Punchy Protagonist

I have always been a country music fan.  Even when I was a baby, my mom said nothing made me happier to hear than a song with a fiddle in it. In my teenage years, I remained a country fan, but I went along with whatever was popular at the time. I went through music phases...Lynyrd Skynyrd, Johnny Cash...but I pretty well stuck to popular sounds. I think I started floating away from the norm when I watched the movie Walk the Line and realized what a repertoire Johnny Cash really had.  However, my real music epiphany started when I heard the smooth buzz-saw voice of Jamey Johnson. From the first time I heard one of his albums, I fell in love with his music. Some of his songs made me laugh, some made my heart hurt. Some made me want to be in a smokey bar somewhere with an old jukebox, but one thing remained constant. All of his songs made me feel SOMETHING. Sure, they were catchy, but the poetic lyrics and his deep old timey voice made me want to keep hearing more. No matt...

There is an epidemic that is growing in this country. Some strains are affecting more than others, and some people are not even aware they are infected.  It could infect just one person, or it could spread without any means of control. One thing is for certain, though. It's everywhere. Body shaming.  We are programmed to think that some measure of this is okay, and none of it is. It is not restricted to size or sex.  There are men and women all over this country looking at themselves in the mirror and making a mental list of things they want to change.  There are women whispering about what each other is wearing, and men saying "he could never get that girl" because she's "out of his league."  It needs to stop, and we are the ones to stop it. I do this myself, and until I started reading body positive articles, I honestly did not realize how guilty I was.  Sure, I knew that I wasn't always confident in my body.  But it can be somet...

Everyone has to wait on things; it's a part of life. Some of us have been graced with more patience than others, but waiting is still going to happen, whether we are tactful and twiddle our thumbs or we pace vigorously back and forth until we make ourselves dizzy. No one has gone without saying "I am waiting for...(this)" or "I am waiting on...(that)." Here in the American world, we use these terms interchangeably, and there is nothing wrong with that.  However, today I propose a difference, at least in my restless mind. Waiting for something implies that we are in anticipation for something to happen.  In my thinking, "waiting for" could imply something that is out of our control.  We wait for the professor to post our final grade, we wait to see if we got the cute little house on the corner, we wait for our food to cook.  These are things that are out of our control, or at least might be ruined if we sped them along.  "Waiting for" can b...