musings from the sleep deprived

I was just sent an email from a good friend of mine. He tends to be pretty politically active, staying on top of issues both local and federal. He’s especially concerned about environmental things, reinforced by his wife being employed in that field as well (she works for an international symposium on global environmental concerns).

What he forwarded me was the text from this speech. Take a moment to read that so the rest of this post will have some meaning. First, I want to make sure this is taken in context. No, it isn’t true that every single religious affiliation or group believes the things mentioned in there, or that every right wing voter necessarily holds those things to be truths. It does, however, cast a more cynical eye on something that has been bothering me for some time.
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The years have not been kind. No … I need to rephrase that. I have not been kind to myself over the years. Yeah, thats better. In my advanced age of 34 (har), I am now starting to feel all the deliterious effects of the abuses of my youth, and the continued effects of my overall sloth.

And you know, its the stupid little things that remind you of it, that something’s not right, or that something needs to be fixed. Vaulting up 15 steps, and being winded. Bending over to tie your shoes and feeling uncomfortable because your gut is in the way. An afternoon spent walking around in a local shopping district leaves you tired, cranky and sore. Oh, not to mention the obvious of not having clothes fitting that used to, etc.
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So now we approach another end of year, and lots of people get all reflective and try and do life analysis, figure out where to try and improve and all that. I still assert, and pretty much always have, that every single day is cause for celebration. I realize that based on particular religious practice, or perhaps to celebrate particular a particular person or some country’s achievement. All well and good, I’m down with that.

To me, though … I wake up every day pretty damn thankful that I’m still breathing. I don’t need any more cause than that to celebrate a day. Similarly, I don’t need any other reason to be reflective and try to find ways to improve my life and health.

Happy Holidays and New Year to you and yours.

Peace.

Smidge. As in Smidgen, or Smidgin, or however you’d prefer to spell that.

Yay. We did it. No name yet. She was puppy #2028 from the Lifeline Puppy Rescue in Colorado. I’ve added in two pics below!!

Cynicism doesn’t really fit me. I don’t like thinking that way, nor having to think that way in order to rationalize a perceived behavior, but you know… thats just the way the world works sometimes. I suppose once you’ve worked for enough companies, or enough larger companies, you will eventually meet people who meet a certain criteria. Namely, those who would seek to rise through corporate ranks and achieve whatever element of success they want through manipulation and exploitation.

Is it so wrong to still believe the right way to go about doing that is by achievement, skill and honorable business practices? I suppose not, but perhaps its just naive to think that everyone would seek to take that path. I don’t even claim to be the holder of some holier-than-thou work ethic, or whatever, but to some of these people, concepts like loyalty, friendship and integrity have no place in their worlds. Sad, really. I suppose it has just always seemed the better path to prove value through deed instead of word. Furthermore, I know it works. It isn’t necessarily a fast process, nor easy. But its definitely satisfying. And not just ‘job well done’ satisfying, but also satisfying in the opinions that other people have of you, and how those get reflected back to you.

“Oh, I’ve heard about you … you’re the one who did X, Y and Z when noone else was willing to”

“Oh, hey, I finally get to meet you, I’ve heard so much about you from person A, B and C”

“Is the company taking care of you? We need to make sure you’re getting what you need”

“You let me know if you’re not happy where you’re at, I have room for someone like you anytime”

Tell me it isn’t satisfying to hear those sorts of comments. I’ve heard all of those within the last week. How you react to those statements is an entirely different matter, and depends on how humble you are, etc, but just to hear them makes alot of effort otherwise expended into the ether worthwhile.

So to those who would succeed through shortcuts, exploitation of relationships (or anything else, really), or manipulation of the truth to further your own ends, regardless of what other consequence that may have, or who else you might be hurting with those actions …. I tell you this:

You will never, ever hear those words. You will never, ever have the satisfaction of knowing your salary, position and compensation are DESERVED. I realize, those are hollow words, because you don’t care about that. Oh well. Your loss.

We’re currently looking around to see if we can get a companion for Sasha, our current dog. Sasha is an aussie cattle dog mix. Sasha’s mother was an Aussie cattle dog/chow mix (probably), and we’re really not sure of the father, but one possibility is a Shiba Inu. Anyway, we’re really impressed with Sasha’s temperment and brains. Her size is also perfect. She weighs about 40 pounds (or just shy of that) and thats just right for us. We’re hoping that another dog will also be in that same range for all three of those qualities.

Here are a couple of the candidates we’re looking at:
number one
number two
number three
and number four

The fourth of those is actually pretty astonishing to look at, given how close she looks to Sasha when she was that age. Compare it to this picture from just shortly after we got her home. Or perhaps even this one. Amazing. Almost identical coloring.

Anyway, we’ve emailed the shelter, and we’re trying to arrange to meet with them this Friday late afternoon, early evening. If it all works out, who knows… might be a very busy weekend.

As with just about any other blog out there, I did recently get hit by the elements out there that would seek to make maintaining a site like this one a more difficult, high maintenance process. Fortunately, wordpress has some excellent facilities for dealing with comments spammers.

I found it an interesting observation that the spammers are not at all seeking click throughs to the sites they are advertising. Instead, they’re simply seeking to have the search engines find as many links to their site as they can, which in turn improves their rankings in searches for things. I suppose any system can be subverted if you throw enough assholes at it.

It is always hard to come back after a break from work and suddenly be 100% productive again. Whether its some inherent slowness in the brain due to too much intake of tryptophane, or needing to gear things up again after having been idle for a week.

Who knows, either way, it hasn’t been easy. Blah.