Love Light – Let it Shine!

I don’t know about you, but when I venture out to run my errands and conduct my routine business I run into a lot of other people.  Unhappy people.  You can see it in their faces.

The tension, the anger, the urgency.

That urgency can be about any number of things.  It could be them wondering how they are going to pay the bills, or keep their old car running, or thinking about how unhappy they are in their current relationships.  After all, most of the unhappy people I see are in pairs.  They are griping at each other, seething with hostility, loathing their very existence, or perhaps their partner’s existence.

It strikes me as odd.  Why aren’t there more happy people around?

And then you see someone who is absolutely radiant.  Nothing but happiness, smiles, contentment, joy.  Peace.  Full of life.

What’s going on?  What’s the difference?

They’re in love.

The Smart Pony

Back around the turn of the century, there was a famous Orloy Trotter Horse in Germany who was acclaimed for being able to perform arithmetic and other intellectual feats.   The horse’s name was Clever Hans.

After a formal investigation into his skills, a psychologist claimed the horse was smart, but only in the sense that it paid attention to the reactions and body language of his trainer.  The trainer, it was said, had no idea the horse was eyeing him for the cues on how to respond to the ongoing tests. 

Well, this story is not about Clever Hans.

Warning:  I have a bit of a sarcastic, sardonic, and cynical sense of humor.  I think a lot of people do, but some don’t, and they may not get my attempts to poke fun at things.  That’s ok, but I just wanted to warn the reader that’s where we’re headed today, down sarcastic, cynical lane. 😊

Disclaimer:  And while I’m poking fun at a business conference below, understand that I’m not really trying to belittle the people who made their presentations.  They were all very nice people and some were incredibly smart folks.  That doesn’t mean we can’t have a sense of humor about the topics being presented and the terminology they used.

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Ok, so yesterday I was having a little fun with some new words and phrases coming out of the business sector.  And I ended that post by mentioning something else I did once at a work conference.  Something I thought was rather amusing, and you can do this too the next time you’re at one of those oh-so-boring meetings.

B Plus

Some days, it’s just difficult for me to resist.  Poking fun at language and usage.

Especially with the business community.

Whenever I worked for big organizations, it seemed that some managers were always trying to justify their existence by constantly rebranding the old with a new term, or maybe even coming up with a new label and experiment to further dehumanize the workforce.  After all, it’s easier to mistreat staff and dispose of them that way.

One of my most despised manager’s famous quotes was: “Attrition is our friend.”

I mean, how do you justify having 400 managers for a 400-bed hospital?  And yes, I worked at such a place as an RN.  I used to joke, although it wasn’t that funny, that each patient could have their own personal billing executive, but they had to share their nurse with six other patients.  And when a patient died, I quipped, “I guess we can fire his manager now.”

Lost and Found

Well, I’m back.  Sort of.  And momentarily.

Back where?

The launchpad.  The place I always leave from 🙂

The summer travels are complete and planning is on the way for the next round.  Hopefully some more before winter sets in.  And definitely more on the distant horizon of 2020.

If I had my choice, I’d never land.  I’d stay in perpetual motion.

For the moment, that is not meant to be.

The Only One at the Table

Things are a little different in the world of being single.  When you go out in public, you’re often the odd man or woman out.  And I particularly note this to be the case when you go to a dining establishment.  Even more so if the place has an ego.

Yes, businesses have egos too.  They like to craft an image to promote youth, beauty, and affluence.  If you’re eating there, you must have money, the food must be gourmet, and you must be part of that “elite” class that expects, and gets, the best service.

When You’re Headed West . . .

Yes, the sun rises behind you.

That’s what those side mirrors are for. 🙂

The old, one-handed while driving cell phone shot.

I wanted to offer my apologies as I’m in motion right now and may be absent or here sporadically for a while.  Hopefully, I’ll return occasionally with a good tale or two.  And, of course, to catch up on all of your great posts!

So far, the wildlife and wildflowers have been amazing !  Pics to follow too.

In Metta

 

 

Shuffled – “Here’s Looking at You Kid”

A couple of days ago, I noticed that a reader had liked one of my posts from February.  Now that’s a great thing because it wasn’t one of the stories that was “pinned” to my home page then.  Generally speaking, our older posts drift backward in time and out of the spotlight as we write new ones.  So the reader had to take a little time to hunt this one down.  Or maybe they just stumbled upon it.  Either way, I was happy they found it.

And then I noticed that this particular piece, Coffee, had one of the highest number of likes of all of my posts.

All the Buzz at Work

As you know, I love words and phrases and the way people construct ideas.  Sometimes it’s extremely creative, and other times, well, it gives me a nice laugh.

And, I’m back with another set of buzzwords for the workplace.

So, the new terms for today are “Micromoves,” Productive Distraction,” and “Arrival Fallacy.”

A Moment of Reflection – WTF!

In the past couple of years or so, a small cohort of friends and I have entered into our retirement phases.  Retirement from careers, that is, not life.  In fact, one might say life begins anew at this time.

We suddenly have time to do the things we want.  Of course, we have to figure what those are.

And I was having a discussion with one of those friends yesterday about this very topic because he asked me to read over a article he had written about his experiences and how he is now free of the toxic environment in which he worked.  It’s a good piece and I hope he publishes it somewhere.

If you’re a Facebook friend you will have already seen this, but here is the reply I sent him after reading his piece.  With a couple of minor edits and spacing added for flow  . . .

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Bullshit – Take 2 – Being “Woke” – Part 2

Ok, so yesterday I talked about how I had attempted to write a story about the use of the slang word “Woke,” and how I didn’t quite land on the mark with that first draft.  The post I was working on is part of a series I’ve waded into about the fray between gender roles, well, maybe gender behavior says it better.  See my previous posts, “Query” and “Tse’itsi’nako – Thought Woman ‘Being Woke’ – Part 1.”

So, here’s take two – on the Bullshit post. 😊

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Thank You and Come Again

A while back I wrote a piece called Experimental Writing.  I have taken that post down with about a hundred others, but the point of the piece was that everything we write and put out here for the world to see is a bit of an experiment.

We learn through trial and error what works and what doesn’t. What people like to read, and how they like to read it.

And while my background has me well trained in technical writing, and formalized legal writing, my academic training did little for teaching me what I think is truly important – the art of storytelling.  That’s one of those things I’ve been learning on my own.

The feedback from the WP community is great.

So yesterday I attempted to write what was supposed to be part two of a short series I started playing with about current societal gender roles and the concept of being “conscious” in those roles.  And because of my fascination with word usage and origin, I was poking a little fun at the evolution of the slang word “woke.”

To tackle the controversy surrounding this single-syllable, yes, believe it or not there are folks fighting over ownership rights to a slang word, I had to discuss the concept of “cultural appropriation.” Something that I think has become a bit distorted. Grossly distorted, in fact.

What I ended up with looked a little bit like a cross between editorializing and a legal brief, and I’m not sure anyone would have gotten the type of humor I tried to infuse it with, as I respectfully called Bullshit on it all. 😊

It was a lump of coal.  And as a dear heart once told me, intelligence only goes so far.

She’s right of course.

Realizing that this was probably not my only failure at composing, I thought I should take a moment to thank all my followers out here in WP land.  I greatly appreciate your visits, you trying to digest the meanderings through my mind, and your insightful comments.

You give me courage.  You give me strength.  You give me the will to get back on the horse and throw something out there for the world to see.  Accepting the risk of whether it will fly or falter.

So, thank you all for being here, and please come visit again.  You help me to grow as a writer, and I’m eternally grateful for that.

In Metta

Photo: Back in the saddle, somewhere in time and space.

Neurocognitive Scaffolding

Disclaimer:  Beware – today I dive into a more technical piece of work versus my more poetic stuff 🙂

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I always love it when new terms of art are coined.  The coupling of words and formation of short phrases to describe something, a concept, possibly already known or possibly a new formulation.  It seems to be the perpetual motion of researchers, politicians, and wordsmiths alike, to boil a concept down into a few short syllables to describe something of monumental proportions.

Why?

Well once the label or buzzword or soundbite is created, no one has any need to reference the material supporting it, or even read and digest it for that matter.  It sort of becomes a “given.”  It is a self-explanatory definition that generally becomes universally accepted.

It is the same philosophy journalists use when they try to tell the whole story in just the headline.  Reading the story becomes superfluous, and with lowering attention spans many readers don’t make it past those headlines.

You might even compare this practice to that of our ancient ancestors drawing pictograms and petroglyphs on cave walls.  Reducing an idea to its most elementary form in an attempt to communicate.

Actually, I think images may even be more powerful than words in the sense that they convey detail that encompasses all of the senses that can cross language barriers.  Some days, I would prefer petroglyphs to the written and spoken language 😊

But, should simple or even complex phraseology be given such deference?

I’m not sure.  Such practices have the potential to oversimplify.  And in the case of journalists, many times their stories don’t match their headlines – not even close.

So where am I going with this?  Well, I stumbled upon a new term this week involving our aging brains.  “Neurocognitive Scaffolding.”

First Camp

There is a sort of calm that takes over as twilight turns to night sky.

As the sun sets, the nuclear fuel driving the shifting breezes subsides.  The towering tree branches no longer swaying back and forth.  Releasing their grips with neighboring limbs.  As if some inaudible song had reached the outro of its final chorus and the dancers now return to their seats.  Resting their mighty legs for tomorrows gyrations.