Everyone has the same shot at the same time in their lives. Fortune favours the bold, and I remember working locally in sales and my manager, a lightweight, middle-aged lady matched against my early thirties or mid-thirties, called out, “Didn’t your grandmother teach you that?”
The lesson was both spoken and fated to be a memory, until tonight. The subject of a day-to-day example is hard for me to compose. I almost feel as though I should read something new. I didn’t know I would find it so hard to write a post about the question of what every person needs to learn. I thought I could write of love, or perhaps family, but I didn’t settle on either of those topics. I remember what my sales manager asked about my grandmother, and I knew that was probably the best lesson the lady would give me.
It was a seasonal job, mostly year-round. I exited it discretely by failing to call up the office, at the end of December. Some well-timed holiday wishes and I might have stayed employed there. A call a little too late, and I saw I’d been too optimistic. The same opportunity was present for everyone who knew to call. I was too late, and it wasn’t owing to my ability to do the job that it became kind of a fail for me, it was realizing that perhaps I’d better settle in or I would be left behind. It was a two-part lesson.
The second part is to go the distance and make an initiative. Two notes: draw on whatever positive direction you were sent. Once situated, continue and you’ve got a cue to aim with.
On Christmas Eve this year, a Friday, I joined in a festive dinner at my mom and dad’s house, where my brother and his wife and kids also visited for the occasion.
I get along with my brother. We usually have a Sunday phone call a few minutes in duration. However, the others, I don’t know all that well. That’s why joining everybody for dinner on Christmas Eve took me out of my comfort zone.
I did all right. I was reasonably chill–I wasn’t nervous. I listened more than I talked. I didn’t get angry or anything like that. I didn’t put myself at the center of attention.
I had a plate of food, and I got some decent Christmas presents.
On other Christmases, I have acted far more quirky. I made the decision this year not to deal with the people observing me on Christmas Eve by trying to be entertaining. I felt that acting more maturely would create a better impression than being silly.
I didn’t take a camera and so didn’t bother my brother and his family with the requirement of me pointing a camera at them and shooting photos.
As I didn’t make verbal references pointing to, say, the movies, my brother and his family weren’t put into a conversation that maybe not everybody desired.
For a change, I acted all the more dependably, and I rest easy thinking about the result that occurred. I think this ability is coming with age. I don’t need to prove, as much, that I’m still kind of bright and young.
To tell the truth, we never know if we will all be able to return for the same occasion one year into the future. Nothing is for sure, especially not something to that effect.
I was pleased with myself that my comfort zone grew.
For January, I am blogging with the WordPress Bloganuary prompts in mind. These are writing prompts, one a day, for the entire month of January 2022, which I am pleased to respond to.
If I could have a word with my teenage self, if this were, say, the year 1990, like the advice my godfather Rick gave to me, I would counsel myself to get as much schooling as possible. My godparents taught me quite a bit in 1991 and 1992. My godfather was in the process of adding writer credits to his career as a professor, and I had access to quite a lot of information about the coming “information superhighway,” the Internet. I think I was lucky that I had any comprehension of what was on its way, Big Tech.
Compared to everything else in life, money, relationships, leisure, travel, I would have implored myself to stay in academics and to gain as much knowledge as possible, with the guidelines of sanctioned academia.
In high school, I took in a lot of learning, including insight into how computers were becoming a powerful tool.
I keep an eye on the keyword “participatory media.” If I were better qualified academically to make better judgements about the world as I potentially understand it, I would be more astute when examining social constraints. Participatory media, if I do understand that, refers in part to social, and to creators on social. The world as Big Tech unfolded has been exciting.
MySpace, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube–all these services were blessings compared to the uncertainties about the free world before Big Tech began to realize its ambitions.
I would also tell myself to dress a bit better–enough of the dated pullovers and denim!
[Captain America puts on a parachute to go follow after Thor, Loki and Iron Man]
Natasha Romanoff: I’d sit this one out, Cap.
Steve Rogers: I don’t see how I can.
Natasha Romanoff: These guys come from legend. They’re basically gods.
Steve Rogers: There’s only one God, ma’am, and I’m pretty sure he doesn’t dress like that.
[Captain America leaps out of the Quinjet]
Starting in 2009, the 25 blockbuster films of the Marvel Comics universe possess an ideology of great distress in a fantastic landscape, only manageable by superheroes with unique, and unmatched, combat abilities.
Marvel Comics adaptations had enjoyed success before, like the X-Men and the Spiderman films, but the stories of the Avengers very much dominated the cinema for several years. From Iron Man in 2009 (earning a box office of 585.8 million US) to Endgame (earning a staggering 2.798 billion US) in 2019, audiences who desired that escape in the cinema largely deal with a contemporary viewpoint.
The Great Resignation means the refusal that many formerly employed people have now toward their jobs. Two days ago FastCompany.com said that a new report by Microsoft tracked down 41% of the worldwide labour force who are thinking about leaving their present manager, inside the following year. What’s more, a survey from Monster tracked down 95% of labourers who are considering a change.
While numerous grown-ups, by which I mean Generation Z-age and the Millennials, are set up to carry on, theirs is a life disrupted. Canadian or American, European or Asian or African, instruction and work and family and land were typical goals set by people until Covid spread. That was the world in which we did our best, before 2020; now, individuals have new liabilities and limitations.
Interpersonal contact can make us sick. Nobody is wrong for wanting something different. Everything we believe about our wellbeing has been challenged by the onset of the pandemic.
In the province of Ontario, Canada, CTV’s cable news network was reporting yesterday that the delta variant of Covid is flattening in terms of its curve, its impact on people, but everywhere people have been required to acknowledge the reality that every human being has potentially only a fleeting lifespan in which to create desired conditions, in case we hadn’t been aware. It is an opportunity that will be an aggregate change in our psychological understanding of ourselves. Anticipating what this will resemble is a significant undertaking for both you and me.
Forbes said recently that the Great Resignation has been documentable since 2009, just presently unfurling, with a lot of gained speed. With opportunities to work from home, many workers have found that, very much, they prefer working from home, over being tasked, in traditional work settings.
Motivation, like inspiring speeches, or books about productivity, usually explores what people can do to get more out of their time, rather than being saddled in the extreme with work. There is now a new expedition of ideas. Personally, I think it is conceivable that what we are attempting to ensure is progress that will see the most awesome cutting-edge living become unreachable.
This is the crux of the Great Resignation.
Successful self-management author Tim Ferriss explores in his 2007 book, “The Four-Hour Work Week,” the virtues of doing as you please. BBC’sThe I.T. Crowd (its first series in 2006) occasionally ridicules low-level groups furnished with personal computers. Whereas “The Four-Hour Work Week” explores Tim Ferriss’ strategies to get rich while young, The I.T. Crowd is an all-out comedy spoofing middle-class occupations and the role of being a smart computer-minded alpha nerd.
British Sitcom
Putting a radius on success, in light of what’s already been achieved, is these days transitional. People have become apt to realize life’s fragility, despite the personal power achieved by technology. The climate for this, the individual’s climate, has a constant of significant change.
I have myself by and by experienced disarray about the conditions of my life. I never wedded, nor purchased a house or a vehicle, or a cell phone. I wished to live more basically than having those obligations upon me.
When I was twenty-one, I was destitute. When I couldn’t support that sort of energy, to keep going with a life like that, I willed the least expensive method of living I could make do with. I made moves to that end years prior, expecting mental lucidity.
Two decades later, I’ve been writing this blog for several years. I figure people will hustle despite those who proffer admonitions that it’s foolhardy; I figure we will end up stranded outside of the design that has as starting points characteristics also found in the Industrial Age.
There is a new strategy that a solution is to walk away from traditional roles in their lives. If we are left holding a hot potato rising up out of what life resembled before 2020, we aren’t living in the same kind of world we had before the pandemic struck. A new but disorderly society slowly begins to buckle under the pressure we’ve created for ourselves.
If we want a world to live in with the same structure we enjoyed before this pandemic, the gamble we must make is to find a way to survive without the luxury of the constants of work and pay we had before the dam broke.
I circle Internet content on Twitter. If you want, you can follow me by my handle @findingenvirons
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Starting, for April, I participated in many of the new Discover challenges that WordPress organized, to help bloggers write posts during the crisis. Each morning, 6 AM in most cases in my time zone, a new word with additional suggestions became available for WordPress bloggers.
Each word theme was accompanied by suggestions about what to post. I found the exercises helped me feel better about blogging because some things I enjoy discussing became the subject of new posts at the same time other bloggers addressed the same themes. With each post, I had several visitors, and if you are among those and returning, please accept my thanks.
Now, today is May the 4th, Star Wars Day. Star Wars The Clone Wars concludes its season 7 run today, a season devoted to the Seige of Mandalore. I think the entire animated series lives on Disney+.
Today is also the day that all nine films of the Skywalker Saga are available with a Disney+ subscription. “This will be a day long-remembered,” to quote Peter Cushing in Star Wars Episode IV.
I have a new strategy, I am starting by trying a serious-in-tone critical thinking post. I was already writing the odd observation about techniques that might contribute to someone’s existing take on the science of being a blogger, tempered with humour, I suppose. I reckoned that I was enjoying myself, that’s mostly what counted.
An activity or interest pursued outside one’s regular occupation and engaged in primarily for pleasure.
The pleasure of blogging comes from the interaction on the world wide web with people who also blog. I believe that social interaction is important at any age. Why is social interaction important for psychological health, I asked Yahoo!.
“Social engagement is associated with a stronger immune system, especially for older adults,” Yahoo! answered. “This means that you are better able to fight off colds, the flu, and even some types of cancer. You will enjoy better mental health.
“Interacting with others boosts feelings of well-being and decreases feelings of depression.”
There are so many avenues that if you have access to the web, there are so many ways to reach people, and fulfill that desire, I know you know this. It is always about more than the dollar, as it should be. I’m not out to make a buck at all, I’m just experimenting with being an optimist.
Recently I found a website page that takes a gander at the satisfaction that goes with the joy of a decent diversion. Human resources psychologist Jessica Beltran addresses it in The Value of Hobbies https://blogs.psychcentral.com/thrive/2014/05/the-value-of-hobbies/ “We are at our best when we are relaxed and in tune with ourselves.”
While we are capitalists, the playing field becomes more narrow if you consider that you can address people with the confidence of having many of the skills that they have. There is any number of stations in the lives we lead, but lots of motivation speakers give the advice to get started with your creations, however possible. “Do hobbies help with their careers?” I asked Yahoo!.
“While it may seem counterintuitive to make time for something outside of work to get ahead at work, career coaches have confirmed that having a hobby can help make you better at your job. Having a hobby helps you learn how to handle work-life stress and think creatively,” answered the search engine.
“What skills are needed to be a critical thinker?” I went on to ask.
In response Yahoo! informed me of several qualities, ten in fact, that you need to be a capable critical thinker:
1 Accuracy.
2 Adept.
3 Analytical.
4 Creativity.
5 Critical thinking.
6 Detail-oriented.
7 Efficiency.
8 Industriousness.
9 Innovative.
10 Logical thinking.
I have additional input.
Accuracy, for starters, I learned about in high school science. Accuracy in that environment is measurably collecting data. To determine accuracy, you might perform the same process several times, with only minor variants, to learn if your method is accurate.
It’s important. Troubleshooting a computer station, for example, requires accuracy.
You need to determine what changes have gone on before and after a problem has happened at your terminal. There is a joke about hapless computer users calling the Windows system crash the Blue Screen of Death, dire-sounding, but which means that you are losing your unsaved work, a bummer. By the way, I enjoyed computer science in high school a lot more than I enjoyed chemistry and physics.
If what you were doing meant nine out of ten times you got a system crash, and then one out of ten times it worked out, hypothetically speaking, you could, if the measurements were accurate, you’re determining that those nine times of system crashes mean that you can’t proceed in that manner. If five out of ten times, your computer works, and five times it doesn’t, you don’t have an accurate idea of what of your commands are leading to the system crash. The results aren’t too useful in that case.
You need to check variables that contribute to your procedure’s success or failure and come up with a more accurate idea of what’s going to work. Once you establish the variables that work out okay, by trial and error, you can figure out which instruction is awakening the Blue Screen of Death.
The second term in Yahoo!’s list is the word adept. Adept means are adroit. Critically, you have to be adept at forming interpretations.
Those I think of as the external–the external is the object or scenario you’re critically thinking about. You need to know what you’re examining, to form a critical judgement. I have two ways for you to do this, and you can read about them a little further in.
Like for me, to decide whether, say, a popular film is “good,” in the sense that the motion picture proves that everybody involved did a good job, you have to understand enough about what makes a good film to be adept at reviewing it. It would help if you’d contributed to the completion of a motion picture, to be properly critical, but it probably suffices to understand the structure of a film, the symbolism in the film visually, and previous attempts to make similar films.
The next term, the word analytical, this is a word like adept, but analytical is more about looking at a critiqued thing that calculates whether you should take it seriously or not. You know what the thing is and what it’s for, but being analytical towards it means judging it in a way that you can comprehend additional specifics about it, forming your external. What does it mean? is an analytical question that you might have about your object or scenario.
You would be analytical concluding that your problem works at all levels.
Next is creativity, a lovely word, for I feel I am creative, as would many bloggers regard themselves. Creativity is reworking an established idea and making it yours. It goes on constantly.
Like, back to film, when a successful film franchise follows up with a sequel, or a reboot, that’s an instance of creativity that is often quite impressive. As with, say, the 1978 horror film Halloween, directed by John Carpenter, when two years later in 1980 the sequel Halloween II came out, again starring famed actress Jamie Lee Curtis, the film continued the story of the first movie by showing a lot more of what happened later that Halloween night, when the mad masked murderer had returned, (ghastly!). However, John Carpenter was no longer directing the film.
Do you like horror films?
Halloween II has the same characters and the same locale and a continuation of the plot of the first film, all interesting for fans of the first movie, just with the point that somebody else is now directing. That’s the creative part, in this example.
Next, Yahoo! repeats the phrase critical thinking. I mean that Yahoo! includes critical thinking among the terms for critical thinking, which begs the question, Yahoo!. I interpreted that as meaning that critical thinking refers here to the overall level of ability the interpreter brings to the noun being thought through critically. It is having the skill to return to thinking critically, in a manner that applies other additional criteria.
In this case, we’re using the handy number ten. The words, I derive, make an agenda for surveying an item or a situation. It is redundant to include the phrase “critical thinking” in a list that explains critical thinking, pointing to a rabbit hole, a burrow that goes on and on when it opens.
You have to be firm with yourself what decisions you will make in the process of critical thinking or you will never conclude. I have a little more to say about that in the conclusion.
Close up white cup of Coffee, latte on the wooden table
Detail-oriented refers to the organizer’s ability to put together a mental assessment of the details that have gone into the subject being thought about critically. A job interview often includes a question along these lines, as in, “If you were taking this job, would you consider yourself a detail-oriented person?” It means getting everything right.
Efficiency is the ability to get things done promptly. You don’t lose time by making redundant decisions; everything works. If you value efficiency, you want your scenario or your object to function smoothly, a swift external.
It means saving time. A lot of people who need to complete many tasks highly value efficiency.
Industriousness refers to having the initiative to take bold steps. Being industrious is good in that a person shows, say, leadership. If what you are critical of is a tool for industriousness, it lends itself to a nature that assists people who have a success rate at reaching goals.
Innovative means thinking outside of the box. Someone innovative has solutions that circumvent traditional stop signs that cause headaches. Being innovative is positive. You should recognize when innovation is happening and that it can have positive results.
Logical thinking is great for being “right.” I first read a little about logical thinking in a high school English class. I was daunted at the time because I’d never known that logical thinking existed like that, and I doubted I could learn enough about it to become competent, bizarrely, I suppose.
I was a diffident youth. I wish I’d got that information earlier in life. My teacher, Ms. M., outlined twelve specific styles of logical thinking and in fact, I wonder if I as yet have that same document.
I should have read it again and again. At times I’ve been proud that I’m not completely obligated to be logical, but I don’t disregard logic. I value things like the structure of an external, and that, for example, requires logic.
Logical thinking when it comes to being critical of a specific external is very useful, for if you can make a logical argument about the nature of your object or situation, you’re external, you are on your way to answering a riddle about it. It is a regret I have that I didn’t take the introduction to logical thinking I got in high school more gravely and go to work at understanding it.
The ten criteria words stop at the letter L. This is all about setting your sights on critically interpreting an external and taking it apart in a way that you can better understand what it means. The terms are building blocks for evaluating your external.
There are some points where the process isn’t going to be scientific. Starting with accurate, you need to look at more than one external and compare them to see how accurate your method is. This word accurate is exciting because you can find parallels that aren’t necessarily immediately self-evident.
You are being analytical because you are trying to make a process occur that is accurate. Those two a-letter words work together to open a method of diagramming your external to better understand what it is.
The next word, adept, is applicable because you need to run your process with adept skill. What I’m doing here is being creative with Yahoo!’s list of critical thinking terms. I’m making the argument that they are useful.
The search engine believes it. So, too, should you. Together the terms have an impact that you can draw upon for inspiration.
It does bother my sensibilities that critical thinking could itself be a term for critical thinking, but as there is a connection between all three a-letter words, so too I noticed a connection between the two c-letter words. Critical thinking and creativity are two different sides of the same coin.
I’ve had to stir my reserve of critical thinking to identify what that means, but it is so. Creativity is letting reason fly in the wind, whereas critical thinking is unearthing the truth about your external that wouldn’t be evident if you didn’t possess some definitions that assist in critical thinking.
For d, we have detail-oriented, taking your analysis and better developing it.
For e, we have efficiency, reducing creativity in favour of a strategy that is more pure critical thinking and not as open-minded as the word creative would imply.
Next, we have i-letter words, industrious and innovative, words that strengthen the process of analyzing the external by accelerating the process. Those words apply to the analyst as much as they apply to the object or scenario being looked at. Being industrious is keeping at it and being innovative is keeping open-minded.
Both these reflect the analyst as much or more than the external being explored. Logical thinking is a phrase that means much the same as analysis. If you took these ten terms, you could assemble them this way: You have the creativity and you have critical thinking (the c-words).
If you want creativity to rule the process of investigating the external, what you have is industriousness and innovation for the matter at hand.
To proceed down the avenue of critical thinking that is more logical and detail-oriented, you can reduce your creative input and begin letting a process unfold without the benefit of a creative assignment. In either case, you need to be adept at thinking, and further, to return to the a-letter words, you are being more purely analytical and accurate if you pursue critical thinking without the requirement of innovation ruling your process. So, your basic process either follows one c-path or the other c-path, critical thinking or creativity and then to round out outreaching your external you have the accuracy, the analytics, the detail-oriented questions, the efficiency and the logical thinking; and down the other c-path, you have industriousness and innovation.
These are subcategories from the ten we started with.
The terms favour an analysis-heavy approach to critical thinking, meaning there are more components of more purely critical thinking than terms that include creativity. Where that leaves us is what I started with, the word hobby. A creative design is better for a hobby; analysis is better suited for more profound comprehension.
All the same, creativity can be as hard to comprehend as analysis. If you reach an external by analysis, it is beginning to fall outside the field of the hobbyist and more closely approach the realm of the expert.
A more complicated external lends itself to critical thinking; a simpler external is suitable for creativity. This isn’t always true, but that’s a guideline that you could start with if you are deciding whether you want to approach an external with a lens of more complicated and comprehensive critical thinking or with a simpler but also effective creative paintbrush, so to speak.
That’s the rabbit hole, that if you don’t have a handle on your creativity, flights of fancy can take you far afield of a suitable stopping place. That’s why creativity isn’t a super useful strategy for analyzing an external that’s become complex. That’s when your critical thinking approach needs to take over.
I’ve enjoyed writing about this, my first post since the April Discover challenges ended. Do you like the idea that a simpler object might benefit from creative analysis and a more complicated object require a more detailed critical analysis? You’re welcome to follow and/or to comment.
Today is my niece Clara’s tenth birthday. Happy birthday, Clara.
I have been perusing the April 2020 WordPress Discover articles. This week they are again driven by Ben Huberman.
Today’s Discover Challenge: book
Clara is in the third grade. At the point when I was in the third grade, I think my preferred intrigue was beasts, and obviously, she is a young lady. However, I think my favourite book, when I was a third-grader, was the classic, The House with a Clock in its Walls, by John Bellairs. It’s a 2018 film.
My nephew Mack, Clara’s brother, is in uni, and when I think back of books I read in college, that weren’t on the syllabus, I remember reading The Mosquito Coast, by Paul Theroux. I think I wanted something familiar to read. There is a film, the 1986 film featuring Harrison Ford and Helen Mirren. Harrison Ford had starred in the Star Wars films which saw son pitted against father. I think he was following that set of motion pictures with another film that was about the idea of Father’s relationship with the child, and furthermore about the connection among machines and nature, likewise a topic in that first Star Wars three.
If my mother were to ask me, I would recommend Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff … and it’s all small stuff: Simple Ways to Keep the Little Things from Taking Over Your Life, by Richard Carlson. It’s an antidote to stress.
For my dad, who has likewise been my supervisor for quite a while now, I would prescribe a progressively unordinary book, the novel Humans by Donald E. Westlake. It’s a novel truly about a fight among God, and the Devil, for the whole planet.
If Kris was still with us, as she loaned me her Holy Bible, which I wish I’d demanded to return, I figure I may have gained favour with her if I’d brought her A Million Little Pieces, the splashy novel by James Frey, that transformed into contention, with Oprah Winfrey.
I’d been focusing when I could on five more ways you can dispense with some of the time you’re putting into video research. If you do anything like that and if you think of consuming video content as being video research, then increasingly I don’t think there’s a consensus that anything like video research is useful. I’m looking back in time when there were different attitudes to video. I mean that it wasn’t as accessible as it today. It occurs to me I should argue that if you are committed to any research activity utilizing video, and there’s a ready workaround, you should concentrate on the workaround.
Aerial view of black board with the letter forming hello greeting concept
The first part for this post, about chasing an adherent to research, left off with points how you can turn some of your conclusions into blog posts. Or if you don’t have a blog, there’s somewhere you could start. I would like to make the point that the best conclusions you can form from watching a lot of videos can indeed be put somewhere, like in a blog, or a podcast, etc. For example, on Patrick Bet-David’s Valutainment on the internet, I watched Bet-David and Robert Greene discuss Greene’s latest bestseller. Bet-David pointed out that Greene sat down with three hundred books to write his latest book, for the pay-off. That’s the traditional sense of research that I don’t think you should disregard in any way. There is no way that you can eliminate the process of reading the page, or perhaps your Kindle, from the actual work of doing research. Sad but true.
The traditional sense of video is taking a video camera to a wedding and then selling it to the wedding party. The best research you can cultivate from a video of that kind is whether a particular family member was in attendance, or perhaps how the bridesmaids looked when they were standing side by side. Do you see many wedding videos, apart from celebrity weddings, that make it onto the Internet? I am not sure there are, particularly as the advent of the handheld video camera has given way to the smartphone camera. If you are a young person reading this, and you don’t relate to the idea of a videographer at a wedding, it isn’t that different from a professional photographer taking pictures. It is just that the videographer mingles with the wedding party and gets a little movie of the wedding.
I’m writing there about commercial consumer video, not expensive TV productions. The thing about the video you watch is that when it is a pricey production, I don’t think you can count on it for insight. Particularly when focusing on video production for TV, in the nineteen sixties, seventies, and eighties, when the technology was useful enough to shoot material for television, and before computers were beginning to infiltrate it, there just wasn’t a lot of purely informative video. The novelty on being on video overshadowed a requirement, to be honest. As soon as the camera was recording, everybody was immediately acting at all times. That sounds like a polarized argument, but ninety-nine percent of the time if you were being paid to appear on camera, you were acting to do it. Speaking jovially, you had to nail it.
What happened in the mid-nineteen-eighties? Computer effects were beginning to be integrated into more and more of the ready video, which starts to become interesting for the possibility that more and better information could be communicated by video. With more information is born the reality that better information begins to come across. Purists might disagree, but fast-forward fifteen years and amateur video is not only more accessible but could also be edited on par with the best of people in the trade in previous decades. There had been an explosion of video on cable TV which meant more ways to deliver information by video. Did that mean you could derive better conclusions in the sense that by better I mean better located in reality? I think so. You always want the past back, once you’re past a certain age, but there is some logic, or I am doing my best to apply logic here.
The apparent irony is that the development of the computer industry accelerated at a much faster pace than did the growth of video. I’m tempted once more to stop, but it’s true that by the time video was in its golden years, the computer industry was spritely, pardon the pun, spritely and skyrocketing for many, many people. I don’t want to mislead you unfairly, but surely some blame for some of the big, really bad troubles that have hit people where there is free access to information lies with what’s just bad information. That caution gets sounded frequently, and where before I was tempted to stop then and there, now I really am going to stop.
I have promised one more post on the subject, with five remaining ways you might want to dodge video. You’re welcome to like, comment, and/or follow.
I am humbled by the attention I receive and I shall make some effort to reciprocate interest if I am lucky enough to make a tiny ripple in this pond. We need to go back to the future
Too much stress, “bad” stress, can weaken you, deplete your resources and waste scarce time if you are not dealing with your lifestyle well. Everybody endures stress.
Getting older, I believe that lifestyles of Generation Z are significantly common, but I am from a small town. It is important to obey the Biblical commandment, to honor thy mother and father. As the father did before you, if you are of a certain age, you too need to heed that you are following appropriately in his steps.
That being said, there is lightness. I think with a touch of envy of the comparative ease of the generation of young people often collectively referred to as Generation Z. That doesn’t mean that I can compete with the energy of the young and of the attitudes which characterize them, different than for someone my age.
Someone like me, I feel, is part of a culture that values stress, that putting a great deal of work into a lifetime is a necessity. There’s nothing wrong with that.
Shopping cart
However, it means fulltime people endure an enormous amount of stress. The more hours of work we take on, to make ends meet, the more stress we cope with.
I believe stress can easily bend one to its will rather than the other way round. It is all very hard to manage.
In the film sequence preceding the climax of the 1978 feature film Superman, Lex Luthor conquers Superman with a chain of Kryptonite, until Superman makes a personal promise to Luthor’s beautiful assistant in order that she remove the powerful amulet–but a promise that puts at risk the woman who has his heart, Lois Lane. All in all, it is an excellent film.
What I did, in my life, is an irregular passage through the years. In 2008 when my employer closed its doors, I went on to work a part-time job while reflecting on what to do with my future Then I went full time on government disability, as it was felt that I’d been “compromised” enough to give up on making a living through the avenue of work.
I had been reading some books on self-management and I didn’t think the stress of a new workplace was going to benefit me enough to do it.
A few years later, my father, perhaps frustrated by my reluctance, had an idea. He was retiring from many years with a municipal cemetery, where he’d helped manage it from its offices.
A small cemetery in our town was searching for new operators. It attracted him, and the trustees of that property were pleased to turn it over to him, so that he could direct it, pleased to have a focus in his retirement.
To my surprise, my dad invited me to help handle the operation of the cemetery. We commenced in 2011. The church at the cemetery, formerly of the United Church of Canada, had disbanded in 2006.
Important headstones of family generations in Maple Lawn Cemetery
We maintain the property ourselves, and work in the interior of the church in dire weather, setting our sights on attending to the cemetery once a week. We made a not-for-profit out of it. While I am junior, and there is no certainty how matters will proceed, in the seven years or so, lucky seven, that we’ve handled the cemetery, it has been a luxury of time and experience for me and an opportunity to enjoy the company of my father in his golden years.
We have had outside help from brothers of my father, my uncles. On a few brief occasions we have talked about growth, but I don’t know if I can turn this venture into something in which I can continue in the long-term. This post is intended to be expository writing, but working for a not-for-profit, when financial gains are generally hard-won, can lead to burnout, and to a minor degree that is what I am experiencing.
You see, I contribute several hours a week of work to the cemetery, and as my dad has spoken reassuringly of the flexibility to set our own hours, I have lately started to reduce my workload to a four-day week rather than a five-day.
I can’t help, for example, but want to relax on Saturday. I think the decision to work less on Fridays is somewhat deleterious in that if you want to get ahead, you should probably be hustling with the same energy on a Friday that you do on a Monday.
I couldn’t help, in the past several weeks, to admit that the stress of putting nonprofit work at the center of my life, was making me feel a touch sick, by which I mean I was experiencing burnout. I am sure this is common.
Photographer: Ylanite Koppens
Whether this transition, to four days of focus on the cemetery rather than on each and every business day, will contribute to a soul-searching decision by my dad to relieve me of my work, I don’t know. I think what will determine my chances of staying on are the quality of work I can produce in the time I devote to the not-for-profit.
How this has me feeling, perhaps, “sick,” is that I do care about working and I do feel some prestige enjoying the privilege of doing work that is shaped by our own efforts. This is in contrast to working for a firm that is structured in predictable ways, with employee equity and positions and demands which could easily contribute to a high-stress load.
I am taking this risk because I believe I can do better work if I make strategies to cope with the burnout before there are related consequences. I am counting on my own experience and abilities to do the same quality of work in a four-day structure than I would be getting done by committing the entirety of the work week to headway and progress.
I am sick to think of losing what I have worked for, and I am sick to think of bringing shame onto my father if the quality of my work does suffer because I am having trouble being afield of all that we do. I feel like I should write something about feeling troubled by what I have to do to manage my role as operator, and maybe even think on how I could express an appropriate apology for how I am feeling.
Writing is the act of discovery. – Natalie Goldberg
Photographer: Freestocks.org
If my father does finally decide, which I know he won’t do lightly, that I should be dismissed, it will be a sad day and for that, I will pay a price, of having the failure on my shoulders. If that scenario comes to pass I will take time to mend. It may be a self-centered attitude, but the best that can be done in the face of failure is to learn from what happened.
Everyone has experienced failure, and usually many, many times, sometimes with adverse consequences.
If you have never failed, you have stayed well inside your comfort zone. Life needs to change and grow.
If my role in the not-for-profit does end in failure, I will at least have work experience. I think I can draw on the time spent at this to draw conclusions that will inform my life in the future. The situation that I think could result, however, is not going to be completely ideal.
It will be back to being “sick,” resorting to making ends meet with the help of a pension for disability, and with the support of my mom and dad. Ain’t no one got time for that. I will have then have the opportunity to look for a job if I feel I can weather the stress, or return to freelancing and try to find my niche doing that.
Photographer: Rawpixel.com
Many members of Generation Z work as freelancers in the digital economy, and I would be competing with all of those people, which is daunting. That being said, there are a few paths ahead for me to take and I will have to ask for guidance from fate and the intentions of The Lord. I know I shouldn’t emphasize feeling sick about all this and I know I shouldn’t take on a job post that gives me more additional stress than I can handle.
For now, I will bide my time–for as much clarity as I can muster.
You are welcome to like, follow, and/or comment if you have feedback. Lately, the blog has been fairly quiet, in terms of visits it receives, but you never know when some I’ve published here will pique the interest of a reader.
I appreciate the time of those who are visitors. I have been tying my blog to the not-for-profit, and also trying to be jovial as I know it is as yet an amateur effort. I feel blogging will continue to play a role in the time I have to write, as it is a splendid little spot of fun that has a pragmatic purpose.
Yesterday the website ZDNet reported that researcher Sam Thomas speaking at the Bsides technical security conference in Manchester alerted attendees that WordPress has been rendered vulnerable to a bug for the entire duration of the last year. While the situation hasn’t been exploited by attackers, Thomas sounded a concern with WordPress that will require a patch. This is the first, I believe, that it has been reported, which is a fact, I suspect, that lends itself to the possibility that there could be an upset connected to this WordPress bug and the suggestion of vulnerability
In a different light on what’s happening in the blogosphere, I would like to say here that I think of myself as a reasonably well-informed individual. I have an interest in being active with a blog, with Facebook, and with Twitter.
What’s come up is that the seventeenth of August, 2018, is a celebratory day for nonprofit businesses. Despite the caveat at the start of the post, it can be said that if you’re unaware of the significance of August 17, 2018, it is that this is National Nonprofit Day.
I thought I would write something to mark the occasion. I personally am part of a business that has a not-for-profit status.
About nonprofits, National Nonprofit Day recognizes people who contribute to organizations who generally rely on charitable funding to keep going. There are a lot of needs that would be underserved if it weren’t for nonprofits. Funding for not-for-profits helps with needs that otherwise would go unmet, which is great because it helps deal with active problems.
I help care for a not-for-profit cemetery that is small but pretty, named Maple Lawn.
Here is a recent photo. Me, my dad Peter and his brother, my uncle, Dave, run the cemetery.
Formerly Louth United Church, St. Catharines
We don’t specifically receive funding for what we do. We got involved a few years ago when Peter opted to take responsibility for a cemetery whose trustees no longer wished to care for it. Since then we have opted to care for the grounds and to handle burials.
My dad worked for many years at the municipal cemetery in the city. We generally attend to the cemetery grounds once a week, on Wednesdays, and we do additional work as needed.
There’s a church on the cemetery grounds. The United Church of Canada congregation which filled it disbanded from this church of ours in 2006. It may sound like we’re carrying out a selfless endeavor, but there are a few advantages, in addition, that I can think of.
Running the cemetery doesn’t require a huge amount of input or direction. I am on hand to do some of the grounds keeping, and I also put it in time doing research and the like as the cemetery SMM. My dad does a lot of the work that requires expertise tied to the particulars of operating a cemetery.
While many not-for-profits would operate on a fulltime basis, we write our own hours and we mostly look in our own pockets for what we need to spend. I recently returned to the popular 4 Hour Work Week book by entrepreneur Timothy Ferriss for the third time now and you can view, if you like, my thoughts on it as the following blog post I wrote
We cover our costs and contribute to the cemetery if someone wants a grave here, or if a funeral needs to be conducted and we do this out of a sense of goodwill.
I remain partial to the notion that if I write a blog there will be a little additional interest in what I say.
I look at Twitter, https://twitter.com/findingenvirons …because of Twitter’s use as an information tool. I don’t limit my interests on Twitter to what we do at the cemetery. I explore a variety of interests outside what would otherwise be confined to a very limited niche.
Cemetery operation is too specialized, I think, to confine a Twitter account to that sole purpose.
Photographer: Rawpixel.com
I don’t feel that time is lost carrying out service at the cemetery. The time that’s devoted to being part of a small not-for-profit rather than working in a career in sales or the like is meaningful and, even better, enjoyable. I feel that limiting one’s energy to a volunteer position is time invested in oneself.
With the trade-off of what might be a better living secondary to time invested in the cemetery, I feel like I have something personal to me that I do, although I know a lifestyle like this is certainly not for everyone. I continue to look at the work from the standpoint that it is a lucky opportunity. There are drawbacks but I don’t want to emphasize them here in this post.
Furthermore, I appreciate that National Nonprofit Day celebrates nonprofits, people who work hard to make a difference. When Maple Lawn highlights for people what we’re doing, such as on our Facebook page for the cemetery, we often get positive responses for the care we take to keep the cemetery looking nice. Visitors to our Facebook page reward us that way.
Photographer: Wilfred Iven
People who work in not-for-profits may not always feel that benefactors give them the credit that they deserve, but it doesn’t mean not-for-profit employees don’t find satisfaction in what they do. I am sure that among not-for-profit personnel, many of them welcome August 17 and celebrate their work accordingly, and that’s what I’m writing about in this post. I usually represent what we’re doing at the cemetery in positive terms, which is how I try to frame it.
That is to say, I think of myself as an optimist rather than as a pessimist, despite the solemnity of the atmosphere of a cemetery. If you relate, you’re welcome to “like,” to “follow,” and/or to “comment.” In November, I will try to respond specifically to the occurrence of Giving Tuesday, the day that charities work especially hard to raise funds.
I realize there may not be such a sense of urgency that a cemetery like ours needs additional assistance, but you never know unless you ask if there is some unknown avenue to improve the standard of work in our hands. It is probably the right idea to look into getting additional help at the same time that similar organizations are delving into the same. Autumn is the time of year for it.
I hope to continue working at the cemetery while playing the additional role of nurturing Facebook and Twitter, writing here on WordPress, and otherwise keeping a hand in at our not-for-profit. Thank you for visiting my blog.
Please do not be alarmed by the idea that there is a bug in WordPress that could, in theory, render you in jeopardy if you maintain a blog with WordPress. Actually, it has been kept under wraps for an entire year.
There have been no specific problems made aware of that ZDNet reported and there is no indication that the bug will actually be exploited in the name of enemy action, however so easy a target exists. I know with this attention to the issue WordPress will respond with a patch.
The Myth of the Independent Blogger and How I Learned to Love It 