Floating where life takes me - and maybe sticking an oar in, once in a while.
Tuesday, December 20, 2016
It seems my Journey and Advisian’s Journey are headed to a fork in the road. I’m choosing the road less traveled, and Advisian won’t fit down that laneway. I’ll be abandoning this soapbox, but the powers that be have let me put up some closing thoughts and a link to where I’ll continue to jot my thoughts for the few of you who, weirdly, seem to be interested.
Wednesday, November 2, 2016
Knowledge…and Understanding – not the same thing. Happiness…and Fulfilment – not the same thing. I'm semi-randomly placing specific nuance onto these terms because English usage has lost a lot of nuance with the invention of the computerized thesaurus. Computers struggle with nuance. Most of the synonyms in that drop down were once only kinda synonyms in a particular context.
Wednesday, September 21, 2016
Death…the last journey where all the answers are received…or not. "…To sleep, perchance to dream - ay there's the rub for in the sleep of death what dreams may come, when we have shuffled off this mortal coil, must give us pause…" and whether you're some Shakespearean Danish prince (Hamlet) on a bad day, or a pretentious working engineer with delusions of grandeur, it a topic that runs into all of us at points in our lives.
Thursday, September 1, 2016
I like using the word "Legend" with a capital L to describe what people who don't know you – or don't know you well, know about you. When your name is mentioned in some circles; whether it's work related, or 1st grade teachers, or little league baseball parents or cosplay golfers, whatev…; what picture ends up in the listeners head, although they haven't met you? The business folks call it "personal branding" but that's, totally less cool than Legend, so it isn't enthusiastically embraced!
Thursday, June 16, 2016
So, about that depression thing...and the motivation thing, and the Frustration thing, and the sorts of things that pet the damn black dog on the head...(that neatly brings in all the blogs written so far if you've not been following...). This is my effort to bring any new readers up to date and to draw the various threads I've been laying down into a whole(ish). I've left so many threads in place that I'll probably not succeed perfectly, but for the most part the earlier stuff comes together here...I'll wait here for anyone who hasn't read the previous 6 to catch up...or to notice how much reading that is and figure you'll just use this as a summary and join the ride from here...whatev, but you'll miss a bunch of amusing reads and some of the (now insider) jokes below...
Wednesday, May 18, 2016
So, inspired by a comment about Joyce and thinking of Molly Bloom's soliloquy in Ulysses, I started this in the style of Dancing Lessons for the Advanced in Age by Hrabal, and realized that a single sentence is a difficult way to try communicate effectively for one without Hrabal or Joyce's brilliance, so gave up. I also promised some math, but am not, at this early juncture, certain about where it might turn up…and I don't want to pretend I've read Hrabal, as he wrote in Czech (the title above is a translation), but the book is reported to be one long sentence.
Tuesday, May 3, 2016
So, we've Persuaded our way past Hassles without triggering Frustration events and actually got people to do stuff!! Hopefully we didn't use much Threat and wisely picked people whose Interests mostly aligned with the tasks and are well on our way to success and happiness and joyful fulfillment in life - or completed a task with others and got to a marginally positive endpoint...(whatev) - Except that one guy who took your careful advice on report formats as a mortal insult and now isn't talking to you...how did that happen?? Turns out the guy had a "thing" about report formats, and you totally harshed his mellow.
Wednesday, March 30, 2016
This segues out of the last entry Frustration entry and some responses to it. I'll reiterate the definition of hassle from there as it's a vital concept in Persuasion.
Everyone has a certain amount of metal energy, or ability to think about stuff. We'll call that Focus – it's a limited quantity and is precious. The amount of unallocated focus that is present in anyone at a given time is, F(u), and is particularly linked to anyone's ability to take on new tasks.
Thursday, March 17, 2016
So for no particular reason, I've decided to take on Frustration as my topic this time. It rolls out of the previous discussions in that, although while "being" frustrated is anti-depressional, the tendency to "well screw it all then" that follows, totally feeds into it.
Friday, February 26, 2016
I have been collecting people's reaction/response to the email I sent around earlier, and have a couple of observations based on what I've been learning about depression and on my emotional responses that I've been granted a first-hand opportunity to observe. This whole separating myself into an unemotional third party observer guy and an emotional, human guy is sorta weird, and I really hope I can reverse the process at some point, cus the split personality thing doesn't sound like roses…and of course, I'm probably not totally successful at the separation thing…but I'm not that good at "detached observer" when dealing with real science either, so whatev…
Thursday, February 18, 2016
Note: Mild profanity and stuff is included in the below, but is all appropriate in the context...really...
More Notes: This is LLLOOOONNNGGGG cus I ramble lots, so get a fresh cuppa and settle in.
Preamble –
Useful context for the piece below - Dr. Tad Dabrowski is the founder of the legacy environmental consulting company Komex. He is an enormous presence in both the industry, and physically. He still talks with a more than mild polish accent (that gets worse the more he wants to avoid understanding you) and has been in the industry here since forever. He still works most days at age 70+ and is the "soul" of this environmental office with an additional advanced degree in "banter".
