Category: Opinion

December 30, 2020 – AltF4.co’s 2020 in Review

December 30, 2020 / bhayes952

Since I was a child, I always looked forward to that period between Christmas and New Years. The chaos died down tremendously and this was that brief period where rest seemed like the prescription before the new year cranked again.

When I was in my teens, it seemed popular to have the ‘best of’ countdowns on TV, radio, magazines and newspapers. It was the best 100 songs of the year or the top 10 news stories of the year. Since it was pre-internet, there wasn’t an instant access to video clips or music like there is today. There were those songs that you sort of forgot about as time moved on because they were on the charts eight months ago and no longer on the radio.

I was driving home from work last night and I was listening to the Sunday sermon on podcast. There was a statement that made a lot of sense and that was ‘You should live your life like you drive a car; mostly looking forward, but sometimes glancing back and side to side.’ And the point of that is that you can’t get to where you are going if you are only looking in the rearview mirror. But of course, this is the time to put an end to this year and everything that went along with it.

I have kind of batted around the idea what I wanted this to be. One thought I had was the top ten things of what happened in the world, but I think that would be too pedestrian. I thought about putting together some sort of song list or something that represented the year but that seemed boring. In the end, I settled on my year in review and the highlights of my year.

January- We rang in the New Year in Whittier, California. I picked five ripe oranges off a tree as we were heading back home January 4th. We had a tremendous week and a half family vacation which turned out to be tremendous luck that we took our trip when we did because travelling soon became impossible.
February- Right before our trip, we had a water leak that caused the ceiling to collapse in our pantry. Once the damage was repaired, I spent most of January and February building cabinets to replace the pantry and turn it into a more functional space. This was my most ambitious all wood woodworking project to date.
March- This was the month where our lives were impacted by the ‘Coronavirus’. School ended a full week before spring break, my wife’s office closed that same week. We cancelled our couple days of vacation that we were going to take and went into ‘lockdown’. Fortunately, we had some distinctly un-Oregon like spring weather and the weather turned mostly nice from here on out.
April- We said good-bye to our exchange student. Even though his Visa was good, he wanted to stay and both parents were OK with the decision the exchange program was not. After we signed a waiver for him to stay, they rescinded the support like insurance and such. All was quiet and melancholy at our house for a couple of weeks.
May- The weather changed for good toward summer this month. I went from working on the apartment four to five days a week to seven days a week. In the back of my mind, I already knew that I was behind and that there was so much to do that I really didn’t have time to waste, especially because we were still in quasi lockdown anyway.
June- This was the month that we started hosting small group at our house. It was really a rededication for me to get more serious about my commitment to God. I have gone through the waxing and waning of church attendance, devotional reading etc. Each time as I come back, it seems that my tuner gets a little clearer. It seems like I am hearing more.
July- This was all remodeling, all the time. I am trying to think of a highlight for this month but it is all kind of a blur. I guess if I were to pick one experience it would be roofing the new addition with my son. I don’t know if he learned anything but it was kind of fun teaching him. Side note: we got it right the first time, no leaks.
August- The apartment is complete. Tenants move in the first weekend. I wasn’t completely done until the second week. I still had, garbage to deal with, materials to donate, and a mess in the garage.
September- I don’t really remember this month. It was the month of wildfire, we had two weeks of smoke and maybe I was in a daze. I had to come to grips that I no longer employed a landscaper and started spending time in the yard mowing, pruning, etc. I now find myself watching the weather to find the dry days so I can attempt to keep up with all the things that need to get done.
October- This was a month of disappointment. I chose to do handyman work and job search over going hunting. I was really disappointed but my dad said that they saw zero deer during the whole week. You know, I always want a chance but the comradery is really fun too. I don’t know how many more chances I will have like that. I hope that wasn’t the last one.
November- I guess that this was a leap of faith. This was the month that I was looking to make a move for a more menial, labor type job since we were moving toward the holidays. The interview was easy, I think the test was just having the perseverance to try. I was hired without being asked a single question other than “can you do the job?”
December- I settled in for regularly driving for Amazon. I have really enjoyed my time. Part of it is that I know I am not going to do this forever. Truthfully, I haven’t worked as much as I hoped I would from a financial perspective. I have been averaging about thirty hour weeks and it takes the best part of the day: from about 9am to about 7pm on the days that I work. Now that peak season has ended, the number of drivers on the road has decreased by about a fifty percent and consequently it seems like that routes are getting longer. Yesterday I was ‘on-duty’ for nearly eleven hours, the max allowed for a day.

Conclusions for all of this… I guess if you routinely document your life, it is easy to remember. But seriously, the big one is that we are not leaving the year in the same fashion as we did last year. The pandemic stopped monthly trap shoots, it cancelled my kid’s summer camp and other extra-curricular activities. My daily EDC now includes a mask and unfortunately I have to wear it all day when I work. I fear that we have severely damaged our economy as well as raised false flags of hope that we are all doing our part to ‘flatten the curve’.

One more quick tangent. I had a nice Christmas. It was the first one ever that we did not leave the house after we got home from Christmas Eve service, including when we lived in South Carolina. It is strange when fourty plus years of tradition suddenly don’t exist. But on the plus side, it allowed us to take some time in the day and just relax rather than just feel rushed. We did spend significant time cooking, so we go a little taste of the rush.

I hope that you enjoyed my year in review. This will be the last post for 2020. My next post will be talking about goalsetting and plans for 2021 so I will save all of that for probably next Tuesday. With that, Happy New Year.

December 23, 2020 – Happy Festivus, the Airing of Grievances

December 23, 2020 / bhayes952

Before I get started and despite the negative tone of yesterday and today, I truly wish my readers a Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays of their faith and culture. This will be the last post before Christmas. I anticipate one more between Christmas and New Year’s day.

Today is the fictitious Festivus holiday of Seinfeld fame which has five distinctive components.

Decorations – A bare aluminum pole as a Christmas tree substitute
Dinner – Some sort of semi-formal, family style dinner with the invited Festivus guests
Airing of Grievances – Bring up issues that have happened all year long with the guests present. This will occur before dinner.
Feats of Strength – Two chosen participants will duke it out to determine the year’s winner
Miracles – Anything that would lighten it up out of the ordinary. It is just fun to say.

Today, I am going to write about concerns that I have from the year and moving forward. This is not intended to be a downer list but rather a stimulating and thought provoking post. I don’t know if I have said in the past on this blog or not, but I truly believe the situation is what you make of it. Without discussion or awareness, things only maintain status quo at best.

Working for an hourly wage may sound good on paper, but it doesn’t pay what you would think. In my case, the expectation was that I was going to work four, ten hour days in a week. The reality has been that it has been 3-4, six to eight hour days. My time stubs are averaging 30 hours a week. I don’t think that it is enough to justify the time output.
Creativity is dead in entertainment. The brilliance of Seinfeld as an example. It was funny, witty and edgy without being over the top. I feel like the last sitcom to hold the ‘best’ title recently, Big Bang Theory was none of those things and I have a chemistry degree. I get nerd humor. Streaming is now the best way to get close but even so I can’t keep up with the volumes of choices and seasonal release schedules.
The difference between the ‘free’ states and the quasi-totalitarian states has been exploited this year. The west coast has gone full jack boot on some industries like fitness gyms, movie theaters and restaurants. Who the hell is going to eat outside in Oregon winter? My position remains that vulnerable people need to take appropriate precautions, everyone else should live as they see fit.
Logic and Reason is completely absent from the majority of the population. We have the group that still thinks Trump will keep the office of President. We have the group that thinks quarantine and masks will ‘slow the curve’. We have the group that thinks rioting helps the image of Black Lives Matter. We have ‘camping bans’ as a policy for reduced homelessness. It feels like it is a school district ‘snow day’ when it snowed for fifteen minutes at three AM.
Media of almost any form is in the tank for one side or the other. It doesn’t matter which side. And by the way, the major social media platforms are the worst at censorship. They are imploring politically correct only messages. The fact that they have successfully polarized the population means that they win. Control has been surrendered. If you are accepting any argument where ‘the science has been settled’ or you are opposed to any argument because that is the argument, then you are being controlled as well.
Convenience over privacy rules the day and people just don’t care. If you have ever uttered or agreed with the phrase, ‘it is a good first step’ then it works on you too. Bills such as the Patriot Act have fueled the collection of data on you. Granted, most people don’t have much to hide (yet). But, I am sure that most people have things, do things that they would rather not share, myself included. I fear that it is too late at this point. We do not have enough technology for complete monitoring but the path is set. Let me put it this way, our laws limit surveillance to telephone wire tapping only, not e-mail, not text messaging, not private forum posts.

That is probably enough. Remember, we are probably more alike than we are different. I believe that God created us in his image, and that cannot be a mistake.

December 15, 2020 – Social Media and Privacy

December 15, 2020 / bhayes952

How is it that that these social media companies have become so big and so valuable? How do they make money when their product is free? Because we are the product. Everything we are doing is getting recorded and stored and analyzed and sold.

Even after we leave these sites, by going there once, we have enabled the tracking to begin. I haven’t seen ‘The Social Delimma‘ yet, but I have heard all about it. This will be on my short list of things to watch in the coming weeks.

We are rapidly becoming a society that will no longer have privacy. Without privacy, we will have no freedom. I really think that people don’t even care. I think that they are already so strung out on social media that they don’t care about the consequences of continuing.

Part of the reason that I am writing this is the ‘Cancel Culture’ and the manipulation aspect of this is driving new alternatives that at least proclaim to respect privacy. Building a brand as I am, I want to build it on a stable foundation, one that I won’t have to move if I invest the time needed to get it going.

Here is a list of alternatives that I have heard good things about

Facebook	MeWe
Twitter	Parler
YouTube	Oddessey
WhatsApp/Facetime	Telegram
Safari/Chrome/Edge browser	Firefox

You see, the browser or the application enables the functions and starts transmitting data. The safest way to use these things is to login using a secure browser and not the application and then log out when finished.

I know, it is inconvenient. I know that you are not going to get instant notifications. But you see, this is the point of appropriate use. We have to train ourselves that it is not important to immediately acknowledge every ding and post immediately. These are the behaviors that get us hooked on the action.

Admittedly, I have been a very slow adapter of this technology. The only two I use routinely is YouTube primarily for knowledge and entertainment and also LinkedIn which I don’t believe there is a suitable alternative.

The good news for a some of these platforms is that they have built plugins to simultaneously post in two environments like Oddesey. That is a great thing for content producers that need to be concerned about de-platforming because their business is on YouTube.

I was reading this articles about COVID the other day in the local newspaper, not very carefully and I came across a quote. I had to reread the article to find out the credentials of the person that made the quote.

This is what encapsulates the problems of our society succinctly. People that ostensibly know better, giving advice or permitting non-sensible solutions. I would say that we cannot have it both ways. We cannot know one thing and do another. I think everyone knows that I stand for freedom and choice, including the choice to be wrong. But, if we gave a shit about our future, our privacy, our patients or whatever, then we need to stand on principles.

Why would doing something that does not work be better than doing nothing? Maybe he was misquoted? It makes no sense at all. The same with social media. If we know that it is close to evil, then why would we use it? I grew up in a world without it, I am sure that it is not necessary. If we are going to use it, then let us know what we are getting into and do the best we can to avoid the very worst of it all.

December 4, 2020 – Footwear, Not Just Fashion

December 4, 2020 / bhayes952

There are some common truths in niche circles around gear, specifically footwear. As I have mentioned previously, my upbringing was frugal and I still have a hard time letting go of some of those tendencies. I have held on to shoes that as long as they are not falling apart, they still have life. As I age, I am starting to change my opinion on that definition of life left in shoes.

Several years ago, I trained for a half marathon. It was supposed to be a goal to be more healthy at 40 than 30. As life got in the way, and I mostly mean work, I didn’t make a half marathon at forty, but I did at forty-one. I ran a number of different races in preparation and I met a lot of people, most of which were much more serious than me about running.

A commonly held belief is that running shoes have about 150-200 miles in them before they are worn out. Training for a half marathon at 5-10 miles a day, that is about a pair of shoes every month or two. What I noticed is that my hip and or knee would start bothering me about that mileage and the pain would go away when I switched to new shoes. So, I guess that I concur with that consensus.

A lot of those shoes would not appear severely worn out other that what I would see is tread wear at the heal. I felt bad throwing out a mostly intact pair of shoes, but I couldn’t keep running in them. The pain was not worth it. So, they would get rotated into the casual wear pile. For that type of use, the pain would not appear unless I was literally on my feet all day, not something I would plan on but would occasionally happen.

I didn’t run seriously long enough to develop much experience with all the different brands. I have always had an affinity with Asics that goes all the way back to my cross country days. Trying and using multiple models from that manufacturer, some were really great and others I hated. I tried other brands along the way as well; I have never liked Nike, New Balance seem to take a long time to break in but seem to last longer, Fila – No. There are still others that I would like to know about but never got the opportunity.

I say all that because I believe that shoe comfort and performance is personal. I suspect that mass manufacturing has enough variability in the tolerances causing users different experiences in use. There are some specific stores focused on running apparel that take pictures of your feet and pressure points to provide optimal performance like Road Runner Sports. This of course comes at heavy price. Average shoe costs are running at $150-200. They do offer great returns and sell used items kind of like REI and Patagonia do for there circles.

Running is one example, but there is also a colloquialism in hunting that nothing ruins a hunt like bad feet. Boots also come in many different styles and features. There are many different designs for different applications and terrain. High lace is supposed to help for ankle stability. Mountaineering boots tend to be super stiff. There is insulation at different levels.

What I have learned about boots is that I would prefer a non-insulated boot if I am going to walk a lot because you feet tend to sweat with that kind of activity. I haven’t been in cold enough to benefit with the amount of insulation that I have in my current boots. Many have soles that are glued onto the shoe which makes them non-serviceable in the future, if the glue fails. I also like a waterproof boot because I don’t need to be as careful where I step.

This whole diatribe is about the fact that I need new shoes. As much time as I am spending on my feet delivering packages, I am noticing pain with my old shoes. I have one pair of shoes that I bought last spring to start training for a multiple day hike that are still usable. They are running shoes, so my feet are getting wet walking in wet grass and stepping in puddles. So, I am looking for a pair of waterproof, low hikers. I want to keep it light, durable and comfortable. I haven’t decided on a brand or model yet.

I wanted to go through all of this to encourage you to consider the condition of your footwear and provide some of the insights I have learned with my sporting activity. You shouldn’t need pain and being on your feet a lot, consider this some of the most important gear you can invest in. One more thing, I feel like you get what you pay for for the most part. I am not convinced a $50 versus a $75 pair makes much of a difference but $40 versus $180 could.

November 25, 2020 – You Have To Want It… Being Thankful

November 25, 2020 / bhayes952

This is the last time that I will write on this, for a while anyway. It got three days because it obviously struck a nerve with me. Since tomorrow is Thanksgiving, most Americans give a topical examination what we think that we should be thankful for.

I have heard time and time again that people can’t wait for 2020 to be over. We all know what is going on between politics, pandemic and such as if the calendar is going to change those things. Are we as a people going to put our faith into the the number of the year or are we going to thrive despite that?

Thanksgiving brings out stories and lore as the birth of the United States of America. A small group of people left the Netherlands to seek religious freedom and a great unknown. The celebration was the end of the harvest season, one last time to celebrate and hope they did enough before things got really bad – winter.

Thanksgiving is a romanticized holiday that we have put a silver lining on a dark time much like our own. The very event that we celebrate was a time where many people starved to death or succumbed to illness. The native population was decimated by European disease and changed the landscape of the world forever. I bring all of this up to say that maybe 2020 will have a new perspective two or three hundred years down the road.

So again, I am writing about being thankful because I need to remind myself to make my world better. For me, 2020 wasn’t so bad. Yes it didn’t go exactly the way that I wanted it to go. Yes it will require new ways of thinking to thrive. No I didn’t get many of the things that I wanted. But, there is a lot to be thankful for here are many of the big ones.

No one in my immediate family or even extended family has suffered from the effects of COVID or any other major illness for that matter this year.
We rang in the New Year on a family vacation in Southern California visiting Hollywood, Disney, Universal Studios and the beach!
I completed a whole new set of pantry cabinets in a woodworking project that used lumber milled from this property
We spent three months developing a relationship with our exchange student.
I completely remodeled our little rental house, hopefully giving it another 20 years of useful service.
We replaced our beloved ‘Snow Dog’ with a handful of puppy Raya.
I got this site going after talking about it for a year and thinking about it four years. I am learning many new skills as a result.
I got the freedom to pursue interests and desires, testing entrepreneurship and creativity.
I have forged a stronger bond in faith and built techniques into my routines to continue to improve and be successful.
I have some steadier work work delivering packages and still have time to keep going.

If anything 2019 was a worse year for me. I was burned out and bitter beyond belief. I was at a point that I went out into the unknown and try to do better just like the pilgrims. I know that from a financial risk standpoint, it is a terrible decision to up and quit your job. But, there are times when you just have to do something different than what you are doing.

For me, 2021 is going to be a better year because of all the things that were done in 2020 to do so. And, it is not going to be better because the calendar changed. With that, I hope that you have a great Thanksgiving holiday. I thank you for reading and I hope that you consider the things that you should be thankful for.

November 17, 2020 – When will 2020 cross into 1984?

November 17, 2020 / bhayes952

I have been mulling over this topic for a while now. One catch-22 is that I want to stay as apolitical as possible. But I watch some of the things and I have a hard time not screaming for people to wake up as they seem to be stuck in a logic wormhole. I am trying to evaluate fake news and propaganda versus real problems and I have a difficult time separating or seeing the truth.

One thing that is extremely apparent is that many people are scared out of their minds over Covid-19. I hear it and see it all over the place, particularly with the more aged and health susceptible people in my life. I know people that still believe hiding out or washing and sterilizing shopping bags, voting for the right person or refusing to associate with people will tip the scales on this virus and outcome.

I am one of those people that believe that collectively we have more in common than we have differences. I watch in disbelief as our governor threatens the citizens of my state. And, just as fast as the threats went up, they seem to have been whitewashed. It is difficult to find the quote in the news stories for this post.

I would like to point out (again) the extreme lunacy in the current social distancing schemes by using an example.

Put on mask to leave the car and enter a restaurant
Be seated, take off mask
Be served with mask off
Get up to go to the restroom, put on mask
Return to table and remove mask

Does anyone remember the earliest debates about mask usage? They were originally not recommended, largely because they are generally not considered medically viable. Just as all things get thrown into the meat grinder and become distorted and re-propagandized, it has now become the ‘must have’ accessory to make people feel better about doing nothing. I believe that the guidance was changed for the appearance of doing something that we as humans have very little control over, the spread of a disease.

I am not saying masks are equated to freedom. What I am saying is that people are losing their ability to discriminate between fact and feel good. I have no issues with wearing a mask when required to participate in society. Any private entity has the right to make rules or conditions for entry i.e. masks. People have the right to ask people to adhere to hygiene practices or social distancing to enter a residence. I do have an issue when the government limits how society will associate together. This I find to be strictly un-American practice.

People are abdicating their responsibility to use common sense in situations and wanting the government to handle it by policy, rule and regulation. I draw that conclusion based on the overwhelming election results to double down on state policy that will never work. I read a headline this afternoon that 75% of Americans support an national mask mandate. I am wondering if this is really true or this is another propaganda push?

I will leave with the non-scientific but logical litmus test for this entire situation.

Does the bubonic plague still exist? The answer is yes.
Does polio still exist? The answer is yes.
Does the Spanish flu still exist? The answer is yes.

Covid-19 is never going away. It is never going to be eradicated. Children still get cancer, not just smokers. Shit happens and we don’t know why. Pharmaceuticals may some day do wonders, for now have to do the best with what we have.

I feel like I am living in the transformation of the world of George Orwell’s 1984. We have the surveillance state with the Patriot Act in collusion with social media. We have perpetual war in the middle east and Afghanistan. We have xenophobic hate egged on by the partisan groups. We have a population that subsists on processed food garbage and funded by government rations. Most of all, we have a population that is numb to critical thinking and is spoon fed ‘news’ that gets rewritten .

Just wait, there is going to be some neighbors turning other neighbors in when seven people are gathered. I can sense that it will soon be time for my re-education.

November 9, 2020 – How the election results prove the left right dichotomy and is making conservatives look like fools

November 9, 2020 / bhayes952

This past week has been a strange and sad week. If you have followed me for some time, you can probably guess my political orientations by my life outlook. Over the years I have become much more apolitical because I don’t believe that either party has my best interest at heart.

My view of voting has really changed as well. I went from red blooded, eagle scout to non-participant. I got in a ‘light’ debate with one of my family members about the fact that I wasn’t going to vote. Her attempted position was that I was setting a bad example for my kids. In fact, I believe the exact opposite, I am not brain washing my kids to believe every vote matters.

Take my state, Oregon. I actually voted as an experiment. I voted a ballot where every candidate of the choices best represented my values. Only one out of the entire ballot won their election and that was on the county commissioner position. Almost all of them lost by a landslide, it wasn’t even close except for state senator and state representative. You tell me that my vote mattered.

I want to go back to the dichotomy. I know people that are refusing to except the presidential election results. I didn’t know them at the time, but it wouldn’t surprise me if they thought Obama was not a citizen.

I also know people that called to rejoice that their candidate won, how great and historical this was, etc. These were the people that claimed Trump stole the election and cried when George W Bush was elected.

None of these people are bad people. I know them all, but they are blinded by their beliefs to the point that they are willing to hold fast to out and out nonsense. Don’t get me wrong, With hundreds of millions of votes, a few are bound to be erroneous, fake or suspicious. But what everyone is missing is that the system is getting over on them regardless of who wins.

This may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but I want to use some other examples of how this works. Take a person like Rush Limbaugh, he is a master of the same craft that Trump has used. Say something outrageous, let everyone get into their galvanized camp and use your supporters to make you more money. I do believe that Rush is sincere in his general positions but he is a master at manipulating his strong supporters and detractors for his own gain.

This is almost every politician on the national level and it is definitely pushing down to the state level. At the lower level it is often not monetary, but policy.

Has anyone been to a restaurant or bar lately? How foolish is it that you are required to wear a mask to enter but as soon as you sit at the table you are now in some sort of bubble where masks can be removed. It has got to be one way or the other. The mask needs to be on or it needs to be off.

Notice what is happening from a political standpoint. Both sides know that they cannot strangle the social aspect of the economy. They have made rules that make no sense and are not effective to appease the mask vs. no mask crowds.

Take football. Why is it that the NFL is fining coaching staff when caught with their masks off and the players are playing like normal? Could it be virtue signaling? Don’t the coaches go through the same testing regimen as the players? Is there such a thing as acceptable risk? It all makes no sense to me. We have another half in and half out situation here.

If you think that INS is keeping kids in cages or that dead people swung this election, you need to slap yourself in the face. Trump out trumped himself. He turned off people that were lukewarm in the last election and he certainly motivated people that weren’t engaged in the last election and lost by a very slim margin. Now, slap yourself again because regardless of the election results, we are just going to stand around while we lose our freedom at an accelerated pace. That is where the outrage should be.

I will leave with one more thought. Why do you think Trump did not want to release his tax information? Because if he did, the general public would find out that he is not ‘paying his fair share’. Meaning, the people that write the rules don’t write them for themselves, they write them for everyone else. Why else would insider trading be illegal for everyone but congress people? It is the most egregious and in your face example of a double standard as there is. They literally make the government contracts that can legally enrich there own pockets that is illegal for a citizen to do so.

You have heard of the saying ‘What is good for the goose is good for the gander’? There has been a lot of show over not releasing tax returns, but in the end none of them want the real game exposed – at least while people are paying attention.

October 20, 2020 – I want to be grateful

October 20, 2020 / Brandon

Have you ever had an opinion that you alone held, especially the one where you believe you are right and everyone else is wrong? That is the kind of thing where you look at yourself in third person and you say how can you possibly believe something different than everyone else.

I guess that is way I can describe my gratefulness ‘gene’. I don’t really see it until I look back on myself in third person. I don’t tend to recognize all of the good things and tend to dwell on the negative.

Here are a list of some of the things that have happened within the last week.

I have had two job interviews this week
I have been helping my in-laws clean-up and organize. I took a load to the dump of their stuff and it included a bunch of mine as well.
My father-in-law gave me a nice string trimmer that he is no longer using
The neighbors gave me a bag full of mushrooms that they foraged this week
I visited the new brewery in town with my wife for the first time. We had a nice time.
I also went out with friends for a social evening on Saturday.
We completed our 2019 taxes and were net neutral on owning money. This was a first in many years.
My daily alignment walks seem to be helping me set daily priorities and be more in touch with spirituality.
I have completed preserving everything that is available to do so. Yesterday I canned peppers as pickled jalapenos.
I completed a job on-time and in-budget.

When I look at the list, almost every single item also has a negative counterpoint. For instance, I had two interviews last week and I also had two rejections. One of them came as I was writing this post; perfect opportunity to practice seeing the positive.

When I look at the list, I am actually impressed with the number of things that seem to be positive. At this moment, it kind of makes me feel like I really am a negative person. I don’t feel that way but comparing my problems versus my reality it sure seems that way. So, it is something that I will continue to work on.

I will keep thinking praying and listening to try and become more grateful. I will keep writing and speaking to show my feelings. I hope to become a better person in the end.

October 9, 2020 Bonus – Concerned about your digital footprint and future privacy, you should be.

October 9, 2020 / Brandon

This is a test post to validate some new features to me.

Episode-2747- Digital Security for the Modern Age

I have not personally vetted the information, nor am I an expert. That being said, this is an excellent interview about the the potential concerns and future implications of privacy. The bent of the conversation is about freedom as we think we understand and believe but likely not a reality.

Be safe, be smart.

October 6, 2020 – What does Calculus and mathematical equations have to do life?

October 6, 2020 / Brandon

Today is a deep cut. To keep you reading, this post is an analogy not actually about math.

I have been doing a lot of soul searching these last couple of weeks. I suppose that you could say that life hasn’t gone exactly to plan or maybe the way I had hoped. Math is used in science to describe or model life and the natural world. I have been thinking about what I want to change and I thought how eerie parallels some of issues in life line up with mathematical concepts.

The Equation of a Line

When you have a plot with one data point, what direction is the line going? For all you non-math types you can’t have a line with one point. A line can go in infinite directions and slopes when you only have one point.

The metaphor for life is without experiences there is not enough perspective to determine success or happiness. The only thing that you really know is where you are currently. You can have an idea and maybe even a plan to create the next experience, but that doesn’t mean that you will like it or it will be right for you. Not everyone has a supportive spouse to let you walk away without an income for over a year.

For me, I thought I knew where I was going with my life when I went to college. Once it didn’t materialize the way that I thought it was going to go, life happened more without direct deliberation than with it. I cruised along twenty some years until I figured out I wasn’t happy with my line. The problem is, I just realized that I haven’t done anything different to change the direction of my line in the last year and a half. I just hoped that it would change by itself.

Derivative Calculus

Now it is going to hard. What is a derivative? I think that the simplest definition is calculating a change. In application, you can either calculate a point on a line where a change has a particular value or you can calculate the value of a change at a particular point. I might have lost some people already here. I know that in my academic career, this is where I started to struggle with math. I took this class twice to get a better handle on the fundamentals of calculus.

Let’s put it into practice. Looking at your experiences (your line) at what point does a particular change occur. When does your life go sideways or when did the focus or desire change. The straighter the line, the easier it is to calculate or even see on a plot. Unfortunately, life has a way of having our experiences not line up neatly. This is why you need complicated math like calculus to figure it out.

I am pretty good at getting the equation setup, I might even muddle into the answer. That is all kind of useless without doing something with the data. I remember from my days studying Latin, the teacher saying there is no sentence without a verb. Action is required to communicate a thought just as action is required to make change.

Integral Calculus

I think that this one will be simpler; calculate the area under your line. What do you want the sum total of your life to be? Just like in math, positive experiences are additive and negative experiences are subtractive to get the total result. If you don’t like how it adds up, you have to go back to the other steps and make changes. Figure out where you went wrong step two and aim for different experience step one so that you can be more satisfied overall, step three.

So, the truth… I have unknowingly hidden in my Toolbox Fallacy. I like to analyze my situation and pretend that I am planning my next steps without any real results or changes. I have been fearful of moving onto my next professional career steps without acknowledging or even realizing that I was already in one. I have been doing small jobs and handyman work without embracing this might be who I really am.

I wanted to build a lifestyle business because I wanted a creative outlet with practical business deductions and control of my output and life. I already have a lot of that. My fear of failing (or running out of savings) has caused me to not put out effort in marketing and working on what is already paying working. I like the work, I like the freedom,

Don’t get me wrong, I still want to build a lifestyle business. Just maybe doing handyman type work isn’t what I am doing in the meantime but another point in my line.

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