Out of the Wilderness

When your 13-year old niece is already an amazing sketch artist, new things are being added to her drawing portfolio all the time.

Some of you have seen photos of me and/or my dogs, but these hand-drawn images are instantly my favorite.

I am not the cutest guy ever and my niece captured it perfectly…

But the dogs. Wow. I mean, have you seen cuter hound dogs in your entire life?

I love being an uncle. Thanks for stopping by!

I intentionally tricked you with that title! The mattress in this case is not stress-free, but it is free. I suppose the stress was free also. I won’t get into the issues of what’s causing my stress, but I did want to share what is going on with a mattress.

I’ve been using Facebook marketplace quite a bit in the last couple of months. One thing I didn’t expect was how many responses I would get from listing a mattress for free

I suppose we are all conditioned to immediately say yes when something is free.

Even with some stress with a separate situation, at least getting rid of a mattress was mostly stress… free.

Thanks for stopping by!

-Out of the Wilderness

This post is quite random but I found Buddy Holly’s song “It Doesn’t Matter Anymore” and it reminded me of my top favorite American Idol performance in the show’s history. From that, I figured why not do a top 3, you know? So here are my top 3 favorite live performances from the show… 

3. “Hello” – David Cook. I wasn’t very familiar with this song before David performed it this particular night. The music is more modern and I just love the use of the electric guitar. I’m sure Lionel Richie wasn’t sad about it.

2. “Ring of Fire” – Adam Lambert. Haunting. A little different. Adam’s vibrato along with a crazy falsetto… incredible.

1. “Doesn’t Matter Anymore” – Jessica Sanchez, DeAndre Brackensick, Candice Glover. This is easily my top favorite. Between these three, there is some power – DeAndre reaching top 5, Jessica winning this season, and Candace willing the following season. Such a great performance from each of them in this trio.

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Are any of these your favorites? If not, share yours in the comments below. Thanks for stopping by!

-Out of the Wilderness

A good example of what I mean in the title is my neighbors here in Nashville. So many times over the years the neighbors (on both sides of my house) have gone out of their way to help with my yard work, give me trinkets, tools, etc and pretty much every time this happens I have a sense of debt in my mind.

Does that ever happen to you?

At times I consider it noble to feel this way, I want to earn everything that comes my way. But I think something else is actually closer to the truth. It isn’t noble at all to deny someone their kindness towards others (in this case, me). The feeling that I “owe” them is not a good thing, it’s probably unhealthy, and it very well could take away the full joy of receiving something as a gift.

I think I have been this way for a long, long time and in one sense it’s not a bad thing to treat others the way I want to be treated (when I’m given something, be on the lookout for how I can return the kindness), but if it comes from a place of repayment, that isn’t good.

Have you dealt with this sort of feeling before? What have you done to change this internal struggle?

Thanks for stopping by!

-Out of the Wilderness