{"id":5899,"date":"2022-04-06T12:17:00","date_gmt":"2022-04-06T19:17:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/writtenbymurphy.com\/wonderblog\/?p=5899"},"modified":"2022-04-05T16:19:54","modified_gmt":"2022-04-05T23:19:54","slug":"surprise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/writtenbymurphy.com\/wonderblog\/2022\/04\/surprise\/","title":{"rendered":"Surprise"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"has-text-align-right\"><br><br><em>The times you\u2019re disappointed with yourself are never the times you are surprised by yourself.<br><\/em>James Lileks<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-left\"><br><br>April fool\u2019s day just passed. It\u2019s a time to hide behind a corner and surprise someone. <br><br>Boo! Got you!<br><br>It\u2019s easy to fall into the rhythm of all the usual things. I know what to expect; there are very few surprises left. Maybe I\u2019m not even looking for surprising. I\u2019ve got my rhythm now.<br><br>I\u2019m not always happy when someone else fools me.<br><br>But I will try to fool myself. My husband is not happy that I have the bedside clock some random number of minutes ahead of the real time, to fool myself into thinking I have more time than I do\u2014that I still have enough time to be early. I\u2019m trying to make room in my life for me to be better than I have been. <br><br>It\u2019s such a wonderful feeling, to be better. It takes so long though. It takes a lot of lifting heavy things and putting them back down again. And again. And again.<br><br>Until one day I find that the heavy thing is seemingly lighter. Hooray! <br><br>I could be happy and rest in the delight of my new skill. But if I want to experience that delight again, I must go find a new heavier thing and start lifting that one. <br><br>I might not. I often forget to add the weight.<br><br>Challenging myself is and endless struggle and ironically and endless delight. I will never be done. Lileks said it up there, I will not be surprised if I don\u2019t manage to keep at it. It\u2019s the easiest thing in life to stop.<br><br>I don\u2019t like the taste of disappointment. That\u2019s what keeps me at the grind. I want to get that bit extra. So I feel like I am extra\u2014or at least have a change of becoming so.<br><br>That thing I\u2019m trying to be. It\u2019s sitting right there. I only have to pick it up.<br><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The times you\u2019re disappointed with yourself are never the times you are surprised by yourself.James Lileks April fool\u2019s day just passed. It\u2019s a time to hide behind a corner and surprise someone. Boo! Got you! It\u2019s easy to fall into &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/writtenbymurphy.com\/wonderblog\/2022\/04\/surprise\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5899","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-random-thoughts"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/writtenbymurphy.com\/wonderblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5899","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/writtenbymurphy.com\/wonderblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/writtenbymurphy.com\/wonderblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/writtenbymurphy.com\/wonderblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/writtenbymurphy.com\/wonderblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5899"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/writtenbymurphy.com\/wonderblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5899\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5902,"href":"http:\/\/writtenbymurphy.com\/wonderblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5899\/revisions\/5902"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/writtenbymurphy.com\/wonderblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5899"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/writtenbymurphy.com\/wonderblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5899"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/writtenbymurphy.com\/wonderblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5899"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}