How Far Have You Come This Year ?

It's time to take a look as twenty twenty four is rapidly coming to a close. Here, what have you accomplished this year? Let's talk about it this time on Wi's Thoughts. It's time for a virtual campfire sit down with Terry Weiss. Welcome to Weiss's Thoughts. Hey, everybody, welcome back to the podcast. Welcome back to Wife's Thoughts. I am Terry Weiss, and I am very happy that you decided to spend some of your valuable time with me today on the podcast. And before we get started, just so you know, Weiss'sthoughts dot Com is the website Wyceewis's thoughts dot Com. There you can listen to each and every episode of this podcast. Also check out the block entitled Weiss's Life for some musings on the world around us with yours truly, and also you can check out the latest videos from the YouTube channel so aptly named Wis's Thoughts. You can look for me on YouTube at Wis's Thoughts. I am an X formerly known as Twitter just at Terry Weiss as well. You can find me on LinkedIn as well. I'm all over the place and just do us one small favor. Who would please. If you enjoy the podcast and you're getting some value and entertainment out of it, share us with your friends and leave a rating and review on your favorite podcast provider, or you can leave a review at the website at weiss thoughts dot com. All right, great, did all the house cleaning. We're done with the house cleaning, and as promised, we're going to talk about this time on the program at our virtual campfire sit down here on Wis's Thoughts. The year twenty twenty four is rapidly coming to a close. I mean as of the recording of this podcast. I'm not sure when you're listening, if you're listening currently or sometime in the future, so this would be a past episode for you to listen to. But we are into October already in the year twenty and twenty four, and we've just got November and December. That's it, basically, you know, the rest of this month and November and December and we're done. Twenty twenty four is completed. And in the books, have you accomplished the things that you wanted to accomplish. I'm gonna be honest with you, I haven't. I'm a little dare I say, disappointed in myself. Yeah, I can say that I had higher expectations for myself this year. And I'm just going to be perfectly upfront and candid with you as I believe in being some to the detriment of my children and grand children would say, TMI too much information? Is that abbreviation? But you know what else if for this medium do we not have? Is just just share, you know, information, share our lives, share our opinions, share our insights. And that's what I do here on White's thoughts. So I'm going to give you a couple of my thoughts thus far on the year twenty twenty four. I had wanted to lose more weight. Now I know a lot of you say, well, you know, Terry hey man, you know you've been talking about that for two years. Now, what the hell what's going on? It's my own shortsightedness, it's my own lack of determination willing to follow through. Because here's here's what happens with me, folks. I'll lose five six seven pounds and then I am very proud of myself and dare I say boastful? And I'm like, yeah, I lost that weight. And then I'm like, ah, I can have a slice of pie. I can have you know, some m and ms. I can have this, I can have that. And next thing, I know, you know, within a you know, a week or so time, I'm like, you know, a couple of weeks time, it's back. We're close to it. So I'm doing this. I call it treading water with my weight loss challenges right now, and I'll be you know, I'm six foot almost six foot one, okay, and I'm hovering right now between two fourteen two fifteen. Now, some may say, well, Terry, that ain't bad. You don't look bad. You don't look like you're fat, you know. And I'm just using this. I'm saying this to me fat, okay, because I don't want anybody to get triggered out there, get emotionally upset. That's not my intention. I'm speaking about myself, okay. And I got a little pot belly, you know, little a little chubbiness around the mid section, and I can see it. I can see it in my face too, you know, and I feel it. I feel it in parts of my body. And I have been told by my doctor and my wife who thinks she's my doctor. Although I don't know what medical schools she attended to have yet to see her credentials, but anyhow that you know, if you would lose you know, she'd say, honey, if you would lose that fifteen pounds, sixteen pounds, get under two hundred, I think you would feel a lot better. Yeah, And my doctor says the same thing. It's just I don't know about you, but it's just so damn hard, you know. And I talk a lot on this program about sticking to your guns, being proactive in your own life, being the captain of your own ship, as it were. And I say a lot of those things and do a lot of episodes, not only just for you out there listening, but for me because I need to hear it. I need to be reminded, I need to be encouraged. I need to be you know, taken to task when I'm not living up to the expectations. So I do it as much for myself as I do for everyone else that may want to listen and maybe find some encouragement and some lessons on what maybe not to do by listening to me. And I really that's one of the I guess I'll just say it one of the disappointments of this year that I did not get under two hundred pounds yet. Now there's still time. I know, you said, Darry, Come on, the year's not over, Bud. The year's not done yet. You know we're only talking, you know, coming out here. You know, in the first week of October of twenty twenty four. You got two months. Come on, I mean you can drop me, you know, ten pounds by the end of the year. And I guess that's I suppose that's the moniker and the the encouragement I want to take. I don't know about you, but man, I love to eat, Okay. I'm a human being, a human doing, and. I just. My weakness is just good damn food, no matter what kind it is. It could be American cuisine, it could be Oriental cuisine, it could be Italian cuisine, it could be Polish CUIs any kind of you know, ethnicity cuisine. If it's good and delicious and it's good stuff, man, I want it. And I know everything in moderation. I say it a lot on this program. Everything in moderation, and you'll be okay. If I do find myself at times being gluttonous and saying, yeah, give me some more of the you know, roast beef and gravy and potatoes. You give me my meat, give me my potatoes. You know. But there's times too when I pull back and you know, I have some salad, more veggies and such. I guess what it whils down to is I am struggling with the laying out my food choices in a pre programmed manner. I'm more on an autopilot a lot of the times, and I'll admit it. At times I do stress eat. I figure, you know what, stress eating is better than you know, I don't know, abusing other substances, not that I, you know, would want to. But what I'm saying is it's better than doing that now. I know some of you out there are probably saying to your Selfuterry, you know, if you get understressed, just go for a power walk, you know, do some push ups, shit whatever, you know, do some arm curls with some light weight, or you know, walk around the block, or go for one of your one mile or plus walks that you like to do. Yeah, but let's face it, sometimes you just can't do that. You know. You know, you're at your desk at the office or I'm in the studio and I'm doing things, and I try and take a little you know, I try to take breaks every so often and step away from something, and you know, you get a little stress in your life and stuff. And that's something I think we all can learn how to do better. And we all, in one form or another, have to challenge with is dealing with everyday life and stress. And good Lord knows, the media and the world around us doesn't help, right, And we know that, good Lord, especially over the past you know, five to five to eight years, how it's been. But that's one of the things, you know. Twenty twenty four, you know, what if I accomplished, Well, I haven't hit that goal. But let me say this with a disclaimer. Yet, there's still time. There's still well over two and a half months before the year ends. So let's let's try and remain positive, shall we. We'll do We'll do that. We'll try and remain on the positive side with that. Now, something else, As far as twenty twenty four, what I feel that maybe a little bit of a letdown creatively. I have not released probably any new music and well over almost over a year it's been actually probably two years since I've released new music, you know, because I like to play instruments and attempt singing and amongst other things. More creative projects I have completed in this past well, in this past year or plus, no, I would say this past year, I've completed eight audiobooks for Audible and on other various voice over working projects. However, for my own satisfaction, I had wanted to release more music. I have songs written, I have stuff ready to be produced and recorded. It's just been when I've been ready to go into the studio and do it, something's come up, and then it gets pushed on the back burner, and then something else comes up, and something and then it kind of gets unfortunately out of sight, out of mind, because I haven't scheduled it in on the calendar. But the songs are there, the arrangements are pretty much all there. It's just getting I guess, getting my ass in the studio and doing it and just just downright just doing it. So that's again that's on me. I take responsibility. I take ownership of that. Some other things, you know, again relating, you know, circling back around to the health Forum discussion. Besides the weight loss, eating better, making better food choices, and trying to cut down in some of the sugar. Because I'll tell you, besides the just good darn good food, I love my chocolate, milk chocolate, dark chocolate, what have you. I'm not a fan of white chocolate, but you know, milk chocolate and dark chocolate. Oh, yes, you know absolutely. I like the sweets here and there. I like a good pastry. I like a good cake or a nice pie. Who doesn't, I guess. But I have a very dear friend who had given up, actually he's given up pretty much almost all sugar. He feels good, he looks good, He's dropped a lot of weight over the past year and a half, and he says, hey, just start cutting down on sugar. But man, sugar is in almost everything, high fruit, toast, corn syrup, my friends, is sugar. I guess probably what I should do, and maybe what I may do in twenty twenty five. If I don't feel that I have or can acquire enough knowledge, I may just go to an nutritionist and maybe that way someone to keep me accountable and kind of steer me here and there. Because there's a lot of information on the internet. About stuff like that. There is, but there's also a lot of bad information on the internet about stuff like that too. What Else twenty twenty four, As it kind of draws to her close, I haven't read as many books as I've wanted to. In fact, I'm in the process of still trying to finish a sixth book six books, yes, six book series. I'm close to the end. Though I'm close to the end. I wanted to read at least twenty five books this year, and I nowhere near it. If I've read ten, that's a lot. I actually didn't even write down how many. But and that's including the six book series and I'm about to complete. So that's something I'm going to do as a goal setting for the year twenty twenty five is to read twenty five books in twenty twenty five, a minimum of twenty five books. If I go over, great because reading, believe it or not, studies have proven reading for those of you that do enjoy it. Now, I know there's some people out there that read and it just doesn't do anything for him. They can't get drawn into a story. Myself, when I read a book, I start seeing I guess you would call it in your mind's eye. I visualized the story almost like a movie. And that's something I've had ever since I was a youngster, and I was a voracious absolutely a voracious reader. I mean I read the book Peter Benchley's Jaws when I was in seventh grade. You know. I read Donna the Dead, the George Romero movie Donna the Dead. I read that book. I read a series called The Magic of xanth by Peers Anthony, and when that was released, it was a three book in one series, well over fourteen hundred pages. I think. I e Stephen King, you know the Stand. You know, well over twelve hundred plus pages. I read The Stand by Stephen King. Believe it or not. I was reading these long form different types of books. I read crime novels, Star Trek. I love Star Trek, and science fiction. I was a member of the Science Fiction book Club back in the late seventies early eighties, where he would think of for those of you that can recall this, or maybe old enough to recall this Columbia house, you know, get twelve cassettes for a penny, or you know then it was twelve CDs for a penny. Well, they had something called the science Fiction Book Club where you got half a dozen books for I believe it was a dollar, and then you had to buy I think it was five books or something in the next five years. And the books were hardcover. They were nice books, you know, these were hardcover books. But back in the day they were costing like, you know, nineteen ninety five and up. So, but I was a member of the science fiction Book Club and read some really good books and was taken to some far away lands and planets and timelines, et cetera. That's really what got me hooked on the science fiction drum, you know, genre and such, and really enjoyed that. So there's a lot, you know, there's a lot of things with regards to reading and getting back to what I was touching on earlier, there's studies, multiple scientific studies as well from around the globe that if you read a lot, you tend to have a better vocabulary, You tend to be able to form your thoughts and express them in a more expressive way that others find easy to understand. And it helps with creativity, It helps with imagination, It helps with the synapses in your brain, keeping the brain active. Just like if you were learning a language or a new skill, or a musical instrument, et cetera. So that's something I'm going to put on the put on the plate for twenty twenty five. Twenty five books are more in twenty twenty five because I'm going to make a list. I am going to make a list of things I want to do in twenty twenty five, and you know, a to do list, as it were, So we're going to do that. What else? As twenty twenty four closes, I didn't accomplish as much in the yard as I wanted to of our yard work around the house here. I wanted to pay more attention and detail to our lawn, maybe get it a little plusher greener, take care of some back corners of the property where we had some overhanging weeds and bushes and you know, shrubbery growing, so that there was a little bit of a leftown. I've got a lot of accomplished, but there still was a lot more to do. But how about yourself, you know, And this is something I like to do yearly. I'd like to start the year with you know, a lot of people on New Year's make New Year's resolutions. I make a one year to do list, and then I break it down and set you know, ninety day goals throughout. You know, by the end of ninety days, I want to have accomplished this, this, this, and that and one last thing. I guess I could say here as we get ready to close out the program today, learning more songs on the bass guitar and the electric guitar slash acoustic guitar. Learning more songs to keep into a set list. I haven't accomplished and learned as many as I wanted to, But again, we're going to revisit that goal as well. I want to. You know, you see these musicians on TV, and you think, my god, how do they know how to play all those songs? Well? Because they actively play them. And you know, even if like these older bands that are touring now, these I guess you would call them classic rock bands, like you know, the Eagles and Rolling I think the Rolling Stones have stopped touring if I'm not mistaken, or was it Aerosmith because Steven Tyler's vocal cords finally gave out, God bless them. But these bands that you know have hits from the seventies and eighties, you know, they got to sometimes go back and say, Okay, yeah, we used to play the song. I got to remember how to play it. But keeping their minds fresh and active and doing stuff like that so you can just pull out and say, I, you know, we can go here and play. We got twenty songs that I know like the back of my hand. I guess would be the the euphemism. I want to engage more in that and learn more in techniques. And I accomplished some things with playing the instruments, you know, as far as fingers style guitar, you know, for the acoustic and such. But still, you know, it's a lifelong journey like anything in life, especially learning a musical instrument, and especially like the guitar or the bass guitar, acoustic guitar, that's a lifelong journey. I mean, you're going to be doing that forever. You know, you always learn new things, like anything in life. But I guess, you know, twenty twenty four, it wasn't a total disappointment. I learned a lot about myself. I grew as a person, I grew mentally. I've matured in some areas, and you know, again, in some ways, I've let myself down a little bit, but I'm not going to beat myself up over it, because, you know what, the at the end of the day, okay, the end of the day, still accomplished quite a bit, Still accomplished quite a bit. So maybe you want to do this too, You want to go through as the year is rapidly coming to a close, and it seemed like a quick year. It really did. Lots happening, lots going on. But sometimes it's time to you know, it's a good time to pump the brakes at times and just you know, shift down a little bit and and kind of take stock of your life and things you want to do instead of always rushing haphazardly from one to the other to the other to the other, because you can get burned out. And I did a few times throughout the year and I had to pull back and you know, all the stuff going on here, I had to pull back for a little bit from mental health reasons, just to you know, decompress. But I hope maybe I by sharing I brought you a little insight or maybe motivated you to if you don't do this, to maybe do this, you know, take take some inventory and think, Okay, well, you know, over the past year. You know how far have I come? And where do I want to be and where do I need to go? And celebrate your victories and learn from mistakes and take it push it forward, and pay it forward. And who knows, maybe twenty twenty five years twenty twenty five will be the best year yet. Hey, thanks for listening to the program today. I truly appreciate each and every one of you out there. And remember to see a change in the world, you have to be the change in the world you want to see. It all starts with you, the person looking back at you in the mirror every morning. Remember to be kind to yourself, be kind to others. If you want to tweet at me on Twitter, it's at Terry Weiss. Stop by the website Weis's thoughts dot com just to make sure you spell my name right. Wysee Wis Thoughts dot com and hey, leave us a positive rating and review on your favorite podcast provider. Won't you tell your friends, tell your family, tell your pets about White Thoughts And I look forward to gathering yet again around the virtual campfire with you real soon. Take care