Let me walk you through a typical day at the gym for me.
I walk into the gym to see some new face working at the front desk. The last person that had just started working the front desk two days ago probably quit because they were tired of making minimum wage while not actually working. Now I know what you are going to say...no one is paid to do nothing... With MOST jobs you'd be right, but at my gym the desk attendants that are supposed to take my membership card and sign me in, simply leave the bar-code reader up on the front of the desk in the classic self-service style of “I'm a lazy bum, that's why I have my brain-dead job in the first place!”
Now as I walk into a sea of perpetually unfit people doing some stupid thing they heard someone talking about seeing someone do while thinking about joining a gym while drinking a grease and sugar smoothie, I can't help but get pissed off. Most people think I'm “in the zone.” I'm in the zone, the zone of idiots that go to the gym just to tell their friends while they are out to lunch eating death warmed over, “I work out, look at me, I'm better than you.”
At my gym the racquetball players are the first contact I have with what I'll call...Some idiot sitting on the equipment like its a freakin' lawn chair! I can kinda are respect that old guy out their bashing a little blue ball around reliving a bit of the time he spent as a young man...but I'm sorry, I have work to do and you sitting on this bench is stopping me from doing it!
After I finish my warm up, I head to the power cage. The power cage is called the power cage because it is a cold steel frame where powerful stuff happens involving big men and heavy weight! In the corner I spy some idiot doing some dumb isolation exercise with poor form right under the end of the power cage bar! On the other side, there is some chick doing the same thing! As a big man that likes to think he does powerful stuff involving kind of heavy weight, I frown at these people which is my way of saying “Please move!”
After throwing some weight around like peanuts, I want a cold drink of water to quench my powerful thirst. I go to a fountain only to taste luke-warm water. I walk ACROSS the gym to the other fountain to have the same experience and then I wonder...why am I paying to torture myself in a place that won't even take my money and fix the compressors on the water fountains?!?!?!?
After completing the rest of my workout and cleaning machines of other people's sweat, I do my cardio(some times...) and I think about lucky I am to have had my eyes opened... Maybe I should be nice and ask the next one of these I see to give me a spot.
Sunday, November 22, 2009
Influencing a child
I visited my nephews yesterday. They are the victims of a broken-home where my brother and his wife have for now failed at providing them the traditional two-parent home. The heart of the situation now is that these boys need an influence...some guiding force of character, dignity and courage to give their lives a direction that will lead them to success. Where does this influence come from...?
My nephews are living a life far removed from the worst of what we find to be all to common in the black community. When asked what's wrong in black america, people often point to external influences and historic issues of socio-economic injustice and racism. However after this visit with my nephews I think the crux of the problems any race faces is simply how do we relate to our children and build LASTING and INFLUENTIAL relationships?
The first truism in life is that what parents value(character values, music, social entertainment...) imprints itself upon parent's children through the child's passionate instinct to be like their parents. Children model their lives after what their parents value because that relationship which is forged through genetic replication and a helplessness in a dangerous world is what lays the groundwork for how children grow up. Parents often through a lack of true appreciation for their own accomplishments in life, point to entertainers, wealthy sports stars, and other media driven people that exhibit the worst of humanity as “What they wish they could have been when they grew up.”
Children hear the furious acclaim and worship heaped up on these images and in turn hear the angst in the voices of their parents about living a “normal” life with 2.5 kids, a wife and a middle-class job. This destructive humility, the desecration of a parent's own image when the child is begging and searching for a role-model to pattern their life after...is setting that child up for failure.
What is the answer?
1. Be there! Children can't model what they don't know. Absentee “fathers” undermine the heart of what a child needs...attention, love and a physical tactile relationship.
2. Parents should love themselves. Its a sad thing when a parent can only market themselves to their children a counter-example of what to be. Parents should take pride in the love that they provide their children. Being responsible, being committed and being determined to see your children succeed is a much more venerable set of accomplishments and values than being able to run fast, dunk a basketball, take pictures of a living or have sex with every girl in the world....
3. Forge a lasting relationship with your child. Without being there, without contextualizing their fledgling view of the world, what is a child to do?
My nephews are living a life far removed from the worst of what we find to be all to common in the black community. When asked what's wrong in black america, people often point to external influences and historic issues of socio-economic injustice and racism. However after this visit with my nephews I think the crux of the problems any race faces is simply how do we relate to our children and build LASTING and INFLUENTIAL relationships?
The first truism in life is that what parents value(character values, music, social entertainment...) imprints itself upon parent's children through the child's passionate instinct to be like their parents. Children model their lives after what their parents value because that relationship which is forged through genetic replication and a helplessness in a dangerous world is what lays the groundwork for how children grow up. Parents often through a lack of true appreciation for their own accomplishments in life, point to entertainers, wealthy sports stars, and other media driven people that exhibit the worst of humanity as “What they wish they could have been when they grew up.”
Children hear the furious acclaim and worship heaped up on these images and in turn hear the angst in the voices of their parents about living a “normal” life with 2.5 kids, a wife and a middle-class job. This destructive humility, the desecration of a parent's own image when the child is begging and searching for a role-model to pattern their life after...is setting that child up for failure.
What is the answer?
1. Be there! Children can't model what they don't know. Absentee “fathers” undermine the heart of what a child needs...attention, love and a physical tactile relationship.
2. Parents should love themselves. Its a sad thing when a parent can only market themselves to their children a counter-example of what to be. Parents should take pride in the love that they provide their children. Being responsible, being committed and being determined to see your children succeed is a much more venerable set of accomplishments and values than being able to run fast, dunk a basketball, take pictures of a living or have sex with every girl in the world....
3. Forge a lasting relationship with your child. Without being there, without contextualizing their fledgling view of the world, what is a child to do?
Thursday, November 5, 2009
Re-Introduction and Rant
Ok...so I'm known to rant. Not because I think people really care to hear what I deem to be the glorious and infallible truth, but because I come from a long line of opinionated and judgmental people in my family. I'm passionate and that passion plus a trait of stammering I inherited from my father tends to lead to me sounding a bit pissed off.
That's ok...
Because I can write about how the world around me really aggravates me sometimes... So this first rant is little bit of an introduction about myself, a taste of the things that really get my blood hot and what you can expect to read here you find any of this stuff interesting.
As a young black man(don't say I didn't warn you...might want to hide your purse and avoid delegating responsibility to me...I mean it...*bling*) I have friends that are young. We sit around and talk about what we want our lives to be like and how we want to own our own businesses. However I am amazed at how SOME of them simply go about trying to live daydreams instead of working, learning and then venturing out into the world head on...
Look Here, Spinning Rims! → My first boss told me to learn as much as I can about what it is I wanted to do before trying to start a business of my own. Why did he tell me this, let's see...because he had already done the same thing!
1. Why take my own precious money that I barely had any of and spend it simply to “learn on the job.” People are so quick to say “I hate my boss/job/the thing that keeps my lights on...” when really they need to suck it up, work harder and learn from the successes they indirectly profit from and the failures that don't readily come out their back pockets(if they are lucky). It's the “I'm tired of working for the man all of about 3 to 5 years” when in actuality these people are the gauntlet of knowledge that can beat some sense into you about things...on their dime!
2. You need credibility and relationships before starting your own business. Working for others is a great way of showing others that you can be trusted, don't have a chronic drug addiction and can add enough value every week to get a paycheck. Inevitably you will meet people that will need your services and skills (that you calm are so dope, so tight that you MUST start your own business). Without building establishing these relationships, there is a slim chance your business will succeed.
3. The best friends are the ones that pay you when you work for them!!!! One of my favorite points I hear the conservative Neal Boortz make constantly is that a poor person can't give you a job. Building a business model around helping friends and random encounters of the Craig's List kind is just enough frustration to...you guessed it WORK FOR FREE!!!
So what is the point of all this...I don't have a business, but I do have daydreams of having one someday. Before you tell me you are "working for yourself", please show me something like...I don't know...invoices that say “Paid In Full” on them!
I'll keep writing...I need the practice because my spelling sucks and snatching handbags is too much work for me...*phew* Free Common Sense!
That's ok...
Because I can write about how the world around me really aggravates me sometimes... So this first rant is little bit of an introduction about myself, a taste of the things that really get my blood hot and what you can expect to read here you find any of this stuff interesting.
As a young black man(don't say I didn't warn you...might want to hide your purse and avoid delegating responsibility to me...I mean it...*bling*) I have friends that are young. We sit around and talk about what we want our lives to be like and how we want to own our own businesses. However I am amazed at how SOME of them simply go about trying to live daydreams instead of working, learning and then venturing out into the world head on...
Look Here, Spinning Rims! → My first boss told me to learn as much as I can about what it is I wanted to do before trying to start a business of my own. Why did he tell me this, let's see...because he had already done the same thing!
1. Why take my own precious money that I barely had any of and spend it simply to “learn on the job.” People are so quick to say “I hate my boss/job/the thing that keeps my lights on...” when really they need to suck it up, work harder and learn from the successes they indirectly profit from and the failures that don't readily come out their back pockets(if they are lucky). It's the “I'm tired of working for the man all of about 3 to 5 years” when in actuality these people are the gauntlet of knowledge that can beat some sense into you about things...on their dime!
2. You need credibility and relationships before starting your own business. Working for others is a great way of showing others that you can be trusted, don't have a chronic drug addiction and can add enough value every week to get a paycheck. Inevitably you will meet people that will need your services and skills (that you calm are so dope, so tight that you MUST start your own business). Without building establishing these relationships, there is a slim chance your business will succeed.
3. The best friends are the ones that pay you when you work for them!!!! One of my favorite points I hear the conservative Neal Boortz make constantly is that a poor person can't give you a job. Building a business model around helping friends and random encounters of the Craig's List kind is just enough frustration to...you guessed it WORK FOR FREE!!!
So what is the point of all this...I don't have a business, but I do have daydreams of having one someday. Before you tell me you are "working for yourself", please show me something like...I don't know...invoices that say “Paid In Full” on them!
I'll keep writing...I need the practice because my spelling sucks and snatching handbags is too much work for me...*phew* Free Common Sense!
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