Sending this Across the Miles….
01 Dec 2011 Leave a Comment
in Personal Enrichment, Uncategorized Tags: bereavement, grief, loss of child, loss of sibling, personal enrichment, self-confidence, self-enrichment, uncategorized
My friend and his family suffered the loss of their son/brother over three years ago. Michael is missed every moment of every day.
My hands are, quite literally, tied. I live in another state. I don’t have much contact with their family. And, frankly, I’m super concerned for everyone involved.
This post is dedicated to them.
Don’t get me wrong, I have “lost” people in my life. One of them was my favorite uncle (Mike) when he was only 45 years old. I think of him, and miss him, every single day.
But I honestly do not have any experience with losing a child.
I would NOT wish that on even my most despised enemy.
I have been blessed to have some really fabulous people come into my life.
Recently, one person has shed some light on the subject of “family bereavement” for me. She is the widow, and her kids are still trying to “recover” from losing their father. It is from this person that I found out about a FABULOUS organization called “CZC” (Comfort Zone Camp).
This organization offers children between the ages of seven and seventeen the opportunity to attend camp at no cost to the family. If there is no camp located in the area where you live, you can choose one that fits your schedule and they work out all the transportation details.
It costs (approximately) $500 per child per camp session.
This camp is very low on funding.
If you wish to contribute money directly to the camp, then this is the link for you.
They also depend on volunteers to help each camp session function smoothly.
From my own experience, the holidays SUCK. There is not one single holiday that I do not think of my uncle. And I miss him. And it doesn’t ever go away.
If you know of a young person who is struggling with the loss of a parent or sibling, CZC is a beacon in the dark.
This website may help as well: Hello Grief. It has articles and even a section to write about your own experiences.
Stay Tuned….
THANKSgiving….
24 Nov 2011 Leave a Comment
in Personal Enrichment, Uncategorized Tags: personal enrichment, self-confidence, self-enrichment, uncategorized
Giving “thanks”.
Being “grateful”.
Staying “positive”.
Usually, these tasks would be quite easy for me.
Especially on this most revered day.
Something is “off” inside of me today, though, and I’m not feeling the “thankful” energy.
Lists always help me, so here is my GRATEFUL list today….
I’m grateful for:
my friends.
my family.
my therapists – chiropractor, acupuncturist, etc.
my dog.
my car.
my technology – phone, computer, etc.
my willingness to learn.
my eagerness to share.
my intention of kindness.
my ability to love.
*sigh*
Stay Tuned….
Contemplative….
19 Nov 2011 Leave a Comment
in Personal Enrichment, Uncategorized Tags: personal enrichment, self-confidence, self-enrichment, uncategorized
con·tem·pla·tion [kon-tuhm-pley-shuhn, -tem-] noun
1. the act of contemplating; thoughtful observation.
2. full or deep consideration; reflection: religious contemplation.
3. purpose or intention.
4. prospect or expectation.
“The act of thoughtful observation.”
Hmmmm….
It seems I have spent the majority of my lifetime in “thoughtful observation” of my thoughts, actions, words.
Some would say this is “instrospection”.
in·tro·spec·tion [in-truh-spek-shuhn] noun
1. observation or examination of one’s own mental and emotional state, mental processes, etc.; the act of looking within oneself.
2. the tendency or disposition to do this.
3. sympathetic introspection.
When I walk around with my eyes unfocused, my mouth set into a certain configuration, and my brain churning one hundred thoughts per second, I honestly do not know what word or words to use to describe it.
I am ALWAYS thinking!
Can I please turn my brain off for a while?
On that note, I have been practicing meditation.
My thoughts on this are “I always learn from my mistakes, so the mistakes I am making with my meditation practice will only help me to become better at meditation.”
Right?
Hmmmm….
I’ll let you know.
Stay Tuned….
I need to change my thoughts….
05 Nov 2011 Leave a Comment
in Personal Enrichment, Uncategorized Tags: personal enrichment, self-confidence, self-enrichment, uncategorized
I’ve noticed that when I think “negative” thoughts, “negative” things happen.
When I think “positive” thoughts, “positive” things happen.
No joke!
This week has been challenging to me. I’m struggling to keep my energy up. Physical and spiritual energy.
I’ve noticed that along with drained energy comes “negative” thoughts.
Whodathunk??
Well, it’s been super challenging to turn those thoughts around.
I cannot say that I have succeeded. At all.
I am AWARE of my thoughts, but I haven’t turned them around.
Yet.
Any positive thoughts you could send my way are super appreciated. A quick prayer. A thought dashing through your mind. A smile in my general direction.
Thanks in advance.
Anyway, onward and upward.
Stay Tuned….
Exhaustion….
25 Oct 2011 Leave a Comment
in Personal Enrichment, Uncategorized Tags: personal enrichment, self-confidence, self-enrichment, uncategorized
“Working on myself” uses an amazing, unmeasurable amount of energy.
I am exhausted.
Seriously.
Stay Tuned….
Time….
18 Oct 2011 Leave a Comment
in Personal Enrichment, Uncategorized Tags: personal enrichment, self-confidence, self-enrichment, uncategorized
There are a lot of songs written about the subject of “time”.
Also a lot of poems, narratives, movies, etc.
Time is, after all, only a measuring device.
Yet we as humans seem to believe that time is the quintessential thing of “value”.
At this point in my evolution, time is flowing right by me like an unimpinged stream.
What our minds conceive, our realities have to work on to catch up to.
My mind has already conceived my desired reality.
OK, so can my body hurry already and catch up????
Stay Tuned ….
I’m a bit hurt by this ….
15 Oct 2011 Leave a Comment
in Personal Enrichment, Uncategorized Tags: personal enrichment, self-confidence, self-enrichment, uncategorized
My mother-in law and I were talking the other day.
She mentioned that when they were visiting her daughter out of state, her daughter took her for a professional pedicure. And she really liked it.
When she returned to our state, she made an appointment at her salon for another pedicure.
Now, normally I would be fine with this.
However, I have my nail technician license. I’ve been a nail tech for over 11 years. I’ve clipped, filed, and polished her nails for her over the years (at no charge) at her own home. I never asked her for a dime.
I must admit, I’m a bit hurt by this.
Instead of coming to see me at the place I work at (which, by the way, is actually CLOSER TO HER HOUSE than her own salon), she went to a stranger.
Then, she mentioned that the way the stranger did the pedicure was nice, but the way the tech clipped her toenails actually scared her. She said it was “too fast”. OK. Gotcha.
I asked her if she ever felt that way when I did her nails.
She said no.
OK, soooo …. wtf?
Now, her child, my companion, never defends me. Ever.
This really upset my companion. Quote “She is taking money out of our pockets!”
Will my companion confront the mother? Hmmmm…. Never has in the 15 years we’ve been together, let’s just see what becomes of this.
Stay Tuned ….
Timeline of a Brilliant Spirit’s Life here on Earth ….
06 Oct 2011 Leave a Comment
in Personal Enrichment, Tech, Uncategorized Tags: personal enrichment, self-enrichment, tech, uncategorized
Steve Jobs: A timeline
Major events in the life of Steve Jobs
By Agam Shah, IDG News Service
1955 — Born Feb. 24 in San Francisco to Joanne Simpson and Abdulfattah Jandali.
1955 — Adopted from infancy by Paul and Clara Jobs in San Francisco. Moves to Mountain View, California, five months later.
1969 — Offered a summer job at Hewlett-Packard Co. (HP) by William Hewlett.
1971 — Meets Steve Wozniak; the two later found Apple Computer Inc.
1972 — Graduates from Homestead High School in Los Altos.
1972 — Registers at Reed College, Portland, Oregon, and drops out after one semester.
1974 — Joins Atari Inc. as a technician.
1975 — Starts attending meetings of the “Homebrew Computer Club,” which discussed home computers.
1976 — Jobs and Wozniak raise US$1,750 and build their first marketable table-top computer, the Apple I.
1976 — Founds Apple Computer Company with Wozniak and Ronald Wayne. Wayne sells his stake two weeks later.
1976 — Jobs and Wozniak launch Apple I for $666.66, the first single-board computer with a video interface and an onboard Read Only Memory (ROM), which instructed the machine on how to load programs from an external source.
1977 — Apple is incorporated as Apple Computer Inc. and the new company buys out the original partnership.
1977 — Apple launches Apple II, the world’s first widely used personal computer.
1978 — Jobs has first child, Lisa, with Chrisann Brennan.
1979 — Development of Macintosh starts.
1980 — Apple III launched.
1980 — Apple goes public, share price jumps from $22 to $29 on the first day of trading.
1981 — Jobs involves himself in Macintosh development.
1983 — Recruits John Sculley as Apple president and chief executive officer.
1983 — Announces “Lisa,” the first mouse-controlled computer. It fails in the marketplace.
1984 — Apple launches Macintosh with a splashy ad campaign on Super Bowl Sunday.
1985 — Wins National Technology Medal from U.S. President Ronald Reagan.
1985 — Jobs ousted from Apple after boardroom struggle with Sculley. Jobs resigns and takes five Apple employees with him.
1985 — Founds Next Inc. to develop computer hardware and software. Company later renamed Next Computer Inc.
1986 — Buys Pixar from George Lucas for less than $10 million. Company later renamed Pixar Animation Studios.
1989 — Next launches $6,500 NeXT Computer, also known as The Cube. It comes with a monochrome monitor, and fails in the marketplace.
1989 — Pixar wins Academy Award for animated short film “Tin Toy.”
1991 — Marries current wife Laurene Powell. Has three children with her over the years.
1992 — Next releases NEXTSTEP operating system for Intel Corp. 486 processors. It fails in the wake of competition from Microsoft Corp.’s Windows and IBM Corp.’s OS/2.
1993 — Next shuts hardware division, shifts focus to software.
1995 — Pixar’s “Toy Story” highest grossing film that year.
1996 — Apple acquires Next Computer for $427 million in cash and Apple stock; Jobs becomes advisor to Apple Chairman Gilbert F. Amelio.
1997 — Jobs becomes interim CEO and chairman of Apple Computer Inc., after Amelio is ousted. Jobs’ salary is $1.
1998 — Apple releases the all-in-one iMac computer, which sells millions of units, financially reviving the company and boosting its share price by 400 percent. IMac wins the Gold Award from British Design and Art Direction. Vogue calls the iMac “one of Spring’s hottest fashion statements,” and Business Week says it is “one of the century’s lasting images.” Jobs wins a Chrysler Design Institute award for the iMac design.
1998 — Apple returns to profitability and records four profitable quarters in a row.
2000 — ‘Interim’ dropped from Jobs’ title.
2001 — Apple launches next-generation operating system — the Unix-based OS X, with subsequent upgrades over the years.
2001 — Apple makes first foray into consumer electronics market with launch of iPod, the portable MP3 player. (It sells more than 4.4 million iPods in fiscal 2004.)
2002 — Launches the flat-panel all-in-one personal computer iMac. It makes the cover of Time Magazine that year and wins numerous design awards.
2003 — Jobs announces the iTunes Music Store, which sells encoded songs and albums.
2003 — Jobs launches the 64-bit PowerMac G5 personal computer.
2004 — The iPod Mini, a smaller version of the original iPod, is launched.
2004 — In February, Jobs terminates Pixar’s highly successful alliance with The Walt Disney Co. for production and distribution of Pixar’s animated films. Pixar is ultimately sold to Walt Disney in 2006.
2004 — In August, Jobs is diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and undergoes surgery. He recovers and returns to work in September.
2004 — Under Jobs’ stewardship, Apple reports its highest fourth-quarter revenue in almost a decade, assisted by the resurgence of its retail network and sales of the iPod music player. The revenue for the period ending Sept. 25 is $2.35 billion.
2005 — Apple uses its Worldwide Developers Conference to announce that it is moving from using IBM PowerPC processors in its computers to Intel processors.
2007 — Jobs announces the iPhone, one of the first smartphones without a keyboard, at Macworld Expo.
2008 — In late December Apple announces that Jobs will not deliver the keynote at the 2009 Macworld Expo nor will he attend the event. This immediately sparks speculation on his health. Apple also said that it will no longer participate in the show after 2009.
2009 — In early January Jobs says that his dramatic weight loss was caused by a hormone imbalance. At that time he said this condition would not hinder his abilities to function as CEO. Around one week later Jobs says that he will take a leave of absence from Apple until June because his medical condition had changed. He does not disclose his ailment. COO Tim Cook is to handle Apple’s day-to-day operations during Jobs’ recovery period. Apple says Jobs will be involved with major strategic decisions.
June 2009 — The Wall Street Journal reports that Jobs underwent a liver transplant. A Tennessee hospital later releases a statement confirming the operation.
June 2009 — Apple confirms that Jobs is returning to work at the end of the month.
January 2010 — Apple announces the iPad tablet computer, which becomes an instant success and spawns a new category of mobile computing devices.
September 2010 — Jobs appears on stage in San Francisco to announce Apple’s second-generation Apple TV set-top box, which streams movies from the Internet or mobile devices like the iPhone and iPad directly to TV sets.
January 2011 — Apple announces Jobs is taking a medical leave of absence, without specifying a reason for the leave or how long he’d be away. Questions are raised about the severity of Jobs’ health problems, and its impact on the company’s stock, product development and business operations.
March 2011 — Taking a break from his medical leave, Jobs makes an appearance at an event in San Francisco to introduce the iPad 2.
June 2011 — While still on leave, Jobs appears at the company’s Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco to introduce the iCloud and iOS 5. A few days later, Jobs appears in front of the Cupertino City Council with a proposal to build a spaceship-like campus in the city.
August 2011 — Jobs announces he is stepping aside as CEO, with Cook taking over that role. It also is announced that the board has elected Jobs chairman.
Oct. 5, 2011 — Jobs dies at age 56.
Rest In Peace, innovator, mover, shaker, colorer outside the lines ….
End of Line …. for now.
Stay Tuned….
“Do The Work” ….
04 Oct 2011 Leave a Comment
in Personal Enrichment, Uncategorized Tags: personal enrichment, self-confidence, self-enrichment, uncategorized
DO. THE. WORK.
I am doing the work.
On myself.
For anyone who is familiar with therapy, you know that the more honest you are with yourself, the more honest you are with your therapist, and the more work you can accomplish in a quicker time period.
I’m all about “peeling the onion” as deeply and as quickly as possible.
In past experiences, I have encountered a 2-year “lag” in my progression. No matter what I wanted to manifest into my life, it would take 2-years to the day to make it happen.
No longer.
I know there is a time and place for “patience”.
I also know there is a time and place for “promptness”.
I have a goal in mind. I have not only set my intention on that goal, I have enlisted my therapist to assist me in making it happen.
I have set a ONE-year goal for myself.
I am 6-months into that goal.
In the famous words of Captain Jean-Luc Picard I hear his voice echo in my mind saying “Make it so.”
And I am in the process ….
Stay Tuned ….
Prayer ….
02 Oct 2011 Leave a Comment
in Personal Enrichment, Uncategorized Tags: personal enrichment, self-confidence, self-enrichment, uncategorized
I posted this a while back, but it bears repeating.
I’ve modified this from a couple different prayers I’ve heard over the years.
It definitely resonates with me. =)
God,
Grant me the strength to forge ahead towards my dreams,
for I am feeling oh so tired and am faltering a bit.
Keep my mind focused,
my body healthy, strong, and nimble,
and my spirit illuminated so brightly
that I may see far enough into the moment
to keep myself on my path,
but not too far to miss out on the moment itself.
Love me as I ought to love myself.
Protect me when I am vulnerable.
Remind me to bring myself back to “center” as often as I am able.
Guide me towards total financial independence so that I may not only provide for myself but also for all others in my life without drain.
Thanks for listening, Peace Out!
Stay Tuned ….