Entitlement: The Darkest Sin.

 

 I have met many people throughout my life thus far and a fair number are truly astounding individuals. They not only get a great deal out of life but add tremendous amounts back in creativity, effort, and sheer inspiration. These people are most often tremendously happy. They understand that it takes effort and engagement to truly benefit from all life has to offer and they don't shy away from a challenge.

Recently I have been in contact with another segment of humanity however, those that feel the world owes them something. They feel they are "entitled" to something. It doesn't matter what they feel they should get for free, and I use the word Free deliberately because the same people also insist on not putting in any effort. Never mind changing any aspect about themselves. They seem to be continually seeking to get more, and for their efforts they get only frustration. It is because they are not willing to be involved in humanity itself. They want to have all the benefits and not change any aspect of themselves. They just keep going and going and going... And are astonished when I or someone else tells them that the reason they are not getting what they want is because they are not willing to accept responsibility for whatever it is. To clarify this I'll give you an example:

Someone in my building wanted to get a dog actually became almost a demand because they were in a wheelchair. I got curious at this point because they already have a pet cat. I asked him how they were going to walk the dog several times a day and their response was "Oh, I will get the staff to do all that." Pursuing this I then asked "Most dogs need a fair bit of attention, they are very social, are you aware of this?" The response was "I will treat them just like my cat." At this point I became a little concerned because dogs and cats are very different animals. Cats are independent and don't really need connection or to be social. Dogs on the other hand might go a little crazy treat them like a cat. As we talked it became clear to me that what this person wanted was an imaginary image of what they thought taking care of a dog was. Not at all the real thing. Personally I be worried about the poor dogs mental health. Not to mention I think it would be a disastrous situation in the long run because this person doesn't think things through. They just desire the image of something. Most importantly, the desire to have something but they don't plan on changing anything about themselves.

To give you another example I recently met someone who demanded that they can do whatever they want whenever they want. This would be relatively okay if they were able-bodied and could take care of any situation they found themselves in. But there was an expectation in their demand that someone else would be there to clean up or deal with any unforeseen issues. Not to mention my place is an assisted living building which means that the staff take care of the core health needs. They are not butlers, and frankly even if they were there are limits for even a butler. Again this person's perception were very one-sided and the entitlement was very much obvious. They felt that the world really old them something big because they had become disabled. That kind of attitude never works and frankly gets me pretty riled up.

Indeed I suspect people like this with this overriding entitlement and the perception that they have all the fun and there none of the responsibility is probably what at least partially led them to their current health concerns. You cannot drink 15 cans of Coke a day and not expect your body to absorb it without any incident. This is not hyperbole I have met people that do this and expect their life to just go on and on fine. Then they bitterly complain that someone should have fixed things when it does not and that "someone is never them".

I wonder what it takes to wake these people up. Their attitudes are of course their own choice but that is why I called this article "Entitlement: The Darkest Sin" because it really is their choice and in my perception they are making the worst choice possible, one that has negative repercussions for all those around them.

It reminds me of the Star Wars movies in some respect. You have the Dark Force, which appears to be easy but carries with it a tremendous cost personally. Then there is the Light Force which offers effort on the part of the person but will end up benefiting many. Life I think is very much like that, you get out what you put in.

When I look at all the great wonderful people I have known, and have yet to meet. It is obvious they have made a commitment to society and the greatest sense. They also have great understanding which has been achieved by effort and labour. I really do believe there is no easy way to kind of fly through life. That is how it should be, because we learn the best when we put effort into the task. At the end of the day I have had a great life, and continue to have a great life. I have absolutely no regrets. :-).

Those that feel entitled however are miserable and often confused. They see individuals like myself as receiving special treatment magically. Again they are not looking deeper. I collaborate with people and work out ways to achieve things which benefits everyone involved. I want the world and humanity to grow and achieve its own goals. It takes some time and indeed effort. There is simply no getting around that. I will forever be grateful for the ongoing engagement and super creativity of everyone in the world who is undertaking similar tasks.

So if you know anyone who is "Entitled" trying to get them to change because effort is needed if anyone is going to alter their path. Every one of us if we are successful will not be the person down the road we are today. Life is dynamic and fluid and human beings are part of that. To be in the entitled state is to be stagnant and still it which is guaranteed to create conflict and incompatibility down the road.

The best skill they can learn is to embrace change and to learn how to let go of perceived power. Power after all is not the dominance over something, it is in truth learning about that very something and growing with it so at the end, All sides benefit.

Take care everyone. Once again have a great day. I have a couple of videos in the works and I think I'm going to add this one to them. Yes it looks like I'm going to have a busy weekend. So check back next week on this article to see if I've added a video. I will do my best. And as always learning in the process.

Patrick

Has humanity begun to think globally, or are we still thinking like a tribe?

1915 World map
Click to enlarge

Photo by Patrick Barry License: CC BY-SA 2.0

Are we used to the big picture yet?

By "The Big Picture" I mean the world and to some extent beyond. Humanity is come a long way in the last 200 years. New hardware and technologies of bound, it really is quite cool to see some of the things that can be done and part of me would like to live for another 200 years to see what the human race gets up to.

However, many of us individually as well as on a societal level are still perceiving things as though we were still a small tribe, the "us versus them" mentality. Human beings naturally have a individual sense of self and a fairly early age but when it goes beyond that to the groups of human beings you interact with there is indeed a problem. It simply doesn't work anymore, and as a matter of fact it is getting rather dangerous to think in terms of one group versus another one. This only promotes stratification and a lot of the problems we are now seeing.

We have to begin to develop more rapidly socially, to be not just politically inclusive but begin to go beyond the old models. I find myself wondering what if a map of the world never had borders or even countries drawn on it, and further to that, what if there was no concept of a country. We would still develop individually and personality wise but we would not have imposed divisions. This is of course emphasized when we are quite young and forms the bedrock of a lot of our thinking and perceptions, to the point where it is hard to conceive of any other system on good old planet Earth for the human race. It makes sense that humanity had to develop this way initially, we were small groups split apart from others geology. There was simply no other way to survive and no master blueprint, no common anything, pretty much. But we can't afford to take a thousand years for our social norms to catch up. Indeed the idea of "society" will have to change fundamental because within the current definition is it built in division. And along with society politics will go through a similar situation... If one can ever truly unravel one from the other.

So I answered my own question: We are indeed still thinking like a tribe. But there are little indications that this may be beginning to change. I have seen this at meetings and when dealing with people individually and as a group. We are a little more aware… Just a little more… But the beginning is clear. The old and new behaviours are running in parallel right now. Man I would really like to see the world in 200 years. I would probably be completely confused. But then again knowing myself, I would adapt.

So any speculation on what society (for lack of a better word) will evolve into in that time? Post your thoughts here.

Take care and have an excellent day.

Presence of Mind

 

One important skill that is all too frequently overlooked in our busy day to day lives is "The Presence of Mind" I've written a related article, about this several years ago but I think it is now more important than ever so here is a refresher.

First, it is important to understand why you need to be aware of the moment, or to put it another way, not on autopilot. Autopilot and routines can be useful especially if you're involved in something which must progress very efficiently. But they also will remove you from reality and since you only have one life to live, as far as you know at this moment, and really you don't want to miss anything. Because mother nature does not believe in the concept of reruns.

The steps are for putting yourself in the present are straightforward:

1. If you are multitasking while you are reading this short article, stop and pay attention to what you are reading now. Become focused on just this one task. If only for a few minutes, but make those few minutes count.. Be prepared to put a little effort into this if your mind wanders off after a few seconds. This is especially true if you spent a lot of time in autopilot. The brain does not like a change in routine.
   
   
2. Take stock of your environment. Look around, not swiftly, but deliberately. Take note of any emotions or thoughts which occur. If you have an urge to write them down or otherwise record them do so.
   
   
3. Check in with your feelings. Are there any stressors or other emotional aspects you weren't aware of before you put the brakes on the autopilot? If so pay attention to them and make note of any actions you would like to take.
   
   
4. You should do this short routine three times a day. It will help put you in the centre of control and is usually quite eye-opening after being done for a few days.

The reason that the presence of mind steps can be so "eye-opening" is because when we are spending large parts of our lives and in automatic mode we frequently don't notice the issues affecting us on various levels and therefore don't pay the necessary amount of attention to them they require. By being aware of yourself and surroundings including emotions you can frequently deal with issues while there are still small and save yourself a lot of grief down the road.

Personally I am convinced especially now that I have lived in assisted living for four years that is in some measure determined by how much listen to your surroundings. There are quite a number of people in my building who are constantly distracted and very reactive. The trouble is they don't know what they are on ultimate autopilot and I frequently find myself thinking "No wonder, they are in poor health. Things have probably been going wrong for them physically for a long time and I haven't stopped to notice." An analogy would be, if a phone was running low on battery power and yet the owner insisted on keeping the brightness set to maximum, then it is no wonder the phone died. But if they had charged the unit up regularly not only with the phone not be running out of power, but the battery would probably last longer.

In summary then: One of the keys to improving one's life is to stop and pay attention, then take the actions necessary.

Take care Patrick

"This is what I learned, and This is what I know. I am staying put."

 I was working with someone today who was still using Windows XP even though they had a much newer Windows 10 machine available. Of course the old computer had no end of problems and they were still using it to surf the Internet... More accurately tried to surf the Internet. Yet they were absolutely clear, that they were not going to move away from the older machine. They said "This is what I learned, and this is what I know. I am staying put." Now I've been around computers and technology long enough to know that when someone is that fixated on something it is a waste of time to try to resist. Yet it is a struggle to get these old machines even remotely to a safe state. In the coming days we are going to backup the contents of the old machine to the new one. Because we are talking about the original hard drive and I find that a frightening thought.

[Side note: the more I've been thinking about this, the more I think it needs a short video to really explain things and to give those a chance of never seeing Windows XP more reference. So here it is. Posted on February 26, 2023.]

This all brings up an interesting point though and it is something I believe we all do it some point. That is that there is something in our lives, some aspect or some issue that we just lock on to and refuse often aggressively to buge. What is going on here when this happens. Why is this thing or item so important? From my perspective nothing last forever so why carry with you a great deal of baggage, it just doesn't make sense to me. Yet it is obvious that we get something out of holding on. But now that I think about it I think the item or event may be more symbolic of something else although I admit I don't know what it would be. Maybe it is not so much the "something else", may be what is important is the why we are holding on. The event or item therefore becomes a symbolic indicator of something going on in their emotional or mind system.

My goodness human spirit is a complex beast and when it decides to go into stubborn mode it probably has a very good reason from its point of view. That is if it's aware of its own point of view. I frequently find that what we think is the motivating event or reason ultimately turns out to be rather far removed from the real bedrock issue. For the person I worked with the computer is symbolic actually I think it's the phrase "Windows XP because they used it a great deal in their conversation.

So what do you think? What are some of the things and the wise people hold onto things? I can hardly wait for the weekend where I can explore these issues more. As a side note and encouraged me to set up a virtual machine (that's emulating an entire computer in software) and install Windows XP on it. What a trip down memory lane that was. As a matter of fact that will be the graphic for this post.

Take care and I will talk with you more tomorrow or more accurately write more tomorrow.
Patrick

"Opportunity"- The Fastest Horse In Town

 

This article is going to expand on another I did earlier "Seize the Moment! Act on the idea". I will also do a video to go along with this article since everyone seems to like them. The video however will probably have to wait until the weekend, or at least a few days because it does take about 48 hours to do all the postproduction. The actual video takes very little time, but if you want to do it right and add something of value to YouTube, there's a fair bit to go through. Anyway let's get on with this little article.

The longer I live the more I begin to really believe one should listen to their impulses, but not be ruled by them, do pay attention though and decide which way to go. Because it seems like a fast horse opportunity appears and then, races off into the horizon. The key point is that the "initial impulse" is there to draw your attention. Make a note of it if you can quickly. Then returned to the idea when you get some time and make a commitment to do that, find that time.

Also be honest with yourself as to what it's going to take to pull that inspiration off. To make it something real. You'll know you're on the right track when you begin to understand where the idea is going and you should be okay with the fact that it probably will take a fair bit of sustained work. Opportunity may indeed be a multistage event. One in which you work on the idea but the first time things don't evolve the way you want them to. Then step back, and regroup and be fearless about trying the idea again. If you pay attention you will usually noticed that each time you gain some insight. Yup this can be the slow way of doing it that's for sure but when you do things in this manner you will ultimately will win. These insights you gain will have a tendency to benefit you everywhere.

If you have to start very small with the idea and that is what you do. Each time you add a layer take stock of what you've learned. You will be surprised. Be honest as well, some ideas do not work out so be fair but clear with yourself.

Our horse, named in this article, is of course just a fictional construct to illustrate that you should react to an opportunity immediately if possible. The task of following your opportunity can be a little like a staircase. One step up, evaluate and then and take the next step up and so forth.

Most importantly have fun in what you are doing. You must ensure that you get more back ultimately then you put out on some level. This will pretty much guarantee your success and allow you to sustain your adventure.

Have a great day everyone.
Patrick

They literally keep themselves locked in

How is it possible some people can appear miserable, and yet when they are provided with avenues to improve their state whatever that may be they decline? As a matter of fact some of them worked very hard at maintaining their status quo. They literally keep themselves locked in.

Usually these are quite bright people and I think there is the problem. That same marvellous mind they have also can provide an infinite range of rebuttals and rationalizations. If they worked a fraction as hard as that and getting out of their current situation they would be way ahead of the rest of us. I'm thinking of young person who is in their 20s and although they have physical limitations due to a disability they have one great mind. But every time someone comes up with an idea they shoot it down and usually do so well. Managing in the process to disenfranchise the friend who suggested the idea in the first place. You would think evolution would have removed by now this odd programming bug in the human psyche. I find myself wondering what's going to happen to this person as they start to age. They are currently not well-equipped for that aspect of life.

Growing older means in some ways you are given the opportunity to get even "tougher" because the autopilot that we had earlier so counted on has just submitted their resignation notice. For me that was when I was 45. I remember the night clearly. I had just prepared for going to bed and since I changed my clothes sitting on the floor I would then raise myself up to my hands and knees and then kind of crawl onto the bed. This was so automatic I never even thought about it. Well, on this particular night I did. I became acutely aware of how much energy this ritual took and it was quite the eye opener. It was although mother nature and the cosmos were saying, "Your warranty. It is now officially finished and all automatic features have now been turned off. Get used to being in manual mode." Fortunately I already had an optimistic outlook and was rather used to adversity. As long as I survived whatever adversity came my way I actually enjoyed it for the most part :-).

The person I was speaking of earlier however is in no such frame of mind. So the question is, what if anything should be done with them? Or should I just let them hit the brick wall, and they are going too. Then after the dust settles maybe they'll be more receptive.

I really am not sure about this one. But I just thought I'd posted here. Somehow seeing words in print seems to make my thought process a little more tangible and of course if you have an idea. Please let me know.

Take care Patrick

Are We Trading Off Our Emotional Intelligence to Automation?

 

We are at an interesting point of time, the Internet is still evolving along with the technology that supports it and I'm wondering if we are losing specific skill sets to automation. This may sound like the old headline "Millions Unemployed Due to Robots In Workforce!" but it is not. That has to do with physical activities. This time I would like to consider psychological and emotional skills.

When handheld calculators became popular in the 1970s, I remember clearly them being immediately banned in school. Anyone found with one, was in serious trouble. The reason was obvious, a bunch of kids would of course use them to get the answers to all the math questions you could think of. But, all of us in school at the time could do the math in our heads, we just didn't want to especially since there was an easier option and that was the calculator. The key point here is that we already had a skill established. So the calculator was an option, for those of us sneaky enough to get around the embargo.

But suppose one had access to the calculator from the earliest days of school. We would never have developed the ability to do math in our heads. That's a really important skill and if you generalize a little bit there is a real ripple effect, because we are talking about the brain actually exercising itself. Learning how to make pathways between the neurons. Remembering phone numbers, was another mental activity which everyone undertook. You always knew your best friend's phone number and now no one needs to do that. If we begin to multiply the effect of not being responsible for these activities are there critical aspects of brain and mind development which the current generation is being deprived of?

With the beginnings of artificial intelligence being combined with search engines on the Internet, we are looking at machines that can actually do the research on almost any given topic for us. Once that evolves and matures, how much thinking will the average person really have to do? This is bound to have a major impact on the whole person as a whole. They might never develop the skills needed for deeper understanding of a subject or indeed their relationship to others. It goes way beyond problem-solving skills. From my perspective it impacts the very process of thinking and understanding in their most fundamental forms.

History is demonstrated that we lose skills pretty quickly, if they are not in regular use. I have met people who do not know how to deconstruct a problem as the first step in finding answers to the issue. Without Google they stop dead in their tracks and are absolutely at loss as to what and how to break something down into its constituent parts. My own math skills have degraded to a pretty abysmal level now days as well, but at least I know how to get them back. I did the exercise once and can do it again because I have the fundamental groundwork and history to build upon.

But if you don't have that in the first place and especially if you haven't learned it early in life that makes starting off learning these skills a very difficult task and to some extent on the finer points may be impossible. So how does this impact the whole human being? More importantly how do we ensure that this does not happen, so that people today and tomorrow will have the fundamental building blocks needed for life. The first solution I can think of is that people must be introduced to certain aspects of technology only once they've demonstrated that they have the groundwork and mental experience necessary for going without it if need be. A "License to use Google". Even though it sounds ridiculous something like this needs to be put in place on some level when we deal with automation and devices which remove us from the responsibility of learning and growing.

The following is pure conjecture on my part:
I find myself also wondering if this has even broader impacts. A mind that is underused, that has fewer neural connections solidly wired, may indeed have less of a margin for the actual process of thinking and therefore may be susceptible to various disabilities later in life.

On the other hand, would it be possible, or would the brain actually take this offloading of tasks as an opportunity to evolve in different directions? I mean usually when you deprive the brain and mind of activities there is a natural tendency to fill that empty space with something.

Let's see now if we follow the "fill the empty space with something ", train of thought where does that lead? Well, cell phones have pretty much meant we don't need to remember phone numbers and the same with calculators we don't need to do basic math, so is there anything we've expanded ourselves with, have we developed any new attributes, subtle though they may be? Most of us multitask every day now. Is that a gain or loss? It's really hard to say. I mean historically if we look back we have gained immensely from the use of technology. But this time it's different because we are dealing with some of the aspects that actually form the personality and psyche of the individual.

There are more questions posed in this article, then answers that's for sure. Let me know what you think. This could really open up to an ongoing discussion and as you can see after I thought about it some more I have made a video. So take a peek at it if you like. As of this writing it may not be available publicly on YouTube yet and may be difficult to find when it is because I only have two videos up there at the moment. Nevertheless enjoy and comment.

Take care Patrick

Clarity of communication versus niche terminology...

 

...it sure is a work in progress.

I was in a meeting the other day with the group representing a particular subset of the disabled population and as the various discussions progressed I noticed a lot of niche terminology being used consistently. This group was verily big and a diverse in age as well so I found it amazing that the people using the terminology didn't check in with everyone to make sure that the definitions for the words were all clearly understood. I can't remember the exact phrase which really stood out to me, and I wish I could right now, because I would write the presenter of the meeting a letter asking "What the heck were you talking about?" Again it was in a very trendy context. Sometimes I do wish that people would speak directly especially when dealing with the larger public. If they are in a group of professionals that I can understand because specialized terminology can make things more efficient when you know your audience. It was even more surprising therefore when no one in the crowd asked for definitions or clarification. We all sat there rather quietly, not wanting to show our ignorance. But I'm telling you that is not a good thing to do. I'm a little mad at myself upon reflecting on this incident. I should've stood up and articulated my thoughts.

This is obviously going to be an opinion piece. But I really do think that as a society tries on one hand to be more inclusive and understanding of their fellow human being. it is on the other neglecting clarity and true communication. I wonder then, if this is just an indication that we are attempting to hide our own biases and prejudices. We use ambiguous words and acronyms to gaslight ourselves into thinking we are more open. But I'm not supposed we are more open now days… Society seems to be on the whole easier to offend and now days that outrage gets broadcast awfully quickly,and not necessarily dealt with just reacted to. So in some cases we are not really dealing with the issues at hand. An analogy would be, scratching an itch but not considering why one is itching in the first place. While short-term relief is achieved the underlying issues just fester away and as they get buried farther and farther down the problem gets more abstract.

My goodness this all sounds rather pessimistic and that is not like me. But on the other hand this issue has bothered me for a while and it was at this meeting that it really became obvious. How to move forward is the question: How does humanity finally begin to resolve some of these behaviours which can cloud clear communication?  if it were me, I would just speak directly deliberately avoiding all trendy terminology because my goal would be to convey information and encourage communication and understanding.

My hypothesis therefore moving forward would be that an over reliance on niche terminology or other unclear language is to hide something so that the speaker doesn't have to deal with it directly. This could be almost anything from a deliberate, act to subconscious motivations. -- Who among us, really knows themselves?  --   It is at best a journey of discovery for each of us.

 Let me know what you think.  Have a great day and take care.
Patrick

Keeping your Website Expectations in Balance

  When it comes to websites, simpler is often better.

Over the last few years when I've gone into repair a website I am often struck by how many unnecessary features owners have bought. Frequently they by the top-of-the-line plan from their host and the end up with a great many add-ons and complexities they don't need.

There is one site in particular that I'm thinking of which could've actually been done on a service very similar to the one that runs this blog, which if you haven't guessed is "Blogger". Of which the most expensive part is the domain and it really isn't expensive at all.

One of the issues I see over and over again with people shopping for a website is that they neglect to look at what is called the "back end". This is the part of the website where you actually enter articles and interact with design elements. Before you purchase a website package always make sure you look at this aspect of the site. If it seems to foreign then consider, choosing another host or a different website platform. Yes not all website back ends are created equal.

If you are choosing to have the website designed by a professional ensure that you have at least a passing understanding of how to remove and add content as well as doing basic upkeep. Because if the designer is on a short term contract or there is a disagreement down the road it is you the owner of the website that will be stuck in the lurch.

The other issue to remember is that modern websites are not static, in that like all other software they need updates, and what works today may not work tomorrow. So approach a new website as something that involves and changes over time. I am frankly surprised that good old Blogger is still around and that the backend has essentially remain the same. Now for me I'm not too worried I know I can adapt quite easily. But I have seen websites which have been around long enough that they reach a point in order to work with the modern Internet they must be completely redesigned on occasions. It's a little more than a facelift, let me tell you. But she must build in expectations and contingencies for just this kind of thing.

Also do a fair bit of planning before hand spend a few months really researching what you want to do with the website. Once a name and its respective domain name become established it can be very difficult to change over. Not impossible but very challenging in some cases. You may have to start all over in regards to getting good rankings on search engines for example because of the old name was successful you may be in on situation of having to "beat your self".

The reason I'm writing this little article today is in the last two weeks there has been an incident involving separate companies which could've been resolved had they done planning in the past. In both cases it would've saved them a great deal of time and money.

There are several other articles on the blog dealing with various aspects of website creation and upkeep. You can simply click this link to see the most current list of documents, or at any time, use the search box on the site to search for the keyword "website" or just click here to automate the search.

Take care Patrick

The Truly Creative Thought Process.

 Creativity is "Sparks of Light!"

I have noticed that people who are considered by their friends and acquaintances as creative all share a number of attributes. But one of these characteristics seems to be almost essential to the entire creative process. That is:

They all to a larger degree like a challenge. Some may be rather specific about it in that it has to relate to whatever their particularly creative with. But overall they enjoy working through a process of understanding and discovery. Some people I have found once they start digging into something have a hard time stopping. Indeed, and I include myself in that group, given the choice of working out a problem or creating something and having dinner, well let's just say dinner will have to wait.

Last night was no exception to this rule. I found it personally annoying while I was fixing a little bit of code that I had to stop because they were serving dinner at my assistant living residence. "How dare they interrupt my train of thought." was the thought immediately made its presence known in my head.-That not so little voice. The really amazing part was that I truly meant it. There are few things more joyous than when one can feel a problem being understood and in the process of resolving.

However, once a problem is resolved, or the answer is discovered, I always feel a little let down. Because the fun is gone. I guess I don't look for the destination in life. It is the trip, the space between the end points, that counts.

I truly now understand my father who love to do his own little research on Sunday. The commandment he would issue was: "Don't disturb the old man while my books are on the dining room table and open. Lest ye, face of fate worse than death. [English translation: Our allowance for the week was on the line.]

There is  also that truly wonderful feeling of being completely immersed in an idea. It can be the emotional equivalent of romantic sex or sometimes even better, and that's saying a lot as to how important the creative process is. When the time and environment are correct, it can feel like it's almost the definition of the perfection of human life. That our job as thinking beings has been fulfilled.

But in order for this synergy to happen there must be the right environment:

• There must be uninterrupted space, physical, emotional and intellectual. Where you know you won't be distracted by someone coming through the door and you can focus your energies exclusively to the task at hand.
  
  
• That period of time has to be of sufficient length, for myself it must be over two hours minimum, so I can really let my hair down and get into the task at hand exclusively. During this time nothing else really matters.
  
  
• The task is often viewed as a mystery one is unraveling, there may be interruptions in the trail but there is also a sense of excitement because it is not too easy.
  
  
• Therefore in the creative process there must be challenge. Something that encourages you to bring in all your mental assets as well as the emotional ones. All departments in your brain must be turned on.

If everything is working correctly there is also a letting go of perceived restraints. A sense of true freedom. This process shares a lot of attributes I spoke about in another article on this blog recently "Nurturing the Creative Soul" which is about recognizing the creative people and friends around. And most importantly allowing these individuals to be themselves.

I Truly Love the Creative Process😁, Complete with its challenges and even the frustrations. It makes the end goal so much more fulfilling.

Have a great day and of course feel free to comment.

Patrick.

Don't Overwhelm Yourself - "Human load balancing"

  Human load balancing

Now that's a very fancy 21st-century term, that in reality simply means "Don't Overwhelm Yourself." This can happen very easily especially if you are creative and like (dare I say love) to assist people in what you see as productive or positive outcomes.

I am a prime example, I have a habit in the last few years of saying "Sure, I would love to be on that committee" or "I can fix that for you.". Things can get a little bit crazy because if you follow through with those good intentions, your happy patrons will spread the word and the next thing you know "the weekend" has turned into an abstract concept. Now I'm not saying you shouldn't do those things, I am saying that there needs to be timing and a limit involved. What I have discovered is a lot of people will leave you alone on the weekdays because they don't want to disrupt your work but come the weekend, usually around 3 PM Friday, text messages start appearing or there's a knock at the door.

If you observe carefully though, you will notice something… Some wise people seem to have a mystical power to at least outwardly manage all this activity. Is it a potion, or some agreement they have with an arcane thousand-year-old society?… Nope. It's common sense these people are using. When they take a holiday they really disconnect. And frequently the holiday or "space" if you prefer the term, is of considerable length. I have a friend who just took a month off. They let all the clients know it and they just went. They also don't answer business calls under any circumstances. If there is something mission-critical they preassigned some individual ahead of time.

The rest of us mortals can learn something here.

1. Enforce your holidays as sacred events. Make sure the people you are providing a service for, Know ahead of time that this is how you run your affairs.
   
   
2. Make sure someone else can step in if need be, and select them ahead of time.

Now, "Are We Listening Patrick?"

Yes this idea is beginning to sink in, slowly but surely we will all get better at this.

Take care Patrick

Seize the moment! Act on the idea.

So many great ideas are lost forever because people don't take action on them immediately. I don't mean that you can go out and rule the world right now or that you even have to, but it is so critical to make some movement toward the goal. Even if that's only writing down a few notes because of the way we move now days literally billions of thoughts are lost to the ether if you don't take some precautionary measures.

Indeed this happened with this very blog post  you're reading. Often times I've been zipping around Vancouver or Surrey and something that has inspired me, one of those "Great Thoughts" or at least the beginning idea of something very cool. Now days I almost automatically recorded in my phone.

It's such a simple thing to do that is why a moment ago I stop work for a few minutes because that's how this very article occurred. It just popped into my head while I was doing something else completely unrelated. So instead of a coffee break I'm having a "Quick write that down now moment." So this article won't be very long and as a matter of fact we might've reached the end for, now anyway . But before I go  and return to the real world. Please remember to take action and next time something inspirational occurs to you.

I promise not only will you be surprised you may be astounded where the idea takes you.

Continue to have a great day!

 Patrick

Dealing with the challenges of procrastination... If you ever get around to it.

Much has been written over the years about procrastination. It is something everyone can relate to at some point or with some aspect of their life.

For me personally it has reared its ugly head in the form of one issue. My God it has been challenging to overcome but, I think I've made some inroads. This may be an article that gets longer and longer as I proceed.

• The first thing I did was acknowledge that part of me really doesn't want to deal with the issue at hand.
  
  
• That was followed by a promise to myself not to ride the old "Guilt Train".
  
  
• The third thing I did was, instead of taking on the entire issue and becoming all knowledgeable about the topic and the individuals involved, I gave myself permission to deal with smaller aspects and acknowledge when any movement toward a solution had been found.

These three steps have personally improved the situation. Now it seems to be the smarter you and are the more aware you are, the more creative forms of procrastinations you can dream up.

Anyway this is just being a micro article. Scarcely more than a thought... For now and will have to see how things progress. But it is nice to know that they are progressing.

Take care Patrick

Resistance to change.

 

 

We, the human race, are an unusual lot...

On one hand we are curious, but we are also, often at the same moment resistant to change. There is a tendency to be a creature of habit, a lover of routine. Talk about a contradiction!

I'm about to have a conversation with someone who is very resistant to change. They are incredibly intelligent but I get the sense they have a fixed way of seeing the world and all the parts therein and those parts are organized, if not hardcoded. In previous interactions with this person the same patterns keep being reinforced. And I've been pondering how to deal with this for a long time because the situation they have an effect on is in my opinion inhibiting growth.

It is very interesting that as children because we know nothing about experience we indulge in change, that old so marvellous feeling of finding something new. Then as teenagers we actively rebelled against it. Something happens though in our late 30s or early 40s. We begin to get comfortable about our surroundings and I wonder if we see our own existence as a bit of an empire that we built. Kind of like, "this is my Castle design and no one is going to alter it". I find myself wondering if this is by design. Maybe evolution literally turns off the desire to find new stuff so that the new generation has less to compete with. Maybe it's a built-in obsolescence, mentally speaking.

Well don't count me, Patrick Clark to be part of that group. Or at least that's what I find myself yelling at the top of my lungs when this thought occurred to me a moment to go :-). I am not so sure I like being comfortable. I like a bit of the unknown on a daily basis. A little bit of out-of-control goes a long way to keep you alert.

Just an interesting thought.
Have a great day everyone. And thank you for dropping by. As we get near the weekend I shall try to write more in-depth articles. Perhaps a video. There won't be too many videos though although they take no time to shoot. It's the postproduction that takes all the work.

Technology is great, but getting to the details of that technology still takes a lot of commitment and effort. Thank goodness. I wonder how artificial intelligence and chat GPT will alter my workflow in the future. I'm pretty sure I will have one but I bet it will be quite different.

And now before I ramble on ....see you tomorrow and have a great day!

Take care Patrick

Why Do People Get Bored?

 

In the place where I live there quite a number of people who always say something like "I'm bored" actually I hear quite a bit, to be clear it's not everyone but a fairly good number. Yet when I say "Why don't you do this… Or that?" They come back with "No. I don't want to do that" this dialogue goes around and around for a while and both parties get nowhere.

It has become clear to me that actually what is going on in most cases is that the individual who's doing the complaining really just wants to be entertained or to be more specific they want to offload the responsibility of fixing their boring situation on to someone else. To get out of this rut, that is to say to become "un-board" they must put some effort into it. Solutions don't just appear out of nowhere.

This could become quite a lengthy article and I think the best way to describe it is for me to do a video. You will find a brand-new one right below. It details not so much the steps in becoming "un-board" but a different way to look at things. Which can be boiled down to:

1. If there is something you cannot change, then accepted it and move on.
   
   
2. Don't seek perfection in becoming "un-bored", except an imperfect solution. It will get you farther down the road in the long run.
   
   
3. Be prepared to put some effort into changing your situation or point of view. Life is not a free ride, but if you put some work into it, boy can it be fun😀.

Below is a full 10 minute video. At this time it can only be seen on this website, until I can go through the appropriate steps to get it fully indexed properly. Like all the things even YouTube takes some practice. It will probably be discoverable on YouTube within the week depending upon how much time I have.

Until then, to get the direct link to this this particular article , click on its title and then bookmark it or send it to a friend. Or you can just come back to this website 😀. You can also search on Google of course.

Here's the video it is about 10 minutes long. If you enjoyed please let me know and I will do more as time permits.

Take care Patrick

A Life after Gathering Stuff

 

As I've mentioned in other articles on this blog, I live in an assisted living building which means that we have staff available to us 24 hours a day. The building is 14 years old now and so they've decided to replace the carpet with vinyl flooring. This is good, the original carpet was beginning to look a little frayed. This has meant that a lot of material items, which we will henceforth call "Stuff", in honour of the late comedian George Carlin, has been pulled out and rearranged to make room for the work crew. It is amazing how much stuff there is. It seems to have come out of nowhere and yet I know that it is been there all along. 

George Carlin's classic standup routine "Your Stuff"

Of that huge mountain of stuff how much do we really need? Why are we so attached to gathering as many belongings as possible around us? I mean when you think about it only a small fraction of that stuff adds to your life in the long run. Works of art are marvellous items of stuff and that lends them some merit in hanging around for a long time. But we all have that dear friend who's apartment or house it's just overflowing with stuff which we all know they don't need. Yet they cannot seem to get rid of it. What in human nature is being met here? What is the urge that is being satisfied or is it an insecurity.

When I looked into this building I made a conscious choice to minimize the gathering of stuff because I just moved out of the apartment building where it spent 34 years gathering stuff and most of it was utterly useless and just the pain to get rid of. But some people in my building and friends I know can't get enough stuff. They are constantly on Amazon or Best Buy or Walmart paying good money for more, and more stuff. I have seen suites that are crammed full of it. Bringing me to my ultimate conclusion of the assuming that they must get an adrenaline hit when they gather or pay for stuff.

When I saw the number chairs downstairs I thought "My God! We must have a billion seats." The human race just keeps cranking more stuff out.

For me when I finally did move and got rid of 90% of my stuff. After the shock wore off I found it quite liberating. Yes, there can be "A Life after Gathering Stuff ".

Have a great day. This is been a random thought which just evolved into a short blurb.
Patrick

Finding psychological limiting boundaries and brainstorming

 When was the last time you did something truly outside of your boundaries of experience?

This doesn't have to be extreme, think about it for a moment though. Sometimes it's even hard to figure out initially where those boundaries are. Most people need a little push, something which takes them somewhere unexpected for a moment and then their minds start to explore.

However, with all the things going on in everyone's life now days, and from my perception it seems to be an ever-growing list, we often forget to slow down so we can contemplate things like brainstorming and boundaries. So that I think is the first step, to slow down, pause for a moment and pay attention to what ever comes to mind. Those quiet little thoughts are the gateways to opening up new avenues of ideas if you only listen.

As so often happens in my life now days I was talking with a friend this morning and then shortly later speaking with someone else and it occurred to me these for two people with tremendously different ways of interacting with their world and environment. Both of these people are very creative but wow in a different way. One is artistic, musical, and incredibly curious. While the other is incredibly curious but only when they can manipulate something to their advantage and they have a habit of going down a very dark path. They do become stuck in a "mood" on occasion and everyone else around them knows leave them be on those days. In other words one of these people uses their insights and creativity to expand their world and while the other tends to use the same talents to restrict their world. I suspect you couldn't talk either of them out of their own modes of operation either.

How this relates to brainstorming and finding psychological limits is as follows:

The first person brainstorms automatically all the time and they can come up with the most ridiculously wonderful ideas out of the blue. Now that I think about it I've never seen this person really stuck on an issue or problem. What they will do in such a situation is immediately asked someone else their opinion. The two of them will chat and sooner or later an avenue presents itself. That boundary has been expanded a little bit 😀.

The second person, our darker minded friend, if given the same insights would take them and restrict their world in some respect. They will attempt to validate their current psychological boundaries in the process rather than going outside of them. This is particularly true when it comes to politics for them. So maybe, just maybe, the initial steps in brainstorming and finding your psychological boundaries are simply a willingness to:

1. Break your own rules of expectation including what you might perceive as right and wrong. In other words don't judge anything. Give yourself permission to let any thought float in.
   
   
2. Consider your current state of mind. Are you waiting for something to happen passively or are you engaged in putting energy into the process.
   
   
3. Even with brainstorming which is usually just bringing in random thoughts to get a creative streak going you should have some reason and motivation. If you don't and that very situation becomes something to consider. It literally becomes the first brainstorming thought. If we are stuck on how to start ask yourself why. The answer you get back might just start a dialogue with yourself and that just might kick the whole thing off.

So today's goal if you want one is to see what brainstorming and boundary busting you can get up to. Once again you are changing the world. One thought at a time. As a practical example as I started this little article I wasn't sure how to really approach it. Well one thought led to another, which led to another, which led to another which ultimately led to momentum. Again it was going outside of boundaries and finding them.

I started with two very different friends as an example and then began to apply the same considerations to the greater surroundings. I broke my own boundary! This behaviour could become a little addictive, what a wonderful way to start the weekend.

Now that I think about it this reminds me of another article I wrote a while ago called "Challenge The Brick Wall" which is on this blog as well. It's fascinating how the mind and people work with the world… Isn't it!


Take care Patrick

Iconic pop-culture imagery from the past

 

This post originated from one of those spontaneous ideas that just occurred to one out of the blue. "Where the heck did the original test pattern used on old-school TVs come from and why to to bizarre picture?" I got quite excited about the idea and just a little while ago started digging into it. Almost instantly however I found a website called "Print" with an article entitled "Deciphering the Language of TV Test Patterns" by Stephen Heller which pretty much gives you all the information you could ever want in two minutes. So that took away my thunder.

"Wacky Pack" sticker.
Photo by Tom Gill
License CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Still though there is something to be said about enduring iconic imagery. I suspect if you're born in the 60s or earlier the test pattern is a major icon for you. So what will be the iconic images of today? Immediately I would say "the Internet" but it really doesn't have a universal symbol. There are some general ones, and definitely one which indicates Wi-Fi but nothing super specific where everyone around the world would know right away "that picture represents... Something." Where 90% of the people seeing the image would understand what it's referring to immediately.

I wonder if we are getting away from, iconic imagery in general? My childhood was certainly loaded with them even if a good chunk of that was thanks to commercial advertising.

 
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holder  Thomas Altfather Good

The Campbell's Soup can comes to mind (The four 50th Anniversary "Art Of Soup" Campbell's Tomato Soup cans featuring a facsimile autograph by, portrait of, and quote from,Andy Warhol. The commemorative cans were released on 2012-09-02 at Target Stores. They contain actual tomato soup.) Does anyone remember the "Wacky Pack" stickers that came out in the 70s they were kind of a mad magazine artwork format where they would do a take off on products?   I'll include images in this article if I can find copyright cleared examples.) There appears to be quite a big online hobbyist community dedicated to just Wacky Pack stickers so click Wacky Pack link if you really want to go down memory lane. For now I'll post a few images in this article.

 As you can tell I'm writing this on the fly because I really do want to get something posted tonight.

Maybe we will look back a few years now and the icon of the early 21st century will be the cell phone.

"Wacky Pack" sticker.
Photo by Tom Gill
License CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Although I must admit it won't be too exciting to look at. When a cell phone is turned off it looks like a black rectangle. Perhaps this is a time in to the old sci-fi movie 2001 a space Odyssey in which a mysterious "black rectangle" is discovered at several points in the movie.

What other icons or images helped shape my early life?… Oh I have one "The How And Why Wonder Books" series of books. Just the perfect kind of reading material for a young Geek mind. I had a small orange crate to hold my collection of maybe 15 to 20 books. They were great.

There was the original series Star Trek. But that's really not worth covering here because Star Trek iconography is still tremendously popular and all over the Internet. There are people out there that could do a much better job at covering its associated iconic symbols than I ever could.

Wonder Bread postcard 1961.
Photo by Steve Shook
License CC BY 2.0

Heck as a child even our bread was an icon. The "Wonder Bread" pattern was all over the place.

If this article sparks any imagery or iconic symbols for you. Let me know in the comments and we will keep adding to this post.

Take care and I will try to post another item in 24 to 48 hours. It is been very busy this week which is why there is been the disruption. Okay now let's see if I can find all the iconic artwork necessary for this post 😀.

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4.0 International license.
Photo by James Vaughan

Take care Patrick

Where does one find the time?

I don't know about you, but lately the amount of things I have to do seems to be going up and up.

To make matters more interesting the reason seems to be that we know what were doing for certain tasks and that other people are somehow missing the experience or the knack. I don't want to leave people and projects high and dry. For the last few months it seems every weekend I find myself saying "Next weekend I am taking it off." But inevitably something comes up. It may not be directly related to work but it's just enough to consume chunks of the weekend or one's free time. Right now for example I'm already thinking about tomorrow morning. There is a server that needs work, a guide needs to be written, someone else need today for a consultation. If you been reading my blog this is good news for you because that consultation has to do with another article I wrote a month or two ago about smart assistance for the disabled. I can't remember the title right off hand but I'll make sure there's a link.

Anyway this is a supershort entry and I'm going to set the blog to release it tomorrow morning at 9 AM. With a little bit of luck all find some time during the day. To add a more meaningful article or at least start one.

Take care Patrick (and of course stay tuned.)

Your Perfect Memories Of The Past: A Product of Our Time.

  "A Product of Our Time..."

Whenever people speculate about the future or indeed consider the past, we always do so knowingly and unknowingly through psychological and social filters. I find this fascinating. It means that unless a person is very careful, bias of one form or another always sneaks in. Maybe we do it subconsciously most of the time to make the topic more relatable, to bend it a little bit to our worldviews.

A few moments ago, I was speaking with someone who has a rather severe disability and they were complaining about our current government in Canada, saying things like "10 years ago it wasn't like this. We had more freedom." Their dialogue continued for a while, and I was struck by the fact that for this person everything appeared to be better in the past.

Now regardless of your political views, I do believe that we've moved considerably forward on most social fronts. I remember when wheelchair cutaways (ramps) and sidewalks were nonexistent in the lower mainland of British Columbia. My life is been long enough that I have met some of the people that started the political momentum to get ramps put into sidewalks. I accept that my own memories are biased as well, because things weren't as easy as they are now in many ways. You don't have to go back too far, and the very devices you are using now to read this post were not only nonexistent, they were impossible to implement. So when looking to the past we really are doing so from the point of view of the here and now.

So I have a hunch that if we could have perfect memories of the past, we would end up appreciating the present a lot more. I wonder how that would change people? Think about it, it would be a profound ability and I suspect it would be somewhat of a burden. Maybe technology in the not too distant future will give us the ability to one day start a recording device at birth which preserves a perfect record of one's life. Imagine being able to review any event in your life. Boy I'm sure that would change one's perspective on a lot of things.

Even though such a device wouldn't be a perfect record since it couldn't include the entire context of the experience and would definitely give us much more to go on. It is a really fascinating thought. Your own "History Archive".

When I ponder this whole idea three things come to mind, especially when considering, the profound impact the information might have.

1. Would you want to be able to delete information and memories? Presuming if you did this, if you then accidentally forgot the memory the information would be gone forever. So the question isn't as clear as it first seems
   .
2. What if you discovered that your biological recount of an event didn't at all match the perfect historical record? What effect would that have on you? Presuming that the historical record could only be deleted not modified.
   
   
3. Knowing everything is being recorded how would that affect your behaviour, or would you just get used to it and act naturally regardless?

It is likely to some degree at some point people and society will have to face some aspects of this. As a matter of fact we are there now to a small extent. The Internet collectively stores a great deal of information about you and I. Should it be preserved? For let's say, cultural historians?

Wow, these are questions that I don't believe the human race has ever really had to contend with up until now. I started this article off thinking about past and our perception. Now we have ended up talking about the future and considering the recorded record we are all making.

Food for thought, indeed.

Take care Patrick

Yahoo, it's the beloved weekend! (Free Photos)

License: Non Commercial
No Derivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

 Yahoo, it's the beloved weekend! Here's a few free photos.

I can't think of much to write today. Myself and my brain are just not in that space.

Although usually I can come up with something to say almost instantly today, for whatever reason-The Rabbits Just Aren't There (and I have no idea what I mean by that last statement, because it just occurred to me and since I do most of my typing by voice dictation it just came out and I think it sounds rather cool.)

So for today I am just going to post some pictures I've taken over the years using various cameras and edited with Corel PaintShop Pro Ultimate. (Software publishers site.) If anything strikes your fancy you are free to download it and use it as you wish. I hereby declare that anything you see in this post which is using this domain is in the public domain.

I do have a few photographs for purchase up on Displate. If you've never heard of this company they print artwork on metal with the result being that the posters are held on the wall by simple magnets. They ship all over the world.

Okay here in no particular order are a few photos taken over the years.

All but the last one, which is a picture of the Sun Tower taken in Vancouver are in their original full-size files. Simply click on the photo. Unfortunately the original of the Sun Tower has been lost to time. 

The photos were taken across the lifespan of three cameras: (Links to the Canon Camera Museum.)

• Canon PowerShot G7 X Mark III
• Canon PowerShot SX120 SI
• Canon PowerShot SX620 HS

Enjoy your weekend and continue to have a great day.

Patrick

PS: This post will scroll off the front page of the blog in about 10 days. If you would like to revisit it easily click this link and bookmark the resulting page. Tip:All posts can be permanently bookmarked in your browser by clicking on their title and then bookmarking their own webpage. You will know you have the correct page when you see only one article.

 Click photo to enlarge, and then right-click, to save.

Also available on Displate as a metal poster. Direct link here.

 

 

Also available on Displate as a metal poster. Direct link here.