And now. We get to the nitty gritty behind this blog.
So far we’ve talked about making a house a home, practicing religion, mental illness, education, resting, being kind, learning from the history to better move into the future, on being crazy, on being vulnerable, on being unemployed, quitting and creativity. If there are some of you out there who have been following my blog on the GSO Compassion Mission, perhaps you’ve been wondering what I’ve been getting at by writing on all these topics. Understandable.
I’ve written on all these topics in an effort to practice storytelling. It’s been my conscious effort to relate each story to me or make each story/blog something that’s easy to relate to. This way, when people participate in the building and working with the GSO Compassion Mission, they’ll feel like they have a stake in it as well, and that’s what’s most important; to have a stake in it. This is not just a home for a certain type of people or population. This is a HOME for everyone. A home for you.
I want my mom to come to this house and meditate and help grow fruits and vegetables in the raiki garden and the greenhouses. I want some of my girlfriends to come and help bake pies for a holiday or special occasion and bond. I want my friends to come and volunteer and help with the house and those that come to it. You see where I’m going? I want people to have an investment in this house because it will be their house as well in a way.
So now you might ask “Well, what about that Home Depot apron at the beginning of this post?” Home Depot is where I will be getting my inspiration and information from. When I think of building or renovating anything, I think of a Home and I think of the Home Depot. They have a lot of How-To workshops on most weekends, they have a whole How-To section of their website featuring tips, blogs, projects and videos. Even if you start out not knowing what you’re doing, I’d like to think that a few trips to Home Depot and ample time on their website can help you figure it out! There are even some free samples of certain items like carpets, hardwoods and paint that can help you get on your way, and it’s those samples as well as their online info and workshops that I will be using to make this communal dream a reality.
I will be looking for powers from Home Depot and the Internet to help me and my community to not only build the home, but to make it as sustainable and green as possible. That way, it won’t only be a home to the community, it will be benefiting the environment, which we all know effects each and every one of us every day.
So if you’re reading this, please contact me at home4gso@yahoo.com to get started on this home for you! Finally.
I’ve realized that I’ve been using my left brain so much recently, that I’ve forgotten what it’s like to use the right brain. At least like it is depicted in this picture. And my soul screams at me every time I do something based in logic and numbers and I do it well. I’m a really good and hard worker so of course I learn quickly, I get jobs done, I call it a day. But by the time I get home from said jobs, my brain’s exhausted, and I don’t even know what it’s like to do or see anything creative. I just wanna go to bed.
But I cannot express how important it is to keep being creative no matter what kind of left brain analytical job you have. If you continue just crunching in numbers all day, you’ll be a number. A crunched one, at that. You’ll walk around through life like I tend to do before I find something colorful to work on. You’ll be aggravated. You’ll be grumpy. You’ll be resentful of people who do creative things and wonder why you’re stuck. Break out! Watch something visually stimulating! Put your hand in some paint and smack it on some canvas and smile. Watch a movie, listen to some music, read something that doesn’t make any sense. Just be free!
And know that just because society and the world stresses the fact that you should use that left analytical side all the time just to get through the day, don’t forget that you’re more than that. You’re colorful. You’re a soul. You create even if all you can create is a semi-straight line. Life is colorful and it’s happening all around you. Not in your cubicle, so don’t let anyone tell you differently. Go out there and be colorful and smile 🙂
About a week ago, I found this article online from the Wall Street Journal: http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2013/04/09/good-news-more-people-are-quitting-jobs/ Oddly enough, I found it at work while someone was trying to teach me something. We had to wait for this super slow internet connection to take us to the site we needed, but the home page was set on the Wall Street Journal. So it was one of those awkward moments where I saw this title: “Good News, More People Are Quitting Jobs” and I almost laughed out loud. The weird thing was that my coworker didn’t. It was one of those places where you come in, you do your job, you get out, yada yada yada.
Once I had some time alone, I laughed out loud even more! This article says, and I quote:
“The 140,000 rise since December came almost entirely from people quitting. That’s a positive for the labor markets because typically people quit when they are confident about their ability to find another job quickly.
In a speech in March, Fed vice chair Janet Yellen said she would be looking at the quit rate as a sign of any sustained improvement in the labor markets.
Right now, the rate (the number of quits as a percentage of employment) is low by historical standards, but a pick-up “would signal that workers perceive that their chances to be rehired are good — in other words, that labor demand has strengthened” she said.”
My first thought was that perhaps people weren’t quitting because they were “confident about their ability to find another job quickly”, but maybe they were quitting because their job sucked. Maybe it was taking a physical and emotional toll on them. Maybe they’ve seen more of their coworkers than their own loved ones, family and friends. Maybe they were so angry after work that they’d come home and complain endlessly until their spouse was like “Gosh! Why won’t you just go ahead and QUIT ALREADY! Geez..” and it was starting to create a rift between them. Maybe x y or z, right? Not so much that they’re confident in finding another job, or quitting means the economy’s getting better.
So I saw the article and I laughed. In my opinion, quitting your job can mean only a handful of things. You’ve had enough of your job, right? So you either have truly found something better, you need some time off, or you’re going to start something new on your own. Vary rarely do people talk about the need to have time off for yourself or your families. People don’t talk about being entrepreneurs very often, they just get excited when people show up as such “magical things” that come up with these new things that either benefit our society or ourselves. So, what’s the other option? The economy must be doing better! Not so much.
People are still unemployed, people are still having trouble finding jobs and feeding their families, and maybe if we emphasized the act of “making a job” instead of “finding a job”, we’d be in a better situation all around. That would encourage everyone to be change, ya know? That would encourage people to be gainfully employed as I said in my last post. Perhaps sit with their other unemployed friends and not wallow in their sorrows about being unemployed, but actually be HAPPY that they’re unemployed because now they get the chance to come up with something good. And it’s those pow wows and bonfires that could be the moments that turn things around. The moments that give people chances to figure things out for the better. Not just run in, collect a pay check, go home and drink until it’s Friday.
Maybe if more people quit, oddly enough, more stuff would get done. But we’ll never know until people say it’s time to go.
I must admit. I’ve had some of the best times of my life while being unemployed.
There’s a huge stigma on not having a job and being unemployed, which makes me think about the question people ask before they find out you don’t have a job. They ask “Are you gainfully employed?” Time and time again people ask this question and we answer it as yes or no but we never wonder what that question means.
The definition of gainfully is “profitable” right? So in a way, people are asking if you’re profiting from your job. In a way, you could be profiting monetarily, emotionally, physically. But if you are not getting what you need from your job, then the next time someone asks if you’re gainfully employed, you can say “No. I’m gainfully unemployed” and they won’t know what to say! You gain nothing from working 8-5 in a job you hate. So you can be employed, but not gainfully. However, if you’re unemployed and you’ve figured out all the free things to do in town and you’re happy every day and every night, then you are gainfully unemployed.
I encourage people to contemplate their employment or unemployment status. Be gainfully unemployed all day. And if you’re employed, make sure you find ways to be gainfully employed so the next time anybody asks you “Are you gainfully employed right now?” you’ll know exactly what to say.
I cannot stress enough how important it is to ask questions. But I’ve learned that nobody’s really used to asking questions or answering them. In today’s society we pride ourselves on being able to just keep it moving. To figure it out. Do it on our own. But sometimes you get to points during your day (whether you’re at work or wherever), where you need to ask a question.
When we’re kids, and on the first day of classes in higher education, teachers say “if you have a question, just raise your hand” or “don’t be afraid to speak up and ask questions”. But in reality, people are not comfortable asking questions because as soon as you ask a question, you get confronted with the fact that you don’t know something. And you risk that the person you just asked the question to will get confronted with the fact that they don’t know something. When you’re in class, you don’t wanna be put on the spot like that. You want to know the answer to whatever the question is but you don’t want to be that one hand.
It’s okay to ask questions and raise your hand and speak out. I know asking questions makes you vulnerable and uncomfortable.
It’s in asking questions that we get to know what we don’t know. We get to challenge people on what they don’t know. And in letting them answer the question to the best of their ability, we let people teach us. It is in teaching us that we get to move forward.
So ask questions. Answer what you can. Teach others and let them teach you. Move forward together. Be vulnerable together.
On the first day of work and the last day of work this past week, I met a couple of people who might have had some sort of a mental issue. They weren’t like full blown not all there, but it made me wonder what the issue was. While I thought about it, I wondered what it must be like to have any sort of a disorder, especially a mental one, in 2013.
I believe that in today’s society in America there’s a stigma on being any level of crazy. However, employers will exploit these people it seems. Like “Are you crazy?” Employee says “A little, and it makes me–” Employer goes “Okay, great. Can you work?” Employee says “Well yeah, but–” Employer goes “Fantastic, your hired but don’t expect benefits” hahaha. Seriously? Employers take in employees who may have some sort of a mental issue and they won’t address it, they won’t give benefits to help this person work (because we all know that businesses don’t want to spend money to help their employees work better), and they expect them to function like every other relatively normal person in that building.
This only enforces the thought that the person with a mental disorder is not a PERSON with a mental disorder, but more of a number. They are not a person with a soul, they are a set of limbs. A set of hands that can shuffle papers. A set of feet and legs that can stand all day. A set of organs who only require 30 minutes minimum lunch breaks–bare minimum. It doesn’t matter what the deal is, it only matters if the person can work. And that’s not fair to anybody. It’s not fair to people with mental handicaps to be treated that way, and in the long run it’s not fair to the employers. At the end of the day, if you do not take care of your employees (handicapped or not), then you cannot be surprised when they don’t perform at 100% and you as a business do not meet your goals.
Take care of your employees and they will in turn take care of you. Don’t just be content with hearing or noticing that your employee is not 100% or crazy to an extent and be like “Okay, you’re crazy, but are you crazy enough to be able to function and work with this company?” I believe that if you see that off-kiltered-ness that comes with having a disorder, it’s your job as an employer to attempt to figure out what that is in that initial interview in order to stop any future problems. This also seems to open up a line of communication between employee and employer. It lets the employee know that they are not just a number. They are a person. Yes, they are working for a company, but the job is a two way street. The employee works for the employer. And the employer in turn protects the employee so that they can do good work.
And that’s what I think business and work should be like.
Sometimes when people talk they have side conversations. They’ll be talking to a friend about one thing that will remind them of something else, so they’ll talk about that for a little while. Sometimes when people think, they end up brainstorming. Focusing on one topic but later straying into different topics that might prove beneficial to the original topic. Sometimes when getting things done, you have to imagine for a little while what life will be like if you DON”T get that thing done, and it makes you get that thing done that much quicker. That much better. Sometimes you have to look back in order to continue moving forward.
That’s what this post is all about.
Originally in this work series for this blog, I had a few topics in mind that I was going to write on. So I put the little notes in my iPhone and told myself that I’d come back to them later. But when I did come back to them and started trying to find corresponding Ted Talks and videos for these posts, I found that I ended up looking up the opposite topics instead which only made my own main topics that much more meaningful. Because really, it’s the presence of the opposite forces that make the other forces so meaningful to us.
You’re in a good relationship. When you think on your bad relationships and all those ex’s, it makes you appreciate your current partner that much more. You have this job. When you think about either not having a job or you think of all those that don’t have a job, it makes you work that much harder and appreciate your job that much more. And the ultimate opposites example is that when you live your life and you think about those who are incarcerated or in hospitals or even worse: dead…it makes you go outside and breathe the air because you can. It makes you experience things more because you’re able. It makes you appreciate your body and your surroundings that much more.
So in thinking about that concept, and the concept of life and opposites, I found this talk on Ted.com from David R. Dow entitled “Lessons from death row inmates”. It’s not what you think. But it is an example on how thinking in terms of the opposite direction can help you continue to move forward. In this case, it s is in terms of how somebody commits a murder and is subsequently executed. In terms of that particular case, in order to prevent those things from happening again in the future, you have to think back and find out where you can intervene. According to Mr. Dow, there are multiple places to do so. So, in thinking about inmates and murders, you think towards life. You think of how precious that is, and in saving the future of that inmate you save their lives and the lives of their victims as well. See how that works? Just focus on opposites and see where that takes you.
This is the first of at least 6 posts in The Work Series.
I am kicking this off as the first post because I just experienced something that egged me on to write it.
So I just started this job. I started working at another temp agency recently and they gave me a pretty good deal of a job to work this week as well as the half of the week after next. Of course, as is Murphy’s Law, this week has been incredibly busy for the people around me and so, I’ve had to work my day job and a night job one after the other this whole week. Most people can pull that off relatively well. It’s just that I’ve been working all day and all night at various things (trying to keep things moving) since about this time last week without a break. My break comes when I’m sleeping pretty much. We all know that is no way to live. But sometimes that’s the way it is and there is no alternative. Truly.
Having to work these two jobs this week, especially with tomorrow being the end of this week, I have been especially sensitive to people but I’ve had no time to react. Thank goodness. I’ve worked at a job this week where everyone is pretty either passive aggressive or just passive or overly kind to the point where it can be weird. But I’ve dealt with it. Better to be kind than rude, right? Well at the second job is the complete opposite sometimes where people can be short tempered and rude. For instance. I slightly overcharged a customer in which case right away he yelled “Ahhhhhh that’s wroooooonnnnng….” and told me the price. Me, not wanting to bother with him, just charged what he said. When I told him afterwards to have a good night (which I still kind of meant), he just said “Mm.” and left. And I don’t know why that hit me so hard. Maybe it’s because I’m tired. Or overworked or something. Maybe I’m a little frayed around the edges and that “Mm” was the straw that broke my back. But it sucked. And then I had another customer who came in and said “Hi how are you Newport short soft pack.” Which is really “Hi, how are you?” and “I’d like a soft pack of Newport shorts” in one sentence.
As much as I like to give people the benefit of the doubt and treat them how they’d like to be treated, I know they would not like to be treated the way they treat other people. Because that would be rude. And uncalled for. Right? That spans across the board, really. If I treated people the way they treated me or those around them, they would not like me. Then they wonder why nobody likes them. Which makes them somehow justify their bad behavior and general disdain for people.
But at the end of the day, how would you have rather spent your time that day? At the end of your life, what would you like to see on your play by play? Sometimes I think, as my chest tightens and my blood pressure rises (at the age of 25), that it would be best to simply be kind to others. Because really. It’s a lot easier and a lot better for you to just be nice to people.
You don’t feel vomitous and full of bile when you smile.
So smile. And be nice to be people. So you can know what’s like to have people be nice to you.
I recently realized that from the age of pre-k (whenever that is) up until a year and a half ago, I never took a break. I love school. And now that my eyes are pretty open, I’ve realized that perhaps school was like a vortex. Or a walled off city. Kind of like in The Lorax where the townspeople live in this shiny happy place until that one kid goes outside the gates and realizes that there are no trees. It was like every year from pre-k to a year and a half ago was a land full of trees. A land full of possibility and the land with trees makes you think that you can plant more trees when you leave. But it’s very hard to do that. And society makes this so on purpose. American society does not want anybody (even me) to take a break long enough to think about how there might not be more trees. They just want you to think you can always plant more and as long as that option’s there, there’s always a choice. But the thing is that once it comes time to make that choice, you’re too tired to even lift a finger anymore.
I worked in a warehouse for a little while and I came up with the above conclusion in that situation. I realized that people want to change. I want society to change, as does many people. But the only way to give yourself time to figure out those things or even figure out things about yourself, is to take a break. It’s just a shame that society and the workforce makes it so you’re either too busy or stressed or bored to be motivated and change. If enough people just took breaks, they’d realize what could be done to make change happen. And some societies would like to make things worse instead of changing for the better.
That’s one reason why I’m trying to work on the GSO Compassion Mission. There will be ample places to rest and recoup. It will be a place where it’s okay to take a break. People stress the work-life balance all the time, but if the only time you can attempt that balance is on the car ride home or while you’re sleeping…then no wonder everything takes so long to change. NObody’s given us permission to just stop and breathe. Find the balance. Because when we find the balance, peace will seem that much more possible. But who wants that? That’s why you have to find the balance, and even if you can’t in that moment, you need to think of what can be achieved if that balance is made possible. That’s how things can change if you let them.
At the age of almost 26 years old, I have two bachelors degrees technically speaking. My first bachelors was obtained in the conventional manner. My second one was obtained in the less conventional manner, and what’s sad is that people will say that the second one doesn’t count. But when people ask me about my level of education, I say I have two bachelors. I am getting ahead of myself.
I was raised in a very liberal environment. And it scares me sometimes to think about how not liberal my life became. And it frustrates me when I think about it. Because really. Why do educators (the good ones, anyways) tell you that creativity is the way to go and to let your mind fly free and all of this? Do they KNOW that when you get older it’s not about what you do, but who you know? Do they know that you’ll be stuck in mind numbing high school and college classes that just push you through to the worker bee factory until you wake up and you’re crunching numbers from 9am-5pm, living for 5pm on Friday so you can start drinking? Do they know that? Or is it really a test as to who holds on to those basic truths of art, love, compassion and community as an older adult? Because really, people…if you hold on to those truths as an adult, people think that you’re childish and naive. But when you’re a kid, people tell you to stay that way. So you should stay that way until it’s not in your best interest to do so anymore, in which case you’re more than welcome to join the “adult” world of prescription pills, cocktails, and “Life”.
Huh?
Anyways. I was brought up in a private school for a few years and those years were my most formative. Those were the most pertinent experiences of my life because they stuck with me and they still do to this day. I was taught music by a professor named Mr. Sams who’s one of the lading teachers in the Orff-Schulwerk method; a free-flowing way of teaching and learning music based on senses and emotions and not so much repetition. It teaches you to be yourself and embrace whatever that may be. And so when I got out of private school and moved to California and North Carolina and Georgia and all these places, I had a very open perception of the world and people around me. I still do. And people still say I’m being ridiculous. And even to this day when I get hurt by people in the most painful of ways, I learn from them and I say that they are the exception and not the rule.
I enjoyed middle school. I feel like those years were still highly formative. Very creative and productive years for me. Then the usual pangs of high school were pretty much covered up by the fact that I was in band. I was in band all through high school and into the first couple years of college. So when people talk about their high school experience being sucky and them running into all these different issues, I don’t know what they were talking about. I was in band. And my freshman/sophomore year of college, those usual freshman year things I didn’t do much of because I was in band. I changed my major from Music Education to English around my Sophomore/Junior Year at which point I remember myself crying next to my dorm when I made that decision. My mother was fussing at me about how I was giving up on my dream, and I believed her and it hurt. Mainly because I believed her, but I also felt in my heart like I was making the right decision and I didn’t know why she thought I wasn’t. So I switched my major to English. Turns out an English degree amounts to a lot of reading, right? Yup. Lots of texts, lots of papers. Not a lot of emphasis on grammar or those typical English things. People kept assuming that I’d be an English teacher and I was deeply not okay with that, hahah. Looking back, I’m glad I didn’t even try to go that route. In hindsight, considering that I didn’t actually learn much grammar related anything until I got into the Film degree, I don’t know what I would’ve been able to teach kids because I would have been no more prepared than them. I would’ve spent 4 years learning a bunch about classics that I had no time to truly embrace, with no true knowledge, no practical writing skills and for some reason people were trying to pressure me into being an English teacher. Hm.
So I graduated in May of 2010 with a bunch of people in blue caps and gowns with a Bachelors in English. Even at the ceremony, they lumped you together by degree. When your section was called to stand, you did and you waved at your family as an individual in the middle of the rest of the sheep…When I graduated with that degree, I wanted to write music articles and more specifically do film. Music documentaries. So, I came back that fall for a bachelors in Film. It was very intensive and I remember putting a lot pressure on myself to learn what I could learn but do way more outside of class because I knew what I was in that program for. Music documentaries and to film for change in some way or another. Eventually I became very frustrated with the concept that teachers were pushing the in class parts of things and would give you the third degree if you tried to check out equipment for anything that was “non class related” . So when the spring semester came and I didn’t have the funds to continue, I continued “off the grid”. I started a documentary I really wanted to work on. I worked intensely and started a production company of sorts. I networked and worked on marketing. Made a website from a wix page and a facebook and twitter account to boot. I worked really fast for an extended period of time. So much so, that by the end of the spring semester when people in the labs were talking about graduating, I felt like I was graduating too; I had done that much work. But it won’t even count technically speaking. It counts to me.
What I’m saying here is that education is not only what you learn in the classroom. Professors should know that and they should encourage thinking and acting out of the classroom. They should not degrade or dismiss students when they ask questions about what’s going on on the “outside” or “in the real world” because that is where they LIVE. They don’t live in the library stacks or in the professors syllabi or in the professors head. Students are not one track beings and they shouldn’t be treated like it. No wonder the majority of people don’t know what to do when they get out of school. No wonder they’re at an impasse when they realize that their degree can’t be applied to the real world. Sure we can work hard and finish assignments and get a degree, but you can’t write “I work hard, finish assignments and I got this degree” on your resume. Good luck finding a job like that, ya know? And now that it’s almost common knowledge that something doesn’t smell right in the state of College, what do we do? Put on the blinders and keep trucking forward even though we all KNOW something isn’t right. That’s the case with every other aspect of american society these days anyways.
So what you have to do is you have to make your life your education. I’ve learned that lesson very well and I’m learning more now than I ever did in all my years in college. I don’t resent the experience or the concept of education, but I resent the way things were handled and how I was handled upon departure from college. So read what you can, act on what you read, teach what you know, and let others teach you. There’s something new to be learned every day.
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the GSO Compassion Mission 
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