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I’d rather write than talk. Nobody interrupts! Posting monthly or less now--see below. |
My original purpose for this blog, which I started in August of 2019, was to see if I could maintain consistency, to discover what I want to write about, and to find my writing voice. In January, I started a "niche-less" blog at Wordpress.com where I've published weekly. -- Kit’s Kontemplations  . -- I'm preparing to start a Catholic blog on Wordpress.com where I'll post weekly, and another site to put the rest of my writing. I also want to spend more time reading other blogs and offering thoughtful comments, both here on WDC and elsewhere. At most, I will publish once a month at no set time in this blog starting in September of 2020. Thank you to those who have read and rated any posts on this blog. I really appreciate it. I did NOT want to write “about” me on this blog. I wanted to share my interests, discoveries and maybe a few useful insights. If anything I've written helps even one person, whether or not they respond to the post, then this blog has been successful. |
| I try to live in the present, to learn from the past and to surrender the future to God whom I know loves me. I can’t change the past and I trust in God’s mercy for all that the harm I caused to others. My future is something I can have an impact on by my present choices, but it is otherwise beyond my control. I try to be flexible and to adapt to change, since it both can’t be avoided and seems to happen at the speed of light. This is difficult for me since I thrive on structure and routine. In some areas of life I feel more equipped to deal with change. Technology is one example since I have sufficient skill, aptitude and patience to learn how to use new devices. I try to be faithful to the little daily disciplines of self-care, like flossing, exercise and avoiding unhealthy foods. I’ve tried checklists and made resolutions. Nothing has worked for very long when it comes to flossing and going to bed early. I’ve had a lot more success with exercise, having walked on the treadmill every day for almost three years. I try to see myself as valuable even when I don’t get the result I want, because I am not what I do or fail to do. I am much less of a perfectionist than I used to be and this has released me to be more creative than I thought possible. Provided that I put disciplined effort into what I am striving for, I am satisfied with the result. I expect errors, I fix the ones I find or which others find for me, and I don’t worry about the rest. I try to see myself as God does rather than believing the committee in my mind. According to Scripture and to the revelation that the Holy Spirit has infused in my soul, I know that God loves me unconditionally. I know that He looks at me with delight and tender compassion. I am entirely confident that He is working in me to transform me into what He designed me to be. I try to see the good side in every difficult thing. I know that God lives within me and that, like any loving parent, He is sad to see me go through suffering. He knows and allows that which is necessary for my ultimate well-being. and will bring good to me from this suffering in some mysterious way. I try not to have expectations of circumstances and of other people. Expecting things from other people leads to disappointment and frustration, even when you expect them to act in ways that make sense. If you don’t expect anything, you can maintain serenity in any situation. I heard this expression in a 12-step group that I never forgot: “Expectations are resentments under construction.” What are the things you try to do and why? |
| YouTube is awesome! I have learned useful techniques from cooking to crochet, and from sprouting to software use. Most recently I learned how to replace Windows 10 with Linux Mint on my new laptop and what to do after that. Sometimes I want to learn something in a lot more depth. A friend told me about Courseara and later I discovered that my local library provides Lynda.com to its members. There are a few others that I’ve explored as well. Some have a wider variety of courses and others offer a more specialized selection. Some sites offer courses for free and only charge for a certificate of completion. That works for me since I’m interested in the content, not the paper proof. Courseara —https://www.coursera.org Available both through a browser and mobile apps. It offers courses in the following categories: Business, Information Technology, Data Science, Computer Science, Personal Development, Language Learning, Arts and Humanities, Social Sciences, Physical Science and Engineering, Math and Logic and Health. Some courses are part of “collections” where you would want to take them in the recommended order. I’ve taken the four “Think Again” courses. Khan Academy —https://www.khanacademy.org This is designed for elementary and high school students, including Advanced Placement (AP) courses. It also offers material to help students prepare for SAT, LSAT, MCAT and several other tests. The categories of courses include: Math, Science, Economics and Finance, Arts and Humanities, and Computing. Another neat feature is their “Partner Content” from various museums and other institutions. Not only young people but adults who want to refresh skills learned in school or explore what their children or grandchildren are learning can benefit. I used it to review Algebra and plan to explore history next. EdX —https://www.edx.org/ This is a lot like Courseara but offers courses in over 30 different topics. I haven’t tried this one yet. Lynda.com —https://www.lynda.com This is a paid service available through LinkedIn and some other institutions. It is subscription-based so that you pay a monthly fee and lose your course material when you unsubscribe. It offers courses in Business and Professional Development, Web Design, Marketing and Sales, Design and Photography, and Mobile App Development. You can access it through a browser or use a mobile app. Udemy. —https://www.udemy.com With Udemy, you pay a one-time fee for a course and it is always yours. They claim to offer over 10,000 courses. I haven’t enrolled for any of them yet but may do so in the future. I would probably choose this service over Lynda.com if it weren’t for the fact that I get it free from my local public library. Udemy offers courses in the following categories: Software Development, Business, Finance and Accounting, IT and Software, Office Productivity, Personal Development, Design, Marketing, Lifestyle, Photography, Health and Fitness, Teaching and Academics and Music. Have you heard of any of these? If so, which ones have you used? If not, which are you inclined to try? Do you care about the certificate or do you just want to learn as much as you can about what interests you the most? |
It isn’t only our family members and friends who provide us with opportunities to practice forgiveness. Consider other provocations: professionals who harm us through their incompetence or negligence such as a doctor who misdiagnoses us careless or impaired drivers who involve us or a loved one in a devastating accident persons in authority who not only fail, but who refuse to protect us from harm, as in sexual abuse situations life, fate, the universe or God who allows us to be involved in a devastating accident, to contract some serioius illness, or to lose a loved oneIt’s hard enough to forgive when we have an accurate understanding of what forgiveness is and, more importantly, what it is not. If you’ve somehow absorbed any of the following beliefs about forgiveness, it’s no wonder that you believe it to be both undesirable and impossible: absolving the offender, excusing him or her from blame, guilt or responsibility letting the offender off the hook glossing over, or justifying the offence denying or minimizing the hurt and harm you’ve endured ignoring or forgetting what the offender did and its outcome symbolically setting the offender free from having to carry the burden of the suffering caused by the offenceForgiveness is an act of the will, independent of emotions. It precedes and is a prerequisite for the healing of the soul and possibly the relationship as well. It is a choice to let go of the desire for revenge Psychologists generally define forgiveness as a conscious, deliberate decision to release feelings of resentment or vengeance toward a person or group who has harmed you, regardless of whether they actually deserve your forgiveness. Along with a false understanding of the nature of forgiveness, there are other reasons we deliberately withhold forgiveness from the one who harmed us or those we care about. We see denying forgiveness as a way to: force the offender to keep suffering gain control over a situation, we feel we had no control over take care of, honour and validate our own wound proclaim that our suffering exists and will always matter hold on to our rightness remain justified in our version of the truthForgiveness is not a feeling and it does not mean that everything goes back to how it was before you were hurt. There were significant consequences for what was done and one of these is a loss of trust. Forgiveness does not include restoring trust; once broken, trust needs to be earned. It is a gift we give to another. Unlike forgiveness, trusting someone is never something we are required to do. Forgiveness does not negate the need for justice. A good parent forgives a child’s misbehaviour but does not withhold punishment, a valuable life lesson that decisions have consequences. An offender may express remorse when confronted by the one he or she harmed but remorse in itself is not repentance. Experiencing the consequence of one’s actions will distress the offender. It may not lead to repentance which, by definition, includes consistent change of behaviour. From a Christian perspective:  We are warned that if we do not forgive, we will not be forgiven since the mercy of God will not penetrate an unforgiving heart. If we pray the Lord’s prayer while refusing to forgive, we are calling down condemnation on ourselves. Unforgiveness afflicts a person with spiritual darkness and makes him or her vulnerable to having demons hold the soul captive. Unforgiveness poisons the soul and can destroy both emotional and physical health. Unforgiveness makes it impossible to grow spiritually or to increase in our intimacy with the Lord Forgiving is an opportunity to share in Jesus’ redemptive healing work. In his mysterious wisdom and profound love, when the Father allows someone to hurt or oppose us in some way, He is entrusting that person to our prayers. When our enemy causes us to suffer unjustly, our faith tells us that this was allowed to happen so that we might participate in the mystery of the Cross. Somehow, like those who offered their lives for our faith, the mystery of redemption is being renewed through our own sufferings. Sources: What Is Forgiveness? What does forgiveness mean? Pondering: What Does Forgiveness Mean to You? What Is Forgiveness Really? Releasing the Poison of Unforgiveness Prayer and the Struggle to Forgive |
| So many people judge others or themselves as not being either smart or intelligent because of a lack of education. On the other hand, people with a PhD are often considered more intelligent or smart than they actually are. Certainly there is at least a minimum level of intelligence to complete high school and more intelligence is required to obtain university degrees. Intelligence is defined in the following ways: the ability to learn or understand or to deal with new or trying situations the act of understanding the ability to learn, understand, and make judgments or have opinions that are based on reason the capacity for learning, reasoning, understanding, and similar forms of mental activity; aptitude in grasping truths, relationships, facts, meanings, etc. the ability to acquire and apply knowledge and skills.Dictionaries:  Merriam-Webster Dictionary Cambridge Dictionary Dictionary.com Oxford Dictionary There are several types of intelligence. Consider these five examples which can be enhanced by, but which do not depend on education: Crystallized It depends on knowledge and skills gained through experience, education and training and what we learn through our culture. It remains fairly constant but can increase through development of additional knowledge and skills. Fluid It refers to our ability to: reason, plan, solve problems, see relationships and learn quickly in new situations. It also includes the ability to think abstractly, where others think (and communicate) in a much more literal fashion. Visual processing It involves the ability to visualize, remember and manipulate images in the ‘mind’s eye’. It enables the imagining of objects changing as they move and the ability to predict how they will look after a specific number of twists and turns. Processing speed It refers to how fast your mental processes are when performing basic cognitive tasks like scanning text for something. This one is most affected by age and can be improved by training exercises. Short-term working memory It refers to the memory system that holds in mind a limited amount of information for brief periods. Examples include remembering directions while driving, reason through something to find a solution, or calculate a 15% tip. Education develops your intelligence; it does not determine it. Intelligence is therefore an internal force that governs our capacities and our limitations in acquiring skills in different areas. Education is something that is provided by an external force, typically a teacher, tutor, mentor or parent. Education is what helps you to develop your natural intelligence in different ways. Being educated and being smart are something you earn by effort but intelligence is something you are born with. It is certainly possible to have street smarts and even book-smarts without having the benefit of more than the most basic education. Anyone with sufficient curiosity, diligence and only an elementary school education can increase their book-smarts by regular reading. People with greater intelligence and higher education may lack shrewdness and the creative ability that comes with a capacity for abstract thinking. You have greater opportunity to determine more how smart you will become than you have to increase the intelligence you were gifted with. Smart is an earned status. When we study and learn, we become smarter in the subject matter. Book smart or street smart, we have to put effort into becoming smarter. Intelligence, on the other hand, is something with which you are born. Your IQ is a measurement of your intelligence, and doesn’t change because it is a measure of your ability to learn. Reflect: Did reading the five types of intelligence enable you to perceive yourself as having more intelligence than you initially believed? Looking over the past year, or even the past month, can you identify ways you increased your “smarts”? Has your perception of your “smartness” changed for the better after reading this article?Sources 5 Factors of IQ The Difference between smart and Intelligent (Once and for all) Difference Between Education and Intelligence Difference Between Smart and Intelligent |
| I’ve been reading Jeff Goins book {/u}You Are a Writer (So Start Acting Like One) {/u} and I like the point he makes that if all we do is talk, think and read about writing, then we’re not writers. We’re writers if we write. Like so many other writers, he says we need to write at least 300 words every day. It doesn’t have to be good - it just needs to be words on the page (or screen). Makes sense to me. I’m not a guitarist if I never play my guitar, however badly, to start with. Then he says, we need to share our writing with others - to put it out there. I’m OK with that. I’m a member of Writing.com, I enter contests and I have this blog where I publish posts twice a week. I plan to start a blog on WIX or Wordpress.com within the next month. So I’m OK with putting my writing in a public place. When he talks about the lifestyle of a successful writer, including speaking engagements, travel and even offers from publishers, I want to put on the emergency brake and jump out of the vehicle. Am I afraid of success in writing? Probably, even though it’s extremely unlikely that I’ll ever be what most would call a “successful writer”. This is because I live a hidden life and I want to keep it that way . I don’t want to have the pressure of deadlines, combined with writers’ block I have no interest whatever in getting into the aspects of being “successful” that have nothing to do with the actual writing. I have a talent for writing and the willingness to work at it. People who’ve read my stuff have found it enjoyable and interesting. I’m not going to be “successful” by most people’s definition because I don’t want to follow the rules - and I don’t mean grammar rules. I don’t want to have my own name or picture on my blog. I don’t want to “market” myself and I could care less about SEO. I don’t want to sell anything through affiliate marketing, at least not now. I don’t want to be “branded”. I may be overweight at times in my life, but I’m not a cow. I’ll share my posts on a couple of social media networks and whoever is meant to find my articles will come across them and hopefully be intrigued, amused or even inspired. I definitely don’t follow the crowd and my views on a lot of things are counter-cultural. I expect most people to disagree with me on almost everythng. That’s fine with me — I just don’t care to hear about it. So there’s another rule broken. It wouldn’t be because of arrogance or because I think my opinions are the right ones that I might opt to disable comments. It would be because I’ve got more important and interesting things to spend my energy on than arguing with someone when it wouldn’t make any difference anyway. Even an article that comes across as persuasive isn’t motivated by a desire to change anyone’s mind about the topic. I want to explain why I believe a certain thing based on what I’m learning. My reasons may have the weight of a hammer for me and the weight of a feather for you. But you’ll come away knowing that at least I’ve given plenty of thought and hopefully expressed my ideas in a clear logical way. Sources: You Are a Writer (So Start Acting Like One) Jeff Goins’ blog |
| It’s been decades since I made a New Year’s resolution. Why? Because I tend to be an “all or nothing” person and I struggle with perfectionism. As soon as I broke a resolution, then I’d dump it and my sense of self-worth would take yet another nose-dive. I no longer say to myself nor do I write in my journal on December 31st a list of things that “I will do every morning” or things that “I will not do”. After abandoning resolutions, I started to set goals instead. I list all of the things that I want to accomplish during a specific period such as a year or month. This includes the books I want to read, the subjects that I want to study and the habits that I’d like to develop. I usually list far more things than there is any hope of accomplishing. I have far more projects, interests and hobbies than I have time to develop at any one time. There are some that I’ve dropped altogether and which I have no intention of pursuing again. For example, since I am now retired I have neither the need nor the desire to become more proficient in French. Because I used to work for the Canadian federal government, I needed to be relatively fluent in French. There are other things on which I focused very intensely until I achieved my goal and which are now more in the background but which are still on my radar. Between June 2018 and February 2019, I lost 25 pounds. I still need to be vigilant with my food boundaries but the habits are well established so I don’t need to devote as much attention to weight management as I did this time last year. There are other activities that I am still very interested in but which are on the back burner. I can’t do everything and I need to make choices. It is better to focus on a couple of things and do them well. Otherwise I am too scattered and frustrated with not having enough time and solitude to spend enough time in every activity to actually achieve anything. Besides the daily disciplines of my spiritual practice, creative writing has been my primary focus for the past five months. This, along with developing a blog, will remain my first choice for how I spend my available time. The “old me” would make resolutions such as: “I will write 500 words every day”. Since a friend introduced me to James Clear’s book Atomic Habits, I’ve taken an entirely new approach to my usual New Year’s ritual. Instead of listing what I want to accomplish, I made a list of identity statements. Each of these statements expresses who I want to become in terms of the habits I expect to have established. For example: “I am a person who writes every day”. Instead of planning to write for a specific period of time or a particular number of words each day, I have started the habit of writing at least one sentence every day. Although my goal is only one sentence, I usually write at least half a page in my journal. This is an “atomic habit”. Every time I do it, I’ll get the positive reinforcement that I am acting in accordance with my chosen identity. As James Clear would put it, I will be casting a positive vote for being a writer. If I miss a day, then I will make sure that I write the following day. If I keep missing days then I will be casting a vote against being a writer. The little things we do each day compound to a significant result over a long enough period of time. There are so many things in life that we have no control over but we do have the power to create positive habits and to crowd out unhelpful ones. Using our will to change what we can makes a lot more sense than stressing over what we can’t control. I can choose to keep a habit that feels good in the moment, like eating what I want whenever I want, but which will have a painful result like getting fat and unhealthy. I would much rather choose one that involves a sacrifice in the moment, like exercising regularly, but which will have a transformational effect, given enough time. There are apps for habit trackers and I’ve tried them but I usually end up forgetting to track the habit then it’s an extra burden to try to recall whether I did any of the 5 or 6 things I had listed. For a habit tracker to be useful, I have to get in the habit of using it! Do you reflect on your life at New Year’s, on your birthday or at other times of the year? Do you make resolutions, goals or plans? Would you consider starting an “atomic habit”? Sources: Atomic Habit e-book — https://www.amazon.com/Atomic-Habits-Proven-Build-Break-ebook/dp/B07D23CFGR/ref=... Summary of book on YouTube (20 minutes) — https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=zJiKc_2h7a0 Interview by Rich Roll with James Clear (2 hours) — https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=s9uDVVWN_ZE&t=53s Atomic Habits Resources — https://jamesclear.com/atomic-habits James Clear - Best articles — https://jamesclear.com/articles |
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Yes, I know some people do that but I'm a creative writer not a journalist. Poetry sells ... but it's a money-maker for only a few. I write A LOT. Almost 180 pieces since Spring equinox. My goal is 300-400 per year. One year I went over 1,000. I need to do more editing, polishing, sharing, submitting. Writer's block? Who has time for that? I don't.