Saturday, October 17, 2009

Environmental leadership with some teeth to it...

I remember when President Carter installed solar panels on the White House, and applauded the action as a forward-thinking strategy.

I also remember taking notice when one of the first things Ronald Reagan did when he got into office was take those panels down. I remember thinking it was a sign that we were in trouble.

in reference to: Al's Journal : Leading by example (view on Google Sidewiki)

Thursday, October 15, 2009

Fight with your cubicle job! Take a blowtorch to money! Put your bills through a shredder! WTF???

Young Phallon's in the fertilizer again. I tried to post this as a reply on the Steve Pavlina message board. In response to this blog post. I registered to be on the message board, but it didn't seem to want my thread entry--I think some of those boards filter out posts that are less than glowing edorsements of a blogger's wisdom.

Um, I haven't read any of Steve's blog in a while, and this latest entry tells me why.

It just seems to me that when there are people out there struggling, (I know of people that sell plasma to make enough to cover the rent; I myself have a McJob, but it's not enough to actually *live* on) that it's a very *weird* idea to put out there that *cubicles* are actually something that people should have a problem with, that wanting to be able to pay rent is some kind of a problem.

For people like me, a cubicle job would actually be a great step up--it would be like having your own mini-office! Oftentimes, these cube jobs pay an amount that *actually approaches* enough money to live on, maybe not "well" , where you can afford to "follow your dreams", and only work when you want to, but being homeless or having no choice about where you live kinda sucks, so working at a slightly boring place for a while is not a bad trade off, in my estimation.

You can make up for these things with a good work/life balance, which you can generally find, because usually cube jobs have a regular, unchanging schedule, around which one can put regular fun and personally enriching stuff into their lives, because they can usually predict when they will need to be at work, etc.

Also, this kind of smacks of being a little prejudicial against clerical workers--apparently they have no inner vision, no drive to do something "better" with their lives.

Also, the fact that one person read this entry and got the idea to leave school because of it, kind of points up the inherent silliness of the idea that we must always be ecstatically happy about everything we do in life.

I don't mean any disrespect, but I just find it really hard to swallow that wanting to have security about how you will pay your bills (You can be sure that if you sent someone you owed money to a piece of paper with the words, "What is a bill? It’s a few pieces of paper at most." printed on it, they might take issue with you) translates into giving your power away.

I don't think this line of thinking makes me a complainer, either. I'm extremely happy that I have a roof over my head, even if it's not mine, I'm very happy that I don't have to sell plasma to pay for a tiny apartment. I have hopeful visions that someday I *will* be a little further along in my professional progress, even if it means working in a cubicle!

I just couldn't help thinking that this blog post was a little silly, and kind of a slap in the face towards people who are really struggling.