Agent of Change

Holidays

This is your annual reminder that the holidays is not a Hallmark movie for everyone.

I worked in juvenile justice group homes for almost 20 years, and the holidays were awful. I came to dread that time of year. Clients would act out more often and more violently for a LOT of reasons.

In a dysfunctional home, the holidays are a time of stress. Alcohol and drug abuse goes up, kids are inundated with images of families and things they don’t have, and abuse rates skyrocket. Add to that that the clients would build up their expectations for the holidays so high there was no way they could be fulfilled, and sometimes, parents don’t’ even show up for them.

We did everything we could do to keep things low key, and when I was a supervisor, I helped the staff understand why the holidays were hard, and how not to build it up as “the most wonderful time of the year”.

I worked hard to make sure that my staff could have the day off, usually working the day on my own, and to make the day special for the clients who had to be at a group home on Thanksgiving or Christmas, I’d set up a great meal, bring in movies, and video games and let them relax and hang out like teenagers.

I keep seeing “Shame these businesses for being open on Holidays”, but hospitals, group homes and the like don’t close. When I needed a place to go get a meal on a holiday, I was grateful for the restaurants that were open.

I have worked at and attended movie theaters on holidays (Thanksgiving and Christmas are insanely busy days at movie theaters) and so on and so on.

And the stores wouldn’t open if there wasn’t a demand for them to offer a supply.

Not everyone has family to spend the holidays with. Not everyone celebrates the same holidays. Not everyone has a job that can afford to take days off. And some people need that extra income from working on a Holiday in order to make ends meet.

The holidays are a good time to step into someone else’s shoes and show empathy and kindness, which is the gift we can all give each other. I am spending a lot of time thinking about what we owe each other lately, and I think that making each other’s lives be less stressful is a good start.

Much love to friends old and new, and Happy whatever you celebrate.

What I am thinking about today: 11/28/2019

What I am thinking about today:

Saturday night, I was working at the group home alone, with all of the clients either in bed, in their room, or snoozing in a chair. It got incredibly lonely, and I’d like to thank you folks on the Facebooks for posting things to make me feel like I was connected. I really love reading about your lives, your creations, your jokes, your memes, seeing your selfies, looking at your meals, and everything else. I was able see what people were doing all over the world, and I will never ever not be impressed by this.

The new American Godzilla movie from this summer is in a DVD two pack with the American Godzilla movie from a few years ago. I am thinking that it didn’t quite meet financial expectations.

I am shocked that the people of DC and Baltimore were mean to the President after he said repeatedly that their city was a rat and roach infested trash heap. It’s like they thought he was insulting them or something.

Much love to friends old and new.

What I am thinking about today: 10/24

What I am thinking about today:

Lately, I have been buying an extra package of socks when I go to Target or Wal-Mart to donate to the new homeless shelter in my area. Everything I read is that the one item of clothing always in demand is socks, and people rarely, if ever think of it when they donate clothing. I also saw that internet pal and friend of many of my friends Ely Mattson does kind things for others on her friend’s birthdays, so I will be packing up that baton and doing some kind things for people as someone who drifted out of my life has their birthday.

I am four weeks into doing coverage of AEW for PWInsider.com. I do the play by play recap and an audio hotline that you need to buy a membership to listen to. It’s always a rush to get it written in a timely manner, since the show doesn’t have a lot of rest holds or commercials. It’s tiring but exhilarating at the same time and like no other writing I have ever done. Hopefully, I am halfway decent at it, since there isn’t a lot of time to polish or wordsmith.

Much love to friends old and new.

What I am thinking about today 10/22/2019:

 It’s entirely too clear that I should not have worked every night last week at the group home job. I still exhausted, irritable and feel like I am months behind on things. Could it be I am getting too old to put in 60 to 70 hour weeks? Nah, it’s got to be something else.

It’s about time for NaNoWriMo.org, National Novel Writing Month, and I’ll be taking part again. I even have a keyboard for my tablet so that I can write pretty much anywhere. I like November for writing, even though it’s our busiest month of the year in the Benefits world because it helps me focus on the writing. I know it’s hard to believe, but with two jobs and multiple podcasts, I find it hard to put aside time for writing and usually only do it a couple of times a week during the rest of the month. All I want to say about this year’s novel is that the theme will be how hard it is for groups to stay together and the cost of bad leadership.

Speaking of our busy time, the Overtime for the office job has been coming every week, despite them saying that there will be no overtime. Now that we are hitting the busy time of the year, there is even MORE of it. I pretty much take it since I live by myself, don’t date, and can schedule podcasting around it. So…there’s that.

I was reading through some older comics last night and it struck me just how good Robert Loren Fleming was. Of course, Thriller was ground breakingly brilliant, but his Ambush Bug scripting still cracks me up, and his work on the mini-series Underworld as well as the Ragman revamp from the 90’s. A damn shame we don’t have more work by him. I’d also love to get that pitch his did for Thriller, since DC Editorial at the time said it was the best pitch they had ever received.

Much love to friends old and new.

No goals for 2018

I don’t do “goals.”

Goals are black and white. You either succeed or you don’t.  It doesn’t allow for exploration, for sidetracking, and for finding out what is along the path.

Bruce Lee said that if you focus on the finger pointing at the moon and the moon itself, you miss all of the heavenly glory inbetween. Neal Peart said in a song lyric that the point of a journey is not to arrive.  JRR Tolkien said that not all who wander are lost.

So, I don’t have goals. I have themes.  When you have a theme, you can explore, find out what works for you and grow as a person, rather than have a goal that you either meet or fail at.

My theme for 2015 was health. I had been diagnosed with extremely high blood pressure and, with medication, exercise, meditation and changing my eating habits, I brought it down to where my health is pretty damn good.  My other theme was service.  A person came back into my life who asked that I assist them with getting their life back together.  Along the way, I learned that I am pretty damn good at helping others, and made it a major part of my outlook.

The theme for 2016 was growth. I wanted to grow my podcasts and get better at getting the word out.  I tried a lot of things, live broadcasting at conventions, adding three new podcasts (two of which have stuck) and expanded my social media reach.  I quickly learned that I no longer cared for going to conventions, that one of the podcast additions was harmful to our long-term growth, and that I had made mistakes in who I trusted, so the theme for the rest of 2016 was fixing what had been broken.

Going in to 2017, the theme was recovery. I had a full-time job with decent pay for the first time since the great recession, and benefits for the first time since then.  I had a LOT of dental work done, replaced by beloved old car, finished up a wonderful therapeutic program for my anxiety issues, and build up my finances better than they have been since the glory days of the 90’s.  As other things fell into place, my theme became exploration.  I took road trips, I visited places I hadn’t been before, I got involved in subcultures other than the comics ones I have known, and am starting to explore even more.  I will be blunt, I do dislike going places alone, but you have to look at places to see where you belong.

So, for 2018, what’s the theme? I have a few.  First is to continue to explore.  We have a lively classic film society here in the Twin Cities, a wonderful arts community (actual art, not crafts, which is its own thing), and one of the most active theater communities around.  I want to start going and doing more.  I want to see indy wreslting, art openings, open mike poetry readings, grindhouse film showing and the like.  I want to get in my car and see where it takes me and learn everything I can stuff in my head.  I also want to create more finished content.  I want to put out at least two podcasts a week, get my novels up on Amazon, and bring a notebook with me everywhere I go.  Will I do all of it?  Probably not, but I will have fun exploring what happens along the way.

Much love to friends old and new, and if you can only do one theme this year, do the one that I have done since 1999: Be kind. Always be kind.