It Is What It Is

Learning to say it is what it is over what we can't control frees the resources up that we need so we can respond to that which we can do something about.

Hello everyone!

I'm only at the beginning of the second full week of the year and already I can feel the benefit of 2024's completion being what it was. In my end of year review I looked back over how I'd managed my time over the course of last year and it was interesting to see what habits formed and stuck and what didn't. Given that hindsight is such a good teacher I thought this would be a good exercise to do having not done it before.

It was a good way to keep myself accountable because if I wasn't happy with who I'd become at year end, then there was only one culprit; the choices I had made all year long. Some small. Some significant. All of them add up in the end and, as I discovered during my grief counselling last year, there is a toll to be paid for every sacrifice and it will be paid in the end. Maybe not at the time, but all checks will balance out in the grand scheme of things...

First Week Back, Fresh Look Ahead

 Hey everyone!

For many it will be the first full week back just completed and I know for me it's been one where I've decided to press into the new year with a desire to head in a new direction otherwise I'll continue going in the way that I'm going.

People talk of new year's resolutions at this time of year and, I must admit, I'm not one for them but instead prefer to reframe that idea as a goal setting exercise where I ask myself one question.

At the end of the year, what do I want to have achieved so I can look back on the year and say 'yes, this was a good year'?

Once I establish that I can then begin to look at what decisions I need to have made to ensure that happens...

Happy New Year!

Hey everyone!

I've been looking forward to writing this one as the first one of a brand new year.

First off thanks for your patience whilst I've been growing through the grieving process since losing my dad almost three years ago now. It can't last forever, the process, but it's just that; a process. I've had to readjust my priorities in that time which has, sadly, meant that the blog had to take a back seat throughout. I knew I couldn't commit to the pace and quality I prefer to put out so had to take a big step back and walk through it.

I haven't exactly been prolific in my writing this past few years and it's a desire I want to correct this year in my bid, finally, to send Off the Scale finally to one hundred episodes which has taken me so much longer than I expected it would.

But such is life sometimes...

2024 Year End Review

Well here it is again,folks!

The 2024 Year End Review and it's that time of year where I celebrate some of the media I've been consuming this year. It's been a year where quite a lot has changed as series I've been watching have gradually been finishing for good leaving me with space to try and discover new shows to get addicted to.

So let's get this show on the road, shall we?

Merry Christmas!

Well it's finally upon us, almost!

Merry Christmas from all here at The Write Dimension!

I want to take this opportunity to get in early with my season's greetings because we all know family and friends will gather round and no doubts old frictions will arise and tempers may flare causing us to lose our way emotionally. But if we make it our aim to rise higher then this will become a season for us and our loved ones to remember for all the right reasons.

Still to come here is the year end review where I, as always, look back over the year and pick out some of my favourite media to be consumed. It's almost complete now, I've just got the final touches to put to it so expect that over the coming days.

Again, Merry Christmas and a happy new year for 2025!

Peace!

===TLP===

Between Perception and Reality

Hello!

Last night I got to thinking how a lot of our problems are less about what happens to us and more about the lens through which we choose to use to view what happens to us. This can cause us to create feelings that we think are attached to these events when they really aren't. What happened to us happened to us, it didn't come with added anxiety, or worry, or fear, hate, anger etc. The events transpired exactly the way they were supposed to, even if we didn't like or appreciate the outcome.

The challenge comes in remembering that we always have the ability to choose our response in life's events. We have a response-ability. An ability to choose our response in any and every situation that takes place around us. Even in the ones we don't like or care for. They happened, they didn't bring any more emotion than we chose to add into our response.

Do the Next Thing

Well, it's the second half of the year and the height of summer!

Or one would think it is one day here in Oldham, but not the next!

Still, you got to make the most of each day as they are all like sand in an hourglass slipping through your fingers. We can state the need to make the most of every moment, but how many are actually doing it?

No, seriously.

How many conversations have you had with people who... just... seem... to be going nowhere in life? You know, they seem to be absent of ambition, of dreams for the future they want, and may even go as far as blaming everyone and everything around them for the reason they are like they are today.

But it doesn't have to be like that.

In fact, I'd argue that if it's like that today then, chances are, you're not doing enough to unfasten your eyes from off the present and onto future glories. It's easy to think that this is all there is if all there is becomes all you look at every day.

You need to dream bigger. Higher. Faster. Further. Longer.

I don't claim to have all the answers how to do this, just a conviction that if all I see today can be changed at any point by learning to focus on just one thing different then I'm going to do all I can do in order to find that one.

The law of nature is: Do the thing, and you shall have the power, but they who do not the thing have not the power. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

It all comes down to doing that next thing that will make that shift in perspective. Not the one after, or the one after.

The. Next. Thing.

If you want that change in your life, will you do what's necessary to have it?

As long as it's safe and legal do it, it's worth it, trust and believe that!

===TLP===

Off the Scale #81 - Any Other Name by Thomas Newman

Hello everyone!

Drawing the movie themes to a close it's back to Thomas Newman and this time American Beauty takes centre stage.

I've gone for a particular piece of music that's so soothing, so relaxing, it almost demands you stop what you're doing to consume it properly in my opinion.

Off the Scale #80 - Love Actually Suite by Craig Armstrong

 Hello everyone!

Well, we're 20 away from target now and it doesn't seem all that long since I started before I took the series on a hiatus.

Continuing in with movie themes, I've chosen one from a movie I could care less about, but the music on the other hand? This one has to get a special shout out...

Off the Scale #79 - For the Love of a Princess by James Horner

Hey everyone!

Onto the next in my mini-series within a series.

This time, it's the turn of the excellently scored movie Braveheart. I'm not wasting time on accuracies or inaccuracies of this movie because my series zooms in on the music that matters...