JJ's World Views

Tag: change

  • Changes

    Changes

    It has been a while since I have posted anything here.  Many things have changed in my life in that period.  I graduated from Normandale Community College and now have my first degree.  My brakes went out on my car and I had to struggle to get the money together to fix it.  I am thankful for my brother in law and his friend for helping me with the repairs.  I have started a new job this week as a educational paraprofessional substitute.   I am working to pay off a student loan before I can go for my B.A. in Teaching Social Studies.  So, I am currently not in school for the time being.  I hope to have that all paid off before June, that way I can get back to work on my degree.

    The next few months are going to be tight but I believe I will be able to make it through.  If I do not make my deadline of June I will head back to school by next spring.  It is good to have goals but they should not I believe, so rigid to the point that if you do not make it with in a time frame it kills your motivation.  This is what does happen to me a lot.  I sometimes push myself, to the point where I start to question my own worth and get down on myself.  Then I let everything go and just give up.  I have to make sure I have a secondary plan of action, because shit happens.

    Things happen in our lives that change us for better or worse.  The thing is when we are in a down spin we have to gain our composer and level ourselves off and change direction accordingly.  There is not just one way to get where you want to go in life there are many.  Some are short and sweet, and others may take a bit longer but you will still get there in the end.

  • This Semester

    This has been the hardest semester for me yet. I have been procrastinating too much. In away I have been doing a great job of self sabotage. In a way I  think I do not deserve to get my A.A.  Though I have put in all of the time and work that I need to, maybe even more.  I am less than two months away from finally getting my A.A. in Liberal Arts.  Maybe it is because I fear the success it could bring.  I do not want to let things go to my head.  I like the way I am now in a personal sense, I worry that I will become arrogant because of the success.  As I am now and how I hope I will see myself in the future is that I am just a guy trying to do more for society and not just for myself.

    The class I am doing the worst in right now is Spanish.  At this point I just want to pass the course.  That is the first time I have said that about any of my classes.  My history class I am a bit behind in but, I can make that up no problem.  I have liked all my social science teachers.  Hell, I have a crush on the teacher I had last semester for U.S. history 2.  The current history course I am taking is History of World Civilization 3.  And I have been looking forward to this class for awhile.  The reason for that is I want to try and understand what the more recent history of the middle east is like.  This way I can help to figure out a solution to some of the problems over there.

    Human Geography is another good class I am taking and I am all caught up in.  I only have a presentation, a short essay on urbanization and the final left for that class.  My teacher for this class I had last semester for Physical Geography so I kind of knew what to expect from him.  Then I have my Career Exploration class which helped me to decide to change my Major from Social studies Education to a straight History major.  I am doing this because I do not want to have to narrow of a major and a History B.A. can open a whole lot of doors as I found out.

    The last class is not really a class but a certificate program called Pillar of Leadership.  In this program we go over the different types of leadership but, focus more on the Social Change Model of Leadership.  This is a pretty cool program and is going to look good on my resume.  Though the main reason I am taking this is because I do want to help change the way things are in this world, for the better.

    I guess for me now it is crunch time.  I need to make sure I pass all my classes and by February I will have my A. A. degree in my hands.  Now I just have to find another job because the job I am currently working at is the student store on the Work Study Program.  So, I really do want to start looking for jobs and internships in my field of study.

  • Crying Spells

    It sucks living with depression.  Not only do I sometimes have issues just finding reasons to get up in the morning.  I also have times where I can not stop crying.  This one I am in now has been going on since I gave my speech on Thursday.  I can stop for a while but then it starts back up again.  It doesn’t matter if I am sad, happy, hopeful or cynical I cry for it all it seems.

    This past year has been herd for me.  I have been losing focus and not keeping up with my homework.  I think knowing this is my last semester at Normandale Community College has this affected me.  I have been comfortable there for the most part, though I have pushed myself out of my comfort zone more since I have been there.  I love the teachers and faculty there.  They have been really supportive and caring.   Hell, I am 41 I knew this was coming.  I just didn’t think it would come this soon.  These past 2 1/2 years have gone by so quickly.

    I guess I might fear change a bit but, I know that is how life is and how we grow as people.  I guess I have just gotten so comfortable that it is really hard to do.  Especially, since I have not had a place where I felt I belonged so long before I came to school.

    For the twelve years prior to me heading to school I bounced around a lot about 30 time in that time period.  I have had many jobs, 2 hernia surgeries, married, divorced, and lost my grandfather.  Though we had only met when I was 20 because, of my mom not thinking it was important for me to know them until that time.  She never even told me about them till I was 20 and I had not asked about them just my Biological father.  I remember one time when I was like 15 years old, when I got into it with my dad (the man who raised me) we almost came to blows.  My mom showed me a letter that bio-father had written me.  He told me he loved me and all that jazz in the letter.  To tell you the truth I don’t remember much of what it said because I was stuck in my own little world, after the fight.  I don’t know why my mom didn’t tell me about my grandparents then.  This to me seems like it would have been the best time to do so.  But, she waited.

    It was always nice talking to my grandfather.  We could talk about anything it felt like.  We talked about our lives, politics, religion, ect… I always felt comfortable talking about these topics with him.  Not like now where I sometimes feel my head and ears burning when I talk about them with other members of my family or friends for that matter.  I never felt judged by him or my grandmother.

    It is time now again to start feeling uncomfortable and push myself to do better.  Not just for me but for the world as a whole.  This is my philosophy of life “I want to make myself better in order to better help the world.”  I know this sounds Idealistic but that how I see things.  Do I think I am better than anyone else? Hell, No!  Do I think we are all the same? Once again, Hell, No. We are only the same as it pertains to us being human.  We are all a part of the same family in a sense .  We all have different talents and skills, this is why we are not all the same and why none of us is better than another, at least in my perspective.  There’s only one exception to me thinking I am not better than a person and that is if they see violence as the only solution.  Even then I think some those people can change their thinking.

    We all have the potential to be both good or bad or fall somewhere on the spectrum.  We can all learn from one another if we are willing to put ourselves out there.  We can find inspiration anywhere and everywhere in life.  It is sometimes comes from the most unexpected places.  Look at me I am an Atheist but, I was inspired to go back to school by a young Muslim woman named Malala.  Her courage to stand up to the Taliban gave me hope for the future.  The fact that she is still pushing for Girls to have the right to an education even after she was shot, amazes me.  I just hope and wish I have the same amount of courage she has.

  • Diversity in All Things

    I found a post on Facebook today that I thought was interesting, though I thought it was some sort of scam at first.  It was about something called and RECs (Renewable Energy Certificates).  I know nothing about it, but it was talking about how it helps to transition the U.S. to a more green sustainable energy system.  I ended up on this video from the EPA.  It talks about how our power grid works and what we can do to help push more green energy.  The way they do this from my understanding is this: we by the certificate and pay the company we bought the certificate from, they in turn put that much energy into the grid and the fossil fuel company gets half the money.  Which means we are getting 50% of our energy from the renewable energy company, but we still pay the same on our bill.  This does show how much cheaper renewable energy has become.  It is half the cost of the old energy sources.  Then the old place we got electricity does not have to produce that energy.

    For some reason this made me think of how we as citizens need to be able to diversify our knowledge base.  Gone are the times of one job or career for the rest of our lives, like our parents and grandparents.  The economy is always changing know.  So, we need to be able to change with it not only that, but with longer lifespans we will start to need a change every once in awhile.   This is why we need college for all and stop calling it a liberal education then start calling it a diversified education.  The people on Wall Street should be able to understand that.  One of the things I have heard about from the stock company commercials is that  we should diversify our portfolios.  If we diversify our knowledge about the world we can transition into different fields easier and explore other careers that we might not have that of.  This helps to stabilize the economy and helps us to work toward that goal in the constitution of happiness.

    Hell, I think there should be diversity in all things.  Without it our species would die off for sure.  I could never understand the premises of White Power.  If we only had white people in the world or any color or nationality.  Eventually there would be too much inbreeding in the genes.    That kind of explains the people who want their own people only.  Could you imagine a world with only white, black, asian or hispanic people.  It would be pretty boring.  We would see similar faces all the time.  The other day a guy came into the student store he was Somalian and he had the same facial structure as and old friend of mine who is white.  To me this seems like there are limited amount amounts of faces that mother nature has and reuses them in other races.  Kind of blows my mind.  Now that I said that being said imagine duplicate people of the same ethnicity all over the place.  Pretty unremarkable is it.