Accepting reality ~

So one of the things I've had to learn to do is accept things the way they are. I've always hated that phrase "it is what it is", but it's true.



What's funny is as I have learned to accept things the way they are I'm learning how many people think that means it's never going to be any different. And that's not what I'm approaching. That's not the take that I'm trying to have on things.



I was trained to control my environment around me. To predict things that might happen and be prepared for those things. And when I couldn't do that it would make me angry.



As part of my anger reduction program I am committing to less. I am looking at the way things are and accepting that this is what is right now. And then working from here to either make it something that I want it to be or letting go and letting it go down its own path to wherever it's going without me.



It's a challenge, because most everybody around me has an opinion and wants to see the way things should be. People are quick to get worked up when things are not the way they expect them. I have that happen to me a lot and as I'm getting older and more experienced I'm able to see that while it may not be exactly the way I want it now it will be in a little bit OR it doesn't need to be and I turn to something else or in a different direction.



But I don't just decide that it's never going to be any different when I accept the way things are. I'm trying to find a footing in the undertow of life so that I can stand and begin to direct my efforts in a more fruitful way. More fruitful than the anger and frustration that I lived in for so long.



It's ironic that this is all very frustrating for me. But I am learning, which is good. I was taught to never stop learning.



And I haven't.

Being an Uncle ~

I am the uncle of eight nieces and nephews that I know about. All but one of them are adults now, the other one is a teenager.



As my nieces and nephews were growing up I didn't get to see them very often. My family is scattered across the United States and now even across the planet. But when I was younger my nieces and nephews lived in different states most of the time. The youngest one has lived in my state for a number of years but lives about two hours away from me.



So as an uncle I haven't really gotten to know my nieces and nephews. Busy with my career and raising my own children I didn't get to spend hardly any time with nieces and nephews. When we would go and visit their parents the visit usually focused on adults with adults and our children with their children. And because we lived so far away that did not happen very often.



My wife has kept up with them pretty well but same as me has not seen them very often. But I'm not talking about her right now.



As an uncle I feel like my role has been maligned by entertainment media. The weird uncle, the crazy uncle the drunkard dope smoking uncle that is in and out of jail. The uncle that stays hidden and nobody knows because nobody really wants to be around them. That's what an uncle is as far as I have seen presented in the media.



When I was growing up we moved out into the woods and lived in a house that my parents had built when my father retired from the military. The house was on property next to my grandparents property. But because of the relationship and life in general I did not get to see my grandparents very often. Usually just on holidays and the occasional special occasion. But not very often.



My father had lots of uncles. He had about seven uncles and one aunt. And that was just on his father's side of the family on his mother's side of the family he had to uncles that I know about. One of those uncles lived just up the road from where our house was and we rode by his family's house daily whenever I would go to school or whenever we would go into town.



I didn't really get to see my great uncles. We would ride by their house and look and see what might have changed but other than that didn't really stop. They were different and strange and in and out of trouble. The uncle was fine but his children were not.



And so I grew up seeing my dad drive by his uncles house daily and never knew him to stop and say hello or hang out or whatever. We would make the occasional trip into town to visit one of the other uncles. But it just wasn't a regular part of our time there.



Now that most of my nieces and nephews are adults we've made some efforts to go and see them. We traveled out to the middle of the country to visit two nieces and that was a very pleasant experience. We reached out to others but have gotten very little response. On a recent trip to Israel we made it clear what were doing and or niece that is living in Israel made the effort to come and see us while we were there which was awesome! Her and her husband are living in Israel for a couple of years and it was great to see them over there.



My youngest nephew is one that I have not seen very often. At some point I realized that I had seen him fewer times than the number of years he had been alive and that made me sad. I racked my brain trying to figure out a way that I could let him get to know me and my family a little bit more than the occasional holiday or special event time together where his face was glued to a screen of some kind. And I came up with an idea that I continue to this day.



I started sending on postcards. I would share a painting that my wife had done, I would share a picture of my wife and I at something we were doing. When we go on trips I try to send him a postcard of what we are seeing or doing. I use an app called TouchNote to send the postcards so that they are very personal and not store-bought and very easy to do: going from place to place.



I enjoy sending the postcards to him so much that I started sending postcards to some of the others. Not all the time, not very often, but just enough to let them know that they have an aunt and uncle that care for them that doesn't get to see them very often and that we are thinking about them.



I hope that my efforts have some sort of impact. Not necessarily with me but just with them reaching out to those that they care for and letting them know that they care. Pass it on and all.



You can learn more about the TouchNote app at https://touchnote.onelink.me/F720/7iapvmdf

Hashtags ~

I'm a nerd. I do computer things. I read about computer things. I tried different computer things.



When I was a support specialist where I work I was heavily into using and adapting homegrown database applications. We used Microsoft Access software to interpret and analyze data. A lot of people pooh-pooh Microsoft access but it can be a powerful start to some pretty major databases.



In the real world hashtags were started on social media to make it easier to find posts that were similar to each other. Nerds started using hashtags to tag their data and be able to search across systems like Twitter and Facebook and come up with trending subjects based on the way the data was tagged with the hashtag.



That use of hashtags was ruined by comedians on Saturday Night Live and other venues that made fun of them and encouraged the use of hashtags as commentary instead of data tagging. You can see this when someone posts my new dog #betterthanyours #yourdogsucks #mydogcanbeatupyourdog.



I got in trouble using hashtags once at work. I made a log entry about an event that had happened that day. I hashtagged it so that I could gather data over time on this sort of behavior. Because the log was kept in a system that is seen nationwide someone on high saw my entry and thought I was making commentary about their performance that night. And they called me and demanded that I remove the entire log entry telling me that I was being unprofessional and foolish. I laughed it off and left it the way it was. I never got in trouble over it. But that just highlighted to me several years ago how the nerd concept of tagging data had been corrupted by the comedians and people looking to sarcastically comment without actually saying what they were thinking.



Now I use hashtags to tag things on my social media like this week's discussion topics. I use hashtags to tag text files and move them around in my automatic system of capturing data. I use hashtags to tag posts like this one. They're not always a pound symbol like the #, sometimes there a utility like that little tilde thing at the top of this post.



But hashtags are useful! They're not always smart alec comments by people who don't want to say what they're actually saying. Or they want to insult others in a cute way. I tend to use hashtags for what they were designed for. But like everything else it has multiple uses and depending on the person of the situation they could mean almost anything!



I hope you tag something today with a hashtag. Good luck!

College Degree ~

When I was growing up, my parents told me that it was important for me to get my education and encouraged me to get my college degree. My grandmother on my father's side always said, "Get your college degree."





My mom expanded on the idea and said, "Nobody can take your education away from you." And they all told me repeatedly that I could be whatever I wanted to be as long as I got my college degree. When I graduated from high school, I started going to the local community college.



My dad had gotten a two-year degree there. People made fun of the community college because it wasn't a big school, but I ended up getting a two-year degree there. And I went on to the University of Central Florida.



But I didn't finish my degree there. In my senior year of college at UCF, I was hired by the Federal Aviation Administration as an air traffic control specialist. After the intensive training that I got from them was completed, and I was a journeyman controller, I went back to school to finish my degree because I had been programmed that I needed a degree. I wanted to finish it because applications always asked about your education level and I wanted to be able to mark that I had a bachelor's degree.



It took me 11 years to complete my bachelor's degree but I did get it. After earning it, I did not go and walk in a graduation ceremony because I was employed full-time as an air traffic controller and my second child had just been born.



And I thought it was silly for me to go and put on the show of wearing a robe and walking across the stage for my wife and maybe some friends to see me. I still think I made the right call, but my wife never lets me live it down because she ended up at the graduation ceremony as an interpreter.



I've encouraged my four children to get their college degrees. My two oldest kids completed their degrees. Our third child dropped out of college and demonstrated that he was not down with the private college experience.



Our youngest child is on track to complete his bachelor's degree in music. And they'll all have that ability to check that box and get the door opened based on their education. Except our third child.



I read plenty of articles about how people don't think you need to have a college degree anymore. And I agree. If you can get out there and hustle and make your mark on the world without it, more power to you.



I just know that I greatly appreciate what I learned through my 11-year process of getting a bachelor's degree. They taught me how to think in systems, methods, and that has served me well in many, many different situations.



And they taught me how to follow the rules and complete something, even when I had to bend them a little bit and go and argue my case to get them to accept the way I did it. I highly encourage anyone interested to invest the time, money, and effort into getting their education, whether it's a college degree or a certification.

AR glasses coming impact ~

I can imagine the augmented reality glasses turning our day -to -day world into something a little bit different. Just imagine the drive to work. You've got a heads -up display and whatever vehicle you're in now that goes with you and gives you just the information that you want all the time.



Speed, gas level, navigation, time, messages as they come in. All floating ahead of you in a heads -up display that you can customize the way you want. You look around as you're driving and you can see your path laid out, overlaid on the world in front of you.



You can see bubbles over buildings telling you what business it is and whether it's open or not. Maybe even a quick flash of whatever the special is today. Then you look around at the vehicles on the road with you and you can see bubbles over some of the cars, bubbles with information about the driver, about the type of car it is, if the driver is sharing or is mandated to share, driving record or risk assessment.



Or if you want to stick with the social media aspect, driver ratings! Especially over the Uber and Lyft and other drivers out there that would be mandated to have their stuff over them. Buses could have a little flag overhead indicating that they're about to stop and their route.



Better yet, speed advisory. So that everybody who subscribes to the speed advisory gets optimized in their drive to wherever they're going to minimize stopping. Like the internet was in the 1990s, this is all possible.



Sadly marketers will turn it into an advertising fiesta where we won't be able to escape any of it. And we'll see phantom zombies and sports stars, even crowds of the race that you prefer to see cheering you on or if you prefer the negative motivation flipping you off.



And then you get an indication that the battery is getting on your frames and then it all disappears and you're back to what you now think of as boring reality. The funny part is all of this stuff is available to you right now in the natural unaugmented world.



If you watch and listen you can pick up on clues that'll tell you almost all of that information. But it doesn't give you the same dopamine hit and it doesn't deliver a sense of control both to you and to those marketing to you.



Our creations around us overlaid on God's creation are very exciting already. Adding a digital aspect of floating information above it all and around it all is gonna make things real interesting. Buckle up!

Four pieces of ice ~

My father retired from the Air Force when I was 12 years old. Seventh grade was a tough time to change schools, but because we had moved a few times I knew how to do it because I had already done it a couple of times in my few years at school. We moved from Patrick Air Force Base on the East Coast of Florida to Central Florida near Ocala.





It was good! My brother and I had a room together, my grandmother had her own bedroom, and then my parents were on the other end of the house in the master bedroom suite.



Summers in Florida are hot! And we had moved into a brand-new house that my parents had built. Central air conditioning was awesome! And the refrigerator had something that we had never had before, an icemaker!



My brother and I love making sweet tea and putting gobs of ice in our glasses and pouring the tea over the ice while it was still hot so that when we drink it the ice was almost melted and the tea was cold. Of course this took a lot of ice and so for the first few months or so as things warmed up in the spring and early summer we used a lot of ice to the point that when my mom and dad got home from work there would be no ice in the ice maker tray for them to use.



After a few weeks of grumbling about no ice and maybe the ice machine was too slow my Mom caught on to what we were doing when we would make tea. She then made a rule that we could not have any more than four pieces of ice in our cup at a time.



My brother and I were devastated! Now our plan when we made tea didn't work and we had to come up with something different. So we would make the tea and then let it all cool then put it in the refrigerator and make sure that it was cold before we drink it. Which is what we should've been doing in the first place, but because we had the new icemaker we thought that we could just use the ice.



When the icemaker broke we had to switch back to ice trays which is a pain in and of itself. That led to arguments over somebody not filling the ice trays and me and my brother coming up with more efficient ways to fill the ice trays after we emptied the (he was always better that than me).



But to this day when I go to get ice I feel a twinge of something when I take more than four pieces of ice, whether it's by hand, from a tray, or from a dispenser in the door



The memories of childhood...

Using pluses ~

So one of the things that I've made a concerted effort to be is more positive. When I was younger, I was told that I had an acerbic wit, which meant I was sharp and hard on everybody around me with sarcasm and cutting comments.



Over the years I've toned that down quite a bit, but it's still there. One of the things that I've been doing lately is something that I feel like God told me to do. Be quiet. And even my wife has noticed that I'm a lot quieter than I used to be.



I still have just as much to say, but it comes out differently now because I'm writing or recording and then editing the transcripts. One of the new things that I've been doing, and I've tried it a couple of times before and it just never stuck, but now I'm really kind of trying is when I make divider lines in my emails or in something that I'm typing, I use pluses instead of dashes.



The dash is the minus sign and I don't want to be negative that way. I know that's silly, but it is an effort that I'm making and it's one of those things that is interesting and when I go to do dashes, I catch myself and then shift and find the plus symbol.



So that's part of my effort. Hopefully you make some effort to be positive too. The world is such an easier place to navigate when people are more positive. Now if I can just work on the drivers around me, that would help too.



Or at least my attitude about them.