🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩
Only Us 🎶
Healing 🩹
Smile Moments 😊
THE DAILY UPDATE
Three Things I’m Grateful For Today:
- Random PTO days to take care of personal stuff.
- My resiliency.
- Knowing a time is coming when all … this … is over and I won’t have to be resilient anymore.
Pursuit of Wordle Godhood: Today’s result: TWO! How I went from nothing to getting the word is surely a sign I am your Wordle God. Bow down to me and worship, for I am a kind and loving god.
Wordle 1,020 2/6
⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
Pursuit of Connections Godhood: Perfect, for I am also your Connections God and with look upon you with favor as you bring your gifts unto me.
Connections
Puzzle #298
🟦🟦🟦🟦
🟨🟨🟨🟨
🟩🟩🟩🟩
🟪🟪🟪🟪
The song in my head when I woke up: “Only Us,” from Dear Evan Hansen
Favorite line from the song in my head when I woke up: I don’t need more reminders of all that’s been broken/I don’t need you to fix what I’d rather forget/
Clear the slate and start over/Try to quiet the noises in your head/We can’t compete with all that
Commute Tunes: It was another morning with John’s Ultimate Chill Song Compendium.
- Crowing, Toad The Wet Sprocket
- Through Glass, Stone Sour
- Imagine, Ben Platt
- Brick, Ben Folds Five
- Gotten, Slash, featuring Adam Levine
- Boulevard of Broken Dreams, Green Day
- How You Remind Me, Nickelback (don’t judge me)
- Imagine, John Lennon
- More Than Words, Extreme
- Complicated, Avril Lavigne
- A Long December, Counting Crows
- Picture, Sheryl Crow, Kid Rock
- Nothing Else Matters, Metallica
Something I’m looking forward to today: The last baseball practice before our first spring tournament.
Something I’m looking forward to in the next seven days: A freaking eclipse.
Something I’m grateful for from yesterday: Taking a PTO day and getting a whole bunch of budget stuff settled.
What I’m writing: Yesterday’s Two Crappy Pages involved absolutely nothing. I was jammed up with a bunch of other stuff.
What I’ve written: What Healing Looks Like. I kinda love this piece
Today’s Stoic Though of the Day: “Circumstances are what deceive us–you must be discerning in them. We embrace evil before good. We desire the opposite of what we once desired. Our prayers are at war with our prayers, our plans with our plans.” — Seneca
John’s translation of Today’s STD: “Hey. You. Dumbfuck. Stop for a second. Just fucking STOP. Put down the phone. Shut off the distractions. Breathe. Now think. What do you really want? What are you actually after while you spin around on this stupid floating rock? How are you going about that? Find the ways you are your own worst enemy and then stop being a dumbass and drop the shit that doesn’t lead you toward your goals.”
There are certain days from my childhood that I return to when I need a smile. Sometimes, I am pushed directly too those days without any intentionality. This morning was one of those days.
Getting a driver’s license was the ultimate freedom for me. After being stuck and feeling increasingly cooped up in a home that wasn’t what it looked to be from the outside, I suddenly had wheels and could just go. And so I went. Often.
This morning, driving to work, the song More Than Words came on. It was by a not-all-that-special rock band from the late 1980s/early 1990s called Extreme, whose best song, to me, was Play With Me. It was featured in the mall scene in the original Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure.
More Than Words is a much different song. It’s the ultimate in 1990s power ballads, an acoustic jam meant to be put on a mix tape for that special girl of yours. And trust me, I did exactly that.
But that’s not how I remember the song the most. I remember the song the most from driving a car full of my friends — my best friend, my girlfriend, my best friend’s girlfriend and another friend or two — to a roller skating rink on a Saturday afternoon. It was warm but not too hot. The windows were rolled down. And on the radio came More Than Words.
There’s a part in the song (at the 2:57 mark in this video) in which the repeated line of “hold me close, don’t ever let me go” is sung just a little bit differently. There’s this heavy emphasis on “ever,” and it’s said more like “Ev-ahhhhh.” Driving the car that day, a car filled with my really, really good friends, we nailed that note in unison. It became something of a thing of ours.
Then, life was good. It was simple. It was fun. Those moments are things every kid should experience at some point in his or her life.
And so yes, sometimes I think of those days. I think of those moments. And I miss them. I miss the people in those moments who made them special. But I smile when I think about them — both the moments and the people.
Would you please help a brutha out? I’ve created a weekly eNewsletter called News-B-Nuts in which I’ll be sending out news nuggets and witty commentary to subscribers. If you can, would you support this endeavor for just $5 a month via Patreon?