I know the title of this post is not a real word at least to my New Oxford Dictionary but I don’t mind stretching the English language a bit once in a while. This post is about how journaling became such an important part of my life.
Read moreTag: Creativity
Storytelling…
Storytelling is something that is as old as man. Before written languages were developed and taught to the masses storytelling was the only way to pass down history. Why I seem to be obsessed with trying out storytelling is a mystery to me. That is what this post is all about.
Read moreRJsCorner – My Public Journal
With my recent obsession with being more creative lately I have come to more thoroughly understand where RJsCorner fits into the scheme of my creative life. That is what this post is all about. Sort of…
Read moreGreek-ish Salad
RJsCorner is meant to be a very diverse place. I cover many topics because I am a guy with many labels. One label I haven’t shown you here is my chef side. I spent five years in college working in a dormitory cafeteria serving about 600 people three meals a day. I started that time washing pots and pans and ended up running the entire student waiter staff of about fifty people. I learned many things about cooking and such in addition to how to be an engineer during those years.
Read moreAlternative Reflections – Drummer Boy
The foundation of this Alternate Reflections post is a photo from my recent visit to the Vincennes Rendezvous. He was part of a drum and fiffe corp. Why I singled him out here is because the drum was almost as big as he was. But, when he struck it with fury even I could hear (or at least feel) it.
Here is to you my friend. I look forward to seeing you again if a few years. Maybe by then you will have grown to oversize the drum you proudly play.
The Ultimate Freedom
This sounds like a pretty grandiose title, I hope the post lives up to it. 🙂 I’m going to clue you in on what I found the ultimate freedom to be. It took me almost seven decades to find it. At first, it seemed more like a prison than freedom but I have found that misconceived view to be the case in more circumstances than I care to remember.
The ultimate freedom was cloaked in darkness when I first came upon it. It just didn’t look like freedom at first glance. Ok, the wait is over I will now tell you what the ultimate freedom is. Ultimate freedom is when you no longer have to do something just to create money.
Now I guess I have to explain my personal circumstances in order to support my dark pre-story.
I left the corporate world at fifty-five. After I got my thirty years in and was eligible for a full pension, my corporate division was sold to a Chinese company. We were told that nothing would change, but of course, within six months massive layoffs started. Within a year 95% were gone, including me.
All my life I had lived pretty frugally so I had enough resources along with the fixed pension and future social security payments to be able to live without any additional income. But, as is often the case, I refused to understand what that freedom could give me. It would be several years later before I fully realized what was in front of me.
When I finally went into the full retirement mode six years after leaving the corporate world, the idea of having total control of my time absolutely scared me. The main reason for that is that I didn’t do the work required to really appreciate what I had. Instead, I languished around as pretty much a couch potato for a couple of years feeling sorry for myself and the self-imposed boredom that followed.
Finally, I got it through my head to actually use this ultimate freedom. I finally started doing some things that I had only dreamed about up to then. One was to be a frequent volunteer at a local soup kitchen. Another was to start a blog about my view of the world. I had always enjoyed writing and now I could do whatever I wanted with that skill. Other things would eventually fall in place, but it was not until a few months ago that I decided to try and take my ultimate freedom to a whole other level.
I actually spent the time thinking and dreaming of what I could now do that wasn’t really possible before. That brought up a lot of hidden, or maybe unrealized goals that need to be further pursued. Finally, when 2019 dawned I decided to bring up yet another blog, this one dedicated to creativity. I am now about forty-seven days into this year-long project of becoming a more creative person. If this sort of thing appeals to you, I would like to invite you to come along on my journey. I think we can both learn if we do this together. Click on the CrackingCreativity logo in the right column here to join the fun.
How about you, what is your definition of Ultimate Freedom?
Human Dexterity…
This post is going to be about how robots have replaced humans in a significant segment of our industrial complex. I will say up front that I deem this as progress. Human dexterity is just not a precise thing. We are incapable of producing the accuracy of today’s workplace. We are imprecise creatures and in some way that makes us creative creatures and that is something that machines won’t soon replace.
When I bought my first new car in 1970 the saying “don’t buy a car made on a Friday or Monday” was something to take seriously. The reason for that is that the workers who made the cars were often thinking about what they were going to do that weekend or what they had done after it was over. Robots think of one thing and that is to put that screw, weld, or part within a 10,000th of an inch where it is supposed to be. They do the same thing to that accuracy over and over again without thinking of anything else.
As I said previously, human beings by our nature are meant to be creative creatures. We are meant to solve problems, create new ways of doing things, or just make life a little more pleasant for the rest of us. We were never meant to shut off our minds and do the same thing over and over again. Someday we will look back on things like the human assembly line and wonder how anyone could ever do such a boring thing!!
