THE END – and thank you so much

About 7 years ago, May 25, 2011, I published my very first blog-post. It was titled: NO EXPLANATION NEEDED, BUT HERE IT IS ANYWAYS,  a bit disorganized, a shaky start, but anyways… And I was off and running.

I have always liked writing, getting thoughts on paper, construct sentences that made sense, or not. I look for funny and silly things, subjects, objects and playing with words. Collecting things to write about comes from what’s around us and what we have the pleasure observing on a daily basis and there is actually a lot of that stuff - constantly.

My initial reason for starting the blog was to communicate with a few friends here in the USA, our friends and family in Denmark and Sweden (where my wife and I are from originally). Being silly and optimistic in the beginning, I wrote and published posts weekly (oh, I was so young). It later changed to every other week, every month and ended with: ‘do I have to?’

I seriously believed that in the beginning I would get around 10-15 page-views (readers) per week, from three countries. I also thought that those numbers were very optimistic. As of May 25, 2018, 7 years later, the numbers were a bit different. The blog has been visited about 65,000 times, representing over 122 different countries; some I (embarrassingly) did not even know existed.

I have published new posts about 173 times, including all kinds of subjects. The most visited post by far is: SPEEDOS & THONGS – not a lot of cover up. One of my personal favorites is: ABBREVIATIONS – the long version. But there are actually many more that I do like. You see, back in the days I would rarely read what I had written (before the blog-thing). I always found too many ‘negative’ things, bad sentences, paragraphs, subject matters mishandled, etc. But as I tried my utmost with the posts the last 7 years, I found that to me, they are all very readable. Sure it sounds big-headed, but so what, huh?

When I retired some years back, I wanted to write a blog, which I did – duh! I wanted to write and publish a book, which I did – twice. And I wanted to learn how to (really) play a musical keyboard; okay, so I’m still working on that.

But now I’m moving on without the blog-writing and I am already fine with that. Though things around me constantly inspire comments, what really has inspired me the most these last 7 years of blog-writing are the many readers and the many responses and comments from a lot of you. I sharpened my pencils (metaphorically speaking, of course) again and again, as I worked hard not to disappoint myself and especially the readers, of course, even more so. Your interest has been mind-boggling and the page-views, quantity of readers from so many countries, will forever and perhaps even longer, be a mystery to me, but so appreciated.

And now what? I am working on two books, one where I really like the main character and like where the story is going. I don’t think I’ll ever publish it, but it’s interesting writing for me. The other book is my (massive and not always successful) attempt to write a ‘humorous’ novel. That is the most frustrating and horrible thing I have ever tried to write. I find that writing ‘fun stuff’, as I want it to be consistently ‘funny’, is not an easy task. I am of course also very critical of that kind of writing, which is not a big help (sigh)…

So again, thank you so much for reading and following my blog LIFE AS IT REALLY IS. It has been a huge pleasure for me to write for that blog the last 7 years. 

Remember that the blog will continue to be up and running and you can always come back, go through the INDEX and find something that might amuse you for a few minutes. At times, that is all we need, a few smiles and several giggles; and that was precisely what I aimed at, some 7 years ago.

Take care and keep reading – anything…

Peter B. Steiness (now former BlogHead)

BLAME GAME – we all play it, more or less

When we stumble, we automatically blame the rock, the sidewalk or whatever. It’s an immediate and always very quick reaction. But instead, we should blame ourselves for being clumsy or intoxicated (ha ha), as we obviously didn’t pay attention. When we do distribute blame, we must more so be fair and not so fast; that’s a much better rule, don’t you think?

We are blaming too many things and people for our own mistakes, failures, faults and mishaps, and at times what and who we blame, is simply silly, at times idiotic and for the most part pathetic, as it makes no common sense; most of us play this game, but hopefully shame-blushing is a big part of that process (sigh).

Blame is the act of applying censoring or responsibility, by making negative statements about an individual or group, that their action or actions are socially or morally irresponsible, with the opposite being that of praise. But for the most part, we also blame things for our missteps. And that makes no sense at all.

When someone is morally responsible for doing something wrong, their action would be called blameworthy. By contrast, when someone is morally responsible for doing something right, we may say that his or her action is praiseworthy. But that is dipping in a bit deep, as the type of blame we dish out daily (for most of us) is something we understand much better, but that we use way too freely.

A white dude from Norway, no doubt (used as a metaphor) cuts in front of me on the freeway; I curse him for being stupid, but at the same time I include all white dudes from Norway (still used as a metaphor) and to make it even easier, I blame the whole nation of Norway for driving like idiots. Generalizations are quick and effective, but pathetic, stupid and most certainly very unfair.

I seriously do not know why we use ‘blame-somebody-or-something-else’ so much; are we really so ignorant (obviously) that we cannot acknowledge and accept whose fault it really is, who we really should blame for our own doing and misfortune; blame ourselves and we’ll most certainly learn something valuable in the process, like not to do that thing again? And do we really feel better (fully justified) when we ignorantly and consistently divert responsibility for stuff that are truly based on our own wrong-doings? The thing is that when we do not admit responsibility for our own actions, it really weakens us. It does not make us look stronger to any extent, only (pathetically) weaker. That’s an image we do not want, is it?

Back in the days, one of the first couple of things I always advised the people I worked with was: always tell it like it is (as in: no lying). Dealing with the truth is much more effective as well as progressive. And the other was: take responsibility for all your actions (as in: don’t blame…). I found early on that when the ‘playing-field’ was obvious for everybody, being forthcoming was easy, and reaching our goals took less time and was more fun and effective.

Sure it’s easy to blame all Norwegians (I poke fun of them because they are so rich – how dare they?) for this single dude’s awful driving. But when I dissect it, I find that I should have slowed down a bit and let him (and the entire Norwegian nation) into my lane, proving yet again what a nice guy I really am. Problem and anxieties solved instantly – and I will still be thinking kindly of the Norwegians, no matter how much money they have (sigh).

I have always been driving defensively; told our kids to do the same. I find that I’m in much better control – and I like being in control in traffic. Taking deep breaths and relax accordingly is the way to go; blame problem solved.

Shouldn’t we feel silly when we stumble over a piece of root on the hiking trail, and then put the blame on California forestry as a whole? Like the root suddenly jumped up and tripped us – I thought it did; didn’t you see it, huh?

Next time you are in a (hopefully minor) mishap, observe who and what you initially blame; but especially observe, how quickly the blame-pointing pops up – as in ‘very fast’. Then take that deep breath and distribute the blame to its rightful owner, namely and for the most part, ourselves. I know it’s much better that way, as the root we just tripped over learns absolutely nothing from being blamed, but the very moment we apply blame on ourselves, we immediately learn to pay better attention and lift our feet a bit more, while hiking on a ‘rooted’ trail – a much better solution.

Conceding when we make mistakes in life, stumble over roots, hitting our heads not bending down, burning our fingers on the stove and the list has millions (unfortunately) of blame-worthy things we do, is the way to go. It makes us feel much more in control and again, we learn so much more that way, about how to avoid this mishap in the future. As kids we had to stick a finger into a candle flame, in spite of the warnings from our parents. Sure it hurt, but that was a lifetime learning experience, as we (hopefully) didn’t do that again ever; but do we still blame our parents? And that is actually how all these blame-incidents work. Blaming something (silly) or somebody (even sillier) teaches us nothing; applying same blame to ourselves teaches us a lot – and we never get tired of learning stuff, do we?

I truly thought that the above issue was only related to human beings (like us), until I saw this posted on Facebook. Click, learn something and be amazed:

 Animals do it too (really?)