Have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. – Steve Jobs

February 17, 2021

This is being written on one of the colder and more miserable days Bandera has had this winter, which makes it ideal for staying indoors and blogging. The nighttime low temps have been in the single digits and we had several inches of SNOW, which I understand hasn’t happened in this area for at least 30 years. I love writing, but I find it impossible to do when the sun is shining, so in that regard, inclement weather was welcomed. Besides, we’re scheduled to leave Bandera in just a few days. So, being stuck inside came at a perfect time.

Situations such as this bring to the forefront so many things I take for granted because, as the old saying goes, you don’t know what you’ve got until its gone. Things like water, electricity, heat. Living in a mobile aluminum tube may not appeal to the majority of folks, but the past couple of days have made me glad we do. For one thing, I’m grateful that we’re able to be independent of public utilities; while much of the state has been experiencing rolling blackouts, we’ve had uninterrupted electricity, thanks to our workhorse of a generator. And our friends and neighbors do a good job of looking out for each another. Ours is a small and tight community.

On the topic of ‘community,’ it’s been more than a month since I quit posting on Facebook, except for what I put on the Gratitude 365 group page (and even that’ll be going by the wayside soon in favor of its own website.) I had thought that I’d feel a tinge of sadness at not being “in the loop,” but that hasn’t been the case at all. The more I learned about how social media companies mine and sell consumer data, the less information and fewer photos I wanted to share. The more the big tech companies shut down the accounts and censored people I wanted to follow, the less I wanted support their empire. The more intolerance and hatred my ‘friends’ spewed, the less I wanted to engage. For my own well-being and mental health, I backed off.

I realize my values, attitudes, and philosophy may not jibe with everyone, but when did common decency and respect for others’ opinions become obsolete? We’re all individuals, so it’s common sense that we all have different perspectives. I try to live by The Golden Rule: to treat others the way I wished to be treated. But today’s cancel culture, though, seems to encourage degradation, bullying and unmitigated elimination of not just differing opinions, but of the individuals themselves. It’s downright scary when you stop and think about it.

So, living a different kind of lifestyle, eschewing popular forms of social connections, and choosing not to take the experimental vaccine are just some of the ways I follow my heart. It’s been years since I’ve stopped caring about what other people think, much to the chagrin of people closest to me, but it’s been freeing. Standing up for what I believe in sometimes causes conflicts with people I love, but my own integrity and self-respect mean more to me than doing something I don’t believe in just to appease someone else. It really is okay to agree to disagree.