Working for yourself...
Even if you have an employer who doesn't appreciate you.
There are careers, jobs, employment and being an entrepreneur with your own business. Not everyone is able to have their own business and run it themselves, some people have careers, but most people have jobs and are employed.
Careers and jobs can be enjoyable and fun and others can simply be employment. With employment your employer only cares that you show up, do what you're told and discourages any independent thinking or initiative. Those jobs are harder when there are also difficult people to deal with daily. I held one once for well over a decade during a previous bad economic era, as soon as I was able, I left it. While doing that job though, I learned as much as I could even though my employer discouraged it, as well as during my time off I earned formal education and did things I enjoyed doing. Most importantly I figured out how to handle being around difficult people.
During this challenging economic period, many people are enduring careers and jobs they would like to get out of but aren't able to due to current conditions. If that is the case, then the best option is challenging yourself to learn as much as you can from that job, which may not necessarily be the skills of the job itself, but other self-development accomplishments such as dealing and coping with problematic people. Additionally also taking the time to learn something else outside of that work to improve your chances for better opportunities in the future. It is difficult, I know. I never thought my work era between 1978 and 1983 would ever end in anything positive. In 1993, ten years after I had left, I had the perspective to look back and appreciate how much the extracurricular work I had done decades prior had paid off. I also recognized that the coping skills and ability to deal with unpleasant people went a long way and were lessons for life.
Coping mechanisms are the key to the door to get what you want.
Right now I have a job that has potential to become a career. I like what I do very much and the people I work with, the one exception is a difficult manager. There's really no other way to state it: she's cranky, irritable, hypercritical and never gives praise; she finds everything that is wrong and nothing that is right. I don't believe she's a mean person, she does have good qualities and for brief periods of time she can be somewhat pleasant. My peers feel the same way as I do about her, therefore I know it's not a personal thing with me.
There are days when it is hard for me to take, especially since I do like the work itself, what I'm learning from it and the potential for growth. It's an exercise in not only learning a new line of work but also something else just as important, recalling how to deal with difficult people. The first lesson I'm still re-learning is not taking it too personally, which is tough. The second is realizing that the other person is probably doing the best they can to cope under the circumstances they're dealing with in life. For the person I'm referring to, the problem is the same as it usually is for other difficult people, their complex, bewildering, problematic behavior is rooted in their own insecurity and doubts about themselves.
The schooling here is coping and overcoming to gain some peace within myself to not let this person bother me and interfere with where I want to go. In order to do that I have to reach back in time and recall skills that I haven't had to use in quite awhile. It's a work in progress but the past has also taught me that in the long term, it is worthwhile and to my advantage. The other person I can do nothing about, they will have to live with themselves, I can only deal with how I control myself within the circumstances.
3/16/11
3/15/11
3/14/11
Geography of the Mind
Just when you thought...
Nothing else could happen, something does and we all know about it immediately.
For a moment in time, the year 2010 seemed to give us and the world a brief respite. It felt as if, although thinking people realized it wouldn't take hold, we may not be in a fully sustainable economic recovery but at least there was a pause or suspension of things getting worse. We were lulled by overkill of good news of small magnitude. The wishful hope I think most of us had was that the economic crisis would not get too much worse and we could stabilize as a people and begin the laborious task of slowly rebuilding. It seems though the dawn of 2011 has brought home to society the realization that we are not going to get out of this universe changing crackup so easily. On the economic front in the United States, a large segment of Americans now recognize that we are indeed in a genuine depression. We'll likely skip spring and head straight into long, hot summer afternoons followed by cold fall and winter nights.
We've been recently jolted by big, bad news. Another shoe may drop. Anything can happen. Things happen in threes. We will all know about it at the same time.
There are uprisings all across the Middle East, which at a minimum threatens our oil supplies and is bound to cause global economic problems. Even larger than that, the turbulence of the Jasmine Revolution, is far from over and more is to come. There is now the earthquake and tsunami in Japan, taking a terrible toll on the people of that country. Worse, nuclear meltdown is a very real possibility, bringing to the people of Japan the horror of revisiting a different nuclear disaster reminiscent of the Second World War. Japan is the third largest economy in the world and this event will have a financial effect on all of us.
What is next? One of the Four Horsemen? Conquest, War, Famine or Death? We will know within minutes if a White, Red, Black or Pale horse arrives.
Any number of things could bring another cataclysmic event to us soon. The debt of the European nations and the US government is one. The Currency Crisis could suddenly make itself obvious as the insolvency of governments reveals itself. Is a widespread incurable global disease possible in this day and age? A technological meltdown? Food shortages everywhere, including first world nations?
No one knows. Nothing could happen since so much already has. The world is random. Everyone will be aware of it instantly.
In the long course of history, Classical Ancient, Middle Ages and Modern, humans have suffered and thrived simultaneously but in the first two periods, news and knowledge was local and took a long time to spread. In the Modern era globalization began and technological progress, for better or worse, advanced and is omnipresent in our lives. The breadth of communications that span the globe is a critical component of input into our minds with a subliminal effect. The social web is the epitome of oversharing personal thought.
This is the period of Too Much Information. Media Saturation. Information Overload. Whatever you prefer to call it, I maintain one of our highest priorities should be managing the flow of current material that enters into our brains. We may be people of the latest Modern age but I'm not sure that as mortal souls most of us have caught up with the rapidity of the advances science and technology have made. Especially those of the last thirty years.
I believe the effects of instant connections have altered the psychology of the larger population, affecting the economic crisis and the way people perceive and react to it.
Mass marketing of mass communications isn't necessarily good for the masses. It's unlikely that progression of widespread communications is going to slow down. The effect of globalization, technological innovations and communication has been one of the major reasons why the impact of this economic depression is different. Prior to the 1929 stock market crash and the Great Depression of the thirties, drastic economic downturns were referred to as Panics. Just a Panics came to be called Recessions and Depressions, the nomenclature of economic crisis has changed to Disruption, due to instant messaging. This is not only an economic depression and change of a way of life but also a disruption of great magnitude because we are at a zenith of communications. The progression from local news and knowledge to global information is made complete. All that remains is improving the tools that transmit it.
Know your own mind. Guard and protect it as securely as you would your body. Consider what you feed into your head as much as you consider what you should eat.
Understanding that this economic disruption is not only a life-altering physical endurance contest, it also is a groupthink mental challenge, is pivotal to understanding how to survive relatively intact. Stress is a demanding thing, it eats you up, that is why it is important to learn how to cope with it and prevent it from distracting you as much as possible. Learn it, live it, to do more than survive it, but thrive in it.
3/13/11
Arizona Landscape
Memorial to Arizona Confederate Troops...
A nation that forgets its past has no future.
photo by Zeff Nelson
A nation that forgets its past has no future.
3/12/11
Music Break: Aaron Lewis
Country Boy...
with George Jones, Charlie Daniels, Chris Young
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsQzw_Ax8Cw&feature=channel_video_title
with George Jones, Charlie Daniels, Chris Young
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsQzw_Ax8Cw&feature=channel_video_title
3/11/11
Writing: Fact and Fiction
One thing I've learned...
Taking a class in fiction wasn't a mistake for me but it has taught me that writing fiction is probably a mistake for me. The reasons why I've reached that conclusion have already been documented in previous blog posts. Writing nonfiction is much more appropriate for me, but one thing I've learned for certain in writing workshop, is that I've gotten lazy and need to tighten up my style. I've learned it in two ways. Proofreading my own material and also receiving criticism for errors in style. Another way I've learned is reading other people's material, although they have a college education and their fiction is pretty good, their style, grammar and punctuation is sometimes appalling. I can say without too much arrogance, that although I make errors, they are not on the level I see too often with some other writers.
It would be trite to go on about the failings of our educational system that people graduate from high school and college without knowing how to structure a sentence, paragraph and a piece of writing with a beginning, middle and end. This we already know. It's disappointing but I have been seeing it at work, online and in email, at school and in publications written by professional authors for enough years now that I am no longer surprised. What I've been doing recently, which has now been reinforced by a blog post written by Mike on rock and confusion, is brushing up on my own style or rather lack of it at times. I'm reviewing simple grammar books as a reminder to avoid common pitfalls we all land in. Also I'm going through different style manuals and the MLA Handbook. It's not so easy to be critical of others when you look at the correct etiquette of writing and realize where you fall short yourself.
Taking a class in fiction wasn't a mistake for me but it has taught me that writing fiction is probably a mistake for me. The reasons why I've reached that conclusion have already been documented in previous blog posts. Writing nonfiction is much more appropriate for me, but one thing I've learned for certain in writing workshop, is that I've gotten lazy and need to tighten up my style. I've learned it in two ways. Proofreading my own material and also receiving criticism for errors in style. Another way I've learned is reading other people's material, although they have a college education and their fiction is pretty good, their style, grammar and punctuation is sometimes appalling. I can say without too much arrogance, that although I make errors, they are not on the level I see too often with some other writers.
It would be trite to go on about the failings of our educational system that people graduate from high school and college without knowing how to structure a sentence, paragraph and a piece of writing with a beginning, middle and end. This we already know. It's disappointing but I have been seeing it at work, online and in email, at school and in publications written by professional authors for enough years now that I am no longer surprised. What I've been doing recently, which has now been reinforced by a blog post written by Mike on rock and confusion, is brushing up on my own style or rather lack of it at times. I'm reviewing simple grammar books as a reminder to avoid common pitfalls we all land in. Also I'm going through different style manuals and the MLA Handbook. It's not so easy to be critical of others when you look at the correct etiquette of writing and realize where you fall short yourself.
3/10/11
Video: Ron Paul
Country Is Bankrupt and Congress Won't Admit It...
Debt will not be paid but repudiated.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yEVjj03_TYU&feature=feedu
Debt will not be paid but repudiated.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yEVjj03_TYU&feature=feedu
Economic, Social and Geopolitical
A brief history of the Federal government and unionism run amuck...
Or how we got into this mess now and why the country is divisive.
America is a big country with wide opinions as large as the population. We are at a moment in our history where our judgment and reasoning is diverse and our opinions are also divisive. In my lifetime the last time we were at this point was in the late sixties and early seventies in the "love it or leave it" period. In it's simplest form today it takes on the debate of libertarian conservative versus progressive liberal ideals.
Progressive Liberalism (as opposed to Classical Liberalism) as a movement started to take hold over a hundred years ago before the First World War. Theodore Roosevelt was the first President to push Progressivism. The consumerism of today is a result of the shift, at that time, in emphasis of managing the national economy from free market business to the regulation of business in favor of the consumer. The idea was that the consumer was more important than the producer. Consumers were the driver of the economy rather than the producers of goods and their rights to products were more important than those who invented, created, manufactured and marketed them.
In 1927 a group of elite academics, unionists, peace activists and radical leftists took a cruise to the then unrecognized Soviet Union to meet Stalin and tour Russia. Their mission was to be self-appointed unofficial envoys of the United States to document the marvels of the collectivist economy of the Soviets. They were given lavish guided tours to selected places that were successful planned economic enterprises and shielded from anything else. They documented their experiences and wrote papers, books and newspaper and magazine articles extolling the virtues of the collectivist society they witnessed. The importance of the trip and passengers is that many of these people become prominent in Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal administrations.
When the legacy became entrenched.
FDR tired of these people and their experiments by 1937 when the second wave of Depression hit from 1937 to 1939. He had been re-elected in 1936 in a landslide but it was becoming clear that the collectivists and their programs had not solved the problems of the economy. In fact, they made it worse, but the damage was done. The established major institutions we are stuck with today including Social Security and liberalized unionism. After the Second World War, the answer to converting from a wartime economy to a peaceful one was in promoting mass produced cookie cutter housing and consumer goods. The remnants of both Roosevelts, regulated monopolies, Social Security, federal government economic planning and unionism were accepted and tolerated as necessary evils.
Those were the seeds planted that the federal government and programs, as we know it today, mushroomed out of control. President Johnson exacerbated the situation by his Great Society programs. Later the Justice Department in law suits started in his administration resulted in Affirmative Action quotas forced onto private employers by consent decree. Public employee unionism also dramatically increased in this era.
To fully understand the consumerism mindset and sense of entitlement many Americans hold today it is important to see how long it took us to get here and how. In order to unravel it, which we must if we are to recover from our current economic crisis, cannot take a hundred years but must be unwound relatively quickly. If we are to recover from it, otherwise we really will spiral downward, a proposition I don't think most Americans are willing to accept.
Why we're divided today.
Due to the current administration, the ineffective political class of both parties in Washington, the divisiveness we are seeing today is a result of a growing movement that is getting stronger. The loose coalition of the Tea Party is the tip of the iceberg. The sentiment they represent is growing stronger among average Americans who don't necessarily align themselves with any political party of movement. The reason the unionists and supporters resistance, especially in the public sector, is so virulently strong (witness Wisconsin as an example) is they recognize the threat to their status quo. Whether they publicly acknowledge this or not, the Progressive Liberals of today realize they are losing the hearts and minds of the American people. In one election three years ago they won their last major victory and gradually they are losing more and more battles.
Some states, Arizona and Montana among them, are taking steps to buck the Federal government and loosen the grip. The process is called "nullification" and refers to state legislatures and elected officials passing bills and declaring that certain federal government edicts are "null and void" because these mandates violate the limits of authority as stated in the US Constitution. Some of their actions seem extreme to a number of people but they don't realize that some of these actions are literal and others are symbolic. Regardless, the trend is there and it is growing.
In Montana a state legislator, Krayton Kerns, is proposing a bill that would nullify the federal Endangered Species Act "null and void" in his state. According to an article in the Great Falls Tribune he argues that the federal government is in serious debt and the opponents to his bill, countering that this legislation would cost the state federal dollars, are arguing over money that isn't there.
"We may as well be arguing over pixie dust. It has as much intrinsic value, the federal government is going down, and you know when a republic dies, it's kind of an ugly thing. There will be no money in the future. Whether we argue about it or not is a nonissue."
On the federal level, Congressman Ron Paul is making the same argument he has for years. Since the US ended the convertibility of the dollar to gold we are using fiat money. Fiat money only has value because the government has laws that say it does. In other words, we keep printing more and more money that has no real intrinsic value to dig ourselves out of debt. Instead we are digging ourselves into a deeper hole.
What is going to happen.
Fear is a powerful thing and many people operate out of fear. The divisiveness of opinion today is driven by the fear of those who depend on the federal government to continue printing money, versus those who recognize that money has no real value and is leading to the inevitable collapse of the monetary system. Sides are forming up and soon there will be no middle of the road dilly dallying around it. The debate revolves around a number of issues but a few serve as focal points.
On the one side, are those who want to see the federal government get its grip off state and local governments and on the other side are those that want more federal control. There are many who want to be free of government interference in our personal lives and some who want the security of entitlement. It is not easily divided up by political parties but each side has organized representation. They are symbolized by the Tea Party movement and organized labor because they are the most visible. They are by no means the only brokers in this divisive war of opinions but it is becoming clearer, as our economic and social fabric dissolves, that we cannot go on this way.
My thought is that we will survive the increasing fights over how much federal government interference people will allow. At the core will be those who are against the status quo of a so-called planned economy and those who are proponents of it. To me the resolution, which will be a revolution in itself, will come when the bottom line is finally tallied. The government really has no money and we may as well be arguing over pixie dust. The system will break and fall and we the people, will have to pick up the pieces and put it back together.
When it's all over and the dust settles, we will be stronger people less dependent on a consumer economy, achievement oriented where accomplishing something matters, knowing things that are important, such as reading, writing, history, geography and math, working hard results in real reward. Above all we will be proud of our country all over again and what it stands for and what we have done for it and ourselves.
Or how we got into this mess now and why the country is divisive.
America is a big country with wide opinions as large as the population. We are at a moment in our history where our judgment and reasoning is diverse and our opinions are also divisive. In my lifetime the last time we were at this point was in the late sixties and early seventies in the "love it or leave it" period. In it's simplest form today it takes on the debate of libertarian conservative versus progressive liberal ideals.
Progressive Liberalism (as opposed to Classical Liberalism) as a movement started to take hold over a hundred years ago before the First World War. Theodore Roosevelt was the first President to push Progressivism. The consumerism of today is a result of the shift, at that time, in emphasis of managing the national economy from free market business to the regulation of business in favor of the consumer. The idea was that the consumer was more important than the producer. Consumers were the driver of the economy rather than the producers of goods and their rights to products were more important than those who invented, created, manufactured and marketed them.
In 1927 a group of elite academics, unionists, peace activists and radical leftists took a cruise to the then unrecognized Soviet Union to meet Stalin and tour Russia. Their mission was to be self-appointed unofficial envoys of the United States to document the marvels of the collectivist economy of the Soviets. They were given lavish guided tours to selected places that were successful planned economic enterprises and shielded from anything else. They documented their experiences and wrote papers, books and newspaper and magazine articles extolling the virtues of the collectivist society they witnessed. The importance of the trip and passengers is that many of these people become prominent in Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal administrations.
When the legacy became entrenched.
FDR tired of these people and their experiments by 1937 when the second wave of Depression hit from 1937 to 1939. He had been re-elected in 1936 in a landslide but it was becoming clear that the collectivists and their programs had not solved the problems of the economy. In fact, they made it worse, but the damage was done. The established major institutions we are stuck with today including Social Security and liberalized unionism. After the Second World War, the answer to converting from a wartime economy to a peaceful one was in promoting mass produced cookie cutter housing and consumer goods. The remnants of both Roosevelts, regulated monopolies, Social Security, federal government economic planning and unionism were accepted and tolerated as necessary evils.
Those were the seeds planted that the federal government and programs, as we know it today, mushroomed out of control. President Johnson exacerbated the situation by his Great Society programs. Later the Justice Department in law suits started in his administration resulted in Affirmative Action quotas forced onto private employers by consent decree. Public employee unionism also dramatically increased in this era.
To fully understand the consumerism mindset and sense of entitlement many Americans hold today it is important to see how long it took us to get here and how. In order to unravel it, which we must if we are to recover from our current economic crisis, cannot take a hundred years but must be unwound relatively quickly. If we are to recover from it, otherwise we really will spiral downward, a proposition I don't think most Americans are willing to accept.
Why we're divided today.
Due to the current administration, the ineffective political class of both parties in Washington, the divisiveness we are seeing today is a result of a growing movement that is getting stronger. The loose coalition of the Tea Party is the tip of the iceberg. The sentiment they represent is growing stronger among average Americans who don't necessarily align themselves with any political party of movement. The reason the unionists and supporters resistance, especially in the public sector, is so virulently strong (witness Wisconsin as an example) is they recognize the threat to their status quo. Whether they publicly acknowledge this or not, the Progressive Liberals of today realize they are losing the hearts and minds of the American people. In one election three years ago they won their last major victory and gradually they are losing more and more battles.
Some states, Arizona and Montana among them, are taking steps to buck the Federal government and loosen the grip. The process is called "nullification" and refers to state legislatures and elected officials passing bills and declaring that certain federal government edicts are "null and void" because these mandates violate the limits of authority as stated in the US Constitution. Some of their actions seem extreme to a number of people but they don't realize that some of these actions are literal and others are symbolic. Regardless, the trend is there and it is growing.
In Montana a state legislator, Krayton Kerns, is proposing a bill that would nullify the federal Endangered Species Act "null and void" in his state. According to an article in the Great Falls Tribune he argues that the federal government is in serious debt and the opponents to his bill, countering that this legislation would cost the state federal dollars, are arguing over money that isn't there.
"We may as well be arguing over pixie dust. It has as much intrinsic value, the federal government is going down, and you know when a republic dies, it's kind of an ugly thing. There will be no money in the future. Whether we argue about it or not is a nonissue."
On the federal level, Congressman Ron Paul is making the same argument he has for years. Since the US ended the convertibility of the dollar to gold we are using fiat money. Fiat money only has value because the government has laws that say it does. In other words, we keep printing more and more money that has no real intrinsic value to dig ourselves out of debt. Instead we are digging ourselves into a deeper hole.
What is going to happen.
Fear is a powerful thing and many people operate out of fear. The divisiveness of opinion today is driven by the fear of those who depend on the federal government to continue printing money, versus those who recognize that money has no real value and is leading to the inevitable collapse of the monetary system. Sides are forming up and soon there will be no middle of the road dilly dallying around it. The debate revolves around a number of issues but a few serve as focal points.
On the one side, are those who want to see the federal government get its grip off state and local governments and on the other side are those that want more federal control. There are many who want to be free of government interference in our personal lives and some who want the security of entitlement. It is not easily divided up by political parties but each side has organized representation. They are symbolized by the Tea Party movement and organized labor because they are the most visible. They are by no means the only brokers in this divisive war of opinions but it is becoming clearer, as our economic and social fabric dissolves, that we cannot go on this way.
My thought is that we will survive the increasing fights over how much federal government interference people will allow. At the core will be those who are against the status quo of a so-called planned economy and those who are proponents of it. To me the resolution, which will be a revolution in itself, will come when the bottom line is finally tallied. The government really has no money and we may as well be arguing over pixie dust. The system will break and fall and we the people, will have to pick up the pieces and put it back together.
When it's all over and the dust settles, we will be stronger people less dependent on a consumer economy, achievement oriented where accomplishing something matters, knowing things that are important, such as reading, writing, history, geography and math, working hard results in real reward. Above all we will be proud of our country all over again and what it stands for and what we have done for it and ourselves.
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