Some thoughts…

I have been giving a lot of thought to healthy living. I don't just mean eating right. Just overall healthy living. While physical well being is important, it's just a part. Spiritual well being is much more important. I have heard you can't have one without the other. To have a good spiritual life, my physical life needs to be in order. What I see, do and think all affect my spirituality, and over time change how I view the world.

When I was in high school I did a research paper on the effect of media on children. Now, some 15 years later, I can see the negative consequences of living life unchecked. Kids brought up immersed in violence, through active participation in video games where you are rewarded for killing others, some are nearly life like in appearance, while others are so graphic and require such participation that the player actually needs to act as if they are strangling another person. It's what has been called stimulus, response programming. It's in movies and video games, it's the same training military and police use to help overcome the natural revulsion we have for killing another person. While adults know the difference, and tend to believe there children do to, I remember that Tessa is always asking if what happens in a movie or on TV is real. She has a hard time seeing the program as fake. She looks at it as if some one was there with a camera and happened to get it on tape.

I am starting to think my mom was right, I know that's crazy! She had this unbelievable rule no 'TV on school days', then on top of that she would monster what we watched and the music we listened too. If she didn't approve it we didn't watch or listen.

What's really interesting, I was watching a program and the expert they had on said that video games were bad because they only offered rewards, but when playing paintball or air soft gunplay it taught importance to rules and the natural consequences of it hurts when you get shot, making it less likely that the participants will use guns against people.

So to sum up, the stimulus is what's bad, hunting and paintball may actually help prevent massacres.

Some goals…

Given the rant above, I am thinking of these:

- less TV (I know it's a constant goal, every time I lessen the amount I watch starts to creep up again) so I want to replace TV time with something else. Maybe family story reading or story telling.

- look into air soft guns and find places to play, then when Liam is old enough we can shoot. Also thinking of learning to hunt.

- Spiritual goal open scriptures and actually look for help. Pray.

Lets see just how long I keep these. I am always starting projects and never finishing, it's frustrating.

Things that have happened…

I finished reading 'The Hobbit', great book! Up next a book I have always wanted to read but never able to find when I was a kid, 'Les Miserable' unabridged.

The kids are actually wanting to spend time with me all of a sudden. It's weird. Today, Krista insisted on playing UNO with me and then laying down to take a nap with me, when I went to sleep. Liam insists that I play with him even when I am falling asleep, if I close my eyes he says, "play with me, daddy."

I Think I finally got my work schedule changed so I can be off by 7 am Sunday mornings. We will see how long its lasts, for all I know it is contingent on the new girl and whether she survives her first month of employment.