Broken Record...

This past weekend, I came across a quote: "My mother taught me this trick: if you repeat something over and over again, it loses its meaning...our lives, she said, are the same way. You watch the sunset too often, and it just becomes 6 p.m. You make the same mistakes over and over, you'll stop calling it a mistake. If you just wake up, wake up, wake up, wake up, one day you'll forget why. Nothing i forever, she said." I don't know if I have writer's block, or if I have just been stuck on repeat lately. I feel like a broken record. To me, it seems my column says the same thing week after week. The last few nights, I have gone outside to look at the stars... they haven't been shining, as it's been cloudy. There is something about looking up at those twinkling lights in the sky that sort of rejuvenates my soul. If you change your angle every now and then, it looks completely different than the last time you looked. Once I read that quote, I made a conscience effort to see every day in a new light. We live in a small community that extends through many towns. When I am covering events that take place in each town, it sometimes is easy to feel as though I am a broken record. It is up to me to try and find a new angle, if you will. That is easier to do when kids are involved, as they are not on repeat. The same can be said about the sky during the day. My kids and I love to look at he sky and the clouds. My son points out when an airplane if flying over. My girls shout out what they see in the clouds. Just over a week ago when it rained, we were pulling into our driveway, when in my rear view mirror, I saw the reflection of a beautiful rainbow. As soon as we parked the car, the girls and I were running to take pictures of it. I taught them how to use the "pano" mode on their iPads to view the entire rainbow in one shot. Because this was before St. Patrick's Day, Brielle looked at it and said, "What a perfect time for a rainbow, there are leprechauns all over the place right now." How many rainbows have I seen in my lifetime? Quite a few. None of them have looked the same. When I was young, around Karys' age, we were driving up Monarch Pass in Colorado to visit my sister at college. This is a pass you do not want to have ate drive in the winter. It is notorious for being nasty. There was one particular trip where a rainbow was shining on the pass, directly on the road. We actually drove through the rainbow, it was like sparkly light shining through our vehicle. For once the pass was beautiful, instead of scary. This quote struck me, it's so easy to get stuck in a rut, to live life on repeat. Even on Easter Sunday, it's always interesting to see if the preacher can come up with a new way to tell the Easter story. I feel the need to challenge myself to look at things in a different light. No matter the circumstance. Even folding the laundry or doing dishes. Maybe I could load the dishwasher in a different pattern (just kidding, you never mess with a good dishwasher layout). Have to throw a little joke in somewhere. Still, you get what I'm saying. If life feels boring, or bad or happy even, try to mix things up, even just a little. Don't live on repeat, don't forget why. Nothing is forever.