Garbage In, Garbage Out

I cannot always control what goes in, but I can always control what comes out.  I am accountable for my actions.  Someone can say something that really hurts me, but in the final analysis reacting negatively gives others control of me.  My response is mine alone.  It is totally untrue to say “you made me do it.”  The truth is I chose to do it.
I reckon I am just being treated like a spoilt brat if to appease me I am just given stuff.  What would do me more good is quality time.  Things can never replace presence.
The measure of me is not what I get by not working for it but by what I earn.  I have found that self-fulfilment never comes from what I may inherit (though I will always be grateful for it) but what I achieve.  I need to work and produce.  It is only then I can look back in satisfaction and think “I did that.”
I reckon that if I am too busy for people I am too busy.  Some things for sure are needful and necessary but to me so is quality people time.  I have never heard someone say, “I wish I’d spent more time at the office.”  But I do hear regularly “I wish I’d spent more time with people”.  For me things matter, but people matter more.
Those that have read my writing (you deserve a medal) know I am big on balance (man I laughed.  Someone today said “people may enjoy what you write, not me, but I can help if you want to put it together”).  I can only write what is going on in this head.  Sometimes it is relatable and sometimes it is not.    
Too much of any one thing is unhealthy.  It may appear fine initially, but it creeps up on me.  I do think people consist of body, soul and spirit.  I need to tend to each to be healthy.
I spend a bit of time these days sitting in a chair writing.  It has only been after a number of years I have noticed a gut I did not have when I was more active.  Someone said the other day that I was a thoroughbred and I felt like getting their autograph.  That has not been said to me in years.  It used to be, but not these days.
But I am grateful for heaps.  I have a good wife, good home, good friends and good lifestyle.  I heard a quote the other day. “Grateful people are healthy people.”  While hereditary may be at work in my body to make it unhealthy, I always can choose what happens elsewhere.  I can be like they say for the computer “garbage in, garbage out.”  I may have no control of garbage in, but I choose weather it will be garbage out to.  Hopefully for me it is like “garbage in, repurposed out.”
I feel it is a bit like that with our worms.  They eat garbage.  Instead of it going to land fill it goes to the worms.  They process it and it becomes something really good for the soil.  Good outcome I reckon.
All of this is easy to say and harder to do.  The best I can do is give it my best shot.  I have clear aspirations and I am working on making them reality.