On why your past self is a gift you can accept or refuse.

My wife and I worked the booth last night at the local Harford Fair in Harford, PA. It was a nice night to work, as it was much cooler and there was no rain. We had quite a few visitors to the booth, and a few family members and friends stopped by to chat and talk. The other artists were selling, and the Friday night crowd seemed different from the others, as many were there with their children and for the rodeo. A few of my pots sold, which made me feel good. I made a good decision to be part of our art collective group.

My goal for almost any show is to sell one thing. One thing means you did the work to show up and say “Look what I made.” Even if you mess up a few things along the way, you are still there because you put in the effort. The good part is we are not our past, and each show is different. While there might be techniques to improve your chances of selling more, the real technique is to make the good better and keep showing up to show others who might care about what you made. Many times being forgetful might have its advantages, as we might forget our past and keep moving forward.

It is possible to be too hard on ourselves when thinking about our past. We might think we are still that person, but that is not true at all. Each day we are a new person and have the potential to make better decisions for ourselves. We might even be gaslit into thinking that we are our past; however, the future is built hour by hour and day by day. If we make future decisions based only on our past, we might become fearful of doing almost anything. That fear will imprison us and keep us from moving forward. While we should use the past to make the good better, each day is a new day and each day is a new you. Each day we have is another day filled with possibilities and opportunities to do better.

So feel free to fail in controlled ways, as long as it doesn’t end you. By failing, we learn not only what might not be working but also what we might need to change. We have failed many times in our lives. Many of us have changed careers, made bad money decisions, made poor choices that we hoped no one would find out about, and even embarrassed ourselves a few times. However, here you are reading this. How lucky you are to have survived all those failures and moved on to make the good better for yourself and others around you. Your past self was, in many ways, a gift to your future self. A gift you can choose to accept or refuse.

If I were living yesterday a second time: I would have worked the fair again. I love people and showing them what we made.

Things I am grateful for: My ability to still create and that I have all day to do somthing amazing.

If I get to live to be 86, I might only have: 12,590 days left.

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