Today is a Monday and this morning for me started slow then, it became a busy monday morning
Today is a Monday and this morning for me started slow then, it became a busy Monday morning. I started fielding calls for various issues. the day went quickly from slow to fast and I felt a little dizzy. It felt like the day was spinning and moving with me onboard and not strapped in. I could not get a good bead on the days movements. I took care of the issues at work then created a task list.
I have often found that lists help me regain focus, I like to create and work with lists. As I build the list I gain focus and as I work through the list I feel the oxytocin high from the hormones released by my hypothalamus. Another thing that helps with days like today is to a clear vision of how and what is going on with my day and lists help with that too.
Once we understand that we are moving, even if we don’t want to, we can gain perspective and develop good plans for our day, month year and life. One more thing that is important is to make sure we are flexible within our plan.
Nothing is more flexible than water, yet nothing can resist it.
Lau Tzu
As you move on today remember that you are part of something big and moving and dynamic.! No matter what comes at you you can and will handle this
Promotions are a function of proximity. My oldest son started his career during the covid pandemic. He worked for his firm for a full year without ever visiting that firms office. Now that the world is entering the endemic phase of the Covid 19 virus he has of course visited the office but his in person schedule is still a little flexible.
There are business coaches who are now encouraging young people to get back into the office even if it is optional. Putting in face time really matters. People are social and physical creatures and connections matter. I have been reading and listening to many experts weigh in on the way the current and future workspaces look and every time I hear and read about the physical office and facetime I cannot help but think about the song (They Long to Be) Close to You by the Carpenters.
I am also reminded of a movie starring Bruce Willis called Surrogates. In the movie the whole world lives in their homes and send out surrogate bodies to the physical world to work and do their business. The movie is a dark sci fi movie and you learn the importance of connection to the visceral in the movie.
No matter how much human beings try to remove themselves from other humans and the physical world the fact that we are part of community and the physical world is inescapable.
The importance of showing up is often not given as much credit as it should be.
If you could be someone else for a day, who would you be, and why?
On the surface this question seems easy to answer. Of course I could find someone who seems to have a charmed life and choose them. I could find a loved one and choose them so that I could help them and or see how they see me. But what makes a person the person they are? What would it be like to be a different person?
a thinking, intelligent being, that has reason and reflection, and can consider itself as itself, the same thinking thing, in different times and places
John Locke
Being a person means we can move with our imagination to different places and times. The question points to a time and place by mentioning “for a day”. The place would be the person. Every figure inhabits some position.
No to answer the tough question.. I would love to see what it would be like to be Super man. Super man is not my favorite super hero, Spider man is but I would love to have Super Mans powers if just for one day. All the physics that seem to inhibit me on earth wouldn’t exist for a day. I could fly to China in less than an hour without boarding a plane!
Ok non fiction person that I would choose or to be real.. I would probably love to be Joe Biden for just one day. I would love to get insight into what the leader of one of the most powerful countries in the world is privy to. I am sort of afraid that it might be boring but what if it is not? What if the president of the United States is briefed daily on the nations and worlds secrets? Man then I would love to know all of that.
secrets are pleasant to each child of eve
Hannah Cowley
It is a fun mental exercise to change places with others but at the end of the day I am pretty happy with being myself.
There was this comic strip panel that made the rounds in the 80’s, in the panel Garfield the Cat is wearing his pajamas and is frowning and slumped over. His thought bubble reads “I hate Mondays.” When asked in a Gallup poll how people feel about Mondays, 70 % of the people polled replied to the poll that they hate Mondays. Mondays can be tough especially when coming back from long weekends.
Monday is a change of sleep pattern and pace. Some of us are still in “weekend mode” and Monday morning requires exiting weekend mode and getting into “work mode”. Usually I am a big fan of Monday mornings. Monday is the beginning of something new. Everything that happened last week is over and now we have new opportunities and challenges. Sometimes though it takes a while for me to get out of “weekend mode”, and on those days it takes me a little longer to get started. On those days I have to find ways to start my week.
A good strategy for me is to start Mondays with a last week wrap up and begin to write out work tasks for this new week. Once my tasks are written I find one “easy win” task and try to accomplish this one first. The win helps motivate me and gets my Monday morning started.
Strategies can help us when dealing with the Monday Blahs. Whatever your startegyuis I know that you can do it! Good luck and have a great week and Monday!
I was in the movie theater with my favorite person in the world. Before the trailers for other movies we get treated to a barrage of commercials. One commercial makes an impact on me and sends me down a rabbit hole. The commercial has images of women, men and children doing everyday things, going grocery shopping, picking up dry cleaning, yard work. The same folks are later seen in the commercial being arrested or hospitalized. Then in bold black letters the words Opioid addiction affects everyone.
The rabbit hole was opioids and the United States. Opioids have been in use in the United States since 1860 when soldiers were prescribed opioids for pain from war injuries. The civil war was going on and injuries were common. The injuries were painful and opioids numbed the pain. Opioids worked well but were and are highly addictive. Opioids naturally come from the poppy seeds and required fields and crops to produce. The difficulty in agriculture was a barrier to entry for production of opioids.
Over the years drug companies that were more concerned with profits than health found ways to synthetically create opioids.
Capitalism created, morphine, heroine, OxyContin and now fentanyl. All these opioids were and are extremely addictive and one of them, the last one is very deadly. Fentanyl has some of the highest rates of use and highest overdose numbers.
The more I read bout opioids and really any drug epidemic in the United States the more I see capitalism at work. Pure capitalism is profits above all and that is exactly what the drug business, legal and illegal, does.
People and corporations should not work for a profit. Profits should be side affects of building and supporting a healthy community.
Until humanity puts people over profit the world will not advance.
Since 1976 every US president has officially designated the month of February as Black History month. In 1865 the United State abolished slavery by amending the US Constitution. After abolishing slavery, racism persisted within the United States. So much racism persisted that laws needed to be changed again. The laws needed to be changed because the racism was entrenched and written into the laws and part of the culture of the United States. The law was changed in the United States in 1964, the change in the laws was known as the “Civil Rights Act of 1964“. The Civil Rights act explicitly prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin.
Even with this new law racism has persisted within the United States in a systematic manner. One major system that has promoted racism, through exclusion, is the public and private education system in the United States. Black citizens contributions to the United States throughout history are excluded from the history books and curriculum within the school system.
Human beings become the stories they are told and tell. If we exclude a race of people from the collective stories what we become is less diverse and racist.
Right now in different parts of the United States of America there is an effort underway by racists to prevent curriculum changes to the public school systems that would include black folks and indigenous people.
As a society it is important to stand against racism like the efforts to stop teaching our children about black history and racism that exists and did exist.
One way to make a difference is by letting your voice be known at the ballot box by not voting for these racists. Another way to make a change is through teaching your children the truth and telling the stories that are diverse. There is no better time to resolve our will to fight racism within the United States than Black history month!
Today in the United States the Supreme Court will hear a case. The case pitts Lorie Smith against the state of Colorado. Lorie Smith owns a website design company. Lorie Smith has decided to deny service to anyone wanting a wedding site that is for a hoomosexual marriage. Throughout the history of the United States Homosexuals have been discriminated against by the majority of the United States population. Because of this discrimination the state of Colorado has made Homosexuals a protected class. Because of the protected class status. Lorie smiths discrimination is illegal. Lorrie Smith wants to be able to discriminate against weddings of Homosexuals though and that is why the case is being heard today.
Something that struck me right away about this case is the concept that everyone matters and when everyone cannot find a compromise we should reconsider our beliefs and actions. Lorie Smith feels that marriage should be between a man and a woman and that is it no budging.
How can we move forward together when we cannot compromise on something as small as service to our fellow humans? That’s a question that I honestly do not have an answer for, I have seen racism come and go and I have seen racists who will not budge get left behind by society, I fear this will be the case for Lorie Smith and her web design company.
“the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”
Martin Luther King Jr.
Change and progress happen, often the change takes a long time but it does happen. As a species we have evolved and I have to believe that in the future as a species we will evolve beyond the discrimination like that of Lorie Smith. I am hopeful however that our species evolution can include not only the aggregate but also the individuals.
Alex and Jean Trebek have taken time and money to address a problem in their neighbourhood. The problem was homelessness. Just recently the Trebec center was opened. The center has 107 beds and is a shelter for the unhoused.
Losing a home looks and comes differently for everyone.
Economic
Health
Fanily
Addiction
Coming out as LGBTQI+
All of the above can be a reason for becoming homeless. Not one person sets out with the intention of not having a home, however the current economic and property system in the United States seems to be designed to generate homelessness. Right now there are about 31 houses that are vacant for every person who needs a home. That number is a little misleading though because of the state of the houses and the unrepaired homes.The more accurate number is 21. California has a population of 151,000 unhoused and the state has 1.2 million empty properties. The issue is not housing it is greed and an economic system keeping people from having a home.
“We all know that homelessness is complicated, There is no single pathway to the streets. There’s no single intervention that ends homelessness. But there is a single remedy and it’s called love. Supporting another is loving another and the transformational power of support will surely be known at this site.
Photo by How Far From Home on Pexels.com
Jean Trebek
Support for our fellow humans is not done through making oursleves wealthy at the cost of others, however making ourselves rich at the cost of others is the cornerstone of the current economic system.
“It isn’t the man who does the work that makes the money. It’s the man who gets other men to do it.”
Andrew Carnegie
Andrew Carnegies legacy is a dichotomy of good and evil. Andrew Carnegie killed workers who would not go to work for him. Killing an employee is not an act of love, it is of course evil. Later in life Carnegie gave away all his money. Building society, for 25 years Carnegie built libraries schools and fought to end imperialism. A man who benefited greatly from capitalism and imperialism fought to end all and even wrote an essay about this. In his essay on wealth Carnegie argued against the wealth gap. The gospel on wealth has made a huge impact on philanthropy and that is a great thing however it has done little to address the reasons for the welath gap.
Why should one person make 1.7 % of the salary of their employer. The median Amazon employee pay last year was 30,000 dollars. The CEO’s median income was 1,681,840. That’s right the average employee made 1.7% of the CEO. The CEO did 0 deliveries, folded no boxes, shipped nothing but was rewarded with a million dollar paycheck. This is one scenario in the United States among many. The average CEO makes 351 times more than the average employee! The wealth gap is alive and well.
Jobs are the vehicles in the United States that should lift us out of poverty and homelessness however 40 % of the homeless have jobs in the United States. Because of the design of the system, with wealth concentrated at the top the United States is becoming a nation of working homeless and sick people.
At the start of his essay on wealth Carnegie mentions how the native Americans did not have a wealth gap, but the wealth gap was a good thing because it gave the poor something to aspire too however since the time of the essay we see that 99% percent of people in the United States will never be wealthy. The truth is without the poor their can not be any rich people. This was what was left out of the essay that Carnegie wrote.
What is the answer then? how do we help the homeless and poor? Love. That is it plan and simple we must actively love each other and help each other. With love a system like the current capitalism would not last very long. Love would been dividing resources equitably amongst our fellow humans. Love would mean that abandoned and empty homes would be full of people, even if the people cant afford the rent. Love would not have eviction notices or terminations in it.
1 Corinthians 13:4-5: Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.
The United States economy is driven primarily by consumer spending. Us companies spend about 230 billion dollars a year in advertising. All that money and time to get someone somewhere to buy something that will be used and “thrown away”.
Today is Halloween and very shortly we will be right into the Holiday season, Christmas and Hanukah. The average cost of the holidays as in girt giving is 887. That is how many gifts are bought.
71% of the United States economy is in consumption. Buying stuff that we usually try to dispose of. I use the word try because nothing is every really thrown away. Landfills are filled up, eco systems destroyed and all because of what?
We do it because it makes up happy giving and receiving stuff. But does it? Since the 50’s America has gotten bigger stuff. Bigger and more cars, bigger and more houses. more clothes, more food, more everything and happiness still seems to allude most Americans. As of 2020 Americans are at the most unhappy level they have ever been. One of the major reasons cited for being so unhappy was the standard of living.. Wait that makes no sense if stuff makes you happy. Consumption has gone up so fast but no one is happier. Stuff will not make you happy.
There is a movement called the Slow Movement. Slow living is about consuming less and taking a slower approach to everyday life. This year for the holidays maybe we can give our loved ones less things and the few things we do give them we could build for them. Building something as a gift show thoughts and love.
Hand made Christmas gifts are the best. You learn something new and feel accomplished and the gift receiver gets something unique and special. A great idea is to include before during and after photos of you making the gift for your loved one as well.
Lets end this year with a commitment not to the economy but to ourselves and the environment. Let’s commit to make the world and ourselves better.
One of my best friends in the house right now is my dog storm. Look at that picture how can you not be best friends with this guy?
Ok, ok I will try to quit anthropomorphizing, my dog try but will probably fail. Every afternoon I feed this guy because he gets hungry and like I said he is one of my best friends. When the dog first got to the house he was happy with dry dog food but about a year ago he got a taste of the dog food that comes in the can or wet dog food. Now I get to mix a can of wet dog food with two cups of dry food for the guy. The dry food is pretty boring but the wet dog food has flavors written on the side of the can and I am kind of ashamed to admit that some of the flavors sound delicious. Duck, Chicken all kinds of entrees for my dog bestie.
In 1976 the actor Lorne Greene went on tv and told the world they should feed their dogs Alpo and then he fed his own dog Alpo. The term dogfooding was coined and now it is used (especially in the tech world) quite often. Dogfooding is when someone uses their own products, the term dogfooding gained popularity recently when Mark Zuckerberg gave all his employees Android phones because, users had complained about Facebooks Android interface. Shortly after being forced to use Android phones major improvements came.
It can be easy to dismiss claims from others about their situations however it is not a great idea. Everybody is going through something some way and the best approach when interacting with anyone is kindness and empathy.
The Corrigan Encore 