering 162, I began slowing down. It wasn't until after that I realized I was only in 5th gear. The bike has six gears. That's kind of scary. Not that the bike can go faster than that, but that I know it can. There will always be that little question in my mind that begs, "How fast can it really go?" I don't really want to know.

Maybe I should have bought a scooter.

Nice Mix

Its a really nice feeling to ride through backroads on solo treks on the bike while interweaving visits with friends along the way. Those ingredients make for a pleasant day.

Who am I fooling?

I am an amalgam of everyone I have ever met. Yet I strive to find the real person behind the blend. But maybe that's it. The blend is the real person. Growing up with so many different friends with so many conflicting ideas and cultures, I found it hard to mix it all together. Birthday parties for me would be like bringing together all walks of life, rich, poor, good, bad, and throwing them into a room together. For an outsider, watching me transform effortlessly and fluently into my different characters would be something to behold.

The only one who's ever really noticed this thing about me is my ex-wife. So strange actually. Through all the abrasiveness of that relationship she was still able to see me as me. Kudos to her for that.

My mom just called as I was writing this, and I was trying to encourage her to do something now, and instead of saying, "There's never a better time than now", I said, "There's never a time for the better." Apparently she understood me completely. I mangle phrases like that all the time. Funny.

Gotta run...

Intentions

I fully intended to write something here that was completely out of this world, full of creative juice, and dripping with knock-your-socks-off excitement.

Instead I will write about nothing at all. I am surprised this blog even lets me write in it after being so negligent towards it. I wouldn't want anyone writing on me if they only came around once in a blue moon.

Luckily blogs don't have feelings, so I can continue my trend of disrespecting it.

Have you ever had a million things on your plate, but yet you don't feel overwhelmed in the slightest? I feel like that now. There is so much for me to do, yet I don't feel a sense of urgency. That's either a good thing, or a really bad thing. Am I affected by it? Not really.

Let's see if I can start some things in motion over the next few weeks and then I will have something more interesting to write about, other than having nothing to write about.

More to come. . . .

Cleansing

I feel refreshed, clean and renewed.

In the past, I could hang with the best of the filth mouth truckers, but over time I have been shedding this crude form of expression. It feels good. It is also not easy. I still find myself from time to time wanting to utter an unsightly word, but I have done a good job of filtering it out before it is vocalized. Mostly, it happens when I do things like hitting my head on the car door, or dropping a glass (I haven't done either of these two things, but I can't remember a specific event when I felt like cursing, so these examples will have to suffice).

I guess this is kind of like a person who quits smoking cigarettes. Once they quit, they begin to notice how many other people smoke and how awful it smells. I have felt the same way with bad words. Its amazing how many people curse around me. It seems amplified now, and quite sad.

Why can't people express themselves without using obscenities?

I'm going to go through my past posts and begin censoring them as well. I don't want to be remembered for such things. Even though it was my past, this medium allows me to go back and clean it up a little.

Here's to a clean future . . .

Almost Fell Asleep

Sometimes in this life, things become so repetitive that, like a lullaby, the redundant rhythm begins to put you to sleep. I have been falling asleep, but not in a literal sense.

There are few in this world who are awake enough to be fascinated by every little detail of the life that surrounds them. I like to think I am one of those few.

I have found though that without attention to detail, the eyes grow heavy, and the mind begins to get used to the everyday mundane repetitions of life.

I would like to thank the soft, gentle hand of another who rustled me out my sleepiness to remind me that there is more to life than the cycle where most tend to find themselves. I am sure you know who you are. :) ... I am sure they are not even aware what they have done, but I am truly grateful, and will do my utmost best to thank them in every possible way.

Now that I am reawakening, I am rubbing the sleep from my eyes, and shaking the stiffness from my joints, and beginning to see things the way I did before I fell into this routine.

I welcome change and embrace it with open arms, for without it, life would again lull me to sleep.

Its not easy questioning yourself each day to be sure you are heading down the right path. The questions can be difficult to hear, and even harder to answer, but question I must, to ensure I am heading in the right direction. Life is too short to get stuck in a rut, so it is necessary to make constant adjustments.

I was a bit sad when I started writing this, but now the possibilities seem endless, and my mind is opening up again. The details of everything around me are becoming clear again. I am not straining to see. Its like a touch of Spring, and I can almost hear the sounds of those warm nights under the stars that I love so much.

Thank you!