I have one such co-worker, Barbara, who was involved with my life from the very first time I submitted an employment application with my employer way back in the late summer of 1994. Barbara was integral to me getting hired. She convinced her boss at the time that I was the person to be hired, out of a roster of 136 applicants for the position.

Barbara was the supervisor of other office workers, and although I would never report directly to her, I did work with her in the same work division since I was hired. I went to her uncountable times over the past 17 years though for advice and comments on both work and personal sharings.

The mind is letting us know that something needs to be worked through. Something needs to be expressed so as to be moved beyond. Is any of it real? Of course, it feels as such, but in reality it isn't. The mind has just found another way to busy up the presence of life with its seeming existence.

It wants us to focus on its needs, not what is truly present and needing attention: what is.

The mind is a marvelous machine. It never stops. It doesn't need fuel very often, and when it does it certainly lets us know by bringing more drama into our life so as to continue its existence and daily stream of processing that we can't seem to escape from, even during sleep.

Think of anything. An object. A long relationship. A thought. We have so many things that are a part of our lives and our days and moments here. They've been with us throughout this journey. Yet, somehow, usually unbeknownst to us we picked them up along the way to now and held onto them without even knowing that we were, and are, doing so.

Q: "What is it when we want to be just mortal?" Why are "feelings" just ego?

A: The body sweats when hot. The body shivers when cold. The digestive system digests and excretes. The heart pumps blood. The brain processes thoughts. The mind feels emotions and other feelings.

That's the human organism.

To me, writing isn't about knowing how to write. Certainly, my writing style is not the usual mold. And the syntax and grammar and structure that I use is not the norm or something that would be used at the NY Times: except to serve as a streite example of how not to write.

The entire process of writing is interesting in and of itself. What is it anyway? Well, it's simply putting what's in the mind onto e-paper. It's a structuring of thoughts and the words that they include into a cohesive flow that makes sense. Wash, rinse, repeat, and an article is born.

My body is important to me enough so that I've been constantly working it out for the past 30 years because without a healthy body, not much else can occur, whether it is desired or not. Of course, someone like Steven Hawking is the exception to this, but, you get the gist of what I'm sharing.

Is our reason for existence to become a supermodel? An actor? Someone with an identity that only the government knows about? A parent? A spouse? A lover? A good worker-bee? A dissident? Someone who makes a lot of money? A person who is angry? As we all know there are thousands of other possibilities for an identity.

But, what happens when that process doesn't work out? What happens when all that we set up to resolve that need for knowing ourself doesn't stay stuck together or stuck in place as we originally planned or expected? What happens when whatever we assembled starts to fall apart at the seams?

We all know what it is that we do. We get another identity going in the hopper. Or we rely upon what other established identities might be in our own personal hopper of life.

That is, the pursuit of happiness, and the fact that this pursuit is generally a secret, or is hidden from plain view and so it remains unseen for the most part. Oh, I know we don't spend our days here saying to ourself "I'm going to pursue happiness", or "Happiness is something that I'm pursuing", but it is something that is reflected through our actions yet unbeknownst to us.

Let me start at the beginning. Literally.

I expected the words to just come flowing off the fingertips like butter off of a hot knife. But, alas, no. They were clogged up in the mental log jam in my mind this a.m.

Wanting to do something is something that we don't usually think about. We either want to do something, or we don't. We won't actually take the time to discern actually what it is that gets us to that position of deciding to do something or not. We usually wait until the decision needs to be made, and then we decide. Action or no action. Do or don't. Yes or no.

The present moment is something that we somehow think that we are in control of and that we can somehow manifest our own destiny from that cosmic morass of things that are presented to us on a moment to moment basis.

We can believe that we are choosing what is occurring as it is presented to our senses. Or we can choose to believe that there exists something bigger than us that is presenting what is being shown as the present moment. Both ways work for many people. Some are more on one side or another. I believe it's the old matter of the issue of free will.

Do we have free will? Or are we being controlled by something that is unmanifest and unseen?

That is a question that befuddles and confuses many a person.

I believe that I made it more user friendly, and although I kept the same theme, on purpose, I did update the look so that there is more information on the first roll of the page as it is loaded upon first view.

The page is wider too so that more information fits on today's wider and large monitor. Long-gone are the typical narrow pages from the turn of this century and the creation of affordable larger LCD monitors with such more useful viewing space.

Of course, there are other changes.

These times can prove especially difficult when the decision that is desired and required is not very easily forthcoming.

We've all been there too. Many times in one's life decisions need to be made and there needs to be an outcome decided upon that may or may not be the one that one envisions is the result of the decision-making stress.

That's part of it. Decisions are not always easy, as we all know. Of course when there isn't a lot riding upon any particular decision that needs to be made, say, if one should choose dark or milk chocolate for a snack, the decision is not usually one that any of us belabour and pour over in angst.

I'm from Canada, but I moved down here in '92. The idea of celebrating American Thanksgiving in late November took some getting used to, especially after celebrating a gathering of family and friends during Canadian Thanksgiving in early October, on what is known down here as Columbus Day. However, I, being Canadian First Nations, certainly didn't celebrate with zest the finding of a particular lost European explorer some 500+ years ago.

Anyway, personal soapbox opining aside, American thanksgiving is supposed to be more of a celebration of the actual giving of thanks for one's blessings in this life. At least that's the tradition that I thought it was a national holiday for. Gather around a feast with those you care about and dine in gratitude for the many blessings in your life.

Fear is an amazing driving force in life. Some say that we have this innate fear from the second we were released from the cocoon of our mother's womb. Some say that we live our entire lives living with fear as our friend, without knowing it to be present.

Think about the fear in your life. Okay, let's not make this personal. Yet.