Today we think nothing of calling overseas. In many cases, using tools like Skype, not only is it easy, it’s free and can easily include video.
In the early 1960’s it was another story. My parents made one phone call to Holland. It lasted 3 minutes, took something like an hour or more to set up, involved at least three separate operators, and cost an arm and a leg.
I believe it was in part to set up a visit.
While I see being born in Canada as having been a positive thing, I’m also grateful that we moved to the United States when I was three.
Nothing at all against Canada, but when I look at the years that followed our immigration much of my good fortune would not have played out as it did had we not moved.
As odd as it may seem to some, I’m actually grateful that I was born in Canada.
For one thing, even though I’m a U.S. citizen having been born elsewhere protects me from ever considering a run for U.S. president. 🙂
In reality, being a Canadian citizen as well as U.S. (I have both) opens a few doors that wouldn’t otherwise be opened.
For the next 60 days I’m putting a little bit of structure around my daily writing exercise. Each day will be about something for which I’m grateful. Some may be trivial, while others (like today’s) more significant, but all will be honest and from the heart. I live a fortunate life, and it’s good to reflect on that from time to time.
Why sixty days? I’ll reveal that … in sixty days. 🙂
♥
It’s only logical that I start with my parents. After all, they “started” me. 🙂
We’re being flooded with negativity. Every day, it seems, there’s something newly horrific, upsetting, depressing, embarrassing, or just wrong that comes across our news feeds or in our personal communications.
I think it’s having a deeper impact on our collective well-being than most people realize.
That was brought home to me again this morning when I received the following in response to one of my mailings:
Four o’clock in the morning is a magical and often anxiety ridden time for me. I don’t know what makes it special, but when I wake up at 4AM there’s a certain consistency in how I frequently feel, or where my mind often goes.
It’s common wisdom that sometimes you need to “get away” from your normal day-to-day surroundings. A change of scenery, as it’s often called, can bring renewed energy and fresh perspectives.
The problem, so to speak, is that there’s getting away, and there’s getting away.
Over the years I’ve known several people that have more than their share of bad luck; I suspect most of us have.
I use the term “bad luck”, but it really encompasses an entire range of situations, scenarios, and circumstances that – through no visible fault of their own – result in bad things happening to those acquaintances.
My wife and I have started to characterize them as “drama magnets.” It seems that everything could be going along swimmingly, and out of nowhere, some kind of drama finds them.
One of the problems we have as writers is feeling like we need to continually come up with something new to say.
The problem, of course, is that in so many ways there’s precious little that’s truly new, or that isn’t already being said by others. This is something that I had to face from the start with Ask Leo!. There were, and are, plenty of tech sites answering questions and providing information for the public — often about exactly the same topics I address.
What I learned is that as important as what you say is how you say it. That, in a way, makes it new.
One of the issues I face periodically on Ask Leo! is that of what we colloquially call “conspiracy theories.”
Be it part of a question, or just a rant, I get comments from people from time to time that are absolutely convinced that there’s a massive government or corporate conspiracy to invade their privacy, steal their information, or worse. Usually it’s of the generic variety — “they’re after us all” — but I’ll occasionally see the more personal version as well — “they’re after me.”
This bothers me in part because these folks are choosing to live a life in fear that is generally unfounded.
What worries me more is that it often prevents them from doing things that would benefit them, or ironically, protect them.
It’s frustrating.
I watch the scenario play out on TV all the time. People are given some information and accept it without question.
Right or wrong, true or false, intentionally deceptive or accidentally misleading. Blind acceptance from someone in a position of perceived power or beguiling intrigue.
Some people hate email.
I love it.
It’s one of the best possible means of communication invented, as far as I’m concerned. And my reasons are very, very simple.
I ran across an interesting statement in my reading this morning: “…school was taking up a lot of the time I would have spent on learning.”
The knee-jerk reaction to that statement is that it feels somewhat like an oxymoron — school is all about learning, isn’t it?
That very reaction, though, illustrates that even in this ever-personalized world we look for one-size-fits-all.
There are no liberals. There are no conservatives.
There are only people.
Whe brought this to mind was this story of recent days:Â “GOP candidate charged after allegedly ‘body slamming’ reporter“, or more correctly the republican candidate’s response that included the phrase: “It’s unfortunate that this aggressive behavior from a liberal journalist created this scene …”.
Whether not the journalist created the scene is debatable. But what struck me was the need to call him out as a “liberal” journalist.
My parents spent World War II in Nazi-occupied Holland.
As you can imagine, I heard several stories of that time. My sense, though, is that I did not hear all the stories. The stories I heard were of successes, things that worked, hiding from the Germans, and some of the tricks my parents and grandparents used to work around some of the shortages, or prohibitions, of the time.
There’s one story, of which I certainly only have fragments, that almost always comes to mind when I think about them during that time.
The time my dad and his brother escaped from a Nazi prison camp.
My attempt at a daily writing exercise is only one part of my overall approach to honing my skills.
Another exercise that I’ve adopted for some time now is about idea generation. I’ve now read about variations on this technique in several places, and have adopted my own variation.
It’s a scenario I see repeated often: a group of people go to a restaurant to share a meal. At the end of the meal the bill comes and all chaos ensues. Relatively intelligent people become failures at basic math. Friends become adversaries. “Fairness” becomes a thing that’s hotly contested.
Let’s just say it’s one of my pet peeves. I tend to sit quietly by and roll with the punches, but still … it often frustrates me.
Sometimes I wish that people could let go of their egos long enough not to end a meal on a sour note.
If you’ve used technology for any length of time you’re probably already acquainted with the cool things that are possible, and the new frontiers it can open for us all.
You’re probably also familiar with the excitement you feel when something works.
My take is that a) the excitement is real, b) it’s somewhat misplaced, though c) it’s also somewhat of a sad reflection on the state of our technology.
At one point while at Microsoft I had an employee who had some interesting notions about communication. He was a smart guy, passionate about his work and the quality thereof, but when it came to getting his ideas across — particularly his opinions — things fell a little short.
I challenged him, to which he responded with words to the effect of “if I know that I’ve stated what I mean clearly then it’s not my fault if someone doesn’t understand me”.
Wrong,
Wrong, wrong, wrong. So wrong.
All in all it was a pleasant way to do nothing.
I was sitting on a guardrail along the Seward highway a couple of miles outside of Girdwood, Alaska. The sun was out and felt warm on my face, the view was amazing, and I found myself taking a few moments just to let it all soak in. The only real downside was roar of the traffic flying by a few feet in front of me, and the fact that many of them weren’t really slowing down to avoid the U-Haul truck with a flat tire on the narrow shoulder.
The U-Haul that I was baby-sitting.
For me the day had also started out as eventfully.