I think to a certain degree we’d all like to believe that life is long.  That the changes in the seasons don’t pass as quickly as they seem to, and that our next birthday is rounding the corner a touch slower than reality insists.

And it is in fact reality that screams in our faces to pay attention to the world around us, the people around us, and not merely let the days we have continually appear in our rear view mirrors.

Personally, I struggle with this. As I sometimes find myself focusing on the future, I forget to be an active participant in my own present.

A good friend of mine, wiser than she recognizes, once wrote about herself:

The consciousness of my own mortality often prevents me from performing menial tasks.

The profound simplicity and naked truth of this sentence always impresses me. At first glance this may look as if it were written by someone who acts as voyeur in this life, but quite the opposite. In my opinion, when you come to truly appreciate the beauty of the life we all have, only the thought of your own mortality can slow you down.

But how do we pay more attention?

Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.

—Ferris Bueller

This is the trick, learning to look around once and a while. I don’t practice this enough, but several years ago a good friend taught me a lesson in life awareness that I truly believe every should practice…

How To Walk Like A Macedonian

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Being the overly friendly and talkative person I am, I happen to hear a lot of stories . Some are personal, suck some, and some are just hilarious.  Its the latter type I plan to bring more to this blog, because seriously, the world is just full of stories from ridiculous people that need to be exploited for our own pleasure.

With that in mind, I only decided to write about this most anecdote because frankly I find it hilarious.

A friend of a friend is a 24 year old female, lets call her Ruby, whose goal it is to become a police officer. Semi-normal enough goal.

This girl has recently applied to be a cop but was turned away from the academy after failing the fitness test. She just wasn’t strong enough.

Now, I understand we all think in different ways, and use various methods to achieve our individual goals.  I figured I would ask a few friends of mine, if put in the same situation, how they would proceed if they were this girl?

You should answer this question as well before proceeding with this post.

I received the following possible answers from my cavalcade of friends:

A) Hire a personal trainer

B) Buy P90x and start training

C) Girls shouldn’t be cops

D) Get to the point already this story is boring me

E) Take Steroids

If you were to have said E) Take Steroids to achieve this goal then you and Ruby would be BFFs because this is what she has proceeded to do.

Hilarious.

And the saga continues as Ruby has embraced her new life as a juice pig by also deciding to date her steroid dealer (what a catch!), and has somehow managed to find a steroid using police officer to coach and train her for her next fitness test.  Seriously.

Notwithstanding, Ruby also met said police officer coach when he was nice enough to let her off of a DUI charge he pulled her over for.  No, don’t worry, you did in fact read that correctly.  This pillar of society pulled over a drunk driver and quickly thought to himself, “We need her help protecting the rest of society”.

Each and every day I find more and more reasons backing up my operating view about the world: that everyone is messed up in one way or another.

And don’t kid yourself, you’re on that list, as am I.   There is no such thing as normal.

In fact, I’d like to go so far as to say for those people out there that appear to be normal, they are usually the most radically twisted.

The important part is to keep it to a minimum and try really hard not to venture too far into the void. Because once you cross that line, well, I guess taking steroids seems to the rest of us, like trying a new cereal.

If you have any crazy stories you’d like to share, please let me know and I would be happy to have you guest post on this blog or just leave the story within the comments area.

And if you happen to get pulled over by a female police officer within the next few years that looks like she could carry your car back to the station, that’s probably Ruby.