All things considered...

Just something to consider. If your news source just keeps validating everything you already thought, if it is telling you exactly what you want to hear all the time, if it isn't regularly challenging you to think in different ways or to question your own conclusions, maybe your source is flawed. Because where else in your life is everything exactly the way you think it is, all the time?

To vote or not to vote? What exactly is the question?

After this grueling election season, a lot of people are expressing surprise that so few of their fellow Americans chose to exercise their right to vote.  (According to reports I have seen, voting was at a 20 year low in a presidential election, which is bad, even for the United States, which typically has a low turnout, anyway.)  I have seen a lot of disparaging remarks about not voting, and I think they have missed the point. We also have a right not to vote, and it can be a choice of honor, a choice of exasperation, a choice of civil disobedience, a choice of protest.

Working rich...

Change is difficult for most people.  It is scary.  It is unpredictable.  It is challenging.  It is complicated.  It is emotional.  It is enervating.

But change is also exciting.  It is innovative.  It is opportunity.  It is interesting.  It is fun.

I have felt all those things in this complicated week of change, sometimes all at the same time.

To write or not to write.... It really isn't a question.

I rarely get into this genre of writing, but this morning I stumbled into a blog post by a so called "mommy blogger" who was expounding on the virtues of her recent epiphany of not blogging about her children.  Like most new converts, she was full of enthusiasm for her viewpoint, and somewhat sanctimonious about her freshly developed convictions on the subject.

What she apparently failed to appreciate in the whole piece was that she was still blogging about her children.  In fact, she went even further by reminding her readers that she had previously blogged about something so personal for her son that her own father had to tell her to knock it off.  By talking about how she was not going to make personal revelations such as these any longer, she was, in fact, talking about them, and reminding us all that she had talked about them previously.  Frankly, the whole piece fell flat, since the entire blog was, in fact, about her children's personal lives.

Life Math

0+5=5
1+4=5
2+3=5

I was recently asked by a customer at my job if I watched the political convention the previous night. This man was very pumped up about the speeches that had been given, and he is very excited about his choice of candidate. Although I am not in favor of his candidate, I respect his right to his opinion, however misinformed I think it may be.  So I tried to listen respectfully as I got the transaction completed.

But I also believe I am entitled to the right to privacy in my political persuasions. I am not required to disclose to anyone who I vote for, or my reasons why. I don't answer to the world - I answer to my own conscience. And I certainly do not need to answer to a customer who does not even know me.

So I responded to this customer by telling him I did not watch, and in an effort to shut down this line of questioning, I told him I am not political. Apparently he does not share my respect for the opinions of others, nor believe in my right to my personal privacy.