We are like roses that have never bothered to bloom when we should have bloomed 

and it is as if the sun has become disgusted with waiting

 

I wasn’t lonely. 

I experienced no self-pity.

 I was just caught up in a life in which I could find no meaning.

  

 I didn't have any friends at school, 

didn't want any. 

I felt better being alone. 

I sat on a bench and watched the others play 

and they looked foolish to me.

 The organs in the human body have entirely different functions. 

The cells which make up those organs act independently of each other. 

But in a healthy body, seemingly independent cells quietly depend on the functioning of the others. Because when one system stops working, the others can't function for long.

Just as organ systems are codependent for survival, so are human beings. Studies have shown that our happiness and health depends on our relationships not just functioning, but thriving.

 Sometimes the best we can do is bear each other's burdens and ease each other's pain. 

And hold each other's hands in the dark.

 The vagus nerve is longest and most complex of the cranial nerves. 

It transmits information to or from the surface of the brain to tissues and organs elsewhere in the body. When a body sustains an extended period of stress or trauma, the vagus nerve becomes hyperactive. 

We think of stress and trauma primarily as primarily emotional. The real impact is on the body.

 When the vagus nerve is triggered, it fights to slow the heart, blood pressure drops, and you can experience nausea, tunnel vision, ringing in the ears, low blood pressure, an irregular heartbeat. 

And when the mind suffers, the body suffers. 

And it can be difficult to undo the damage. 

Recent studies suggest that when we experience physical sensations related to intense emotions, it comes back to the vagus nerve. We think of the pain of a broken heart as being outside of our control. 

But science suggests that if we laugh instead of cry, if we sing instead of ache, we might just heal faster. 

Of course, when we're hurting, sometimes it's just easier to keep hurting than to try to heal.

 Tensions exists throughout the entire body. 

How it affects you depends on how you manage it. 

Some people can self-regulate by breathing, meditation, exercise. They develop tools that help them fight the stress and reduce the pain it causes. 

But not all people are wired that way. Some people feel completely overwhelmed by it. 

And the tension freezes their bodies until they can't move at all.

 The area dividing the brain and the soul

Is affected in many ways by experience --

Some lose all mind and become soul:
insane.

Some lose all soul and become mind:
intellectual.

Some lose both and become:
accepted

 regret is mostly caused by not having done anything

Brenda Ann Spencer - 29th January 1979

 Brenda Ann Spencer - 29th January 1979  

Aged 16 at the time of the shooting,  

Monday, January 29, 1979, 

2025 is 46 years since the shooting 

Spencer was charged as an adult and remanded in custody 

She was 18 on April 3 1980 

On April 4, 1980, a day after her 18th birthday, she was sentenced to 25 years to life

She has been denied parole four times 

Her next opportunity for a parole hearing will be in 2025 

She will be aged 63 and will have spent 46 years of her life in prison 

On January 29, 1979, sixteen year old Brenda Spencer pointed her .22 caliber semi-automatic rifle that she had received as a Christmas present from her father out her bedroom window to San Diego's Grover Cleveland Elementary School across the street.

 She waited for the school to open, then at 8.30 am, began firing on the students who were arriving at the school. 

For twenty minutes, Spencer fired 36 shots, killing the school principal and the school's caretaker, as well as wounding eight students, aged 6 to 12 and a San Diego police officer. 

During the next six and a half hours, Brenda talked to the police and press, before finally surrendering. 

Explaining why she had done what she did, she said: 

"I just started shooting, that's it. 

I just did it for the fun of it.

I just don't like Mondays.... 

I just did it because it's a way to cheer the day up.

 Nobody likes Mondays." 

She was tried as an adult, and pleaded guilty to two counts of first-degree murder, eight counts of assault with a deadly weapon, and one count of assault on a peace officer and is serving two 25-to-life sentences.

Incarcerated at the California Institution for Women in Chino, California. Spencer became eligible for parole in 1993, but was denied parole four times and will not be eligible again until 2025 

Vassago: Brenda Ann Spencer

Vassago: Cleveland Elementary School shooting (San Diego)

Vassago: Brenda Ann Spencer

Vassago: Brenda Ann Spencer

Vassago: I Don't Like Mondays

Vassago: I Don't Like Mondays Song by The Boomtown Rats

Vassago: Bob Geldof

 

 There is a breed of Tuesday in January 

in which time creeps 

and no light comes 

and the air is full of water 

and nobody really loves anybody.

Planetary alignment - January 25 2025

 The six planets will form an astronomical alignment known as the "planetary parade".

 six planets - 

Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune, and Uranus - are set to align in the night sky today, January 25

Blood is thicker than water

  Blood is thicker than water. 

It means the family you're born into is important above all else, right?

 Wrong. 

The original proverb goes a little differently. It actually says,

 "The blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb."

 Meaning the bloodshed on the proverbial battlefield bonds us more than simple genetics. 

DNA matters when it comes to medical history. 

 family is family. 

don't give a crap whose blood you have.

  

The big day is here. 

The day you're gonna hear the news, the test result. 

Is the biopsy malignant or benign? Am I gonna live or die?

 You just want to know, even if the news is scary, because then you can move on. Whatever that means. 

They say ignorance is bliss because once you know about the tumor or the prognosis, you can’t go back. 

Will you be strong or will you fall apart? 

It's hard to predict, so don’t worry about it. Enjoy the time you have before the news comes.

 Yep, ignorance is bliss.

 Patients who undergo an amputation often feel a sensation where the missing limb was as if it's still there. 

The syndrome is called phantom limb. 

It's as if the body can't accept that a terrible trauma has occurred. The mind is trying to make the body complete again. 

Patients who experience phantom limb report many different sensations but by far the most common is pain. 

The body can be stubborn when it comes to accepting change. 

The mind holds out hope that the body can be whole again and the mind will always fight for hope, until it finds a way of understanding its new reality and accepts that what is gone is gone forever.

 

To a critically ill patient, an organ transplant means a new start, a second chance. 

But the body is designed to fight off any outside invader. Even one that's trying to save it.

 Because a transplant doesn't guarantee that it's an easier life. There's a threat that the body will reject the organ outright. The transplant process is very scary. A patient goes from worrying about getting an organ to worrying if the organ will be rejected. 

The anxiety continues until they can finally open their eyes after surgery and see that their gift has been accepted.

 Work keeps our minds active. 

It keeps us out of trouble. 

When we're not working, our hands are idle and the Devil will find work for idle hands to do. 

And when you have an idle mind, well, that's the Devil's playground too. 

At first, idleness can seem like a welcome distraction. The troublemaking and the fun. Everyone needs some idle time to focus on something other than work. Even if it means focusing on something that's a little bit scary. 

Stepping back from work is the only way to get perspective. 

And it's only after we have everything in perspective that we remember where our hands truly belong.

 There are some feelings that refuse to go away. 

They're little distractions, whispering in your ear. 

Some things just get under your skin. 

Try as you might. You can't ignore your instincts.

It's like they say. Always follow your intuition.

  

 There is a breed of Tuesday in January 

in which time creeps 

and no light comes 

and the air is full of water 

and nobody really loves anybody.

Blue Monday - January 20 2025

 

 

Blue Monday is a day marked out every year according to an equation as apparently the most depressing day of the year. 

It falls on the third Monday of January every year, 

 

Why is it called Blue Monday? The 'formula', which has been disputed over the years, takes into account many factors including post-holiday blues, bad weather, debt level, low motivation levels, and so on, to calculate this Monday as the most depressing of the year.

Blue Monday is the supposedly most depressing day of the year – where January blues reach their peak. In 2025 the date falls on Monday 20th January in the Northern Hemisphere. The date is generally reported as the third Monday in January, but some variations also claim it can fall on the second or fourth Monday.

Celebrating Blue Monday

1. Mindful Reflection: Take a moment to acknowledge and reflect on your emotions without judgment. ...
2. Realistic Goal Setting: Rather than succumbing to the pressure of ambitious New Year's resolutions, set practical and attainable goals.

Wisdom

  

“Always go to other people's funerals, 

otherwise they won't come to yours.”

“If you don't know where you are going, 

you'll end up someplace else.”

“You've got to be very careful 

if you don't know where you're going, 

because you might not get there.”

“You can observe a lot just by watching.”

“The future ain't what it used to be.”

“When you come to a fork in the road take it”

“Nobody comes here anymore, 

its too crowded”

“Cut my pie into four pieces, 

I don’t think I could eat eight.”

“Half the lies they tell about me aren't true.”

“I never said most of the things I said.”

“Deja Vu All Over Again”

“We made too many wrong mistakes.”

“I'd give my right arm to be ambidextrous.”

“Its getting late early”

“No matter where you go, there you are,”

“He must have made that before he died.”

“If you can't imitate him, don't copy him.”

“Ninety percent of all mental errors are in your head.”

If I didn't wake up, I'd still be sleeping.”

“Never make predictions, 

especially about the future.”

“It's tough to make predictions, 

especially about the future.”

Time

 There are so many kinds of time. 

The time by which we measure our lives. 

Months and years.

 Or the big time, the time that raises mountains and makes stars. 

Or all the things that happen between one heartbeat and the next.

 Its hard to live in all those kinds of times. 

Easy to forget that you live in all of them.

 When you're a kid, you always want things to stay the same. 

The same teacher, the same house, the same friends... 

It's one of those things people say: you can't move on until you've let go of the past.

 Letting go is the easy part. It's the moving on that's painful. 

So sometimes we fight it, try and keep things the same. 

Things can't stay the same, though.

 At some point you just have to let go, move on. 

Because no matter how painful it is, it's the only way we grow.

Risk

  

There can be reward in risk. 

There can also be fallout. 

Still, you need to buck the system every once in a while. Bet big.

 And when you get the results you want, there's no better feeling in the world.

 But when you don't?

  

The brain is the human body's most mysterious organ. 

It learns. It changes. It adapts.

 It tells us what we see, what we hear. It lets us feel love. 

Maybe it holds our soul. 

But no matter how much research we do, no one can really say how all the delicate gray matter inside our skull works. 

And when it's hurt, when the human brain is traumatized, well, that's when it gets even more mysterious.

  

Recovery is not a team sport.

It's a solitary distance run. It's long, it's exhausting and it's lonely as hell. 

The length of your recovery is determined by the extent of your injuries. 

And it's not always successful. 

No matter how hard we work at it, some wounds might never fully heal. 

You might have to adjust to a whole new way of living. Things may have changed too radically to ever go back to what they were. 

You might not even recognize yourself. It's like you haven't recovered anything at all. 

You're a whole new person with a whole new life.

 

Germs, disease, toxins. 

Our bodies encounter dangers all the time, just beneath the surface. Hidden. Whether you realize it or not, your body is constantly protecting itself. 

Every time you blink your eye, you wash away thousands of unwanted microbes. 

Breathe in too much unwanted pollen and you sneeze. 

The body knows when it's encountered something that doesn't belong. The body detects the invader, it releases its white blood cells and it attacks. 

Just when we think we've figured things out, the universe throws us a curveball. 

So we have to improvise. 

We find happiness in unexpected places. 

We find our way back to the things that matter the most. 

The universe is funny that way. 

Sometimes it just has a way of making sure we wind up exactly where we belong.

 The baby you have is the baby you were destined to have. 

It was meant to be. 

That's what all the adoption people tell you

But everything else in the world seems so completely random. 

What if, one little thing, I said, or did could have made it all fall apart? 

What if I'd chosen another life for myself, or another person?

 We might have never found each other.

 What if I'd been raised differently? 

What if my mother had never been sick? 

What if I'd actually had a good father? 

What if? What if?...What..if? 

Your life is a gift. Accept it. No matter how screwed up or painful it seems to be. 

Some things are going to work out as if they were destined to happen.

 As if they were just meant to be.

 

 We've all heard the warnings and we've ignored them. 

We push our luck, we roll the dice, we play with fire. 

It's human nature, when we're told not to touch something, we usually do even if we know better.

 Maybe because deep down we're just asking for trouble.

In sickness and in health

  In sickness and in health. 

For better or worse. In sickness and in health, they say. 

It sounds so final, so binding. 

But it just means you have to be there. You have to really want to be there. For whatever is coming. 

And we don't know. It could all pan out the way we want, the way it's supposed to be

. Or it could be so much worse.

 According to this man's family, he was not a smoker, but the truth is he smoked two packs a day, in his car for twenty years, while his wife and children slept. 

 shame is the elephant in the room. 

The truth is right here for everyone to see and it doesn't need to say a single word. 

They say shame controls every aspect of human behavior. 

It's about who we believe we are.

  Our shame can choke us. Kill us. Can rot us from the inside, if we decide to let it. 

Don't let that happen to you.

  

Never choose the safety of what was known 

when there was the possibility of more to be discovered

Adapt or die

 We've all heard the saying. 

It's one of those things we learn in seventh grade science class. 

Adapt or die. 

Adapting isn't easy, though. 

You have to fight your competition, fend off their attacks, and sometimes, you have to kill. You do what you need to do to survive. 

Adapt or die. 

As many times as we've heard it, the lesson doesn't get easier. 

Problem is we're human. We want more than just to survive. We want love. We want success. We want to be the best that we can be. 

So we fight like hell to get those things. 

Anything else feels like death.

 You work, you study, you prepare.

 Months and years leading to one day. The day when you step up. 

On that day, you have to be ready for anything. 

But there's one thing you can never quite prepare for. 

The day when you step down. 

Sometimes, it happens in an instant. We step up. We become a leader. We see a path forward.

 We see a path, and we take it. 

Even when we have no idea where we're going.

  It's hard to fight against certain biases.

It's important to keep an open mind. It's how we learn. It's how we grow. It's how we move forward. 

Until we don't. Until we let our bias take over. 

Until we succumb to what feels right, or good, or satisfying in that moment,

 because even then, deep down inside, we usually know we're going to regret it.

 When we can't avoid pain, we try to understand it with pithy little quotes that we can wrap our heads around, like 

"suffering is optional", 

or 

"time heals all wounds". 

And my personal favorite, "Every pain has a purpose." 

God, I hope that one's true.

  Some biologists believe that it's human nature to help. 

Scientists believe we're biologically programmed to empathize.

 it's one of the reasons our species has lasted this long. We have an innate instinct to support each other.

 You can only take care of yourself for so long.

Because, let's face it, some problems are way too big to carry on our own.

 Fixing your mental health isn't like surgery. 

You can't just run the blood work and check the vitals.

With mental health, progress is way harder to measure and if something's wrong, we have to take action. There's a lot of uncertainty. There's a lot of fear.

 And what might be easy for one person, for someone else might take inner strength you can't even imagine. 

But we have to try. We have to stand up to our demons. We have to face reality whenever possible and ask for help when we can't. 

And when we do that, healing is possible.

 

However one more day decrease from life,
Sweet dream lost with Tuesday,
This is Wednesday, remembering..
what forget Last day, running to fulfil,

A day after Tuesday,
I think its Wednesday,
Every eyes and my destiny ask
"What you did on Tuesday"

 

Rainbow in Wednesday
echoes of nothing audience
society stresses....

Wednesday's child is full of woe 

hooray say the roses, today is Wednesday
and we bloom where soldiers fell
and lovers too,
and the snake at the word.


Because it's Sunday -- all the time --
And Recess -- never comes --
And Eden'll be so lonesome
Bright Wednesday Afternoons --

Little doing - for sacred, oh Wednesday, thou art
To the seven-o'-clock joys of full many a table --
When the Members all meet, to make much of that part
With which they so rashly fell out in the Fable.


That was Wednesday, 
for every Wednesday ended in darkness. 

 There is a breed of Tuesday in January 

in which time creeps 

and no light comes 

and the air is full of water 

and nobody really loves anybody.

 

 

People don't like Mondays
but are Tuesdays any better
when Friday is that far off?

Monday always passes and there will always be a Tuesday with a beautiful blue sky with few clouds.

Tuesday isn’t so bad. 

It’s a sign that I’ve somehow survived Monday

Tuesday’s child is full of grace

Monday January 13th 2025 - the Wolf Moon

Wolf Moon

Said to be so named for the wolf's hungry howling during mid-winter nights.




It’s thought that January’s full Moon came to be known as the Wolf Moon because wolves were more likely to be heard howling at this time. It was traditionally believed that wolves howled due to hunger during winter, but we know today that isn’t accurate.

Howling and other wolf vocalizations are heard in the wintertime to locate pack members, reinforce social bonds, define territory, and coordinate hunting.


Another fitting name for this full Moon is the Center Moon. Used by the Assiniboine people of the Northern Great Plains, it refers to the idea that this Moon roughly marks the middle of the cold season.
Other traditional names for the January Moon emphasize the harsh coldness of the season: Cold Moon (Cree), Frost Exploding Moon (Cree), Freeze Up Moon (Algonquin), and Severe Moon (Dakota). Hard Moon (Dakota) highlights the phenomenon of the fallen snow developing a hard crust.
Canada Goose Moon (Tlingit), Great Moon (Cree), Greetings Moon (Western Abenaki), and Spirit Moon (Ojibwe) have also been recorded as Moon names for this month.