Choosing a Positive Focus

I'm been thinking a lot about what my next steps will be online, after this immediate DietHobby Hacking crisis has passed. 

There are some of you who share my dieting interests and who have been very close to me during this past year while I established this website, and I feel confident of your continued support no matter what I choose to do here. 

I spent many thousands of my hard-earned savings along with more than a year of long days of very hard work to establish this DietHobby website, and to buy the equipment to make the videos that I've posted here and on youtube.

The day before this Hacking happened, I  paid $600 for an order of 2500 custom-made buttons to pass out to my YouTube grandbabies at VidCon 2012, and along with the registration fees, travel expenses, hotel bills that are connected with VidCon, attending this event at the end of next month will be very expensive. 

I don't make any money on this website, or on my youtube channel, and these buttons, along with all of my other expenses and my work have been intended to be a gift of kindness.  

I've spent my entire life working very, very hard to earn a living, and to do what I could to help people with their personal problems and their legal problems. There are many things I could choose to do to enjoy my final years of life, now that I'm retired, and old. 

What I've chosen to do this past year is to share some of my knowledge and support with others.

This was received quite well by many thousands of people of different ages at YouTube, but there were also a few who didn't like me or what I had to say, and those people have been very unkind.  The most disturbing so far, is of course, this recent hacking and destructive vandalizing of what I have worked so hard to build -- simply for the hacker's personal amusement. 

The hacker's mindset does not seem unusual to me, because for a time I practiced criminal law, and I saw a great deal of that type of unkindness and disregard for the rights of others in the people who the court assigned me to defend.

When acting as a court-appointed attorney I've even experienced having to defend the legal rights of paternity of a father who had abused, molested, and then killed his 3 year old daughter. That child was dead. He was in prison for life, but he refused to give up the legal rights to his other 2 small children so they could be adopted. He had no chance of winning, but the law required him to have a lawyer, and the court assigned his case to me.  

I also remember when I first begun my legal practice the court appointed me to defend an adolescent boy after he beat up his grandmother for absolutely no reason except his bad mood, and another time, the court appointed me to defend a 13 year old boy who broke an old lady's arm when he stole her purse, and pushed her over, while riding past her on a bicycle. 

I've visited many clients in prison. You understand… at that time I was a young DEFENSE attorney, and my job was to try to help the one who had committed the criminal act. Dealing with such people is never fun, and this situation reminds me of those past times in my life.

I've been able to turn Dieting into an enjoyable hobby which is a good thing because Dieting is not really a choice for me if I want to maintain my body at a reasonable size. 

I have a great many other hobbies, and they are for my enjoyment  and bring pleasure to myself and others.  One of my hobbies is sewing, Another is gardening. Another is building stained glass windows.  Another is writing.  I've enjoyed learning about computers, and when my nephew was young, I enjoyed playing playstation RPG games with him. The Final Fantasy series was a special favorite. My nephew grew up and became a Marine in Iraq and Afganistan where he received 2 purple hearts.  My most recent hobby has been making videos.

Except for dieting, if a hobby stops being fun, then I choose to engage myself in a different hobby, and right now, I'm not finding Google/YouTube itself to be much fun, and dealing with the haters, trolls and bullies on YouTube is also no fun. 

I believe that haters, trolls and bullies should be avoided and ignored, and if I have to leave youtube and even close down this website to avoid and ignore them, then I am prepared to do that.  There are many other wonderful things in my life that I can focus on.  My 25 years of legal practice contained some very difficult experiences, but now that's over. I'm retired, and I don't have to do that anymore.

So I am thinking about what I want to do to avoid this type of situation in the future, and while I am in the process of writing this, it's keeping me from sitting here on the sofa stuffing myself with cookies for comfort.

I love that picture of the fortune from the cookie that I put at the top of this website.. "I cannot help you, for I am just a cookie"   Life events are often difficult, and I get to choose whether to focus on the negative or the positive.  I remain aware, of course, of both negative and positive, but I can choose to direct my FOCUS toward the positive.