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Almost Time
We have only a few more days of dreary pre-holiday 🦃🎄🍾 time to endure. The jingle 🔔 bells are waiting with baited jingles…
A Kind Word
Wise sayings often fall on barren ground, but a kind word is never thrown away. ~Arthur Helps
As we head into the holidays of what is possibly the worst year in our entire lives, let’s spare a kind word for people far and wide.
Some people are violently allergic to facts, so don’t feel the need to burden them with the heavy weight of things that happen to be accurate and true.
Best if you simply smile and slowly walk away.
Just be kind. After all, it’s nearly the holidays…
Dominion War
Rudi Giuliani Press Conference
Okay, to address the elephant in the room, apparently, the guy did a touch-up on his hair dye before the presser. Seriously bad idea but whatever. The leaking hair dye does not take away from the impact of what Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell were disclosing.
To address the insipid and insanely childish reaction to the leaking hair dye and the fly on the Vice President’s hair during the VP Debate, what the actual fuck people? Grow your ass up and deal with reality.
To address the complete disregard of the actual content of the press conference, go figure that the infotainment propaganda industry would try to simply disregard everything that was said. The fact that they’re all saying it’s crazy and unsubstantiated is easily fact-checked by actually listening to the fucking thing and hearing both Rudy and Sidney say repetitively that they have affidavits and mountains of forensic and statistical evidence.
They’re both lawyers. They know what will be accepted by a court of law and what will not. They’re not wild-eyed conspiracy theorists. They have boatloads of evidence that have serious potential to overturn the alleged results of the election. There are justifiable concerns about the conduct of the election and the media needs to STOP calling Biden the “President-Elect” because he definitely is not until all of this is straightened out.
For the love of mercy, ignore the unsightly streaks on Rudy’s face (seriously, what the fuck was he thinking) and listen to the entire press conference. What they’re saying is of colossal importance and it puts a serious tarnish on the reporting associated with this election by the lamestream media. They are supposed to “report” what happens, not decide it for us. It’s time the Fourth Estate went back to their role of telling us what actually happens instead of what they wish was happening. Just do your jobs, idiots…
Their Own Interest
It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. ~Adam Smith
We need to realize that the reason most people go to work is to make money. Mostly, it’s to pay bills, buy food and have a bit of fun with whatever’s left. Some people have the good fortune to find some passion in what they do.
The Japanese have a term: Ikigai. Roughly translated, it means “Reason to Live”. There’s a wonderful Venn diagram of Ikigai that depicts it as being the intersection of:
- What you Love
- What the World Needs
- What you can be Paid For
- What you are Good At
Now, I’m a sucker for Venn diagrams in general but this one is really poignant. It’s actually a bit funny that the Eighth Grade version of me found the fulfillment of the “What you Love” and “What you are Good At” axes of the diagram but had no idea about the “What the World Needs” and “What you can be Paid For” axes might be.
After I gave up on the English major version “What you Love” and “What you are Good At” parts of who I am for lack of an idea of how the “What the World Needs” and “What you can be Paid For” parts fit in, I took some time away to just go and get a job and make some money and pay some bills and have some fun with whatever was left.
Along comes Kelly. I met my best friend in all of humanity and I had a specific and immediate need to be the best me I could be in order to attempt to take care of her and the kids forever and always.
Suddenly, Ikigai is back in the picture. Along comes computer science. I did rather poorly at it when I took a programming class at Millersville. However, when I was sufficiently motivated and given more attention by the programming instructors I came out of the program with a 4.0 GPA and was invited to give a speech at my graduation ceremony.
The other two axes of my love for Venn diagrams suddenly came into focus. Not only could I love and be good at Venn diagrams, but the world actually needs them and I can be paid to do them. Okay, so I’m not literally drawing intersected circles or ovals on a piece of paper like I was in Eighth Grade. SQL is the practical, digital expression of a Venn diagram in service of some collection of information.
Whether it was the customers of an experimental phone/cable streaming content service in Omaha, Nebraska, or the customers of a cable company in Sweden, the users of a project management and support ticket tool, the staff and management of a variety of county government agencies or even the owners and employees of a variety of chemical companies across the face of our beautiful planet, I have the ability to not only create virtual Venn diagrams that put together useful bits of information but I can get paid for it because it’s needed.
Fortunately, the other thing that I had walked away from suddenly had the missing axes become available to me. Back in the 80s, I might have been good at writing and loved doing so, but I wasn’t good enough to get paid for it and it was somewhat up in the air as to whether or not the world needed it. Things have changed. Self-publishing is now a profoundly profitable avenue for would-be authors who can’t get in the door with the major publishing houses. Whether or not the world needs my stories is still in question, but three out of four ain’t bad.
So, I have the good fortune to have not one, but two types of Ikigai. If you’re feeling a bit lost or wondering what your purpose in life actually is, check into the concept of Ikigai. It’s likely that you have at least one solid nexus of value exchange that you can hitch your wagon to.
I’ve got to get back to work on this year’s seasonal romcom now. Talk to you Wednesday…
To paraphrase Robert Frost: The woods are lovely, dark and deep, but I have promises to keep, and thousands of words before I sleep, and thousands of words before I sleep…