MMGA - Make Me Great Again, Maybe...

It is that time of year again.  As much as I love spring and summer, due to my desire to grow things, Thanksgiving through the New Year holds a very special place in my heart and memories.  As I mentioned earlier, I can't "truly remember" a lot about my past.  I can't dive in and pick a specific day and tell you what I was doing or what anyone else was doing, those types of memories just aren't there.  Hell, I can't tell you what I did yesterday (that's not actually true, work let out early and I did some indoor plant work that I had been putting off). I am a Christmas nut believe it or not.  I am that guy that ran around the office at my corporate job dropping bottles of wine randomly on people I worked with desks.  I am pretty sure they knew it was me, but I didn't leave a note or card.  Why, I was hoping they felt that little tinge of magic.  The one I felt during the holidays.  See, it was all magical to me.  I don't allow myself to ...

  As I would expect, today's brain is not in the mood to harass me.  Smile at somebody today, it makes both of you feel better. -JJ (mmga I'm good)

I am going to take a quick break from the search for past greatness and just write about the now.  We are in the city (again).  I wish we had more time to explore and enjoy, but that isn't why we are here.  To say that this isn't great, would be true, but not totally.  I'm in a good room, actually more of a condo, nice veranda, and lots of ads on the TV for Leon Ellis's restaurant  Chocolat  (if you live around the city and watch cable you must have seen this commercial – it is on all the time!) and ultimately, I am with my wife which makes everything great.   We have come to NYC a lot in the last 3 years and outside of Saint Patrick's Cathedral we haven't done a lot of sightseeing.  You may think that all that is going on in my life that I look backwards all the time, thinking about "better times", but that isn't true.  To say the last 3 years have been hard would be a massive understatement, but many things have happened that I wouldn't wan...

Once again, this picture has nothing to do with this post "Uptown got it's hustlers   The bowery got it's bums"       - Jim Croce, You Don't Mess Around With Jim, 1972     As I was thinking about my life and my search for my past "greatness", I was torn with where to start.  Many times we talk about what we remember from our youth and I wonder sometimes if I remember something because there was a picture or it was something the family talked about.  I will be honest, my early years are a blur at times.     I was trying to think back to my earliest memory, but it truly is difficult.  I do think I remember an incident that left me with two scars just on the inside of my bottom lip.  One Christmas when I was extremely young (maybe 5), I remember trying to unplug the Christmas tree from the extension cord.  Being the kid I was, I put the cord in my mouth and pulled.  The prongs hit my lip while still making contact inside...

This picture has nothing to do with this post :) How many times have you said or thought, "things were so much better back in the day"?  The flood of memory and images making your mind race through the photo album of your life, back to a time you remember fondly from your decades of existence.  I do this a lot.     Since I have been a bit introspective as of late, I was thinking about when I was personally great.  Before I get into that though, I was thinking that the entire idea of being great is relative or objective.  In fact, to me the idea of greatness or perfection is not something that ever happens, but rather something you strive for and never achieve.  What may have felt great to me might not have been so great for those around me.  The thing about looking backwards is that you tend to perceive the past only through the lens of your personal experience and it is hard to take off your personal bias lenses and look at the past in a manner a...

Gotta love the phone reflection in my glasses   I have decided to call it day when it comes to social media.  At first, back when I joined FB and Twitter (at their infancies), I thought that the concept was a good idea – I am not so sure anymore.  Maybe at its core the idea of social media works, but with the amount of advertising and forced visibility algorithms, I've just had enough.  Ultimately, it was a time waster and time is a luxury (we just don't always realize it).  Even after several weeks, I find myself almost instinctively typing the URL for Facebook or Twitter in my browser the minute I open it.       So what am I going to do instead?  Learn some things I have been avoiding (you are never too old to learn new things!). Probably use this blog to post my stream of consciousness stuff.  Honestly, I do these things because my brain won't shut up.  It doesn't matter where I write it, I just have to type it out so my hea...