Stories - FD Thornton

First off, a few moments ago I came up with a title " Shadows of Doubt ". Funny, but if you read my posts (and b y the way, Thanks! to my 6 fans ) you already know I used that title in a post. Despite that, I re-read the piece and decided to continue my train-of-thought. I have issues , hell we all have issues , still as we go through this world we want at at least enjoy ourselves and keep the issues to a minimum. To do that we got to be balanced in every area of ourselves. You see, I was raised with the mindset that we are both spiritual as well as mortal beings. So when one of those two areas get's off-balance you end up with " issues ".  One of my many issues is a lack of confidence in myself. Now this isn't to say I haven't gotten better, I mean I have a dream or two that's been fulfilled. It's just that every now and then you get a voice in your head telling you that your not good enough. Even now, I'm working through a deeper situa

Without going too much into personal details, it’s been a pretty stressful two weeks for me. It seems every so often despite the plans you make things go to hell to put it mildly. So while I was running around stomping out fires here and there I’d try and remind myself to breathe and relax. I’m sure everyone reading this knows how easy that is (you can stop laughing now). Anyway, the stress and anxiety I was allowing myself to live was really affecting my work, my family, my sleep, and my health. Let me tell you, it wasn’t a pretty picture, which is why I wanted to tell this story. Each of us faces some level of stress every day. Rather it’s in the drive to work or that deadline your boss moved up again or the child who throws a tantrum when you say no. We all have stresses and levels of anxiety we can handle. But, what if you’re pushed to the edge and even little stresses get to be too much. What do you do? First off, I claim no cure all for stress and anxiety other than

In our lifetimes we wear so many different hats, it can get hard to tell the real you from the rest of the ensemble. Because sometimes we wear the hats for so long people forget who you are under them. As for myself, I wear the hat of husband, father, businessman, friend, and relative. I’ve worn these hats for so long, I’ve ended up forgetting who I am. So the topic of my thought today is rediscovering myself and allowing myself to be. At first the title may sound like poor grammar ( like that stop me from writing before ). But at the beginning of this draft, I decided to look up the word be . What I found on dictionary.com was that be meant: to exist or live, to take place; happen; occur, to continue or remain as before . So in a way the title sounds right, because Am allowing myself to: exist, live, happen, occur, continue or remain , again. Understand that this isn’t a call to discard the hats we wear. What I’m saying is don’t let the hat become you. You see, I may be my

I noticed I hadn't made a post in a few days. I just guess that's because my mind has been running in about ten different directions lately. The reason for that is complicated, I guess it all can be chalked up to simple too many things to solve. But I'm sure none of you ever experience that problem. When I do see myself going off in several directions, I usually pull back on the throttle and coast for awhile. So I guess that's what I'm doing, I'm coasting. When you pull back you tend to leave a few things undone, kinda' like my blog. But you know what, that's OK. Sometimes when too much is heading in your direction, it's good to step back. Too many times in my own life and in the lives of my family and friends. I see them working and working and not decompressing. But much like that engine you hold the throttle to, if you don't pull back you'll find yourself heading for trouble. So as Friday is here upon us remember to that some time ou

First let me apologize to REM for stealing their line but, I can't multitask and yes, I feel fine. For a long time I tried to multitask, but discovered I was a miserable failure at it. So instead of being honest about it I hide my "problem". After all I couldn't let my kids know their college attending old man was just like all the other old people and couldn't multitask like them.  But truth  be told, no one really multitask's very well.    I recently read in Forbes Online  an interesting piece by Douglas Merrill about multitasking. In the piece Merrill points out that while we may appear to multitask from time to time, we are limited by our short-term memory to the number of things we can concentrate on at any given time. On that theme I did a little more digging and found an article in  HealthDay.com  about actual risk in multitasking.  While both Forbes and the HealthDay  discuss the risk to job performance through the lack of concentration when jump

As I'm sure you all have figured out it's the dogs days of summer. I did a little silly research and found that the dog days are between mid-July to mid-August in the "Dog Star" Sirius  is brightest star in the summer night sky. But no matter what the Sun's out and I'm burning up.  The sad part is last year where I live in South Central Georgia we were going through a heatwave last with temps above 90 degrees most of the summer. This year it seemed the temperature dropped during the spring and it rained, and rained, and it rained. It only started to get hot a week or two ago. Even with temperatures no where near last year's I'm burning up, a friend of mine in Arizona said, " it's just the humidity ", ha, ha.  So I don't know if it's me or the humidity or what, that's got me hating this summer. Like that county song, " too hot to fish, too hot to golf ", all I can do is sit in this office and try and cool off. You

Awhile back I wrote a post on people and their negative attitudes towards life called, Negatively, Speaking (1/5/2013). In it I told about how others including myself, used cynicism to justify our poor attitudes on life and other people. For many years I used negativeness to justify things I thought I couldn't change. But for the past five years I've fought very hard to reach goals I only dreamed about just a short time ago.  What I'm going to discuss here has to do with being negative, but being negative in a slightly different way. You see, it was the negative internal voice that brought on cynicism. The internal voice that tells you you're no good or not worth getting that dream. It was that voice I have to face down even to this day to achieve what I know I can achieve.  You may ask, what is your secret to facing down that voice? What is that you do to kill it and carry on? I guess the best way to tell is that I simply walk through it and face it. A good exampl

Earlier today I was watching a film called The Company Men , it's a film from a few years back about the affect downsizing has on this group of employees. For me, the film served as a reminder that only a few things in our lives aren't fleeting such as love and self.  The film itself goes into other moral and ethical issues which I'll let you watch and figure out for yourselves. Mainly the movie brought that to life that, what you put into this life is what you get back. So while money and it's trappings are nice, true content can only come from love and respect. Why I would post this to my Blog is obvious, why I'm sharing this with LinkedIn is a reminder to everyone. Serving only yourselves may fill your pockets, but what fills your soul Love & Respect. So work ethically.