Grandpa Bear

Let me tell you about the birthday present I got this year that almost-but-didn't-quite make me cry. When I was tiny, I got a large stuffed bear from my grandparents. I've held onto him for something like 46 years now. Here's baby me with my Grandpa Bear. Given the pictures near this one where I found it in a scrapbook, I was very close to my second birthday. In fact, that might have been a birthday present. There's a cake with two candles in the next picture.

Good Enough is... Good Enough (Job Hunting)

In one of my online discussion spots, there is someone asking advice about job hunting - about cover letters and interviews and convincing someone to hire them. So here we are, and I'm going to sum up some of my part of the advice with something I wish I'd been taught.

You don't have to sell yourself as a Star. 

You can just be Good Enough.

See, I was a Gifted Kid(TM). I was always told that I could be a star at whatever I wanted to do. I was put on the path of greatness and told I had to go as far as I could go. I was gonna be better! I was going to change the world! My future included being the CEO or President of something, a name everyone knew, someone everyone looked up to. 

That's Just How I Am: Two Takes

 

Unless you phrase it differently. Rather than 'that's just how I am; take it or leave it', try on 'I like being this way; it's okay if you don't like it'. I'm weird, and I know it. But it's not that I'm unwilling to change in ways that correct my flaws; instead it's more that I have accepted and embraced my differences and realized that they aren't flaws. They may not be to your taste, and that's okay; you don't have to like me. But I do like me, and the people I chose to keep around me do like me and my weirdnesses. You can choose to be part of that circle or not, and neither choice is wrong.

Now obviously, I'm not talking about the toxic traits that are bad for you and the people around you. I'm just responding to that first line. If there are toxic traits about you, you need to recognize and correct them. For your own sake.

I Was Thirsty, So I Ordered Toilet Paper

I got thirsty this morning, and ended up ordering toilet paper. Because this is how my mind works. I'll take you on this journey with me, where I dig myself down into a hole and back out of it again.

While working, I realized I was thirsty. I went to take a drink of my Coke, but it was empty. So I crushed the can and dropped it in the bin, then grabbed a glass to pour some water. That left the pitcher low, but I couldn't refill the pitcher because there was a dirty bowl soaking in the sink and blocking where the pitcher would need to sit. So I needed to do dishes. I emptied the dishwasher and started rinsing dirty dishes to refill it, but then realized with all the bending over and running water that I needed to go to the bathroom.

Naturally-Carved Jack-O-Lantern

I found this image posted on Facebook in a few places. And I found it wonderfully horrific. Also suitable to my usual laziness. 

So I got a big fat pumpkin and some peanut butter. I found this article about having a naturally-carved pumpkin:
https://flannelandflame.com/2020/10/19/train-squirrels-to-carve-your-pumpkin

Using a drill to make holes in the pumpkin is something I've done before. I like it as a lazy carving technique.

I thought you guys might like to follow along the progress, so I'll take some pictures and we'll see what happens.

It sounds like it could take as few as a couple of days for the squirrels to do their work, and then it'll go bad like a week later. Which means this might be a trial run before Halloween, and we do another later.

Pronouns as Canaries

I have some outside reading to refer you to this time - 'Pronouns are the Canary in the Coal Mine' - go ahead; go read it first. But the short version is that telling someone your pronouns is a simple measure of how they will (or won't) respect you overall.

We wear a vest almost all the time when we're out of the house. When I meet people, I will often point to the patches on my vest as I introduce myself. One has our name, and the other shows our pronouns. After I've done that, I generally won't say much about my pronouns, though I typically will use plural pronouns in conversation a lot (for those new to my space, we use both plural and singular personal pronouns - I/me/my/mine and we/us/our/ours - depending on intent).

Religion, Worship, Prayer

 A couple of friends lately have brought up the subject of prayer and worship with me, and I rather like one of the answers I've typed out, so I'll share parts of it. 

First, context. I was raised casually-Christian. In that I understood I was a Christian, I went to church a handful of times a year with various family members, but I didn't really have any active worshipping or churching happening in my life. I also occasionally went to synagogue or temple with various friends or classmates. I went to school with a lot of Jewish friends, so 7th and 8th grade meant a lot of Bar and Bat Mitzvahs (is there a collective term for that?). I went to a Baptist summer camp, and was baptized at least a couple of times (I'm pretty sure I was baptized as a baby, too?).

As I got older, I learned more about other religions, both real-world and fictional.  I took a couple of cultural anthropology courses, which were enthralling for examining religions from without. Sci-fi and fantasy fiction world-building have to include religion as part of those worlds, and often include a lot of thought and discussion about how a particular religious view can influence entire moral structures and behavior mores. If you ask me now about my guiding faith, I'll point you toward IDIC (https://meronym-thoughts.blogspot.com/p/idic-infinite-diversity-in-infinite.html). Yep, that's from Star Trek.