Monday, June 11th, 2001

Time	Event
6:22a	Willie Ray, Grocery Journeyman (This entry was written yesterday, but for some strange reason I couldn't upload it last night.) Question of the moment:  How come I was so damn unproductive today? I'll tell you why. I was tired! I just finished five days straight working at my grocery store. Some people wouldn't guess it to be, but the grocery business is an exhausting business to work in. I am on my feet all day long standing on and running around on the store's concrete floor. It simply poops this old fellow out. I either ring up people's groceries up front or I'm heading to the back to write a milk order or take care of some other task. And like all big supermarkets, my store is loud and busy with a constant flow of people coming and going. Just the store's never-ending background noise can wear a person out, especially if you have been diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder like I have. There are times I am aware of an inner alarm crying out from within, "Too much stimuli! Too much stimuli!" And those five days I work straight in a row almost always end on Saturdays, the one day I manage the store's warehouse. Warehouse days are doubly exhausting because there is so much strenuous physical labor involved. I am continuously straightening up, cleaning, and organizing the warehouse. You have to pull pallets of freight around, unload the pallets and stack the freight here and there. All the while, I am checking in more incoming freight as it arrives. On top of this, I still have a milk order to write. Nevertheless, I like my job. After all why have I continued to do it for thirty years? Out in the front end of the store I do good working with the public. Customers like me and have good reason too. I am a people person. I am a people pleaser. I bend over backwards to make their visit to our store an extremely pleasant visit. And one thing I really like about the grocery business is the fact that you always have to act happy when dealing with the public, and this is easy for me to do. I'm basically an upbeat person. And even on days when I am in a crab-ass mood, I can still manage to paste on a smile. And on most of those occasions, just by pretending to be happy causes the real happiness to spontaneously kick in. As for working back in the warehouse I like that too. On my warehouse days I can work at a specific task from start to finish and in most cases not be interrupted by a call on the intercom to go up front and ring up groceries. On warehouse days I am strictly the warehouse manager. I even like the hard, strenuous labor. There is something about how I feel at the end of a warehouse day that tells me that I really accomplished something that day. The aching muscles and utter exhaustion are proof of that. Plus, most of the time the warehouse is all spiffed up from my efforts. So on the sixth day I rested. And didn't get much accomplished. And now that I think about it, it was rightly so. For this here hard-working groceryman. Live Journal Archive/Live Journal Calendar/Home/Email/Cast/Places/Hamrickie Gallery ©Renovation, Rejuvenation, and What Counts-2000 to 2001-All rights reserved. ©The name "Hamrickie" and any art by Hamrickie: all rights reserved. No artwork by Hamrickie shall be reproduced without his permission. ©Willie Ray's LiveJournal 2001-All rights Reserved. Current Mood: exhausted (Comment on this)
11:32a	A Healthy Lifestyle RIGHT NOW! Question of the moment:  What am I doing RIGHT NOW to continue living a healthy lifestyle? 1. Drinking only one cup of coffee this morning. 2. Switching to water. 3. Remembering to take my blood pressure medicine and my one-aspirin-a-day. (I forgot to take them on Saturday.) 4. Loading up my Remember-To-Take-Your-Daily-Pills Box. 5. Stretching. 6. Sit-up crunches: two sets of 50. 7. Arm shaper's exercise with weights: two sets of 10. 8. Pecs exercise with weights (lower region-mid-upper): two sets of 10 each region. 9. Arm bends with weights: two sets of 5. 10. Overheads with weights: two sets of 10. 11. For breakfast I ate a raw carrot, two slices of turkey bacon, an egg, and one piece of whole-wheat toast. I wanted another cup of coffee, but I drank more water instead. 12. Rode my bike, Blue Thunder, down to the coffee shop to meet friends instead of driving. At the coffee shop I only drank orange juice and decaffeinated tea. My friend, Duke, offered to buy me a pastry and I told him no thanks. 13. I rode my bike back to Creekview, and now I think I am ready for a nap. And it's only 11:25 AM! (Please note: this is a lifestyle program I've adapted for me with the help of a physician. This not intended for anyone else. If you do feel you'd like to try doing anything I've done here, consult your own physician first, ESPECIALLY if you have high blood pressure.) Live Journal Archive/Live Journal Calendar/Home/Email/Cast/Places/Hamrickie Gallery ©Renovation, Rejuvenation, and What Counts-2000 to 2001-All rights reserved. ©The name "Hamrickie" and any art by Hamrickie: all rights reserved. No artwork by Hamrickie shall be reproduced without his permission. ©Willie Ray's LiveJournal 2001-All rights Reserved. Current Mood: sleepy (1 Comment | Comment on this)

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