(no subject)
Had my Red Cross interview today. I'm really impressed by those guys. I expected it to be a run-down, sterile, depressing hospital or shelter-like setting, and it feels more like a planned parenthood building. Modern and welcoming almost to the point of being yuppie. The woman I talked to seemed energetic and like someone I could connect and be friends with. I have an orientation next Wednesday, and then I start one-week-in-six rotations with the DAT team and some minor stuff with the language bank. I'm honestly pretty thrilled about this. It's Rangering in Seattle, effectively. Which is why it's probably a good thing that it's a habit I'll have to support with an actual job, at least for a while.
One of my high school teachers emphasized putting things in terms of yourself whenever you were thinking of doing something. Never "I want him to do X"; always "I want to do X and this is how I'm going to do it." It's a great technique for personal effectiveness, but also something I went a bit overboard with over the years and ended up cutting a lot of people out of my life. Ok, water under the bridge. What I hadn't been doing though is slightly rephrasing the question and asking "What do I want?" without tangling in the "but it's going to affect so-and-so, so I have to factor in..." Which is not to say that it's not a good idea to consider other people, but all that should basically be part of a different equation. For the most part, other people really can handle themselves. And that's... different. It opens you up more, for one thing, and for another thing, it introduces the scary variable uncontrolled undercalculated agency of the other person.
Nearby is the country they call life.
You will know it by its seriousness.
Give me your hand.
Right? What else?
One of my high school teachers emphasized putting things in terms of yourself whenever you were thinking of doing something. Never "I want him to do X"; always "I want to do X and this is how I'm going to do it." It's a great technique for personal effectiveness, but also something I went a bit overboard with over the years and ended up cutting a lot of people out of my life. Ok, water under the bridge. What I hadn't been doing though is slightly rephrasing the question and asking "What do I want?" without tangling in the "but it's going to affect so-and-so, so I have to factor in..." Which is not to say that it's not a good idea to consider other people, but all that should basically be part of a different equation. For the most part, other people really can handle themselves. And that's... different. It opens you up more, for one thing, and for another thing, it introduces the scary variable uncontrolled undercalculated agency of the other person.
Nearby is the country they call life.
You will know it by its seriousness.
Give me your hand.
Right? What else?