Today’s the day: decide what 2010 will bring for you. Or, if you’re like me and everyone I know, decide what the first few weeks of 2010 will bring for you. I don’t really like new year’s resolutions because I’m bad at them. Seems like everyone is. I read this article on economist.com today and it does a great job describing the rural farmer’s common battle with procrastination and fertilizer use and how it all relates to the procrastination that we are faced with here i the US and other ‘developed’ countries.
You and I are probably not faced with whether we should fertilize our crops or not (Neal and Marie notwithstanding) but it all comes back to whether or not we are willing to incur a cost (or inconvenience) today if it means that we will receive a benefit (or success) in the future.
I want to be a person that lives in the moment and enjoys each day, but not to the point that I’m not willing to put in effort today to be happy in the future. I am content with who I am at the moment, but unlike Calvin (pictured above), I recognize that I have work to do to be more and more who I want to be.
There’s a blog that I recently started reading called Get Rich Slowly. It’s a personal finance blog that has articles about sensible ways to manage money better and to live a good financial life. The whole point of the blog is that virtually anyone can get rich slowly by making good decisions daily. The author makes sure to note that “being happy is more important than being rich” and so this is a guy that’s worth listening to.
I was reading some of his “best of” blog posts today and wanted to share one with you that struck a chord with me. The article is called The Power of Yes: A Simple Way To Get More Out Of Life. His advice for living a better life is simple: start saying ‘yes.’ Not everyone needs this tidbit, but for many people this is precisely what is holding them back. I know that it is something that I deal with daily and I’m happy to say that I began to learn this lesson earlier this year when I was in Zambia. I was living with people who were constantly asking me to do things, many of which made me quite uncomfortable (not because they were bad things but because I get uncomfortable easily.. I had two options: block or yield. I decided very early on to yield as much as possible and this was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made.
This might seem a little ‘motivational-speaker-ish’ but have a look at that article if you’d like. It’s a good one.
If you’re looking for a non-traditional gift for someone you love… Please consider the following two options.
Donate a bicycle to a medical worker/pastor/person in need in Zambia. Zambikes / Acirfa is the company I worked with this year and I can vouch for the good use they put donations to. Just click on this image, and make a donation in someone you love’s honor.
Eden Reforestation Projects is an organization that is reducing poverty around the world through environmental stewardship. They are doing incredible work in Ethiopia, Madagascar, Sudan, and Haiti and you can help them plant trees with your donation. They even have a great looking stocking stuffer that you can print out and give to the person/people you are donating in honor of. Please make use of this opportunity.
Everyone who “surfs the net” (when will that metaphor go away?) has a routine of how they do it… some people first check email, facebook and twitter are next, then they hit up the blog circuit to catch up on everyone’s deepest darkest thoughts. Others have eBay auctions that get checked first and foremost, and still others log into AOL and live in that world. I’d like to talk about how people read blogs though, and possibly help some of you who might not be utilizing technology to its fullest.
There are two basic styles of blog reading. The oldschool and simple way is to save each blog as a bookmark and visit each individually to check and see if there has been any activity since you last checked. I did this for a long time. This is not bad. (more…)
People for whom English is a third language should not be Bingo callers, especially at retirement homes.
Tonight this happened and all but hell broke loose from the 90-somethings (doesn’t have quite the same ring as 20-somethings, does it?) that had paid their quarter to play two bingo cards for the evening. Nobody could understand the sweet woman and she was constantly confusing herself about which letter/number to call, and she even threw one of the little balls partway across the room because she couldn’t read the lettering written on it. You couldn’t write, cast, and direct anything this good… It’s just perfectly itself and it’s real.
Every Monday night my mom and dad go to this retirement home to visit my great aunt and play bingo and they basically administrate the whole evening. I join them every few months or so to be a friendly and new face, and they seem to appreciate it. The old lady who normally calls the bingo numbers is in the hospital and somehow the replacement was named with little forethought. My dad ended up taking over for her after two painfully slow and dissatisfying games (a French and German-speaking woman who grew up in a convent in Norway 70 years ago hollering across a big room in her non-native tongue to 25 seniors who have no problem hollering back, “We can’t understand you. You’re bad at this.”) and the flow of the night resumed. What was interesting, though, was the way my dad handled it.
The woman was doomed from the start. She had a very little chance at doing a sufficient job and this was apparent to most of the people in the room. I talked with my dad afterward about his decision to not intervene in the two full games, and his response was simple. The woman’s dignity was more important than the evening’s bingo. She was somehow elected to the job, and was giving it her best. She kept an amazingly positive attitude even amidst the snide remarks from her senile bingo-mates who lacked an “if you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all” filter. My dad gave her ample opportunity to receive constructive criticism and get better at the job, and then after the second game he walked to the front of the room and asked her politely “if he could be of any assistance.” She responded with a ”Yes.” and a joke (presumably) about needing to go out for a smoke, and this prevented constructive criticism from becoming hurtful criticism and the evening proceeded. Had my dad stepped in when the woman was failing so miserably at the beginning she would have been a failure that had gotten the boot. This way, she finished two games with a bit of dignity (she did get better at it… and she is in her 80s for goodness’ sake) and she’ll be able to say at the dinner table that she successfully (though maybe not gracefully) called two full games of Bingo.
The lesson to me, however, is that my dad did what the old folks could not: he correctly identified the most important aspects of the evening – dignity and respect – and acted in line with these in a way that delayed our evening of kick-ass, old-school bingo, but accomplished something so much more important than a game. Thanks dad.
I try not to be a bandwagon jumper and I don’t know anything about MTV’s EXIT Campaign, but I saw this video on a blog that I read on occasion (The Bravest Thing Is Hope) and thought it pretty poignant. I have this new problem where I sometimes have a hard time empathizing with the poor (a result of desensitization, I think) but this video surprised me.
Have a look. Let me know what you think, if you want.
Today’s the day: decide what 2010 will bring for you. Or, if you’re like me and everyone I know, decide what the first few weeks of 2010 will bring for you. I don’t really like new year’s resolutions because I’m bad at them. Seems like everyone is. I read this article on economist.com today and it does a great job describing the rural farmer’s common battle with procrastination and fertilizer use and how it all relates to the procrastination that we are faced with here i the US and other ‘developed’ countries.
There’s a blog that I recently started reading called 
