Blessed Samhain!

And finally this is my favorite holiday of the year: Halloween is here! ^_^ I've carved my pumpkin, baked my pumpkin pie, picked up some Halloween decoration (cauldrons and jack-o-lanterns), put out my plastic glow-in-the-dark ghost, wore my Halloween sweater (orange with coal stripes) and put candy on a round CD holder's top for the kids of the office. Completed the whole thing with listening to Witches BrewHaHa Halloween Special (WBHHfm), sent out greetings on the social networks and sms. The usual drill.

Truth to be told, I haven't prepared anything particularly for Samhain, even though it is the major Pagan Celebration - from what I gather. Alix was supposed to come up with something, but I haven't received as much as a peep about whether something will be done, shall I bring something, where, when and how will be done and so. If nothing, I was thinking anyways to make a small meditation ritual, the same way I did it for Mabon. (And right now Alix sent me an e-mail telling me she's out buying the stuff for Samhain.)

This celebration marks the Third Harvest of the year, your last bounty and starts the period of meditation, introspection, peace and poundering. Here you gather up and prepare to live from what you have earned. The darkest part of the year starts, which for me means the most stable, as night is usually quite similar through it's all its extent, showing none of the regular changes daytime naturally display. This is a great moment to gather your harvest, the last fruits of your labor and think about what you have accomplished, the meaning of it, and look forward to live from it. If your work's harvest has been good, and you can truly appreciate it, your time of peace and meditation - your winter - will be pleasant, but if your work hasn't been as good as it could have been, or you have neglected to properly appreciate your harvest, what you have accomplished, you will spend a bitter winter.

Many are prone to undervalue their job and their effort, and nothing they do seems good enough. Other on the other hand, seek to escape work and rather live out of what they can snitch from others. What last harvest do they have, when the harvest comes only from your own fields? How a winter will be spent when you sneer at your labor's result or if there's no harvest to live on, for you have left your fields plain and instead lived out of what you could steal from the fields of others, scavenging like carrion creatures.

This celebration is a good moment to take a moment and give ourselves a few slaps on the back, smile and make determinations about what would we want to achieve for the next year and the next Harvest.

Lessons to Learn from the Indiannapolis Colts

A friend of mine said I'm a "black cat", because whenever I pick a football team to cheer, it is most certain to lose. Well, if you follow the NFL, you probably think that's true, as my favorite team - the Indiannapolis Colts - haven't won a single game since the start of the season. That's freaking unlucky, right? I'm already getting to the point when I rather not watch any game of my team, but watch other games and other teams play.

From the start, over and over the problem seemed to be the same: the teams Quarterback, Peyton Manning got injured and had to be operated several times, leaving him out of the game. This seemed to mark the team from the start of the season, connecting lost game after lost game. I remember I got to like the Colts because they were an aggressive team, that played always to win to to lose by the minimal difference. However this season, without Manning and lead by Curtis Painter, they have been playing like they would rather be doing something else. They step on the field as if thinking "Manning isn't with us, so we are going to lose anyway". They don't run what's need to be ran when chasing a player with the ball, they don't muscle up enough to stop the offensive, won't try enough to intercept... Last time the QB wasn't even paying attentiong at the begining of the game and didn't catch the ball when it was passed to him. What the fuck?

Then slowly I realized: these guys actually laid all the job and all their hopes on Manning. The current QB isn't prepared, wasn't prepared but isn't even trying to assume his role - because that's Peyton's job, and the rest of the team instead of actively trying to group up and make the game work, just hang around like a band of sorry assed livestock. Now sure, we could stone the Colts for being such bitches, but shall we?

Actually what we see happening with the Colts isn't something unknown to others. As it happens, in many groups and even in the individuals themselves there is a bad tendency to lay all the job and all the hopes on one skill or only on the one team member that can do the job. Often bosses and coworkers automatically give the projects to that one person who knows how to do the job. Of course, you want a job well done, and it's better if the one who knows how to do it does it, but in a team of many people, why the others don't try and work to get the skill needed to do it themselves too? In the family also people tend to leave certain tasks or certain chores or certain duties to one of them, and all the others just don't do it, nor try to learn how to do it.

As individuals, how many of us, for instance, put all our effort to develop one skill or bet everything on one skill. Women who put their entire future on their looks, guys who put their entire life on money, people who put all their hopes on their acquintances, on getting what they want through connections or anything as fleeting. Maybe something more broad, like focusing your entire life on your career, or your family or one hobby, or a political party... you name it. The thing is that when you put all your eggs in one basket - so to say - either because you depend on your partner to cook for you or fix the plumbing, or you relay on your coworker to take care of the maths of the project, or do the paperwork to get it going - despite that being their strong point, you are exposing yourself, or your team to a Colts-case. What if that coworker leaves the team? What if your partner and you break up or they die or get very ill? What if you lose your looks, lose your money, your connections and friends won't help you anymore or can't do so? What if something happens and you can't continue with your career, if your family decides that they want to do their own life or your hobby stops being interesting?

Well, of you centered all your life on that one skill, that one thing, that one interest, that one Peyton Manning in your life, when you lose it, you become a Colts team lead by a mediocre Curtis Painter. It becomes evident that your team can't even tie their own shoelaces, so their reputation at work will fall dramatically, the family that depends on one person to do something suddenly will be at loss and chaos will break, and the person... well, the person will feel like there's no way on Earth they can go on. It happens. Like a car from which you've ripped off the motor: just a pile of scraps.

Now, unlike in the stupid motivational tale of the Cow, where the lesson was "kill your Peyton Manning and raise new ones", I would say, you shouldn't have to separate yourself from your Peyton Manning, but while you have it, train all your other skills, prepare yourself to the eventual moment when your Manning gets pulled away of your game, be ir for a time or forever.

My team is now a load of crap, but at least they can teach us all a lesson: prepare yourself and prepare your team for the time when your best feature, your best element falls out of the game. Prepare yourself, your team , your skills, as a well working, cohesive group, where the sudden lack of one skill, one member doesn't bring down the whole.

Early Morning Grandiose Ideas

I actually had two topics for e-mail posting, but as usual, by the time I've got in front of the computer, I forgot one of those and the other one doesn't seem so great anymore. Has that happened to you? So I sat here, staring at the blank e-mail thinking "so where was I going with this?". It's actually funny how these "bouts of inspiration" come to us at a moment when we are mentally "out of it", as if in a dry drunk state (dry because there's no alcohol to blame on our Genius Stupidity) and there we are, half way between the world of the sleeping and the awake, drifting in the semi-darkness of ungodly early morning, working fully on auto-pilot, dragging ourselves out of the devilishly tempting warm covers and soft pillows into the uninviting chill and activity, our mind willing to work only to make up excuses to stay "five more minutes" with excuses like "five more minutes won't make us late" and "I've everything prepared, I can really get ready in ten minutes", "I can take the highway and really step into it" to "I'm already late, so what difference does it make?" and "I can always blame it on the traffic". By the time we manage to pry ourselves from bed - assuming isn't late and we are running on alarm velocity - the brain again goes off to slumber while the body drags itself to the shower, and like a recording loop the only thing to be heard up there is "we want coffee". However, from time to time, a neurone or two stir up and the brilliant ideas spark up. In a "brain isn't in session now" state, these ideas usually go on the line of "let's blog about how nice it is to shower with purple shower gel!" or "you know what would be a great birthday present? A matchbox covered with beads!". Rationally you would laugh at the idea or dismiss it even before it surfaced, but at that early time of day, when no self-respecting sense of rationality and reason would be up (only chaotic dreams and emergency instincts are allowed to function), these unfiltered ideas break through and pin the note on your bulletin board "I've a great topic idea about purple shower gel!".

Little by little your functional brain wakes up - hopefully before you ignite your car and put it in gear - and there's this fancy little note stuck there "I've a great topic idea about purple shower gel!".You sigh relieved because there is a topic for the day and you don't have to worry about it, so you go about your day, get in motion to the office, tune in your favorite radio station or move to your selection of music, focus your effort on the work at hand, check on e-mails, read your news and then prepare to blog, call in the note... and it's nonesense! Frustrated you crumple the mental note into a tiny, tight paper ball and throw it into the waste basket. Time to think of something actually useful or let another day go by with no posts.

Lost in Here

Once again this post started with bitching. And it's not like any of you would honestly care how pissed off I am at the latest I.T. sponsored brainfart  - because you are not (except maybe Dragonfly) - but really, keeping me from properly posting Trish' comment, or read her post when I have the time and the energy to do so is a motherfucking abusive thing to do. And what for? I'll tell you what for. It's not stupid controllitis, no. You would think so, but no. This is a plain case of "I won't do my job as I should, because I'll get paid the same whether I do it or not". Yes, it's a self-indulging, incompetence favoring attitude. But not only it's the steal-where-you-can mentality going on, because these same people - and Dragonfly doesn't let me lie in here - actually PRIDE themselves on being "hardworking" and "breaking their backs on the job" and "giving their best", not to mention "being honest, commited and responsible". Dude, you've no shame.

Yesterday I was at the most terrible seminar-workshop invented by men. It was - ALLEGEDLY! - about Strategic Planning and Risk Management. The invitation said that, the facts said different. Two "professionals" -  and this is where I'm so fucking proud of being able to call myself a Scientist, so I won't be put in the same category as them - in Business Administration, one of them from some sorry-ass-big-name private university, presented the weakest, most biased ... program, I guess... where the main topics were cut in half in order to accomodate two more topics, unannounced, probably under the philosophy of "more is better", regardless of the utter lack of quality of the end result. Not like it would have held any water, mind you, as the adding of two more topics could have been the result of the fact that both "professionals" (who also prided themselves of being university professors), probably couldn't say a thing (more) about the main topics. It didn't matter either, mind you, as they came with their neatly pressed black suits and close cropped hairstyles, pretending to be top excecutives and ultimate connoisseurs of the matter at hand, and yet turning the seminar into an entropic clashing of disjoined false-based or biased stories aimed to undermine the image of public institutions and uphold the idea of privatization on wild, grand scale.

Did they know the matter they were talking about? No, and not only because they claimed that "Steven Jobs was the greatest CEO in the planet, even if as person he was terrible" (OK, I'll stay still with Jack Welsh), or because us economists are biased about BAs and think they are our "unhinged, braindamaged sibling", but because for anyone could tell that the throwing around of terms in English that went unexplained, and the grandilocuent way they called on the name of indexes clearly, CLEARLY showed it was all to cover the fact that they have no idea about what they are saying, less even about what they are SUPPOSED to be saying.

Professional papers are filled to the brim with self-help-cut articles that praise mediocrity - openly or not - as the way to do business. The same worn off formulas are passed around like the biggest secrets of Freemasonry, when they don't say much, and skip the matter, the core of everything: You must work hard to get where you want.

Truth is that working hard, being honest, being able to settle, knowing oneself and thus knowing when have you reached your Point of Satisfaction, allowing yourself to be content, are no longer values to hold up to. It's not a virtue to work hard and earn respect for what you do and are capable to do, but instead the promoted new virtues tell you that you must always seek how to pull more profit, either by working less for the same money, or get more money for the same work OR get more money for less work. Back in the day that would have been a SHAMEFULL thing to do. That would have been called "stealing". Today it means being cunning.

You are not supposed to work, you are not supposed to know, you are not supposed to get prepared, and by no circumstance you are supposed to work hard only to be better and be proud of what you do - oh no, that's being stupid - but you are supposed to pretend, and see how can you pull it out with the less amount of effort possible... if any.

So yes, I am blogging from my e-mail account, while the I.T. people act as if every update of the firewall resets the entire system and take their sweet time setting it back. (Sweet time which has been reported to last over 2 months...) And morons charge large paychecks for seminars they are not qualified for, as they can't even be qualified as professionals, and the people attending nod at them like the Taco Bell Chihuahua (I was reading a novel the entire time). And so, are we surprised that the multimillion street recarpeting washed away with the rain? The fixed bridge didn't got fixed? The school connectivity programs don't work? The Enterprise Social Responsability programs drown in a pile of unfulfilled promises while eating up large pools of taxpayer money? Big banks fail and get bailed out only to use the money to pay their overpaid executives? Greece goes down the sewer, Italy can't be held up, Spain is sinking bellow the level of its former colonies and on and on?

Geez, why do you wonder? This is the less effort world we have all chosen, isn't it? And sure, you can say "no, not me", but just look into yourself and judge. Have you stayed true to yourself? Have you willingly chosen the easy over the honest? Do you openly or secretly admire the people who pulls it effortlessly? Do you want to be the woman who marries a millionaire and doesn't have to work anymore? Do you want to be the guy who has a friend who gets him a CEO position or any position with a big paycheck attached? Do you dream with winning the lottery and have all your worries vanished? Dream with being rescued? Dream with having the magical powers to make everything better? Then you are one of them.

Sudden Baseless Unattached Inspiration

The learning is in each one of us for each one of us decides the path we take towards better and further understanding. There are no mysteries hidden from the wise on this earth, none that can't be apprehended and turned around for admiring as long as the mind is set on the task and the heart open with humble attitude towards the immensity the universe and God as it. For the universe is God and God is the universe and so is anything under it, above it, next to it, inside it and in between. For there is nothing that isn't God nor there's anything that's not made of God and part of Him. And floating in the immensity of God, as the mind leaves behind the mindless struggling to possess and acknowledges that possession is nothing but a futile substanceless, matterless illusion, for we are all possessed by God and the universe as one, all belonging to Him as we are all him, the understanding becomes clear, as one part can't hold inside the whole, nor it needs to and so the knowledge yielded for the wise is precious and the persecution for more isn't fueled by an insane and greedy ambition of claiming for what falls outside the rights of the part, but as an exercise to know the boundaries of what the part can contain of the whole, as an effort to make the best of what has been given to the part, all to the honor and the glory of no other but the one and universal God.

Preparing for My Favorite Holiday

There's still over two week for Halloween - my favorite holiday of the year, even if we don't get it off at the office - and I'm slowly preparing to it. I've already made a few small purchases - two small plastic jack-o-lanterns and two lovely plastic cauldrons filled with candy and plastic spider rings that look so delightfully creepy, you can rest assured I would make people scream at the office by wearing them and letting them know that a huge, fat spider is walking on my hand. ^_^ I also plan to find a way to decorate Sookie, bring the Halloween to her too, though I bet plenty of people think that the dreamcatcher I've pending from the rear view mirror is creepy enough.

I've also spotted a place where I can get my lovely pawns on a medium size pumpkin for carking purposes. This actually happened yesterday, when - for the first time ever - I took the insane idea of taking Sookie out to run a few errands in the city. Yes, a Saturday, right around 11 o'clock, when the city is the bussiest - because there's nothing like Heredia on a Saturday morning-noon - and the traffic is so dense, the whole city transforms into a big, smoggy parking lot. Yet I did it becace it happens to be one of the rainiest, most freakiest days of the year. Rainy season's poster-day, plus some tornado and what-not has brought my beloved rainy mornings and rainy days and all cool and chilly... with the downside of lots of rain, getting wet every step of the way, and your laundry not getting dry all week. It's a bitch. I mean, I ACTUALLY had to iron all of my clothes - including jeans and t-shirts, which I never-EVER iron - to get them to dry.

However I've got an e-mail from my shipping company, that my Colts stuff was finally on the counter (and I had to pay for their services around 50% of what I paid for the stuff itself, which wasn't pleasing me at all), so I drove there. The place is in a particular location at a commercial center that looks onto a really bussy street. Coming out of there was going to be a real test. It seems however, that God was really on my side as I actually got out of there quite fast and easily. I didn't need to wait much for my stuff, and then though the road was packed to capacity and the cars weren't moving at all, and I actually needed to cross the line in front of me to get into the other line (not just melt into the flow), all I had to do was to roll down my window, smile pretty and quite soon a guy stopped and signaled me to go. The priviledge of being a woman. ^_^

From there I had to go to the supermarket to pick up a few things I've written up on a list. Some beverages, bread, paper handkerchiefs (it's flu season) and some cold medicine. Yeah, like that was going to be the only thing I would buy. Not so lucky. I was quickly pulled towards the veggies, because "hey, I shall cook something for next week to take to the office" (and lets not talk about the fact that Monday is a holiday), so I went to the veggies and got myself some mushrooms, zuccini (because it really seems that the only thing I think about when it comes to veggies is zuccini. Really, could someone please, PLEASE give me a veggie cookbook for Christmas so MAYBE I get a hint about how to actually use and incorporate other veggies in my diet?), some potatoes, some apples, chives... and there they were: The Pumpkins. Halloween pumpkins are not all that common here, and actually the first Halloween pumpkin I saw was the one Alix, her husband, her daughter and I carved last year, so finding them there, just waiting was a wonderful revelation. Now I can actually get my own pumpkin and carve it at home! And of course gut it and scrap it and make pumpkin pie from the scrapping!

There were smaller pumpkins too, but I'm not sure I'll be skilled enough to carve those too, though it would be fun to carve a small one and take it to the office. If it could safely house a tiny votive candle inside it would be a success! Not like anyone at the office cares for Halloween, but I'm a total sucker for the holiday! (Like you can't tell that already).

Also, as you can imagine, I also plan to somewhat do a Samhain celebration in the evening. In good theory we'll celebrate it again at Alix' place and this time it will be her time to preside the ceremony. However not much has been said, and it seems to me that there are big chances that she won't even be available for that day. (The first time we gathered for a celebration was for Lughasadh, where I was asked to preside and it came out really whacky.) However I'd like to plan and have my own - shall we call it Solitary - ceremony too, to meditate a little about the meaning of the Third Harvest and what it brings to my life, what it has summoned, what it has given and what's to come. It's important as these days feel indeed final, and I can't stop thinking with a certain, ethereal feel of peace, that this is my last October here.

For this purpose I have yet to read and yet to prepare, though I've already prepared a script for the calling of the corners that sits well with me, as I have paired it with my Christianity, seeing in each element an element related to God. This I wish to try out for the new start.

I must say that I'm feeling quite happy and accomplished. I'm proud at the resilence I proved with the thesis, at the strenght both Mile and I had, the determination, the supporting to get this through and conquer our goal. I feel it as a lesson that teaches us that though things ahead might seem hard and impossible, by persevering and keeping our eyes on our goal, by pushing, by not letting go and finding the right way, we can and will always succeed. It tought us also that God is there, that miracles do happen and the impossible becomes possible when the time is right and the star align for the purpose. I feel at peace and much calmer, more focused, centered in myself. Obstacles do not frighten me as I know there's always a way to reach to them.

This Harvest has brought me lessons, has brought me yoga, peace, determination, the closing of many cycles and forethoughts for the cycles to come.

Perceptions

Probably a lot of people do the same - I know for a fact that many of my friends do - namely, to have a coin purse. You know, those lovely, little purses that fit well in the front or back pockets of your jeans, which hold all those coins you wouldn't or can't put in your wallet. The coin purse has an interesing life, with a "basic state", which is usually half-full to rather-empty, but goes towards full and towards "moths and a button" from time to time. It also feeds usually on change - well, that's what you keep in it - with the seldom crumpled low denomination bill and maybe a few recipes from the grocery store.

The coin purse can also be your best ally, when you are in a "less than good" place and you must go to some place to make an important payment, or someone decided to pay you an important amount of money in cash rather than doing a transfer. If the amount can be fitted, you roll up the bills and squeeze them into your trusty, humble coin purse. But these are usually extraordinary cases, as the coin purse usually houses change. You normally don't take out your coin purse to pay for the groceries at the store, nor your pay the fee of the movie rental from your coin purse, nor the movie ticket, nor your clothes or new smartphone, unless, of course, you've prepares ahead the money and put it there. So, what do you think of when looking at your coin purse? What do you usse it for? Here comes the funny thing. 

Up until  now, I used to associate my coin purse with the public transportation. My coin purse was the source to pay the bus fare (in Costa Rica, as well as in many Latin American countries, you still pay the bus fee to the driver in cash). It was also the source to complete the taxi fare above the amount I should pay in bills. In Europe, where you don't pay your bus fare in cash, the change in my coin purse mean a hot coffee or a hot cocoa at some local bistro, or change for a newspaper, a magazine or some candy at some traffic booth or at the nearest gas station. It meant also to eventually do the effort an empty it, count the change and see if I can do something to get rid of it, OR - like my dad and brother do, who have no coin purses - dump it into a jar and leave it there, for taking when needed.

The other day, however, as my coin purse got in my hand, my thought about was "change for the toll fare". The thought came automatically an suddenly I stopped in my track. When had the "bus fare" morphed into "toll fare"? Not that I pass through toll booths all that often, but this change in the way I regarded my coin purse made me think.

As your life changes and your conditions and circumstances change so change the way you see things. That's notthing new, but often we tend to forget about it or dismiss it as something small. If you have worked hard all your life for the things you have, the experiences you've earned, your perception of them is different from that of someone who had the same things given. For instance, if you have competed and worked hard for a good position in your job, you get there with a certain degree of appreciation, and knowing all you had to do and endure to be there, you'll make sure to keep it, continue working hard to prevail in that position. BUT if you've got to that position because you have a friend, and that friend has power and offers you protection, and part of that protection is that awesome job, then you can't care less about that position, but you will do your best to stay in the grace of your friend so they keep you protected, and if you fail at your job and you must go, your friend will get you a better position. It's the same job, just as it is the same coin purse and the same change in it, BUT the way you relate to it change.

As it happens, people for instance relate differently to life after a near-death experience, or after the death of someone close to them. It also can explain how people who started a path together, but have different circumstances and different experiences end up seeing the same thing in very different lights. Among other things, this coin purse made me think of my friends, and how some of them don't see the things the way I do and how I often struggle to understand what the heck are they seeing when I see something completely different. In the end, it's the same coin purse, but one of us see the future contents of a coin jar that eventually will make it to a bank, another sees teh chance to buy a couple of cigarets, or a cup of coffee ot a shot of vodka on the way home, to pay the bus fare, buy some candy, get the morning paper, make it for the next issue of their favorite magazine, or may the toll fare.

Let's not forget that we all start on the same place.

The Reason I've Been Out

You probably don't wonder anymore why on the freaking earth I haven't written in a while, because after several steady months with posts on the single digit figures, me falling off on you again wouldn't be strange. Yeah, only this is due to something else. It seems the office updated the WebSense again and that means that they went back to filtering justa bout everything, which includes the blogs. It's strange because I actually have access to Twitter and Facebook, but I can't access my blog nor newspapers. Really, we go through this on every single time there's an update and it's getting old. Can't they just get it right at once? Why do they subscribe to a system that resets every single time? Or why can't they do the job properly, and have the settings done for once and just upload the updates in a seamless way? No, they have to be a pain in the freaking ass and go moron getting in everybody's way.

Sure, I could post from home, and eventually I'll do so - when I don't get home all tired out and wishing just to roll into bed with the remote, a book and a BIG mug of hot cocoa. Meanwhile, I'm back to hectic and in-and-out posting.

Pride as a Virtue

It seemed up until a few days ago, that I would manage to write one post per day. It would have been nice to do so, to add up 31 posts for October, and round up, pair up a month with a number signaling my favorite celebration: Halloween. Before you ask, no I haven't started my planning and rounding up for Halloween/Samhain yet. According to plans, Alix shall "lead circle" for Samhain, if we actually decide to keep up this strange decision to celebrate in a Pagan-ish way the cycle of the year, so it's not like I must be working on it, planning and coordination - no matter how poorly the end result comes up - though most likely I would end up doing something small and private - Solitary Witch like - just like I did in Mabon (though I didn't took pictures of that).

In the past days, the days I didn't post a thing, I took part of two activities that made me think about pride in a very positive way, a way that should be kept and nurtured inside everybody's heart.

On Friday seven of my coworkers and I went to a work tour to know an Eolic Power Plant and a Hidroelectric Power Plant. Our company - which is a State Owned Company - started originally working on the energy sector, aiming for many years to bring power to every corner of the country at affordable prices. The ideal back then was to work hard and do the best to ensure the country could grow and develop. The company gave jobs and made sure to have the best professionals in every area, sending them to study, giving them chances to be better and serve better the country. Years after the company also took care of the telecommunications sector, also seeking actively to interconnect the whole country, ensuring low prices and access to phones to everybody. The level of penetration in both sectors was quite high, earning the country the first place in electrification, and I believe telecommunication reach in Latin America. (Or so we have been told.)

With the years, many upper tiers got corrupted and soon we found our labor force filled with people more interested in pulling personal benefit, sucking the blood of the company for the sake of their own pocket, than that of the country. Service degraded, poor choices were made, elitism sneaked into our ranks, with many middle and high management elements too quick to outcast the poorer segments of the country in favor of big companies, ready to give away important chunks of service and price, not thinking twice before fucking up the little people. The phrase "they don't make us so much money, they can go to anyone else" has been said more time than I'd like to recall.

On Friday, however, we were packed into a small mini bus and drove to the far West province of the country, Guanacaste, where in Tilarán and Sandillal we've got the chance to see an Eolic Power Plant (Tejona) and a Hidroelectric Power Plant (Sandillal). Aside from the tremendously poor planning and evident adjust-as-we-go system, it struck me how so far from the putrid higher management spheres, there were people still living the ideal, plausible proud of wearing the uniform, eyes filled with stars of love and pride when looking at the logo of the company. It got to me how these simple engineers, working in far away locations, among machines, staring intently at control panels, still had that unadulterated pride of being part of a force that's there to serve the country. They may not make as much as any of those working where I do, and yet they relate to their jobs, they would give their lives and souls to serve the country. In they lived the kind of pride many have forgotten, with their minds clouded by greed, juicy paychecks, big titles, work paid trips to anywhere in the planet, and the handshake from corrupted politicians who wish to break the company to pieces and give it away to their larger campaing contributors.

It made me think that Pride isn't a capital sin, but the sin is to forget pride, to outcast it and thus be open to sell out one's soul for money, for greed, forgetting the noble ideas that can make you grow by serving your country.

A second type of pride I learned of was the pride of being able to help. It happened on Saturday, when a former coworker of mine, Andy, and her sister, Cucha, took part of a walk for Breast Cancer Awareness. It was particularly meaningfull, because Andy and I have very different political backgrounds and positions: me more "State oriented", she definitivelly more "liberal", and yet it came the day she and I walked for a common cause, and donated for a common cause. Without any discussing, fight picking or anything (we never got into arguments anyway), we took part of a huge Pink Force, among men and women proudly sporting pink ribbons and pink t-shirts, surrounded by people who was there for a family member, a friend, and acquintance or simply for the world, in an effort to do something to help, to bring awareness about this illness and others like it.

Here differences went up in the thin air, made smoke and it didn't matter if you were against or in favor of this or that, didn't matter if you were of this or that religion, of this or that sexual orientation, poor or rich, healthy or sick, strong or weak, fit or a potato couch, what it mattered was that you were there, helping to bring a message to the world, to your fellow citizens, donating time, effort or money - as little or as much - to help those in need, to contribute with the recovery of those stricken with the illness and wishing them for the depths of your heart, without knowing them, to be better. You walked there in support, showing respect and sharing the pride of those who survived and made it, infusing your life strenght from close and from far, to those who are still in the battle. They are not alone and we, a big pink sea, came together to send them our thoughts and positive energy to encourage them to defeat the illness and soon walk with us.

This is Pride, and this isn't a sin. It's the pride of being helpful, of sharing, of doing something for others, it's the pride that doesn't seek to raise above others, but to pull others along, infect them with the feel and the happiness and move them to be part of a greater good.

Be Proud. It's a Virtue.

What's in your Head

Let's not make this about self-help. I'm not a self-help person. Do I ever struck you as a self-help kind of person? Right. Let's not do it either about yet another post ranting about what a piece of motherfucker someone is. By now we all know I happen to be surrounded by motherfuckers that can't differenciate between their mouths and their asses, and usually connect their dysfunctional brains directly to their rectum. FTTA. Fiber to the ass.

There is a positive thing about being surrounded by assholes, and that is that you get to appreciate even better the handful of wonderful, thought-capable people that have been put in your path.

So this time the thing is about "speaking out".

As it happens, when you are tangled on the social networks, a lot of crap is pushed at you. Whether you want it or not, you are witness to the conversations of your friends, and also have a front row seat to the awkward moments when they feel they must "produce" and look "important", resourcing thus usually to common places or quotes. It raises my eyebrows... in the best of cases, particularly because a lot of them are not well thought through. Sure, Sheldon quotes are fun, but do you make noise about freedom of expression only to flaunt the fact that you have nothing to say, but instead decide to say what other people said before. Nice.

From time to time you happen on an original thought, typed down from brain to fingers, and you connect. Aha! That's it. Not always, but happen. Then, it happens that you type down something that you haven't ripped off a quote site, but something that comes directly to you, like ranting somewhere about someone, or just about a situation in general. Yes, it happens. It happens that you keep being nice to someone and decide to keep things on the veneer as they were so far, but you are so fed up with that person, you've decided that you are going to let them go. You are fed up with the stupid lies, you are fed up with the peti little dramas, with the games of envy and whining, putting up faces through which you can see clear as day. It happens that you are getting tired of the regularly scheduled load of crap, and so you blow out some steam, and the steam catches the person, and they actually feel offended about it. Yes, it happens.

So, this time, plain and simple, I want to state that though you shall never forget you are accountable from what comes out of your mouth, bitching about freedom of expression only to abuse the right saying only what pleases others is hypocritical. The world won't end because you dare to say "I hate this person", nor will hunger strike the planet because you dare to say "dude, you are wrong, and this is what's right".

It wouldn't be right to say that you shall only defend and advocate for the rights you would use, as I advocate for same sex marriage, but I won't marry a woman or anyone for that matter. But if you advocate for something, use your head, be consistent, and don't go advocating for freedom of speach when you can't take the truth from others nor you have the guts to dish it out.

Books Never Written

For those who write - be it on a professional level or amateur, be it books or fanfics or blog posts - a few things are as dreaded as the infamous "writer's block". Not like it seems to be so freaking bad, as this phenomenon when the brain goes on vacation, inspiration exhales and the "working process" takes a moment to go "writing yoga" and "plays dead" to relax, is actually inspiration - or excuse - for many more stories - Californication among them.

Question: Do we really, truly, absolutely know what this writer's blocking is? Because we can call with this name a wide arrange of things that basically add up to one result: nothing to publish. It can be the "brain shavasana" (or muse plays dead), or the "brain goes half assed" when there are thoughts and ideas floating around in your mind but none of them seem enough or good or complete to be written down. Of course, some even gather up these pieces and publish crap like "Twilight", which is worthy only to be flushed down the toilet.

The techniques do you use are up to you. Maybe you decide to gather all those pieces, type them down and keep them for the future, if a day comes when your brain does go playing dead on you, and then any scrap is better than no scrap. Maybe you treat those bits like cosmic junk and push them away like annoying bugs, trying to keep your mental slate clean for the eventual landing of the next Literature Nobel Prize you are hoping to write.

Or maybe you are like me, and walk among the floating bits, like in a dreamstate, something pulled out of a Daliesque picture, a Sommerland with bright berries floating around you rode by little faeries or whatever. You look over some, pick one - anyone that seems particularly pretty - and play with it, develop a movie in your head with an implausible plot that could never see the light of day, but fuck if it amuses you! Words and images that never reach the pages, never to be recorded, unfold in a movie just for you. Non Commercial, fluffy, weak, but who cares? It's thew kind of story you like, you enjoy, even if you'd never be caught dead admitting to it.

Worst thing about this floating bits? Sometimes it's so enjoyable, it tortures you that no one ever wrote it down. So why don't you? Because you only have bits and pieces, the movie in your head doesn't need so much, can skip scenes, but if you write it down, who shall you do it?

Understanding or Rightful Raging

For a moment there I thought the Internet was flatlining on me, until I realized that the cleaning lady had pulled another of her usual "mess with the rest" stunts and pulled the cord half out, which considering the usual architecture of the Internet cable, that's pretty much more painful and irking that it would otherwise be. Let's leave to the side how the hired cleaning company hires a crew that can't leave things where they found them - in the best of cases - which makes coming back from lunch a real adventure of "Find The Pendrive With Your Week's Work" game a regularly scheduled one-hour entertainment, if it's not a case of "thought it was helping by sending to recycle all the papers on your desk" and had shredded an important expedient full of un-digitalized originals. No, let's concentrate only on the technological damage.

If you work in a large company where everybody has a computer,  and there are printers, phones, fax machines, scanners and so on around, you're probably acquainted with the post-its fixed on the screens saying "DO NOT CLEAN HERE". It's not by mistake. With unexplainable strenght cleaning crews can punch keys out of the keyboars, fragment a screen, send hardrive into a coma no I.T. Master can bring it back from. It escapes anyone's mind how is it possible that there's a human being not secluded in the desert, who doesn't understand how delicate and important these machines are. Maybe they don't have a computer at home, but shouldn't their employer tell you about how to clean around a computer and what should they pay attention to? But even so, have they really never, ever touched a computer in their lives?

It happens also with the hired help at home, for those who have. I've heard of the cleaning lady sticking a metal pot in the microwave and setting it for 20 minutes to make soup, or smashing the phone with their hands as if it were made of egg shells. One would say that it's not like you expect them to have these same things at their own homes, but if their job involves handling these things, shouldn't they know better?

Some would say that you should be patient and understanding that "they are humble people" and "not everybody knows how to handle these things" and so on, BUT STILL, it's their job.  Should't they know? It's like, if you are a doctor, shouldn't you be aware of what hurts and the damage something you do to cure, can do? As it happens, it's not a matter here of how humble you are or not, whether you actively use these things or not, but a matter of work attitude, and this happens outside the cleaning and housekeeping industry. It's not strange to find professionals who display their diplomas and all sorts of titles around, flaunt them like a peacock tail, and yet are incapable of doing a job well. People so incompetent they can't even compose a remotely sense-making letter, who can't add too numbers and get the result well, who can't follow a simple one-o-one logic to explain something. It's their job, but they are blatantly ignoring the details and parts that would take you from a mediocre hacking into the task to a work properly done.

So, shall we rant at the cleaning lady for nearly breaking the Internet cable and leaving us for over 15 days without internet while the I.T. department processes the request for a new cable and install it, or shall we put her in perspective regarding the mindblowing incompetence of those sporting three-letter titles before or after their names, who don't even know where to put a period in a sentence? And whatever we do, shall that move us to understanding, filing the incompetence of others under "you can't expect everybody being as knowledgeable as you" or are you right about getting upset at people for refusing to put to work a small portion of their Hyne-given-brains and do the small effort of actually doing the job they are paid to be done?

Needless to say, I take the second choice on both takes: nothing excuses laziness and incompetence.

Labels

The topic of labels, just like the topic of "judging" seem to be of the kind that never reach to an end. In each case the bottom line of all mainstream publications, postings and speeches is basically that people don't like to be judged or labeled. People - either from minorities or from mainstream ranting against something or someone - pull out the bleached, worn ragged card of "you can't put me/us/people into a small little box, cram them into a category", and this does sound like such a big, strong, revolutionary argument, when in real life it's an argument suffering from the same short seeing as that they are accusing.

The particular case of labeling shall be taken carefully, being this a particular case that can get really messy, being not as simple as all its detractors want it to be seen. Labeling, just like judging, isn't by nature a bad thing. In a sense, labeling is often the staring point of judging (you first name something before you consider it inside yourself whether that thing is good, bad, likable, dislikable, neutral to you...), and the finishing point (like a second name of a better name you give to something after you have decided how will you relate to it). From here, labeling is a step each of us take tobegin understaing our environment, our entourage, and then it's also a tool we use to order the world around us. These labels come in a wide arrange of forms and types. Successful, failure, happy, sad, big, small, average, extraordinary, rich, poor, alien, local... Some are hard to change, like those related to what we've been born into, or what we've grown into, but others depend often on the choices we make. From this later batch many are labels we seek. When you choose your career, you are choosing also a label for yourself. Driver, teacher, philosopher, writer, matematician... Other labels require you to put a given level of effort. Best Player, Most Valuable Player, Successful, Nobel Prize, Best in the Field, Employee of the Month... You also can do something to earn other labels such as loyal, determinated, hard working, efficient, smart, resourceful and so on. 

There are negative labels as well, which are earned the same way: by what you do and how you do it. Lazy, careless, liar, incompetent, stupid, unpleasant, disrespectful and so on. At the same time one single person usually has a ton of labels, depending on the spheres they move. One person can be at the same time a great sibling, a terrible child, an funny friend, a disrespectful worker and a fierce sports fan. It happens, of course, that some people, at the same time, pick on label of the many they have and hold to that one and only that one and try to live their whole lives only through that one. Shedding everything they pick to be known only as "married", "parent", "boss", "independent worker", "football fan", "otaku"... It's a personal choice.

Labels, on one direction or the other, are simply the mind tags we stick to things and people to arrange them, order them in our head, in our world so that we can relate to them according to our appreciations. You won't relate the same way to someone labeled as "unreliable" as to someone labeled "trustworthy". You also may choose to know better someone and thus get in touch with more of their labels, though often people tend to pick one particular label to stick it on that person and use it as a "Main Tag". Take your best friend, for instance. You know a lot of that person, job, family, political views, favorite sports team, quirks and fun things, and a bucketful of tags. However, when you think of that person, the first label that comes to mind is "My best friend". Is that wrong? Of course it isn't! Labels are just like the name you put to files in your computer so that you can find them easier. So, when someone protests and says that they don't want to be labeled, it certainly sounds like they don't want to be known, acknowledged, recognized... and still all they achieve is to get yet again labeled.

We all are, and we'll always be.

In a way, one could say that labels, like magic and like anything human and organic, are not good or bad, light or dark, right or wrong, but they are one way or the other depending of the heart of the person who sticks the label and interpret it. Thus, the name of a label can be changed a thousand times and that won't clean it or improve it, as long as the heart of the person isn't also changed.

Logging

After a rather interesting project reaching its blessed end, I decided to put up a log - which should I thought about it before, I would have done since the begining of the project. In this log I carefully noted each memo, each relevant e-mail and each meeting where notes were taken. In the systematizing of the information several things became quite evident, things you don't often notice - or not as clearly - when you are in the middle of the action. The lags in replies, or even the lack of replies but rather the ranting and havoc wrecking some decide to implement when reason is no longer on their side (or the illusion of it). Once I finished (it took me a while going through notes and e-mails to sort out the historic log of all the activities involved with the end result of the project), realisation hit me that this would actually be a great thing to do with all your projects and all those things in your personal and professional life where you'd like to keep a record of what has been done and maybe what's still to be done. Be it a party you are planning, or all the preparations before a vacation, a personal project you are working on, track on the medication you are taking, or someone should be taking or also work related stuff. Keeping an activity log can be a very useful way to keep a clear track of what's being done.

I made my activity log on Excel - I found it easier to handle, but you can pick any other way, be it Word, Project, a notebook, a blackboard, Internet tools, you name it. Also you can change, add and take from the columns or adjust the spaces for the information the way it suits your needs better. In this example I picked an activity: Preparing Halloween Celebration (maybe I should have picked something else, but nothing else came to mind). For purposes of making it clear, I prepared four columns: one with the date when the activity starts, a description of the activity, what was the activity (meeting, e-mail, letter, document, note, memo, phone call, etc), and when it ended. Other columns can be added, such as "Next Step" or "Responsible", "Task Manager", "Percentage of Completition"... it all depends on what's important to you and what you work better with.

If you keep a log like this for each activity that you feel needs to have a follow up, or you'd like to keep a track on, first you need discipline, and then you also need to be clear as what you want to keep your eye on. Do you want to keep an eye on the time it takes you or your team to get something done. Do you want to keep an eye on the people doing it, and check how's everybody working in the team. Do you want to keep a track on the "paper track" or what's the most used mean in getting a project done. Do you want to keep a track on the nature of the activities and how many of them actually add to the project and how many are just a waste of time.

A log like this could also be of use in your daily life if you make an effort to write down quickly what do you do in your day, how much time you spend doing it, what it takes you to do it, and whether you finish the task or not. In this case this log can help you see clearly how do you use your time, and eventually help you plan better your day to make sure you only concentrate on the things that are really important and thus make the best of your day.

So think about it, and maybe you'd like to give this "logging" a try out.