mysilentscream.com

What Will Our Future Look Like?

For hundreds of athletes this is an exciting day. Today at “National Signing Day” young football players will reveal at which university they will transform from boys to men. Millions of dollars will be spent on indirectly paying young men to play football as a fundraiser for the university.

Fans of the chosen universities will celebrate at their good fortune. Hopes will rise for the winners and hopes will be ravaged for those left wondering what their favorite university will do without this or that teenager.

The Future Is Uncertain

A month of writer’s block & busyness be-gone!

While trying to shake free from my malaise I read what other writers did when enveloped in writer’s block. A google search led me to this quote by Maya Angelou:

“What I try to do is write. I may write for two weeks ‘the cat sat on the mat, that is that, not a rat.’ And it might be just the most boring and awful stuff. But I try. When I’m writing, I write. And then it’s as if the muse is convinced that I’m serious and says, ‘Okay. Okay. I’ll come.’” ~~ Maya Angelou ~~

Today when asked to describe me in one word Jocelyn “Jozey” Wichterman described me as passionate. While I humbly smirked when I read it, she’s right, I am passionate.

Yesterday’s tragic death of Avenged Sevenfold’s drummer The Rev [James Owen Sullivan] drives my passion into a flame.

Chains

Several years ago while having lunch with Heather Crimmins she introduced me to Avenged Sevenfold. Over the years I realized that Avenged Sevenfold’s lyrics spoke to people; they touched wounded souls:

“Tormented young with no souls, haunting me
Pain in their lives all they know is misery
Take these chains away that are holding me down” [Eternal Rest]

I love today! What we’re doing today makes today one of my favorite days of the year.

Today is our help others change the world day.

I’m writing this not to sound prideful nor to get your accolades. I’m writing because if you don’t have a day like today I think you will want one.

Today is the day when we give away the rest of our random donations money. Gratefully, though I sit home this week on an unpaid furlough, I have a job. Though my wife Amy’s part time hours got cut back, she has a job.

Please keep reading. This advice might make your life better! Seriously!

No gimmick, no scheme, no quick fix, I just found some common sense that was not common to me.

I’m not working today because I’m on a furlough. I’m not being paid to not work. The economic challenges hit TreeHouse.

At the risk of sounding like a martyr, Amy and I still struggle with the financial impact of my choice to work at TreeHouse. In 1990 during my first month at TreeHouse I made $30. As the months went by I had several paychecks of less than $200.

Barack Obama wins. Tiger Woods cheats. Tim Tebow loses.

These three men are, like us, people.  They have friends and a family. They have hopes and dreams. They win and they lose, they succeed and fail. Why do we care about them. Why do we track their lives? Why did their names appear on virtually every news portal every day this week?

Why, because they are “celebrities.”

Fame

As a society one of our biggest problems is that we create “celebrities.” Celebrities, people whose lives and accomplishments we follow. We attribute celebrity status to and esteem them because of their success in their chosen field. Athletes become icons, actors become idols, musicians become magnified.

I love snowboarding.

My favorite time to snowboard is during or just following a snowstorm. Yesterday & today the first snowstorm of the 2009-2010 winter descended upon the Twin Cities.  We have three inches of snow in the driveway with more coming.  The winds carving beautiful etches in the snow.  Drifts and drifting snow  danced through the streets and yards.

I wished that I was snowboarding.

I’ve had wonderful snowboarding buddies over the years.  Miska & I tearing it up.  My dad & I in sub-zero weather.  Wonderful memories snowboarding with Josh & Shannon: laughing, chasing, playing follow the leader, muttering, and challenging one another.

In the evening when were not talking or laughing I’m “not watching TV.” Yes, the TV is on, but I am usually reading while the TV plays in the background. Somehow I can pay attention to both my reading and the TV. I’m multitasking.

Multitasking.

Maybe I’m maximizing my time.

Maybe I’m increasing my productivity.

Maybe I’m lying to myself.

What I do know is that I’m dropping in on Facebook, checking an email inbox, messaging a friend or reading my RSS subs.

Tonight something changed. Right in the middle of reading a great article written by Shane Claiborne I stopped.

We had dropped calls in my neighborhood with AT&T, my first carrier. I had great service in rural Wisconsin, but I had to walk out of my house to use Verizon.

Frustrated, I asked many people who visited my home what cell service they used and then I examined their phone and their “signal bars”. Wisely, we chose T-Mobile. We have had no problems with the our cell service nor with their customer service.
Everyone I talked to loves their iPhone. On the other hand Mashable readers seemed fond of the Google Android phones.

Web 2.0 is cutting edge. Google’s new Chrome OS will use web apps exclusively. This post concludes the list of my favorite FREE web apps.

reQall

I’ve used reQall to leave myself voice mails.  reQall converts my voice mails into text.  reQall Standard is the free service. “It lets you organize tasks, ideas and important notes in one place and have reminders delivered at the right time.”

Shape Collage Online

I’ve used Shape Collage on my Mac for a while.  It’s a cute and clever web app that takes my photos and creates a, yes, collage out of them.