The Weed That Can Change The World

Here is an article I found that does a nice summary on the history of Hemp and its uses.

Hemp - Could Save AmericaThe Weed That Can Change The World
From Varied Sources
2-25-4

captured and shared here from http://www.rense.com/general49/could.htm

HEMP FACTS   1) Hemp is among the oldest industries on the planet, going back more than 10,000 years to the beginnings of pottery. The Columbia History of the World states that the oldest relic of human industry is a bit of hemp fabric dating back to approximately 8,000 BC.   2) Presidents Washington and Jefferson both grew hemp. Americans were legally bound to grow hemp during the Colonial Era and Early Republic. The federal government subsidized hemp during the Second World War and US farmers grew about a million acres of hemp as part of that program.   3) Hemp Seed is far more nutritious than even soybean, contains more essential fatty acids than any other source, is second only to soybeans in complete protein (but is more digestible by humans), is high in B-vitamins, and is 35% dietary fiber. Hemp seed is not psychoactive and cannot be used as a drug. See TestPledge.com   4) The bark of the hemp stalk contains bast fibers which are among the Earth's longest natural soft fibers and are also rich in cellulose; the cellulose and hemi-cellulose in its inner woody core are called hurds. Hemp stalk is not psychoactive. Hemp fiber is longer, stronger, more absorbent and more insulative than cotton fiber.   5) According to the Department of Energy, hemp as a biomass fuel producer requires the least specialized growing and processing procedures of all hemp products. The hydrocarbons in hemp can be processed into a wide range of biomass energy sources, from fuel pellets to liquid fuels and gas. Development of biofuels could significantly reduce our consumption of fossil fuels and nuclear power.   6) Hemp grows well without herbicides, fungicides, or pesticides. Almost half of the agricultural chemicals used on US crops are applied to cotton.   7) Hemp produces more pulp per acre than timber on a sustainable basis, and can be used for every quality of paper. Hemp paper manufacturing can reduce wastewater contamination. Hemp's low lignin content reduces the need for acids used in pulping, and it's creamy color lends itself to environmentally friendly bleaching instead of harsh chlorine compounds. Less bleaching results in less dioxin and fewer chemical byproducts.   8) Hemp fiber paper resists decomposition, and does not yellow with age when an acid-free process is used. Hemp paper more than 1,500 years old has been found. It can also be recycled more times.   9) Hemp fiberboard produced by Washington State University was found to be twice as strong as wood-based fiberboard.   10) Eco-friendly hemp can replace most toxic petrochemical products. Research is being done to use hemp in manufacturing biodegradable plastic products: plant-based cellophane, recycled plastic mixed with hemp for injection-molded products, and resins made from the oil, to name just a very few examples.     Hemp History   Hemp is among the oldest industries on the planet, going back more than 10,000 years to the beginnings of pottery. The Columbia History of the World states that the oldest relic of human industry is a bit of hemp fabric dating back to approximately 8,000 BC.   Presidents Washington and Jefferson both grew hemp. Americans were legally bound to grow hemp during the Colonial Era and Early Republic.   In 1937 Congress passed the Marihuana Tax Act which effectively began the era of hemp prohibition. The tax and licensing regulations of the act made hemp cultivation unfeasable for American farmers. The chief promoter of the Tax Act, Harry Anslinger, began promoting anti-marijuana legislation around the world. To learn more about hemp prohibition visit http://www.JackHerer.com or check out "The Emperor Wears No Clothes" by Jack Herer           Then came World War II. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor shut off foreign supplies of "manilla hemp" fiber from the Phillipines. The USDA produced a film called Hemp For Victory to encourage US farmers to grow hemp for the war effort. The US government formed War Hemp Industries and subsidized hemp cultivation. During the War and US farmers grew about a million acres of hemp across the midwest as part of that program.   After the war ended, the government quietly shut down all the hemp processing plants and the industry faded away again.   During the period from 1937 to the late 60's the US government understood and acknowledged that Industrial Hemp and marijuana were distinct varieties of the cannabis plant. Hemp is no longer recognized as distinct from marijuana since the passage of the Controlled Substances Act (CSA) of 1970. This is despite the fact that a specific exemption for hemp was included in the CSA under the definition of marijuana.   The United States government has published numerous reports and other documents on hemp dating back to the beginnings of our country. Below is a list of some of the documents that have been discovered:   * 1797: SECRETARY OF WAR: U.S.S. CONSTITUTION'S HEMP * 1810: JOHN QUINCY ADAMS - RUSSIAN HEMP CULTIVATION * 1827: U.S. NAVY COMMISSIONER - WATER-ROTTED HEMP * 1873: HEMP CULTURE IN JAPAN * 1895: USDA - HEMP SEED * 1899: USDA SECRETARY - HEMP * 1901: USDA LYSTER DEWEY RE; HEMP & FLAX SEED * 1901: USDA LYSTER DEWEY 13 PAGE ARTICLE ON HEMP * 1903: USDA LYSTER DEWEY RE; PRINCIPAL COMMERCIAL PLANT FIBERS * 1909: USDA SECRETARY - FIBER INVESTIGATIONS: HEMP/FLAX * 1913: USDA LYSTER DEWEY - HEMP SOILS, YIELD, ECONOMICS * 1913: USDA LYSTER DEWEY - TESTS FOR HEMP, LIST OF PRODUCTS * 1916: USDA BULLETIN 404 - HEMP HURDS AS A PAPER MAKING MATERIAL * 1917: USDA - HEMP SEED SUPPLY OF THE NATION * 1917: USDA - CANNABIS * 1927: USDA LYSTER DEWEY RE; HEMP VARIETIES * 1931: USDA LYSTER DEWEY RE; HEMP FIBER LOSING GROUND * 1943: USDA - HEMP FOR VICTORY - DOCUMENTARY FILM * 1947: USDA - HEMP DAY LENGTH & FLOWERING * 1956: USDA - MONOECIOUS HEMP BREEDING IN THE U.S.     These documentes and many more are published online by USA hemp historian extraordinaire, John E. Dvorak. His Digital Hemp History Library is the most complete source for historical hemp documents and data anwhere. To visit the Library click here.   You can also check out literary references to Industrial Hemp from Aesop's Fables to the present:http://www.ofields.com/OFIELDS_HEMP_HISTORY.html http://www.thehia.org/hempfacts.htm

Things Highly Confident People Don’t Do

We're always being told what to do to achieve success and be happy.  Well, I came across this article on what really confident people don't do.  

15 Things Highly Confident People Don’t Do

COMMUNICATION MOTIVATION BY DANIEL WALLEN

Highly confident people believe in their ability to achieve. If you don’t believe in yourself, why should anyone else put their faith in you? To walk with swagger and improve your self-confidence, watch out for these fifteen things highly confident people don’t do.
1. They don’t make excuses.
Highly confident people take ownership of their thoughts and actions. They don’t blame the traffic for being tardy at work; they were late. They don’t excuse their short-comings with excuses like “I don’t have the time” or “I’m just not good enough”; they make the time and they keep on improving until they are good enough.

2. They don’t avoid doing the scary thing.

Highly confident people don’t let fear dominate their lives. They know that the things they are afraid of doing are often the very same things that they need to do in order to evolve into the person they are meant to be.

3. They don’t live in a bubble of comfort.

Highly confident people avoid the comfort zone, because they know this is a place where dreams die. They actively pursue a feeling of discomfort, because they know stretching themselves is mandatory for their success.

4. They don’t put things off until next week.

Highly confident people know that a good plan executed today is better than a great plan executed someday. They don’t wait for the “right time” or the “right circumstances”, because they know these reactions are based on a fear of change. They take action here, now, today – because that’s where progress happens.

5. They don’t obsess over the opinions of others.

Highly confident people don’t get caught up in negative feedback. While they do care about the well-being of others and aim to make a positive impact in the world, they don’t get caught up in negative opinions that they can’t do anything about. They know that their true friends will accept them as they are, and they don’t concern themselves with the rest.

6. They don’t judge people.

Highly confident people have no tolerance for unnecessary, self-inflicted drama. They don’t feel the need to insult friends behind their backs, participate in gossip about fellow co-workers or lash out at folks with different opinions. They are so comfortable in who they are that they feel no need to look down on other people.

7. They don’t let lack of resources stop them.

Highly confident people can make use of whatever resources they have, no matter how big or small. They know that all things are possible with creativity and a refusal to quit. They don’t agonize over setbacks, but rather focus on finding a solution.

8. They don’t make comparisons.

Highly confident people know that they are not competing with any other person. They compete with no other individual except the person they were yesterday. They know that every person is living a story so unique that drawing comparisons would be an absurd and simplistic exercise in futility.

9. They don’t find joy in people-pleasing.

Highly confident people have no interest in pleasing every person they meet. They are aware that not all people get along, and that’s just how life works. They focus on the quality of their relationships, instead of the quantity of them.

10. They don’t need constant reassurance.

Highly confident people aren’t in need of hand-holding. They know that life isn’t fair and things won’t always go their way. While they can’t control every event in their life, they focus on their power to react in a positive way that moves them forward.

11. They don’t avoid life’s inconvenient truths.

Highly confident people confront life’s issues at the root before the disease can spread any farther. They know that problems left unaddressed have a way of multiplying as the days, weeks and months go by. They would rather have an uncomfortable conversation with their partner today than sweep an inconvenient truth under the rug, putting trust at risk.

12. They don’t quit because of minor set-backs.

Highly confident people get back up every time they fall down. They know that failure is an unavoidable part of the growth process. They are like a detective, searching for clues that reveal why this approach didn’t work. After modifying their plan, they try again (but better this time).

13. They don’t require anyone’s permission to act.

Highly confident people take action without hesitation. Every day, they remind themselves, “If not me, who?”

14. They don’t limit themselves to a small toolbox.

Highly confident people don’t limit themselves to Plan A. They make use of any and all weapons that are at their disposal, relentlessly testing the effectiveness of every approach, until they identify the strategies that offer the most results for the least cost in time and effort.

15. They don’t blindly accept what they read on the Internet as “truth” without thinking about it.

Highly confident people don’t accept articles on the Internet as truth just because some author “said so”. They look at every how-to article from the lens of their unique perspective. They maintain a healthy skepticism, making use of any material that is relevant to their lives, and forgetting about the rest. While articles like this are a fun and interesting thought-exercise, highly confident people know that they are the only person with the power to decide what “confidence” means.

Have wild imaginings, transformative dreams, and perfect calm.

Another post on my interpretive series on “How to be an Artist” by Sark

~ Have Wild Imaginings, Transformative Dreams, and Perfect Calm ~

When I was seven my friend and I were sitting on the steps of my grade school one day at recess and singing “Hello Dolly”.  I looked over at her and said, “Ya know, one day I’m gonna be a singer, I’m gonna be a Rock Star!”  We laughed and went off to play tag with some of our school chums.  That feeling though never left me.  I would dream at night of performing in front of hundreds of people.  Taught myself how to play piano too.  That really got me through those tough teenage years.  I’d just play and play and not care that I felt like I didn’t fit in.  I was at home with my music and it completed me.  

Well, not that I’m a rock star but I did become a performer and have sung in front of hundreds of people.  It may have been my destiny because my Mom was a singer and I always loved going to hear her.  Later in my life, when I was of age, we would go to this one piano bar and sing all the classics and big band stuff.  That’s where I learned to be a song stylist.  I would imagine myself back in time during that era singing with all those great bands.  We had a ball.  I miss those days.  I still listen to Sinatra and Ella, Mel Torme and Sarah Vaughn.  

Even though I played keys I got tired of needing someone else to accompany me when I went to the open mic nights because there wasn't always a keyboard set up and it was a pain in the butt to hail a 60 pound keyboard around.  So at forty I learned to play the guitar.  That was frightening at first but I did it and it was very freeing because I didn’t need to rely on anyone but myself. 

In High School I had a folk group with some friends and was in some of the musicals. Never a lead but had a great time being in the chorus, dancing and building sets.  I joined a country band in my early twenties, then a wedding band, a couple of classic rock bands along the way and now I'm still working on getting my own original music band. 

Through all of this - all the years, all the songs, all the performances, the nerves, the criticism and the praise - I really discovered my sense of self.  I put aside the judgements and the “why can’t you be like...” suggestions and I made each song my own.  I learned my limits and my strengths vocally and instrumentally.   I transformed myself with each new band, honed my skills, developed my own style.  I can walk onto a stage now no matter what kind of venue and feel totally confident about who I am and what I’m doing.  I don’t care if I might make a mistake, I’ll find my way through it and keep going.  

I may not be the rock star that that little girl imagined so many years ago but I am a pretty good musician and vocalist, with a super family, lot’s of friends, a wonderful husband, an awesome garden, a growing jewelry business.  I wake up every day and go to sleep every night feeling so blessed and at peace with the life I have created and look forward to new dreams and adventures.  

Blessings to All

Martie

Finally an article that really clarifies a lot things for me as a creative soul.  I understand now a lot better why I do the things I do.

10 PARADOXICAL TRAITS OF CREATIVE PEOPLE

CREATIVE PEOPLE ARE HUMBLE AND PROUD. CREATIVE PEOPLE TEND TO BE BOTH EXTROVERTED AND INTROVERTED. CREATIVE PEOPLE ARE REBELLIOUS AND CONSERVATIVE. HOW CREATIVE ARE YOU?

BY FAISAL HOQUE

Editor's Note: This is one of the most-read leadership articles of 2013. Click here to see the full list.

I frequently find myself thinking about whether I am an artist or an entrepreneur.

I am simply trying my best to create my own unique path.

It is safe to say that more and more entrepreneurs are artists, and artists of all kinds are entrepreneurs. And the trend is only on the rise as all things (art, science, technology, business, culture, spirituality) are increasingly converging.

Creativity is the common theme that drives both entrepreneurs and artists alike. But creative people are often also paradoxical.

The Paradox Dept.

The Paradoxical Traits Of Resilient People

The Paradox of Doing More

Over this past Labor Day weekend, I found myself reading excerpts from distinguished professor of psychology and management Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s(pronounced me-HIGH chick-sent-me-HIGH-ee) seminal book Creativity: The Work and Lives of 91 Eminent People (HarperCollins, 1996).

He writes:

"I have devoted 30 years of research to how creative people live and work, to make more understandable the mysterious process by which they come up with new ideas and new things. If I had to express in one word what makes their personalities different from others, it's complexity. They show tendencies of thought and action that in most people are segregated. They contain contradictory extremes; instead of being an individual, each of them is a multitude."

Mihaly describes ten traits often contradictory in nature, that are frequently present in creative people. In Creativity, Mihaly outlines these:

1. Creative people have a great deal of physical energy, but they're also often quiet and at rest.

They work long hours, with great concentration, while projecting an aura of freshness and enthusiasm.

2. Creative people tend to be smart yet naive at the same time.

"It involves fluency, or the ability to generate a great quantity of ideas; flexibility, or the ability to switch from one perspective to another; and originality in picking unusual associations of ideas. These are the dimensions of thinking that most creativity tests measure and that most workshops try to enhance."

3. Creative people combine playfulness and discipline, or responsibility and irresponsibility.

But this playfulness doesn't go very far without its antithesis, a quality of doggedness, endurance, and perseverance.

"Despite the carefree air that many creative people affect, most of them work late into the night and persist when less driven individuals would not. Vasari wrote in 1550 that when Renaissance painter Paolo Uccello was working out the laws of visual perspective, he would walk back and forth all night, muttering to himself: "What a beautiful thing is this perspective!" while his wife called him back to bed with no success."

4.Creative people alternate between imagination and fantasy, and a rooted sense of reality.

Great art and great science involve a leap of imagination into a world that is different from the present.

5. Creative people tend to be both extroverted and introverted.

We're usually one or the other, either preferring to be in the thick of crowds or sitting on the sidelines and observing the passing show. Creative individuals, on the other hand, seem to exhibit both traits simultaneously.

6. Creative people are humble and proud at the same time.

It is remarkable to meet a famous person who you expect to be arrogant or supercilious, only to encounter self-deprecation and shyness instead.

7. Creative people, to an extent, escape rigid gender role stereotyping.

When tests of masculinity and femininity are given to young people, over and over one finds that creative and talented girls are more dominant and tough than other girls, and creative boys are more sensitive and less aggressive than their male peers.

8. Creative people are both rebellious and conservative.

It is impossible to be creative without having first internalized an area of culture. So it's difficult to see how a person can be creative without being both traditional and conservative and at the same time rebellious and iconoclastic.

9.Most creative people are very passionate about their work, yet they can be extremely objective about it as well.

Without the passion, we soon lose interest in a difficult task. Yet without being objective about it, our work is not very good and lacks credibility. Here is how the historian Natalie Davis puts it:

"I think it is very important to find a way to be detached from what you write, so that you can't be so identified with your work that you can't accept criticism and response, and that is the danger of having as much affect as I do. But I am aware of that and of when I think it is particularly important to detach oneself from the work, and that is something where age really does help."

10. Creative people's openness and sensitivity often exposes them to suffering and pain, yet also to a great deal of enjoyment.

"Perhaps the most important quality, the one that is most consistently present in all creative individuals, is the ability to enjoy the process of creation for its own sake. Without this trait, poets would give up striving for perfection and would write commercial jingles, economists would work for banks where they would earn at least twice as much as they do at universities, and physicists would stop doing basic research and join industrial laboratories where the conditions are better and the expectations more predictable."

Paradoxical or not, what I have learned most is that there is no formula for individual creation. As Mihay says, "creative individuals are remarkable for their ability to adapt to almost any situation and to make do with whatever is at hand to reach their goals." So, more than anything else, what it takes to be creative is resourcefulness and the courage not to give up.

http://www.fastcompany.com/3016689/leadership-now/10-paradoxical-traits-of-creative-people?utm_source=facebook

Plant Impossible Gardens (2.0)

More thoughts in my interpretive series on “How to be an Artist” by Sark

~ Plant Impossible Gardens 2.0 ~

An Impossible Garden will never be done.  

   
We moved into a new construction house last summer so this is Impossible Garden 2.0 for me.  We have a blank pallet to work with so I'm thinking it will take years of playing in the dirt to fill all the spaces I want to fill.  


The landscaping and flower beds will start along the parameter of the house for now, then here and there and then spread to everywhere as plants will be split and shared with friends and they in turn  will share some of their overages with me.  As the garden thrives I will keep making more little areas at the corners, by the mailbox, wherever nature and my budget take me.  

The only shady spot I have now is along the north side of the house which borders a 1 acre retention pond we lovingly call The Bog.  It is filled with sweet grass and cattails, willows and goodness knows what else.  The rest of the yard is sun sun sun until all the trees grow up.  So, as my former house was mostly shade, my thought process and research has now shifted to drought resistant, critter resistant and native plants and shrubs.

The soil is good ol' Wisconsin clay, oh yay, so my veggie garden will be large and small raised beds, a lot of them. And because we now live in an area where the wild life is abundant, including a wonderful herd of deer, we'll be building a 6 foot fence around it, with a lovely trellised garden gate, and a sweet pathway to a magical spot under one of two original trees left standing after all the crazy construction, right by the edge of the The Bog.

So why go into all this about my garden?  It’s life.  We start off with just a bunch of dirt and then slowly add to the landscape of our lives.  What gets overgrown we trim, we share what we don’t need, take chances and expand our spiritual acreage so that we may learn more and grow in self awareness.  Sometimes we have to switch things around as we change with our own seasons and alter what feeds us to get ourselves back into the sunlight.  

We constantly evolve and change and grow.  Though some things will remain the same about you, your heritage and upbringing, those are the seeds of your garden and what you do with it is all up to you.  That knowledge and the experiences you gain on your life path is the freedom, joy and uncertainty of planting an Impossible Garden.  One that is never done.

Blessings to All

Martie

Railroad Tracks - Past, Present and Future

This article was shared with me by a friend.  Thought I'd pass it along.  It's informative, funny, and head scratching.  You'll understand why as you read on......

 

The U.S. Standard railroad gauge (distance between the rails) is 4 feet, 8.5 inches. That's an exceedingly odd number. Why was that gauge used? Because that's the way they built them in England , and English expatriates designed the U.S. Railroads.

Why did the English build them like that?

Because the first rail lines were built by the same people who built the pre-railroad tramways, and that's the gauge they used.

Why did 'they' use that gauge then?

Because the people who built the tramways used the same jigs and tools that they had used for building wagons, which used that wheel spacing.

Why did the wagons have that particular Odd wheel spacing?Well, if they tried to use any other spacing, the wagon wheels would break on some of the old, long distance roads in England , because that's the spacing of the wheel ruts.

So, who built those old rutted roads?

Imperial Rome built the first long distance roads in Europe (including England ) for their legions. Those roads have been used ever since.

And the ruts in the roads?

Roman war chariots formed the initial ruts, which everyone else had to match for fear of destroying their wagon wheels.

Since the chariots were made for Imperial Rome , they were all alike in the matter of wheel spacing. Therefore, the United States standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches is derived from the original specifications for an Imperial Roman war chariot. In other words, bureaucracies live forever.

So the next time you are handed a specification, procedure, or process, and wonder, 'What horse's ass came up with this?', you may be exactly right.

Imperial Roman army chariots were made just wide enough to accommodate the rear ends of two war horses.

     

Now, the twist to the story:

When you see a Space Shuttle sitting on its launch pad, you will notice that there are two big booster rockets attached to the sides of the main fuel tank. These are solid rocket boosters, or SRBs. The SRBs are made by Thiokol at their factory in Utah.

                         

The engineers who designed the SRBs would have preferred to make them a bit larger, but the SRBs had to be shipped by train from the factory to the launch site. The railroad line from the factory happens to run through a tunnel in the mountains, and the SRBs had to fit through that tunnel. The tunnel is slightly wider than the railroad track, and the railroad track, as you now know, is about as wide as two horses' behinds.

So, a major Space Shuttle design feature of what is arguably the world's most advanced transportation system was determined over two thousand years ago by the width of a horse's ass.

And you thought being a horse's ass wasn't important!

Now you know, horses' asses control almost everything...explains a whole lot of stuff, doesn't it?

Protect Your Peace

Photo by Jason Naudi Photography 

“Have the clarity and courage to not enter every door and to not accept every invitation. Protect your peace.” ~ Thema Davis

Thema Bryant-Davis is a licensed psychologist, poet, dancer, and minister. Dr. Bryant-Davis, an Associate Professor at Pepperdine University, is Past-President of the Society for the Psychology of Women. The North Carolina Arts Council named her Emerging Artist of the Year.

When I first read this quote my initial reaction was "Wow, she summed up in one sentence what others have written entire books about.  

Here's my take.  I don't know about you but saying 'No' is not always the easiest thing to do.  Following your instincts, that gut feeling, is not always simple either.  Sometimes disappointing your family and friends is ugly.  But it has to be done in order to 'Protect your peace'. 

Some of those situations are as simple as not going out on a Saturday night because you're just too tired and just want to be home because you've been working long hours all week and on the go and just have to stop, even though your friends are all gonna be there and it would be a total blast.  

Others are not so simple when you have to weigh the pros and cons and ask yourself if the risk is worth taking and at what cost to your health or livelihood.  Will the long term end result be worth that effort and risk.  

As a business person and musician there have been dozens of opportunities that were offered to me quite often over the years.  Some I took and regretted, some I didn't take and regretted.  Some I took and they turned out fabulously, the ones I didn't and now wished I had, oh well, can't go back and get a redo.

When I first decided to go into business for myself after I retired from my regular job I had no idea that it would take up this much time and this much energy. But I jumped in and said what the heck, I've got nothing to lose really.  I'm glad I did because it's been fun "energy spent and time invested".  I've met amazing people and found out so much more about myself.  It has not sucked anything out of my life, it has only enhanced it in so many ways.  

My regular job was just that, regular.  I had no ambitions to move up in the company with all the added responsibilities and time that I did not want.  I had too many other things going on in my life outside of work that meant way more to me. So when I was offered promotions, some I took because it didn't require anything life changing, others I turned down because they would have disrupted too much and infringed on my 'outside of work' life.  And to be honest, I didn't mind being a worker bee in that situation.  

In the music industry sometimes it's hard to know who to trust.  Even at the local level people will say things and make promises that are only designed for their good not yours.  I learned that the hard way.  I'm sure youth and dreams had a lot to do with those choices.  So it was, for a long time, "Once bitten, twice shy".  And I'm sure looking back now that there were legitimate and honest opportunities I missed because I didn't believe in myself and my own ability to discern fact from fiction.  But once I learned to pay attention to my gut feeling I was able to deem an event or an offer good or bad for me.  

Clarity and Courage come with time.  Once you get through all the youthful emotional characteristics of your personality and realize the world will not come to an end if you decide not to rush around all over because you don't want to miss this or that event, or take a job or band offer every time one is presented only to realize that that job sucks just as much as the last one, and heavy metal music really isn't your thing, or follow your friends off that bridge just because they're your friends (Hmmm...maybe not the best analogy LOL).  But you know what I mean.  

If you are feeling uneasy, exhausted, or feel you are missing something maybe it is your life that is un-easy, your desire to be all and do all that is making you feel exhausted, and maybe it is YOU that you are missing.

Blessings to All
Martie

- I want to thank my friend JBH for sharing this quote -