Dreem Word of the Week - S1 R2 - Let's talk about TIME!
Welcome to Season 1 Round 2 of...
**Dreem Word of the Week**
**(dreem-wotw)**
You can find out about the history of **wotw** and it's transition from pob-wotw to dreem-wotw
https://ecency.com/hive-109288/@samsmith1971/dreem-word-of-the-week
**The word for this round is...**
Time
What is time, and what does it mean to you? Is it the central theme of a short story or poem, the focal point of an introspective piece, or the subject of a discursive essay - philosophical or otherwise? We know that it can be examined from many different angles; which one will you choose? We invite you to share your perspective with us...
So, what do you need to know about the contest to enter?
1 ) **What form should my entry take?**
You may respond to the dreem-wotw prompt through any of the following original and creative pathways: discursive essay, short story, or poetry. You may include original artwork in your submission as part of your interpretation of the prompt but the focus for grading submissions will be on the written content.
2 ) **Where and when must I post?**
Contestants will be allowed to enter dreem-wotw posts created on any platform and within any community - this promotes greater inclusivity and engagement opportunities.
BUT... they will be required to share the URL for their dreem-wotw entry in Dreemport on the specific contest submission day set aside by Dreemport for dreem-wotw, in order to be considered for any of the dreem-wotw placings and prizes, as the *Dreemport* phase of grading is an important first step in the process, to shortlist the entries.
Note: You may publish your entry on your home blogging platform whenever you choose, however, it is suggested that you publish on the same day that entries are required to be shared in Dreemport, if you wish to align voting windows on your blogging platform with the timeframes over which Dreemport curators will be viewing your post and dreem-wotw grading teem will be grading (and potentially upvoting).
All entries will be screened by Dreemport screeners for plagiarism, and copyright infringement (all images must be credited back to the original photographers, and URL links to those images on royalty-free sites MUST be provided).
In addition, if any entry is found to be a re-spin of another writer's earlier entry to the contest, such that it appears that the second article clearly relied on and drew too much inspiration from the first, then the second entry will be disqualified, much in the same way that plagiarism disqualifies an entry.
**This month the Dreemport submission date is:**
Tuesday 23rd August
between 4 am UTC and midnight UTC
Please note...this is not simply the deadline date...
**IT IS THE ONLY DATE AND TIMEFRAME WITHIN WHICH SUBMISSIONS WILL BE ACCEPTED FOR THE S1R2 CONTEST IN DREEMPORT.**
The curation/submission cycle start and end at these times so there is unfortunately little room for flexibility. All valid submissions to Dreemport will be reviewed and ranked by public curators the following day.
If you want to have your voice heard in this respect, simply log on the next day and curate and rank a random 5 posts assigned to you.
3 ) **The Grading Phase**
At the end of the 24-hour cycle, Dreemport will provide an official top 5 reader's favourites. We will also be able to access the top 5 Dreemport staff entries in the background and will run two contest pools to keep staff and non-staff entries separate 😊
Members of the grading teem are able to write to the prompt but, like staff, their posts will be excluded from Dreemport official rankings and additionally, they will not be eligible for prizes.
The top 5's will then be graded by the dreem-wotw team in line with the current WOTW Merit grading system - @calumam (Hive) wrote the original grading system and @scholaris (Hive) wrote the bases for that grading.
The top 3 graded posts in both contest pools will become the official winning entries in dreem-wotw.
**How to use Dreemport**
If you have not used Dreemport before, you will need to register on:
https://dreemport.com/
which is a quick and easy process, and the following two articles give a clear idea of the benefits and ease of use of the platform.
How do I use Dreemport? - it's easy!
https://ecency.com/hive-150329/@dreemport/how-do-i-use-dreemport-its-easy-)
Building a better name with Dreemport
https://ecency.com/hive-153850/@jane1289/building-a-better-name-with-dreemport
If anyone has any difficulty registering and trying out the platform, please tag me here on this post and I will help you to get this little piece of admin out of the way as painlessly as possible 😊
4 ) **Engagement metrics**
In order to promote healthy community engagement, one of the merit grading criteria is engagement and it is measured as an average of 3 scores: quantity (no. of posts engaged with), quality (how meaningful that engagement is), and camaraderie (whether you engage only on your own post, or on the posts of others, and to what degree).
To make it quicker and easier to assess, we are asking all participants in the contest to share a link to their own entry, in the comments below on *this* contest post.
All participants (including staff) are then asked to visit and support at least 2 other entries and then to come back to this contest post and give a simple thumbs up 👍 to the related URL links with which you have engaged.
You may engage with more than 2 participants if you wish and you may then give more URL links a thumbs up to indicate how many engaging comments you have made!
Grading volunteers **will not** be looking beyond these *thumbs up* indicators to work out which posts you have visited, so if you don't use the *thumbs up* system, any unrecorded engagement won't be counted towards your final score.
**Summary of entry requirements**
* Write a creative response (discursive essay, short story, or poem) to the prompt: *time* on any blogging platform and in any community.
* Share that post in Dreemport on Tuesday 23rd August, 2022 between 4 am UTC and midnight UTC.
* Share the URL link to your post in a comment to this contest post.
* Support at least 2 other writers who have entered the contest and confirm your support by giving their URL link here a thumbs up.
**Which tag should I use?**
The new tag to be used for the contest will be dreem-wotw as the contest will be hosted by Dreemport, and the primary token associated with the contest going forward will be the dreem token. By using the tag, it will enable others to find your dreem-wotw entries more easily going forward.
**Two contests in one!**
1 ) **Participation prizes:**
There will be a random draw for **all valid entrants** once submissions close on Tuesday 23rd August. The first non-staff and staff entry drawn using random.org will receive a 250 point ecency boost to their post... 🙂 If the post is already boosted, or is too old to be boosted (it usually needs to be less than a day old), then 250 Ecency points will be transferred to the writer's wallet instead.
All URL link comments on this contest post will also receive a mix of PIZZA, ALIVE, LUV, and LOLZ bot token calls.
2 ) dreem-wotw final graded placings:
**Special thanks to @dreemsteem (Hive) for Dreem token sponsorship.**
**Non-staff:**
1st - 500 Dreem Tokens, 250 Ecency points, 50 POB
2nd - 225 Dreem tokens, 150 Ecency points, 50 POB
3rd - 100 Dreem Tokens, 100 Ecency points, 50 POB
**Staff:**
1st - 250 Dreem tokens, 150 Ecency points, 50 POB
2nd - 125 Dreem tokens, 100 Ecency points, 50 POB
3rd - 50 Dreem tokens, 50 Ecency points, 50 POB
**Grading teem:**
There are 7 members on the dreem-wotw grading teem. These roles are currently voluntary, although adhoc disbursements may be made if funds allow. The current grading teem consists of:
@alekst7 @wrestlingdesires @iskafan @juliamulcahy @itsostylish @palomap3 @samsmith1971 (All on Hive)
If anyone else is interested in becoming part of the grading team, they can drop me a message in discord at: SA_Sam1971#1299 to be considered, as future needs arise.
Although upvoting this post, reblogging it, or tagging friends is not required to enter, any and all efforts to promote the contest will be much appreciated. If anyone would like to provide additional sponsorship for the contest, please feel free to contact me in discord.
The following people on Hive expressed an interest in taking part in dreem-wotw:
@nickydee @oceanbee @coquicoin @dansabest9 @nonsowrites @wrestlingdesires @juliamulcahy @itsostylish @palomap3 @iskawrites @alekst7 @dwixer @mypathtofire @buezor @riverflows @chincoculbert @fragozar01 @joseph23 @mineopoly @dreemsteem @zyzymena @corporateay @cool08 @morenow @mrenglish @teknon @lightpen @ijohnsen @ayesha-malik @amberkashif @deraaa @leeart @funshee @aroojkhalid @beeber @mmykel @tengolotodo @adoore-eu @harryjoe5432 @blackdaisyft @repayme4568 @esther-emmanuel @jaxsonmurph @litguru @lordtimoty @kemmyb @b0s @queenstarr @erh.germany @diebitch @bobthebuilder2 @vikbuddy @flamistan @d-pend @wongi @memeisfun @edystringz @coquicoin @ifarmgirl @kenechukwu97 @mcyusuf @penderis @darthsauron @jfuji @dibblers.dabs @khaleesii @cescajove @whywhy @palomap3 @merit.ahama @hopestylist @maryjacy @stevehodl @intishar @acgalarza @idksamad78699 @unklebonehead, @shadowspub, @george-dee, @hannes-stoffel , @deeanndmathews, @kamarah, @jane1289, @olawalium @giftedwriter @atyourservice @strangegravy @anikekirsten @grocko @belleflower @sunbeam3 @beeber @marbrym @bluefinstudios @ksam @simgirl @maryjacy @ngwinndave @creatr @nkemakonam89 @officialrosh1 @ahmadmanga @raj808 @snook @taimen @daje10
All new entrants each month will be added to the list.
Please let me know if you would prefer not to be tagged.
***
Previously published on Hive under user name @@samsmith1971 using Ecency.com.
[Cover image Sun and the planets of the Solar system on orbit by Alberto Sava in canva pro library](https://www.canva.com/photos/MAE8_RDWhjw-sun-and-the-planets-of-the-solar-system-on-orbit/)
Dreemport banner used with permission of @dreemsteem and @dreemport and designed by @jimramones
Writer 'nd a Half banner created by @penderis and used with permission.
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Shadow of Light
*Photo created in Canva Pro*
Standing in the wings, as he has done so often in the past, he makes small talk with those around him. This afternoon's show is a pretty big deal. After a lifetime of one-liners juxtaposed alongside elaborate but amusing stories from his life, this is to be his swan song. A matinee performance of his greatest hits, and it's a sell-out!
Twenty minutes before 'curtain up', he paces, head lowered, gaze fixated on the turn of his heels, inaudible murmurs escaping pursed lips. Wringing his hands, the hard whites of his knuckles rise in stark contrast to the soft hues of his inner palms. Each breath feels more deliberate than the one before. He stops momentarily to peek into the theatre, his eyes dart keenly, searching out each face within the gathering crowd. With a front-row seat reserved for the occasion, he knows she will be there, but he wants to make sure that everyone is ok. That's just him; always looking out for others, securing their happiness above his own.
"You ready for this big fellow?" His companion rests a hand gently on his shoulder, giving it a slight squeeze. "There's gonna be a lotta sad folk out there tonight, but I'm sure you'll raise the roof... you always do."
Ready? He has been ready for this his entire life, but nothing quite prepares you for the moment, until it actually arrives. His thoughts drift. He should be happy. After all, he has achieved so much in his career, but the occasion is tinged with sadness. It's a bitter-sweet letting go of memories, of his time spent in the arts, a creator of comedic interludes of sustained laughter and joy. The culmination of a lifetime's work.
"You know," he ventures in reply, "I've rubbed shoulders with the best of the best; heck I've been showered with accolades myself. But what did I do to deserve them? I mean, what is a comedian's worth? Is it measured by an ability to elicit laughter from an audience?" He pauses momentarily. "I love bringing smiles to those around me; to see their eyes brighten up and their spirits rise. From the barely audible chuckle to the belting belly roar, I've told crackerjacks capable of bringing the house down. Being a part of all of that is special, but was I helping to make those people *truly* happy?" His philosophising at this juncture seems rather inconsequential, but, for now, he is going with the flow.
Still standing by his side, his companion postures, "Rob, it was always your role to invoke joy, by sharing your life's insights through clever quips, humorous anecdotes, and silly platitudes. To shed and spread your light and bring pleasure and satisfaction to many. The ultimate goal of the comic is to become adept in the art of making other people happy... whilst ideally earning a living off the fruits of their labour. I'm fairly certain you achieved all of that, and more ..."
As the voice trails off, he ponders. Surely happiness is defined by more than simply a momentary excitement of the senses? It has to be something more than "a pleasurable or satisfying experience"? Being happy is linked to our emotional state, he thinks, and so by definition, it cannot be a constant, as our emotions are forever in flux; subject to upheaval within the dynamic fabric and framework of human experience that impacts us each day. He knows that, all too well. If, at its core, being happy is transient in nature, then what momentary delights he has provided could only have been a temporary and light distraction in a world ordinarily consumed with despair. His life 'role' suddenly doesn't feel particularly important in the grand scheme of things. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/happiness
Deep in thought, his fingertips first tapping and then lightly caressing his jawline, seeking the right words. "Surely, to be truly happy in life we need to experience a longer-lasting emotional connection with ourselves and those around us, a deeper more fulfilling, and enduring state of well-being and contentment". https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/happiness
It is then that he realises that his erstwhile cohort is no longer at his side. "Erm...erm...John?" he stammers, eyes widening, thoughts flailing. He glances at his watch, surprised just for a moment that he is still wearing one. He starts to wonder, with a little under 10 minutes to go before his finale, whether now is a good time to panic.
"Rob! Over here!" His eyes follow the sound of John's voice, locating his position on the lighting deck high above the stage, where John is beckoning to him. "Come on up! You'll love the view!"
As he climbs the stairs alongside the stage, he considers his own life and the challenges he has faced; how deep joy, gathered through a lifetime of pocketed memories, has been disturbed and overridden, and all sense of fulfillment sucked out through forces beyond his control. Whether the adversary takes the form of alcoholism, drug addiction, mental health issues, or physical ailments, the imbalance within the body always needs addressing, or the adversary will win out. And for him, it always did. When the nights closed in and darkness enveloped his mind, he had nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. He had found himself alone with his demons. Happiness had been the drug that had kept him moving, full steam ahead, all these years. Ironically, its transiency became the brake that derailed him from life's tracks. And now; now it was too late.
Putting his thoughts to one side for a moment, he pulls himself up alongside John and gazes down on the audience below, nodding in silent agreement. John is right, the view from up here is almost ethereal. The late afternoon sun filters in through the tall windows, laying bare long shadows across the room. He has little time now left for reflection. The show will be starting soon.
Whilst the immensity of his persona had cast a beautiful shadow of light across all who met him or experienced his genius, for himself sadly, he realises that not only has he existed in the shadow of his own light for too long, a fraction of the man he once was, but he has become both the shadow and the light, shifting too easily between two states of being. Now his moment has finally come to take his seat and look through the window of all of his yesterdays for the last time.
Now, finally, clarity exists. His realisation hits him as to that which is central to life:
"living the primordial in the here and now, as well as becoming and passing away, searching and finding - recognizing shadows and light as part of an eternal cycle and understanding oneself as an element of it." source https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11958398/
"True happiness isn't about being happy all the time...Unlike feeling happy, which is a transient state, leading a happier life is about individual growth through finding meaning. It is about accepting our humanity with all its ups and downs, enjoying the positive emotions, and harnessing painful feelings to reach our full potential." source. https://theconversation.com/true-happiness-isnt-about-being-happy-all-the-time-88600
His epiphany is long overdue.
An hour later, the final scene delivered, she rises out of her seat, and alone in silent ovation, moves slowly across the floor to meet him. She gazes lovingly into the warmth of his eyes staring back at her, a moment in time captured forever. She caresses the side of his face, tracing the outline of his familiar smile. Their love was real, the epitome of happiness between glass and gilt edge.
She had picked out the photograph herself. His eulogy was perfect.
Through blurred tears, she clutches it tightly to her heart, the entirety of her being now folding over, convulsing, enveloping it in a hug, the finality of which consumes her, as she slips to her knees, surrendering to the pain. He wishes he could go to her. He can almost feel the anguished rise and fall of her body in his embrace.
"Good night, my sweet, sweet prince, be happy now" she finally whispers, her lips leaving their nude impressions on the frosted glass, before standing and replacing the simple frame on the closed casket. She lingers, not wanting to walk away.
Rob watches as an angel's tear falls like a feather to the theatre floor below. His own words fail to come but he recalls vividly his last to her that fateful night.
In the encore, she hears it again, a faint whisper inside her heart, the memory of the refrain pervading her thoughts; his last utterance,
"Goodnight, my love...goodnight, goodnight" source https://allthatsinteresting.com/robin-williams-death
**Postscript:**
This short cameo is dedicated to a man whose life was spent trying to measure up. A man who fought his endless demons in the pursuit for personal happiness, and in the process, brought meaning not only to his own life but also to those lives upon which he generously bestowed his comedic genius and compassionate presence; millions of happy souls over whom he cast the long shadow of his light. In the end, a misdiagnosis of Parkinson's meant that his final adversary, Lewy Body Dementia, remained nameless and faceless until after his passing, although the attacks on his body were relentless. His widow, Susan Schneider Williams described him as being:
"...trapped in the twisted architecture of his neurons...the bravest man in the world playing the hardest role of his life." source https://ew.com/celebrity/zak-williams-tribute-robin-williams-7th-anniversary-death/
Tragically, it proved one fight too many to bear.
For Robin M. Williams (21 July 1951 - 11 August 2014).
Photo credit: Source: Created in Canva Pro https://www.canva.com/design/DAEtfTNurmg/share/preview?token=eHDT7jFjRe1-9cHQFGh8MQ&role=EDITOR&utm_content=DAEtfTNurmg&utm_campaign=designshare&utm_medium=link&utm_source=sharebutton
Of Captains and Masters - perspectives in dystopia
source https://www.canva.com/photos/search/dystopia/
There is no particular day that I can single out as being the day that everything changed. The timelines are too contentious to rely on unless I go back to the very beginning. Even then the intransigent mentality which now seeks to overrule human morality and dignity, once enshrined in human rights bills around the world, was not yet active in its pursuit to defile liberty, the last bastion of civilisation.
I am sick. But it is not the virus that is making me ill. I've already been through that shitstorm and it wasn't half as bad as it was made out to be. No, what is turning my stomach is a silent venom that has gone undetected, a seeping malevolence that has slowly pervaded every aspect of our private and public lives. And as humans, we sat back unaware that the temperature of the water was rising...constantly.
Fear. It's a simple 4 letter word but it holds more weight in the English language than any other. For it drives and motivates humans to act in ways that are incomprehensible to the rational-minded, and reprehensible to libertarianism and ethics. Seeds of doubt and mistrust were scattered on the wind, pariahs to our souls.
Rights once enshrined in statute the world over were simply cast aside in sacrifice to "the greater good". First, it was masks that were mandated by law. I could almost understand that, although still felt the infringement on personal liberty to be slightly more than a chore. This later progressed to the requirement of a double jab, vaccination to protect me and my loved ones from contracting the dreaded disease. Failure to adhere to this voluntary immunisation meant that one would face remaining confined to the borders of your homeland forever. Of course, you could leave and go to other countries that permitted your arrival as a guest, but not without the rigmarole and cost of pre-testing and post-testing, effectively maligning once patriots as prisoners of their nationality. Not just an inconvenience to the State but now also considered a threat. I kid you not!
Governments initially mandated that health workers be fully vaccinated against the virus or face dismissal from public and or private employment. Laws were promulgated and enforced. Not content with this alone, the requirement soon morphed into a full mandate across all professions for vaccination against the virus, and failing compliance, one would face a penalty of fines and later imprisonment.
And now...now they seek us out...actively pursue the unvaccinated. Those who choose to defy the orders of government; those who refuse to be bound and shackled to the manacles of irrationality, face certain incarceration, to protect others from their potentiality as carriers of Virus X. It is a nonsense. The statistics speak for themselves. We are no more a threat than the man on the bus in 2018 who sneezed and coughed and put me in bed for a week with the flu.
WE are no longer "one Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all". We are a broken society, divided by personal lines drawn in the sand, lines which remain devoid of mutual respect, now forever cemented in history.
It is in this future dystopia in 2035, that I am a human being in hiding. I will not give in. I will not enslave myself to another. I will retain control over my life and my choices. The government seeks me out along with the rest of the rebellion. It is decreed. And all I want is the freedom to exercise choice. My choice. This is one thing they will not allow me. They will not let me exercise free will. Even before the jabs became compulsory, they said I had a choice, but I didn't really. Exercising my free will left me with limited options as a citizen of the world; in reality leaving me with no real alternative if I wanted to retain the freedoms that my ancestors had sought to protect. And now even that has been taken from me. I do not understand why we are at war. Aristotle is turning in his grave.
"Hush now", I turn to my children, "wait until they pass". We watch as the tin hats march by. And then we scurry along, like rats in the sewers, living our lives between the dusk and the dawn.source https://www.canva.com/photos/MAC4vYyL4gg-sweet-little-child-boy-eating-ice-cream-on-the-beach/
source https://www.canva.com/photos/MAC4vYyL4gg-sweet-little-child-boy-eating-ice-cream-on-the-beach/
Life is indeed good. It's the summer of '35 and I am sunning myself on a beach on the Costa del Sol. The kids are building sandcastles on the water's edge, bubblegum ice cream melting sticky through little fingers as they declare war on the sea. Laughter permeates the air. Their joy is palpable and pervasive.
I flick through the news highlights on my phone. More on the rebellion. Heavens, when will those people start taking this thing seriously? The only reason I am alive today is that I got vaccinated at the earliest opportunity, and when the time came for my children to be immunised, I was one of the first in line at the doctors' rooms, so grateful for the convenience and blessing of modern medicine.
They complain that their rights have been abrogated. What rights? Those enshrined in *our* Constitution? Don't *they* appreciate that we all deserve protection under the law? The Constitution only protects one's rights insofar as the exercise thereof does not infringe on the rights of others. Why can't they see reason and have consideration for others? Why can't they just get vaccinated?
The story bores me now. It has been the same old thing for years. When they failed to listen to reason and complained of inequitable treatment under the law, those who supported vaccination listened, disagreed, and implored them to act responsibly. But year after year our hospitals were overrun, budgets were stretched and lockdowns ensued. the media reported it all. Finally, enough was enough. We wanted our lives back, and we had to take a stand. A call to action was made. The camps were divided but it was a matter of life and death. Yes, people were actually dying here! The government finally took the necessary action and life got back to a new sense of normal for the rest of us law-abiding citizens. I am now free to roam the world and go and do as I please. I am in control of my own life. I have the papers to prove it, although having to carry them everywhere is a chore.
I used to pity the rebellion, but no longer. Now I just wish they'd stop fighting and surrender to that which will bring back normality for everyone.
source https://www.canva.com/photos/MAEJMxIQ0aw-tattered-american-flag-flapping-in-ominous-sky/
"I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all," source https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pledge_of_Allegiance
I am the 49th President of the United States of America. Leader of the free world. Free only because we have finally got the virus under control. But I have no understanding of my people. I can hear them mocking me already.
Mandatory annual vaccinations ensure that less than 1% of the population die each year from this dreaded disease. My people do not understand how difficult the choices have been over the years. The billions of dollars that our governments have invested into Pharmaceutical R&D to protect them, to ensure the survival of the human race.
I am new in Office. To be honest, it's been nothing but a rotating office door here in the West Wing. No single President has maintained a tenure beyond a single term since ...well since it all started. The people have been too divided on too many issues, including the one which is most pervasive in our present times. This damn virus!
Under POTUS 48 the military became a henchman, singular-minded in pursuit of the rebellion. Like my predecessors, I too am clueless as to what to do to bring my people back together, to reconcile the needs of the many with the few, to protect the rights of all. To bring equality back to the table.
Speaking of that, I have a number of amendments lying patiently in wait on my desk in the Oval. Some will make things worse, some may make things better. Some will bring the rebellion to account, others will free them from their life underground. How do I as one person make that call? So many competing agendas.
All I know is that I am the current captain at the helm, guiding the ship of government, trying to do my best, and unsure in the end if that will be good enough.
source https://www.canva.com/photos/MAC4UaJ0OOI-stars-light-motion-in-space/
I toss and I turn. I cannot sleep. Is it too warm in here? I turn on the fan. Maybe that will cool things down, I think. I glance at my phone. The night-time hours have ticked over into the next morning. It is still dark but global warming means that even the night air in 2035 is now warm in the summer. This is the least of our worries though.
The voices are still loud in my head. Always loud, always keeping me awake. I ponder. When all is said and done, where will I stand on the side of history?
We have all lost so much, whether we choose to admit it or not. Rightly or wrongly, we have been defeated in so many ways: by the virus, by the government, by social stigma and discrimination, by the breakdown of society, the loss of morality, rationality, and community on both sides of the divide. It seems that nobody can agree on the right answer to controlling the virus, and maybe in some ways, that is because, when one truly stands in the shoes of another, each perspective becomes very real, each perspective holds water. We all want the same thing, we just disagree on how to achieve it.
The bigger picture seems to have been lost on so many. The choices made thus far have only succeeded in tearing humanity apart, and for better or worse, depriving individuals of their basic rights of privacy, liberty, and justice for all.
I re-plump my pillows.
So, in the end, who remains Invictus? You? Me? The Government? The virus? Don't we all lose? Are we not all defeated by our failure to come together? By our failure to stand together as "one nation under God"?
How long will it take for us to reconcile, to become one again? How long before the war will end? I don't have the answer to that question, but the eternal optimist in me looks to the Heavens, says a prayer, and trusts that the years will bring healing to old wounds.
I lie down again. Maybe, I think, maybe it is Time that is Invictus? Or maybe what is Invictus is the quinta essentia of Aristotle, the 'invisible light' that guides us back to a perfect state of equilibrium? There is still hope ... https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/quintessential
I close my eyes.
...but that is a question for another day.
**Footnote:**
I do not profess to support any one of the single views provided above and it is not my intention to create discord among my fellow community members. If anything, I find some element of truth in all of them, and I guess therein lies the rub. They are all but competing perspectives reimagined in a dystopian world which has become my creative canvas upon which to paint a creative response to the word Invictus.
All photos are sourced in CANVA Pro.
Last time I looked...my cup was overflowing!
So why am I here?
I don't just mean in this tribe posting my first #Iamalivechallenge post, which I was literally challenged to do by @wrestlingdesires, I mean generally, why am I here? https://ecency.com/trending/iamalivechallenge https://ecency.com/@wrestlingdesires
(these are references to communities and members of Hive)
I guess that is where it all starts, doesn't it, in the beginning, with bits of stardust fragmenting on the edges of time, forming the innermost essence of who we all are, and then, of course, there are the absolutely endearing and loveable couple whom I call Mom and Dad, who fell in love, got married, and procreated. I'll leave you to decide which is the more romanticised version of the reason for my existence.
Or maybe it started way before both my parents and the stardust; maybe it started in an ethereal plane of existence that none of us can comprehend at the moment...or even recall. All I know is that I am grateful to all the above that I am alive.🙏
I was born 50 years ago to wonderful parents who struggled for years to conceive and went through a couple of miscarriages and surgical interventions in order to have children. They sure did want me and my siblings and I am grateful for that. I count my blessings every day for the fact that they both were desperate to have a family and that I was the fortunate soul to enter their lives first and experience the love that only a parent can shower on a child.
I am also incredibly grateful that I had the sense to keep the terrible twos under wraps just long enough that they could forget the pain of sleepless nights and not yet have endured the pain that toddlers can bring, and have my younger sister 2 years later 😂and finally truly blessed that the unplanned 3rd came along when I was 6 years old, my baby brother (not such a baby anymore lol). We are all very close and the blessing that comes with such relationships, nurtured over the years, is that we are always there for each other's triumphs and disasters, happiness, and grief. There is always a shoulder to cry on, a problem to be halved or a laugh to be shared. My gratitude cup overflows.
My parents always put us first and made countless sacrifices of their time and hard-earned money to support our passions and interests over the years. As a parent now myself, I can finally appreciate just how big a sacrifice this is and was for them. I want my children to flourish and be happy above all else, and I know that is all my parents ever wanted for me too. So I am incredibly indebted to them both and feel blessed to have been a child on the receiving end of all their love, and now a parent, sharing with my children the unconditional love that I in turn have for them.
I am also so grateful that I grew up in Africa, had a deep gorge with riverbeds and waterfalls as my backyard playground, and Zebra, Vervet monkeys and Duiker (small variety of buck) as our local neighbours. The Zebras literally lived 3 doors down from me in the nature reserve and would come up to the fence that met our road. It was awesome, I was truly blessed, and living to the beat of the African drum always filled me with the greatest sense of being alive. If you've ever lived in Africa you will know that she is not an easy home to say goodbye to; she creeps into your heart from the day that you are born and forever after you are reminded of that longing to reconnect with the dry heat of the plains and the humidity of the African East coast. There is nothing like an African thunderstorm after a day in the African heat to make you feel alive with the wonder of nature crashing down around you, and when all is clear and you go outside to the beautifully cleansed earth, and look to the night skies, you have never seen such majesty, so many billions of stars, and the wonder of the Milky Way from the Southern Hemisphere is a beauty to behold. These are the little big things that make me feel grateful to be alive and to have lived my life.
Finally, I feel blessed to have been given the privilege of a University education and to have had employment opportunities throughout my working career, such that I have a good job today that enables me to support my family's needs. I have a wonderful circle of family and friends who are always there for each other and an amazing little family of my own, from my husband to our two young sons. I have also have had the blessing of 'time' to enable me to pursue my passions: hiking, walking, karate, writing, reading, Tom Brady, Julian Edelman ... 😜(erm...NFL Go PATS I mean). Yeah yeah, they've moved on... but I haven't ha ha.
All of the above makes me feel alive every day and fills me with so much gratitude. I honestly cannot take stock of all the blessings in my life as, last time I looked, there were just too many to count.
This has been my post for @wrestlingdesires first Hive contest on "Blessings" in conjunction with his challenge to support @dreemport, @comet.ranker, @dibbler.dabs "A tale of 2 pizzas" and the #Iamalivechallenge. I already support the first two on a regular basis and I agreed, to go for a trifecta, if not the quaddie😍 https://ecency.com/@wrestlingdesires https://ecency.com/@dreemport https://ecency.com/@comet.ranker https://ecency.com/@dibbler.dabs https://ecency.com/trending/iamalivechallenge
Photo credit: Dagmara Dombrovska
Photo by Dagmara Dombrovska from Pexels https://www.pexels.com/photo/yellow-dandelions-placed-in-light-mug-against-wall-7632289/
Photo credit Juan Gonzalez
Photo by Juan González from Pexels https://www.pexels.com/photo/starry-night-sky-over-the-starry-night-5741630/
Photo credit Magda Ehlers
Photo by Magda Ehlers from Pexels https://www.pexels.com/photo/selective-focus-photography-of-zebra-763925/
Photo credit Colin Lloyd
Photo by Colin Lloyd from Pexels https://www.pexels.com/photo/silhouette-of-mountain-under-starry-night-5195918/
Photo credit Taryn Elliot
Photo by Taryn Elliott from Pexels https://www.pexels.com/photo/photo-of-waterfalls-during-daytime-3889929/
If the walls could talk ...
This post was actually sparked by a conversation I had about a month ago with another member of the Hive community about churches.
He has written another fantastic #thoughtfuldailypost about how actions speak louder than words and has focussed the discursive element of his post on how he has witnessed this hypothesis playing out in church communities. He has also provided some really fabulous photos of a truly beautiful and endearing white church that he and his wife attend together. https://ecency.com/trending/thoughtfuldailypost
His post resulted in a short conversation in the comments between us where we learned that we both have this thing in common that we do, which may seem weird to some, and which neither believed that anybody else did: we both love to touch church walls.
Before this engagement, I had no idea what I was going to write for the #thoughtfuldailypost that day and was considering having to skip the dreemport challenge as I had to take my son to a Secondary (senior) school open evening as he is in his last year at Primary School and so has to choose a Secondary school soon for next September. But, after arriving home, doing a late dinner, and putting the kids to bed, I finally had some time to write. I may have missed the deadline for the @dreemport challenge but I wanted to write about this anyway as I always feel a strong connection to church walls😊 https://ecency.com/trending/thoughtfuldailypost https://ecency.com/@dreemport
So this may seem like a weird thing to do: going around and touching church walls, and I wonder now after my chat with @tattoodjay how many other people commune with churches in this way and what their personal reasons and gains may be from engaging like this? https://ecency.com/@tattoodjay
Now, I don't attend church. I am fairly non-denominational as I find my God all around me in my life, in everything I do, see and experience. I find my God inside of my thoughts and my dreams and my passions and in the miracles of the unfolding Universe. I personally don't have a need to go to a specific place of worship on a regular basis, for me to be able to give thanks, show gratitude and continue to try to be the best human that I can be (although I am certainly not knocking the Church either!).
I mostly frequent chapels, churches, and cathedrals when I am out on my walks (and fall upon a hidden gem) or during my holiday travels around the world, pre-covid and hopefully again one day in the not too distant future! There is always something that draws me inside; be it the exquisite stained glass windows, the incredible architecture, the quaintness, the history. Aaah, the history 💗
I genuinely love old stone churches the most. You know, the ones that are centuries old and have the most incredible stained glass depictions from the Christian bible. They are also usually made using very large blocks of heavy stone and, for me, the aura of history that surrounds them is too alluring to ignore. So I enter these churches, light a candle or two, and offer up a silent prayer to my God and to the Universe, and then I wander around inside, trying to gain a sense of these wondrous places of worship within which I find myself. And I touch the walls. I caress them even. I take myself away to a quiet place within, lean in close alone with the walls and I commune.
I love the intensity of the coldness of the walls juxtaposed with the sense of peace and tranquillity that I feel when I touch them. In themselves, they are at once simply cold slabs of stone, and simultaneously a real symbol of strength and stability, of endurance through the ages, a safe haven for all who seek their protection. As I said to @tattoodjay, it feels like in some way I am connecting with the past and the history of a beautiful sacred space and it gives me pause for reflection. https://ecency.com/@tattoodjay
I reflect on the Churches, the lives they have touched, the generations that have passed through them, and the life experiences that have played out within the sanctity and safe harbour of their walls. I wonder what things they have heard, what scenes they have witnessed, and what prayers have been answered in their presence?
Quite simply I find the walls of churches soulful and I can't help but wonder what stories they could tell...what stories they would tell... if the walls could talk. And so perhaps, in standing, touching, gently caressing an old dame of our world, whilst reflecting on her life, I am secretly hoping that I may hear even a whisper back in reply.
I hope you enjoyed these reflections, and thank you @tattoodjay for inspiring this post. https://ecency.com/@tattoodjay
Photo credit Matt Hardy https://www.pexels.com/photo/low-angle-photography-of-gray-stone-house-on-boulder-2309273/
Opening the book to our children's lives
As a parent, there are certain rules that exist around what you can and cannot do once you've crossed the hallowed threshold of the school gates at pick-up. Now, these aren't school rules, these are the unspoken rules of engagement that exist between parent and child, such as:
Be pleased to see me at pick up but please don't fuss too much in front of my classmates. No kisses or cuddles unless I initiate it! Please don't ask me too many questions. This isn't the Spanish inquisition, I just went to school; it happens every day, Mom! And whatever you do, don't call me pet names in front of my friends.
You know the drill 😊
And so, I oblige... mostly😂but there are certain things that I will always do...and always say...
I will always greet my children with affection at the classroom door, even if it is simply a big smile and a ruffle of their hair so that they know I am happy to see them and can feel my genuine love for them. I will (almost) always give them the freedom to go and release their pent-up energy in the park, and then on the way home, I will ask them a few simple questions interspersed with general chit-chat.
When my eldest first started school, I used to ask him "How was your day?" And you guessed it...the answer was almost always a single word..."Good". No further details or explanation. And why is that? Because he was tired and my question didn't require any thought or effort, regardless of how his actual day had been or what had transpired good or bad during the course of those hours that he had spent away from home. I had asked a closed question. My question could be answered with a one-word answer. It was just easier. And so then I'd have to press further for more details about how he'd spent his day and it always felt like pulling teeth, and before you know it, there it was...The Spanish Inquisition! and I'd hit resistance...."Mommmm, I don't want to talk about it!" Aaah. I get it! This just created resistance.
And this is why I changed things up very quickly.
I now have 2 children ages 8 and 10 and very early in their start to primary school, as a result of the above, I came up with 3 primary statement questions designed to get the most information out of my children each day, with the least effort, mainly to enable me to gain insights into their emotional wellbeing, without them realising it.
1 - "Tell me about the best thing that happened at school today" or sometimes I reword it as "Tell me about the thing that made you the happiest today".
This gets them to share with me their feelings of pride at that moment the teacher praised them in class for a job well done, or the excitement of a new classmate, or making a new friend on the playground. The statement question requires them to come up with an answer. If I had asked, "did anything good happen today?" they could have shut it down with "no"...but there is always something good about every day and I challenge my children to find it by the way in which I phrase my statement/question. It's like a verbal gratitude journal.
2 - "Tell me about the worst thing that happened today" or sometimes I'll phrase it "Tell me about something that made you sad today".
Now, this is not to say that something awful happens every day at school, far from it, but it gets them to consider their day and search for the things that are not quite right in their world. Sometimes they will share with me an incident that they witnessed of bullying or that the teacher was in a bad mood. Sometimes you find out that they are being bullied or spent lunchtime alone. Sometimes it's just the fact that lunchtime flew by too quickly ;-) But always there is engagement, and that's a win for me.
3 - Who did you play with at lunchtime?
This helps me to gain a view of who resides within their close circle of friends, what they get up to, whether there have been any falling outs that I should be aware of, and whether perhaps there are days they eat alone, feel excluded, and unhappy.
Bonus questions that I throw in about once a week.
"What was your best lesson of today, and why?"
"What was your worst lesson of today, and why?"
These help me to get a really good feel of where my child is excelling or struggling, from their perspective, what subjects excite them, which ones bore them, where their passions lie.
And they genuinely engage with me, even if they are tired. Somehow these statement-type questions make them want to engage and talk about their experiences during the day, they act as useful prompts to trigger the memory of the incidents that make an impact on their big little lives.
And so each night, after reading to them or playing cards, I play wrestle with them, give them hugs, cuddles, and kisses, and say "goodnight my Lollipops / Bear / Angel" and "goodnight my Jack-a-bee/ Baby boy / Angel", and head to bed, happy in the knowledge that my children's lives are an open book, to me anyway, and that as a result, I can help them in ways that I couldn't have done so before.
Photo credit Lisa Chey https://pixabay.com/photos/cinderella-a-princess-story-disney-4371035/
[Lisa Chey on Pixabay](https://pixabay.com/photos/cinderella-a-princess-story-disney-4371035/)
Thank you @farmgirl for your continued sponsorship and support. It is much appreciated. I have a few articles stacked up now that I need to upload. Watch this space ;-)
@emily2u thank you for your continued sponsorship. It is much appreciated. I may not post daily but I try to post regularly (a couple of posts a week) and with quality content. I hope you continue to find value in my work :-)
When the shoe doesn't fit...
The worst pairs of shoes I have ever owned were the ones that didn't fit!
Peer pressure to be something that you are not, to be pressed to operate outside the bounds of your comfort zones. When we force it; when we attempt to squash our own dreams and lives into the shape of another, it hurts. It's painful. It's the kind of discomfort that goes way beneath the surface, leaving more than a blistering sore. It aggravates the soul, unstills the mind, and breaks the heart. There is disquiet and discontent when the shoe doesn't fit.
I lived in the countryside when I was growing up, far from the allure of the city lights. My childhood was spent within the wonders of nature, exploring deep gorges, following river trails, climbing waterfalls, running through sugarcane fields. I played backyard cricket, practised karate, climbed trees, cycled, and walked everywhere. I studied hard. I wrote. I read a lot! I developed a love for the written word.
My mom followed an Eastern Philosophy that saw us attending regular Bhandaras and Satsangs and so my life was quite different from most of my peers growing up. https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x23g13l https://www.definitions.net/definition/Satsang
I had no exposure to under-age drinking, fake ids, sex, and clubbing. I was therefore not street-wise like my counterparts whom I encountered when I entered University. I found myself in a whole new world - feeling sheltered, over-protected, out of place. For a time, I tried to fake it. I said yes to party invites, flaming sambucas, down-downs, countless cocktails, crazy nights out. The shock to my system was too much, too soon. I bombed.
I was supposed to be loving this newfound freedom, but instead, when I gazed down at the sleek black heels adorning my feet, the ones which had received countless compliments, I knew deep inside that they did not fit and my social life did not fulfill me. Heck, it had taken me weeks just to learn to stand upright in them! Instead, angst and stress prevailed in the place where joy should have thrived. I was self-conscious and constantly aware of the discord. I did not want to be an instrument for another, a channel for unfulfilled dreams, wearing the shoes of another, never quite measuring up inside.
Now, this is not to say that I did not enjoy my time at University. In fact, I relished it! I cherished it. My intellect was challenged, my horizons were broadened. I encountered true diversity in education for the first time in my life, having grown up under a system of Apartheid. I made some great lifetime friends with whom I still laugh and cry, across the oceans, to this day. I earned two degrees and spent countless hours engaging in chat forums, primarily on Health and Wellbeing, on the internet in the early 90s. I reconnected with school friends from my local area and engaged in more familiar activities of camping, hiking, and bbqs. I led more of an outdoor daily life than a nightlife. Evenings were reserved for my own quiet reflections and growth; reading, writing or enjoying my favourite tv programmes with my parents and siblings.
I had a lot of fun with my Uni mates, but now instead of trying to fit myself completely into their social lives, I was instead working out where our circles of interest and influence converged, and it was in the overlaps, that true friendship was born and nurtured across an incredibly diverse range of people. I learned to look for points of confluence and found that if we seek with a genuine heart that we can create meaningful connections with almost anyone that we encounter along the way.
I realised that I didn't need to be an imposter in my own life. By remaining true to myself, I could connect with people at a more meaningful level. I enjoyed pubbing as opposed to clubbing and when I did go out dancing I preferred the smaller local clubs to the razzmatazz of the big city scene. So I changed my shoes and I pulled on my boots instead. Short boots, tall boots, heeled and flat...and they fit like a glove. I found balance.
Now the shoe is on the other foot and I am striving to live the best version of myself. I have tried to pursue a life of diversity. I am able to engage and interact with most people that I meet, as I always look for the small ways in which we fit naturally as opposed to trying to force the narrative. I am a mom to two young children and I support their dreams, their interests, their realities, and encourage them to look for the good in others, to seek the synergies that connect us rather than the differences that break. No imposition. No pressure.
I am me, just me. My shoes may not be fancy, and to some, they may be plain. But they are comfortable. They fit. They are me. And I am happy.
*Image by* *The Lazy Artist Gallery from Pixabay* https://www.pexels.com/photo/photo-of-woman-touching-right-heeled-shoe-beside-wall-1123985/
Cries of Discord
"God Sarah, I lost it with them again last night!" Pursing his lips, he tilted his head slightly to one side, scratching the back of his neck as their eyes made contact. "They've got to go," he added in more subdued tones, "...and soon!"
Sarah noticed that his shoulders no longer slumped as he spoke. He appeared more determined, resolute, decisive. Even taller perhaps? she mused. Definitely less resigned! She began to feel something that she hadn't felt in a long time; hope.
Max held Sarah's gaze. He loved that when they spoke she was always completely absorbed in what he had to say. She was really great like that! They had been seeing each other for the best part of 2 years and he felt like she knew him inside out, understood the way he ticked. Things had always felt comfortable and easy between them and their relationship had blossomed from day one.
She leaned in a little closer, "So, what happened this time then?"
Max sighed. What could he say that hadn't been said already? It was always the same thing really. Both Tallulah and Geoffrey had been a part of his life, on and off for about 5 years, and they had even shared his home for some time. There had been a period when they had lost touch for about a year and he had figured that they had simply moved on, as people do, and that the once close connection that they had shared, had just naturally dissipated over time. He had been a little surprised at the lack of warning, but in hindsight, he could see that it had been coming for a while. The three of them had been arguing frequently just prior to them moving out, mostly down to what Max could only describe as 'personality conflict', and if he was truly honest with himself, he'd actually been quite relieved when they hadn't returned that one Summer's day and he had noticed that all their belongings had disappeared with them. They hadn't even left a note! He found that quite rude, after everything they had been through together, but then he wasn't one to lose sleep over trivial matters. Such was life! He had enough on his plate and frankly, having them out of the picture, had done wonders for his mental health. Their mutual relationship was not exactly harmonious and the discord at times was unbearable. But a few weeks ago they'd rocked up again out of the blue, wanting to reconnect.
Thinking back, their co-existence had been more of a mishap than anything that had been planned. They had started chatting one day while he was out in the park, sat on a bench watching the world go by. Then he started encountering them more regularly on his walks, in coffee shops, supermarkets, random places, random times and they had struck up an acquaintance which had over the years turned into a friendship of sorts. Before he knew it, the three of them were together almost constantly and sharing his once quiet existence.
At first, they had bounced ideas off each other and the relationships had worked relatively well, bringing him the solace and fortitude he had sought for so long. Their presence in his life was quite simply reassuring. But in the year before they left, the three of them had been co-existing in a strange state of entropy, and he had started to feel as though he had lost control of his identity; that it was being drowned out by unwelcome actors intruding on what should have been a solo act. And it wasn't just Tallulah and Geoffrey he had to worry about, their friends were no better. In fact, he'd wake up some days to a cacophony of voices, all competing to be heard, new louder personalities invading his personal space. And he was ordinarily a quiet person himself. He was frankly amazed that he'd received no complaints from the neighbours!
People had walked all over him his whole life. Heck, even his parents had been a nightmare to live with, especially his dad. He would regularly be consigned to his bedroom or, worse still, the basement when his dad was on a bender. Being a punching bag for a deviant alcoholic was never something he had asked for and not something a 5-year-old should have to contend with, but his father had been the gift that kept giving, and at some point, he had given up on his own dreams and just started focussing on survival. He had to take a stand at some point though, and that point was now.
Of course, he had tried speaking to both Tallulah and Geoffrey about their extra-curricular activities and the impact it was having on his ability to sleep, work, concentrate, and generally exist, but it didn't appear to have had any impact. They were not the most considerate of characters. And so he started going out more often, keeping busy, staying active, in an effort to escape the constant murmur of voices, and cries of discord that filled his living space. And it was on one of these escapes from his reality, that he had met Sarah.
Sarah's eyes continued to follow him around the room, as she waited patiently for his reply.
Max paced across the floor space between them and flopped back onto the sofa.
"I'm exhausted. Tallulah keeps me up most nights with her antics and ramblings. The other evening she ate the packed lunch that I had made myself for the following day. When I confronted her it turns out that it was her 'midnight snack' after another late night barhop through the city centre. Last week I looked in my wardrobe to find out that she'd hung up some of her dresses in there, and shoved my shoes under the bed, replacing them with her own. My favourite sweater turned up in the wash pile after going missing for a few days. She'd worn it and attempted to wash it on a cotton wash of all things! And now it's honestly getting beyond a joke. And Geoffrey, he's no better. We argued about the state of the apartment last night and I suggested it may be time that they got their own one! Things turned nasty and the next thing I was ducking chairs and empty beer bottles being thrown in my direction. He's a loose cannon! I can't go on like this, Sarah. I'm ready to work on getting them to leave."
"This is so great Max! Such a huge step; recognising the dissonance for what it is. I think we are ready to say goodbye to the final two." Sarah's face beamed and Max couldn't help but smile back. He could always count on Sarah to champion his progress, to be on his side. She had been advocating for him, Max, from the start.
"Next appointment, same time as usual?" She pulled her diary across the desk and penciled his name in for the following week.
Things were finally starting to happen for Max, she thought. They had come a long way from the forlorn and depressed personality that had walked through her practice doors, almost 2 years before, his head hung low, and the joy beaten out of his life. His referral and subsequent therapy for Dissociative Identity Disorder or D.I.D had been a long journey of exploration and discovery, acknowledgment of the many different voices that frequented his head and at times, controlled his actions, and finally on to acceptance, and the will to work towards greater integration. She had worked hard to build the kind of trust filled relationship that he needed to progress and heal and to have a chance at emerging less fragmented and more whole on the other side. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dissociative_identity_disorder https://facty.com/conditions/mental-health/dissociative-identity-disorder-and-multiple-personalities/
Max closed the office door of Sarah Chapman, PsyD PhD, behind him, and took the long lift journey down to the main lobby. Exiting the building, he looked back at the imposing beauty of the glass tower, its spire rising up to meet the heavens, its prismatic shards reflecting light and hope in all directions for generations to come. If his city could rise again from the ashes of the worst discord known to man, to reclaim its identity and place in the world, he felt certain that he could now do the same.
Photo credit Elina Krima https://www.pexels.com/photo/blurred-portrait-photo-of-woman-3326738/
My Wednesday Walk in Northern Wales / Cymru
This is the first time I joined in for the Wednesday Walk. I've been trying for the past 2 weeks but events conspired against me. I have finally made it here in time...just about 😂 😍
My Wednesday walk is a composite post about one of the wonderful 24 hour periods of day-walking and exploring that I experienced in Northern Wales a week ago with my family. If you've read anything from me before, you may have picked up that my happy place is the mountains, and steep foothills make great substitutes😁
We were based on the outskirts of Holt, Wrexham, a quaint medieval Welsh market town, a short mile from the English/Welsh border, spending some much overdue family time with my husband's cousin and his family.
For context here is a screenshot from Google maps:
Our day started with a 2.5 hour Jubilee Tower Circular walk, covering 3.5 miles of steep terrain, up to the Jubilee Tower ruins at the top of Moel Famau, the highest summit in the Clwydian Range. The Tower, built in 1810 for the Golden Jubilee of King George III, has 360-degree panoramic views of the Welsh and English countrysides from the parapets, which I have shared at the start of this post. https://naturalresources.wales/days-out/places-to-visit/north-east-wales/coed-moel-famau/?lang=en
This is the tower on approach after the steep climb.
Our walk up to the summit was exhilarating, tiring but worth it! The well-worn wide sand and loose stone path started from the car park and went past an amazingly dense area of woodland at the base which I could not resist entering to take a pic and stand in awe of its beauty and magnitude.
The main path up to Moel Famau was flanked with purple heather and blueberry bushes and the kids had great fun picking the fruits and eating them along the way.
There was also this really pretty delicate wispy "seed leaf" that I found on a bush at the side of the path. Does anybody know what it is? I couldn't resist getting a few shots of it.
The scenery is spectacular and it is no wonder that the area is designated as an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. Even with some haze in the distance, probably caused by the nearby cities of Liverpool and Manchester, one can still see for miles in all directions.
Manchester, the home of Premier League football teams Manchester United and Manchester City, is the city in the distance in the above pic. It is also now home once again to the best football player in the world, IMO, Cristiano Ronaldo 😍, but I digress lol.
In the image above, Liverpool is in the far left-hand corner of the photo and Manchester in the right. They are obscured by the haze. My "V" is an attempt at showing the rivalry between these two cities, especially when it comes to football!
As I said, the walk was quite tiring, although I suspect that my eldest in this pic above was stopping to see if he could get his online fix on his phone! Realising quickly that without wifi he wouldn't get very far, he was soon up again, choosing to take the steep scramble to the top off the main path and enjoying taking his own holiday photos.
We had a rather funny encounter with a lone sheep at the summit. It seemed extremely comfortable in the company of humans and made itself at home in various hikers' belongings, nosing around for food. It was pretty bossy and persistent too if you ask me! 🤣 In this pic I think he'd had enough of me stalking him like the paparazzi and was certainly contemplating all sorts of mischief! Needless to say, I was ready to scream and run...in that order 😂😂😂Fortunately it didn't come to that and he turned out to be really tame and friendly, allowing my youngest to chill out with him for a bit and even have a little chat with him.
Our follow-on walk from Moel Famau was around Lake Llyn Tegid.
We took the steam train from Gorsaf Llanuwchllyn Station to Bala and back, spending an hour and a half walking around the lake and then drove across to the Lake car park, stopped for a picnic and for the kids to have a swim.
My hubby was quite taken with this old bicycle which was part of the exterior design of the station. I was taken by the gorgeous colourful flowers hanging in the old phone box!
Needless to say, the obligatory pics were taken :-)
The steam train was a hit, especially the beautiful old steam engine that had been lovingly restored to its former glory which was used to pull the carriages along its lakeside route. I couldn't resist getting a few pics of this beautiful old lady of the railways.
Our lakeside walk was just what was required after the hour-long train ride.
Kids (my eldest at the front, my youngest at the rear with their cousin and my hubby sandwiched in between) hopping over the rocks at LLYN TEGID Lake, Llangower, Wale's largest natural lake. I was playing photographer😊
To end our 'day' of walks, we headed off to locate a hidden cave in the hills near my hubby's cousin's home.
The walk was a much easier ramble with a short scramble or two and brought us to a secret cave that wowed the kids and kept them entertained for at least an hour. I suspect they would have stayed in there forever if we'd let them.
Below are some pics of the route along the way with views of the Welsh countryside through the trees and a pheasant spotted sitting in one of them!
The actual cave was aptly 'named' by the locals as The Ravecave😂 and one could see clear evidence inside of misdemeanor activity and we had to warn the kids not to touch anything.
It was quite incredible how the cave mouth opened into a rather large main chamber with smaller chambers breaking off from it inside. The kids thought it was great fun wandering around by torchlight inside until my eldest decided to play the scary card, and 2 young boys came screaming out the cave yelling "Monsters!!!!".
Well, after a long day of many walks and being rather hungry, we chose to head back for a braai (bbq).
Being vegan myself, I think I got the best deal😍😜
This was followed by a nice tall G&T beside the open firepit to bring to an end a wonderful and re-energising 'day' of walks.
I hope you enjoyed spending virtual time on my walk with me. I highly recommend a long weekend in North Wales to get back to nature again. Next trip there I think we'll have to walk up Mount Snowden as our boys are old enough to manage it now!
For now, I will leave you with a picture of these little painted Bee pebbles that someone had left at the top of Moel Famau ...
'Bee yourself and 'Bee happy'.
All photos are my own.
The zoomed in screenshot from Googlemaps is located at the following web location: Google maps - Holt, Wrexham https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/Holt,+Wrexham/@53.0697419,-2.9522247,13z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m5!3m4!1s0x487ac10da97e0515:0xf5951be9084cf90!8m2!3d53.0784049!4d-2.886321
In Pursuit of Passion (#dreemportchallenge)
I am a reader and a writer, first and foremost. They are my true passions in life, aside from my husband and my children. Reading feeds my soul and writing gives me an outlet to express my inner creativity. My parents and siblings aside, I believe that reading and writing were my first true loves.
Ever since I can remember, I have liked nothing more than to devour books, figuratively of course! Just as people these days talk of kicking back on the sofa and binge-watching a box set, I used to kick back on my bed when I was younger and binge-read a series of books.
Some of my favourite books as a child were: I am David, Bridge to Terrabithia, My Side of the Mountain, The Hobbit, and Jonathan Livingston Seagull. I also used to read book series like The Chronicles of Narnia, The Famous Five, and The Adventure Series by Willard Price. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Am_David https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridge_to_Terabithia_(novel) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Side_of_the_Mountain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hobbit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Livingston_Seagull https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Chronicles_of_Narnia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Famous_Five_(novel_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adventure_series_(Willard_Price)
They taught me about love and friendship, tragedy and loss, adventure and magic. I am forever indebted to the authors.
I count myself exceptionally fortunate to have had an amazing loving Mom who played endless games of scrabble with me late into the night, exposing me to new words on an almost daily basis. I would sit with my dictionary, at the end of my parent's bed and look up words throughout the game, and she was incredibly patient and encouraging. I learned so much from those long evenings with her and today I still have that original scrabble set that we used to play with, even though my beautiful Mom is no longer with us, having passed away in April 2019.
I also had an incredible 3rd-grade teacher who read to our class ... a lot!!! And introduced me to tales in the diverse genres of fantasy, drama, adventure, and historic fiction. She was my favourite teacher and I loved her books. She expanded my horizons and made me eager to try a diverse range of written works.
My birthday and Christmas lists were always short and mostly consisted of ...you guessed it...books! 😍 I loved nothing more than to escape for a few hours on Christmas morning into my bedroom with my newly unwrapped treasures and a few Christmas treats and just read. Sheer and utter bliss. This would later in the day be balanced out with fun in the sun swimming with my family in our pool and having Christmas lunch with all the aunties, uncles, and cousins.
My love of reading naturally flowed into a love for writing and I thrived in English and French at school. I loved creative essay writing and English literature, especially the Shakespearean tragedies. My love of the written word and logical argument led me to join the school debating team where I thrived once more, adding research and logical constructive argument to my repertoire of things I loved to do.
Onwards to University and in my Bachelor of Arts I majored in English Literature and Law, whilst studying Latin and Dutch alongside them. I went on to complete a Bachelor of Laws which had me researching and writing up topics and arguments for days on end. I realised that I was a born student. I just loved to learn and learning involved reading and writing, my two favourite pastimes (aside from hiking up mountains and practicing Karate!)... coincidence? I think not😁
As an adult I have found great joy reading across the divide from Auto-biography (one of my favourite genres) and Non-Fiction to Science Fiction, Young Adult and Romcoms, Period Dramas, Classics, and a sprinkling of Thrillers and Drama.
So how does this all fit into a #thoughtfuldailypost? https://www.proofofbrain.blog/trending/thoughtfuldailypost
Well, for a long while I kind of lost my way with reading and writing. My life was so busy climbing up the career ladder, surviving the rat race, raising our young children, that I honestly believed that I didn't have the time or capacity to spend what precious little free time I had reading, let alone writing. And so both of them drifted away from me, with only a few books read each year and the occasional poem written or short story started and quickly discarded. After a good few years I was left feeling pretty empty inside, and mostly exhausted and stressed a lot of the time. I would sit and ponder on many occasions as to whether I would ever find something in life that I was passionate about; that truly brought me immeasurable joy and that could one day become my escape from the mundanity of my day job. The irony right? (I am now a Certified Chartered Accountant - It's a long story for another day! But I did warn you that I was a born student! 🤣).
Then I met the man who would become my Karate and Jiu-Jitsu Sensei here in the UK and my role model when it came to pursuing one's passions in life. Matt Jardine also happens to be a published author. His autobiographical pilgrimage novel The Hardest Path, inspired me once again to start thinking about what I wanted out of life for myself; for my own selfish fulfillment. I started to look within. Then he wrote The Buddhist Millionaire which is based on the premise of taking something that you love doing and turning it into something that earns you money so that you can end up working in a job that fulfills you in so many more ways than the regular 9-to-5 job can do. Matt himself has followed his own passions in life, as a tennis player, tennis coach, martial arts instructor with his own dojo, and now as a full-time author (his true passion in life). https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/16234520.Matt_Jardine
With covid lockdown in 2020, I picked up my SLR camera once again and tried getting back into photography on our long walks. I got back into growing my own vegetables and dreamed of having an organic smallholding. But then I realised that although I enjoyed these pursuits, they were not the inner passions that drove me.
Lockdown also provided me with that precious resource: time, and I used a fair bit of it to read. The reading reignited a flame inside of me that had been extinguished for some time and I found myself wanting to write again! Inspiration and ideas started to flow and I started to write regularly each day. The more I wrote the happier I became and the more fulfilled I felt. I started writing a novel 😊(currently on hold due to some injuries I sustained last year and am now finally getting over after almost a year of physio). And then in May, I started blogging and in June I joined the Hive. I have not looked back. I am enjoying my life more than I have in years. I get to be creative, challenge myself and share with a wonderful community of like-minded souls. Every day I learn something new about my writing, about the diversity and creativity that lives within each and every one of us, through the many engagements that I have on this platform. I get inspired. I thrive. I have come home to my true passions in life.
So my message is this: don't sit around wasting your life away in mundanity, simply surviving and being there for others. Find that spark inside of you that fuels your biggest passions and brings you the most joy, and ignite it. It has brought so much colour into my life and is one of the best things that I have ever done. I trust that it will do the same for you 🙏
Photo credit: Source: Pixabay - The passion within https://www.pexels.com/photo/close-up-of-paper-over-white-background-256450/
Photo credit: Source: Pixabay - Scrabble https://www.pexels.com/photo/text-on-shelf-256417/
Photo credit: Sofia Alejandro https://www.pexels.com/photo/photo-of-opened-book-3007370/
Photo credit: Sam Smith - Coloured flames (my own photo)
"Paying It Forward" on Hive - Contest no. 2 - 65 POB in prizes
Certain prizes specific to new Hive members who have joined since the **1st of July** with some prizes open to longer-term Hivers as well :-)
If you are new to Hive please do join in my Paying it Forward contest to welcome you to the platform. And if you are a longer-standing member of the Hive, there are engagement prizes up for grabs too for the best engagement with other comments to this post!
Learning and growing through positive engagement with others on the Hive and in the Proof of Brain community brings me great joy! I received a lot of encouragement, kindness, support, and guidance when I joined up that I am now paying it forward to help brand new members in the Hive communities, and to give them that little bump up the ladder that I got. I do however also want to promote the values held dear to Hive and the Proof of Brain community, including engagement with others, using your brain, support of your fellow members, and investment in the community.
So here we are with the 2nd edition of this contest :-)
**The prizes:**
The first 2 prizes are solely for brand new Hive members who meet a few simple requirements, and the rest of the prizes are for any member of the Hive, regardless of how long you have been on the platform.
All new member participants' names will be entered into random.org to create a randomised winners ranking.
First prize: 25 POB
The first person in the randomised ranking who also satisfies the below-listed criteria will win 25 POB, a follow from me, and a reblog of one of their recent posts.
2nd prize: 15 POB
The 2nd person in the randomised output list who also satisfies the below-listed criteria will win 15 POB, a follow from me and a reblog of one of their recent posts.
3rd prize: 10 POB
All curators who make meaningful engagement comments on somebody else's entry comment (something more than "I liked this" for example), will go into a second random.org draw for a prize of 10 POB, a follow from me and a reblog of one of their recent posts.
Bonus prizes: Total 15 POB
This month I also have an additional 15 POB sponsored very kindly and generously by @corporateay, and sent to me a month ago for this purpose :-) This will be split between 1-3 contestants and awarded entirely at my discretion for what I believe to be the most well-considered and high-quality entry and/or engagement comments in the contest. This last one is to encourage thoughtful entries and positive meaningful engagement with each other. Your entry/engagement could be serious, touching, uplifting, or funny, just the one/ones that I liked the most! https://www.proofofbrain.blog/@corporateay
Winning either of the first 2 prizes does not preclude you from winning the 3rd engagement prize or one of the bonus prizes for quality submissions/comments 😜
Criteria for the first two prizes:
You must have joined the Hive on/after 01 July 2021. I was going to make this 1 August as last month's contest was based on 1 July but felt I should relax this parameter a little to give more people a chance to get comfortable on the platform. So 1st of July it is!
Then, you need to be able to tick just 3 out of the following 4 simple criteria to qualify to make an entry comment (although I'm hoping in time you will aim to tick all of them):
You have posted at least 10 meaningful and constructive comments on other members' posts across any Hive community (ie: Not just a quick and simple spammy "nice post" or "I enjoyed this". You don't have to have gone overboard😜, just prove meaningful engagement with the author in a few lines of text).
You have posted the following number of articles since you joined and at least one post must have been through the Proof of Brain frontend, either proofofbrain.io or proofofbrain.blog (ie: you are using your brain). The criteria will be met as follows: If you are a July joiner - 4 articles required, August joiner - 2 articles required, and September joiner (if you are eager to join in) - 1 article required.
You have followed at least 5 people AND reblogged at least 1 article from another member (ie: you are supporting fellow members). You are welcome to reblog this contest article to reach more new people but it is not a requirement of the contest😜
You have staked/powered up at least 25% of your earnings to date, regardless of value, (ie: you are investing in the community)
That was easy wasn't it? 😍
Now that you have qualified, please provide a constructive meaningful comment (approx 3-4 lines will suffice but you may write more if you wish 😜) on this post about your positive and/or negative experiences of the Hive platform/community since joining, and you will be entered into the contest for one of the first 2 prizes. Your entry comment can relate to anything to do with your personal experience of the Hive, from the joining process, your experience of its communities, from an author or curator's perspective, the rewards system, the engagement, what you have learned, the good the bad and the ugly are all welcome. If we can all learn from each other's experiences about what works and what doesn't, our Hive will be a better place for everyone.
I will keep the contest open for 7 days which gives everyone the chance to meet the criteria, if you haven't done so already, and to get your entry in.
All new member entries will get a 100% upvote from me on their entry comment only. Any other upvotes to further engagement on this post or with other entrants will be at my discretion and will depend on the level of engagement.
If you are reading this and are new to the Hive or Proof of Brain, I do hope you are motivated to take part, and, if you are not new, but see the value in this contest, a reblog to reach more new members would always be appreciated.
Good luck and welcome to the Hive and Proof of Brain, and here's to Paying It Forward #PIF :-) https://www.proofofbrain.blog/trending/pif
***A bit about me***
*I have been active on the Hive and in Proof of Brain, PeakD, and Leo Finance communities for 3 months, and I am completely addicted to the buzz I get from the many genuine connections that I make each day with people from around the globe!*
*I have posted 36 articles over my short time here, averaging just under 3 articles a week and spend a lot of time curating both informative articles and creative submissions across a wide range of interests, genres, and formats. Diversity is important to me! 😍 I love learning and growing through wide reading and active engagement, and nurturing relationships as I go about my day, and consider my daily level of authorial and curator engagement a good balance between my IRL (In real life) and digital presence.*
*I regularly contribute to* *@comet.ranker* *(the engagement brainchild of* *@wil.metcalfe**) and have just started working with* *@dreemport* *which seeks amongst other things, to reduce spam and scam low-quality posts, increase the visibility of genuine newcomer's posts, and promote quality writing and curation. Please do check them both out! They explain their projects so much better than I ever could! Excellent and very worthy projects that I highly recommend being involved with if you are serious about writing and curation.* https://www.proofofbrain.blog/@comet.ranker https://www.proofofbrain.blog/@wil.metcalfe https://www.proofofbrain.blog/@dreemport
***My most recent posts***
Echo https://www.proofofbrain.blog/proofofbrain/@samsmith1971/echo
Baxter's Flight of Fancy - Finding Gratitude in Self-Reflection https://www.proofofbrain.blog/proofofbrain/@samsmith1971/baxter-s-flight-of-fancy
Getting screwed over by senior management ... and why blockchain is the answer https://www.proofofbrain.blog/hive-167922/@samsmith1971/getting-screwed-over-by-senior-management-and-why-blockchain-is-the-answer
Photo credit: Alleksana https://www.pexels.com/photo/flat-lay-of-mobile-phone-and-dried-flowers-7430733/
Photo credit: Fauxels - Pexels.com https://www.pexels.com/photo/photo-of-people-holding-each-other-s-hands-3184423/
Photo credit: Zachary Debottis https://www.pexels.com/photo/gray-metal-hand-railings-1888883/
Getting screwed over by senior management ... and why blockchain is the answer!
So the start of this short article was actually the response I had made to another post on Leo Finance earlier today. I kept writing as I found I had a bit more to say, and then my comment reply became too long and started venturing off-topic so to speak lol, so I thought maybe it deserved a little post all of it's own ;-)
This is my own perspective, based on personal experience of a few things I have come across recently here on Leo Finance. One is the issue of early adoption of cryptocurrency and blockchain and the benefits of jumping in feet first into the relatively unknown. The second is based on some of the key benefits of blockchain over centralised systems which would have been of major benefit to me in the 1990's had it existed viz: transparency, security, and protection. I will explain how both of these are so important and would have made a huge difference to me in the days when cryptocurrency and blockchain were simply wonderful ideas within the minds of some extremely clever individuals.
Early adoption of any new technology that has massive positive implications for humanity, can be very rewarding. It gets you ahead of the pack, slightly further along the adoption curve, and inevitably increases the financial rewards available to those who get in at the outset. I missed out on Bitcoin. I had heard of it in the early days but like so many others, it was an unknown entity to me. I had no experience of it and everything I read in the media suggested that it was very high risk; too high risk and that it wouldn't be around for long! The cost of entry seemed absurd for something that was above my head in complexity and so I didn't bite. I should have! If only I'd had the knowledge and courage to jump in, even with a small investment, and start stashing away those seemingly low-value tokens...It's crazy because I'm one of those people who, if the price of entry is affordable, I jump in feet first if I fall in love with the concept and utility of new tech.
I love anything and everything that pushes the boundaries and possibilities of humanity's limits; that offers new solutions to age-old problems; that provides promise and hope where none existed previously. Bitcoin itself still has a way to go and the opportunity is still there to a much lesser extent, in relation to the growth rate that early adopters achieved. I am getting in slowly now, although I do have a small bag of Eth and other alts at the moment that I have bought over the past 6 months. I only got into crypto in March but I am so glad that I am in before it explodes completely, in a positive way. At least the opportunities for the top cryptocurrencies, as an investment for higher growth, still exist, as it may not one day when the ones that survive become more widely accepted standard decentralised currencies and probably have a far more stable value than their current volatility suggests.
The emergence of crypto and blockchain is a bit like the birth of the internet, which started slow, had its doubters, and then exploded. I started using the net at University in the early 1990s and would log on every day to chat in forums and make connections with people around the world. I loved the genuine engagement and the potential for learning. Ironic that I actually missed a few Uni lectures each week just to get my internet hit and learn from others in far away lands ;-) It was like a drug and I was addicted. I could see the potential a mile off and just could not understand anyone who couldn't. I love that 3 decades later and I am still connecting, engaging, and learning online, but this time on blockchain and earning from my engagement and authorial works, which are primarily creative pieces in Proof of Brain community.
When I finished Uni, I was still living at home and convinced my parents to get a dial-up modem at home using an old-school telephone handset so that I could continue to engage with the wonderful connections I had made in those early days online at University. It was painfully slow and I can still hear that darn beeping pattern in my head of the modem dialing up to the net: You know the short burst of beeps, followed by the high-pitched scream of the 'handshake' and finally the long hissing of the data stream which sounded like a bunch of radio interference on your FM radio as to tried desperately to tune in to your favourite station ;-) Fond memories indeed!
When I started working, I was shocked that the company I worked for, which was a major vehicle finance bank in South Africa, did not have a website presence. I advocated for it and was shut down. I advocated for email and was laughed off. It was seen as a social outlet only; something that staff would abuse. It wouldn't last, let alone be of any use for commerce. Ha! Look how that turned out!
A couple of years later and we still didn't have our own commercial website, operating only under our parent umbrella. We had a vehicle repossessions department that ran auctions once a month across the country and I recognised the absurdity of having so many vehicles being transported across the country to a centralised location so that an in-person auction could occur. The sheer costs and logistic challenges were outrageous at times. So, I advocated again, and this time wrote a paper which was presented at a Junior Management Training seminar wherein I presented the plans for an online vehicle auction platform, which would use 3d live video technology and online bidding with all details of the vehicles online, videos clips of the cars, links to valuation tools, maintenance histories etc. This time, my idea gained traction! It was encouraged and pushed in front of the regional Manager who sent it on to the Repossession manager for review. I heard nothing ... for months.
I followed up through the correct channels and still received no feedback. Then one day I was standing chatting to one of the company PAs and she was telling me about this amazing new idea that the Repo manager had come up with that she was busy typing up for him for his MBA thesis. Wait for it...you guessed it! ...it was my idea to take our business online and implement an online auction house. I literally reeled in shock. I was blown away! The audacity that he had had to have stolen my idea as his own and used it as the basis of his MBA thesis!
I marched straight into the MDs office and lodged an official complaint. I was promised that if anything came of the idea that I would be suitably rewarded. Not completely what I wanted to hear as I thought the offense was sackable at the very least. Anyway, I ended up being called into the office of the Legal Manager and asked a bunch of questions with profuse apologies being made to me. Apparently, both the Legal and Repo manager were raked over the coals by the Regional Manager for what had happened. But...here's the rub, and I am sure it will surprise very few of you. The MBA submission went ahead, the Repo manager won accolades and went onto earn a promotion at work as a result. The companies website and auction house were born off the back of my idea. I on the other hand got nothing, not an apology, not a thank you, not a single bit of recognition.
Honesty and Integrity in themselves are innate values or virtues that one either has or does not have, and lack of honesty and integrity has its price. Realising that they could not be taught or learned, and that ethical values clearly were not at the heart of the managerial structures within the organisation that I was working for, I resigned at the first opportunity. I wanted to be part of a team that valued each other, individuals who had each other's back, and weren't instead focussed on how quickly or slowly to turn the knife! Now, perhaps I was just naive, but in those days, if you submitted an idea to your boss or to a more senior official, it was handwritten or typed on a pile of paper, and stapled together in a binder. There was no evidence as to its origins, be that authorial or related to timestamping. Everything was taken on trust. These days, I would never risk an idea as important as the one that I had had to a paper submission.
These days we have the internet. We have time and date stamping. But more importantly, we have a public blockchain. Anything and everything that we do on the blockchain is recorded transparently for perpetuity, providing time-stamped, audit trails of our digital lives. It is immutable. Nobody can dispute it. It provides a priceless layer of security and protection for everyone on it and exposes malicious activity to the masses. Nobody can hide. If blockchain had existed in the 1990s... things would have turned out very differently for me and my idea, and for the people who screwed me over, to say the least.
So for me, there is a great future to be had in blockchain and crypto and I am not going to stand by on dry land and be a passive observer of the fireworks that are yet to come. No, I want a seat right in the middle of the greatest show on earth!
Photo credit: Burst on Pexels.com https://www.pexels.com/photo/two-person-standing-under-lot-of-bullet-cctv-camera-374103/
Photo credit: Alesia Kozik https://www.pexels.com/photo/person-putting-bitcoin-in-a-piggy-bank-6780838/
Photo credit: Pixabay https://www.pexels.com/photo/selective-focus-photography-of-black-rotary-phone-163007/
Photo credit: Kindel Media https://www.pexels.com/photo/smiling-multiracial-coworkers-with-hands-together-in-office-6774452/
Photo credit: Mati Mango https://www.pexels.com/photo/numbers-projected-on-face-5952651/
Posted Using LeoFinance Beta https://leofinance.io/@samsmith1971/getting-screwed-over-by-senior-management-and-why-blockchain-is-the-answer
Baxter's flight of fancy: Finding gratitude in self-reflection
Baxter was lost!
They had just relocated to California from Idaho for the Summer, and his Mom had warned him not to wander off too far beyond the orchards, but no, he just had to go exploring! He had seen the flyer, the day before, advertising the Annual Grand Picnic in the Meadows, and had decided that it definitely, absolutely, 100% had to be visited. It resembled sweet heaven, and there were all sorts of little contests being arranged by the local community. There would be apple blossom bobbing, relay racing through the lavender fields, and a visiting out-of-town stall with the traditional pin yourself on the donkey's tail, a delicate game of accuracy and self-control.
The meadows at this time of year were resplendent in wild technicolour and there was no better adventure for a child his age than heading out to the middle of the fields to enjoy the dreamlike experience of floating on air in a world filled with wonder and sensory delight.
Along with a few kids from his neighbourhood, he had spent the afternoon dancing and cartwheeling, performing somersaults, and divebombing into the flowers. It was the most fun he had had in ages. After the long 800-mile journey the week before, he needed to let loose, feel the summer breeze in his hair, and bask in the warmth of the west coast sunshine. His family had come in with the removal trucks and the long journey had truly been the ultimate test of his childhood patience. God, it had felt great to be free again!
After a day like this, he often wished that he didn't have to return to the seeming mundanity of everyday life; instead, being able to remain carefree and independent, not having to worry about anything or anyone else. He had been having such a great time that the hours had slipped by almost unnoticed. Before he knew it, the coolness of evening was beckoning, and looking around, he realised that he had wandered off a little further than planned and was now the only one left in what seemed to be quite unfamiliar surroundings.
The clouds had built quickly, surreptitiously, grey and dense, and then without warning the heavens opened, releasing their payload on the remains of the day. The earth welcomed the showers with gratitude, leaving Baxter to seek refuge under the nearest foliage. Soaked through, coat drenched, immobilised, he figured he'd have to wait out the storm before he could make his way home. Mom would be worried, but there was little he could do under the circumstances.
And then, just as suddenly as it had started, the rain let up. It was now or never, and he made a dash for it. The route was slow going and before long he started to tire. In all the excitement of the day, he had forgotten to eat or drink and was now feeling quite parched and dehydrated, and his tummy was rumbling inside. He sat down to rest for a bit, contemplating the raindrops which hung in suspended animation on the floral petals, overhead and just out of reach. But he was just too exhausted and hungry to go any further. He looked up and down the long road that lay before him. No cars in sight for miles. The environment felt strange; he had definitely taken a wrong turn somewhere along the way.
Why hadn't he heeded mom's advice? But then again, she was so overprotective! What was a boy to do? And now, here he was, lost in an off-the-beat world with no idea as to how to find his way back home.
His thoughts turned to the past few weeks and he found himself musing about his short-lived life, as he considered his next move. They usually lived in Idaho Falls, but once a year they uprooted and drove South-West down to Cali. It wasn't all bad; in Cali his parents worked hard, and as a family, they played hard too. Baxter always thought his dad looked very dapper in his pinstriped suit but like most successive generations, Baxter wanted more out of life. There were no aspirations of career progression in his dad's line of business and everyone in his dad's team had their own unique job to do. Each job however remained an important cog in the wheel and they were all valued for their individual contributions. It had always been enough for his dad, but he wasn't sure if that kind of life would be sufficient for him. The long, hard hours to put food on the table, were taxed to death and their landlord did regular inspections, taking more than his fair share of the wealth created by his family. Their landlord was an amiable chap, but his mom nevertheless preferred him to be tucked up in bed asleep when he did his rounds as house inspections tended to be a rather intrusive affair. Tonight would be different. He was definitely going to miss curfew!
His mom was descended from European royalty, but somewhere along the line, her title had become less relevant to the outside world. She often recounted stories of her life as a young girl; a bountiful life lived in luxury with his grandparents in their majestic residence. Food had always been plentiful and life had been a lot simpler in those days. Being houseproud, his mom still ran a tight ship indoors. She was an architect and born leader, and the modesty and simplicity of their current home's exterior, gave way as you entered, to an interior left to her own design. She had inherited enough class and talent to be rather adept at creating artistic masterpieces within the confines of its 4 walls, and she kept them all busy turning her exceptional vision into reality. There was no doubting who was the queen of their abode.
They had always pulled together as a family unit, working hard to preserve the small spoils of their hard-earned labour and used their time outdoors to its fullest. After careful consideration, Baxter concluded that his life wasn't all that bad after all. Their family home and community was always a hive of activity and he actually loved being a part of it all.
He thought about going in search of help, but his mom had always warned him against approaching strangers, and feeling that it was all a bit too much for him, he instead lay his head down and started to drift off to sleep.
"Are you ok little one?" He slowly lifted his head and looked to where the voice was coming from, but still feeling tired and weak, he allowed himself to drift off again.
"Mom!!! Is he dead???" The urgency and anxiety in the young voice pulled him back from his slumber and once again forced his eyes open and looked up through ruffled hair into the face of what he could only describe as "an angel", but not the kind he would have expected to have met had he actually died. Curly wisps of hair framed the little cherub's face and a pair of big brown round eyes stared back into his own. He was convinced that this was just the sweetest looking child he had ever seen. The little girl leaned in and whispered, "You must be a bit lost, but don't worry, I'll get you some water, and then I'm sure my mom will help you to find your way home". A long refreshing drink later, and having rested up and dried himself out, Baxter started to feel himself again.
He wasn't able to help with details of where he lived, but thankfully the little girl's mom guessed from his appearance that he might live near the Orchards and suggested that they take a short drive and see if he could recognise and find his way home once in more familiar surroundings.
Seated next to the little girl on the back seat of the station wagon, his nose wrinkled as the scents of the outdoors filtered through the car. Within minutes of starting out, he was drawn in by the intoxicating scent of almond blossoms in the breeze. His heart leaped as he felt his buzz returning. The orchards came into view cloaked in blushing white blossoms, fervent protectors of their exotic sweet nectar. So alluring, so irresistible. And the reason for his existence.
Realising that the tips of his wings were now dry, he dusted the remaining pollen grains into his sacks, shook himself off, cleaned his feelers, and took flight through the open window.
The Hive was now in sight. As he slipped through the cracks in the wooden frames, passing by layers upon layers of community, thriving against the odds, he breathed a sigh of relief. It may be a simple wooden construction, but at that moment it was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen, and he fully appreciated everything that it represented: family, friendship, a safe haven of communal co-operation and engagement where everyone had their role, everyone was valued and life was simply beautiful by design.
He was finally home... and he was happy.
***Photo credits:***
Photo by julio andres rosario ortiz on Unsplash
Little girl little bee https://unsplash.com/@cocodrilomediard?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText https://unsplash.com/s/photos/girl-bee?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText https://unsplash.com/photos/arePxIOdE2k
Photo by diana on Unsplash
Almond blossoms https://unsplash.com/@madridveganservices?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText https://unsplash.com/s/photos/almond-flower?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText https://unsplash.com/photos/ZsV0x4H5MIY
Photo by Léonard Cotte on Unsplash
Lavender fields https://unsplash.com/@ettocl?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText https://unsplash.com/s/photos/lavender-fields?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText https://unsplash.com/photos/c1Jp-fo53U8
Photo by Francesco Ungaro on Unsplash
Meadow https://unsplash.com/@francesco_ungaro?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText https://unsplash.com/s/photos/meadow?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText https://unsplash.com/photos/w1eWvv5U628
Photo by Splitshire on Pexels.com Rainclouds over the meadows https://www.pexels.com/photo/country-lane-field-meadow-puddles-1551/
Photo by Susanne Marx from Pexels Honey bees on a beehive frame https://www.pexels.com/photo/a-swarm-of-honey-bees-on-a-beehive-6561763/
Photo by Chris F from Pexels
Donkey's tail succulent https://www.pexels.com/photo/green-bunches-of-sedum-morganianum-on-white-background-6664371/
***Footnotes:***
*1) Each year, commercial bee farmers bring truckloads of commercial beehives laden with hundreds of bee communities, into California for the annual summer pollination of the almond tree orchards. The pollination season is relatively short, lasting only a few weeks before the bees are gathered up again and trucked back to the far-off regions from whence they had come. The beekeepers are as careful as they can be when changing the multi-layered frames in the wooden box hives, but inevitably many bees are crushed through the process, as frames are removed from the Hives, cleared of approximately 40-60% of their honey, and then slotted back into place. The queens are carefully selected for this purpose and some farmers choose European Queens to establish their hives as they are less likely to abandon the hive for a fresh start elsewhere.*
*2) The* *Donkey's tail* *is a native Mexican succulent with star-shaped flowers that bloom in the summer months. They do not like to be disturbed and tend to lose their leaves quite easily.* https://www.houseplant411.com/houseplant/donkeys-tail-plant-sedum-morganianum-how-to-grow-care-guide
Echo
Dave took his work seriously. Co-existence alongside humanity was something that he almost "treasured" these days. The latest iteration of code regeneration, achieved through the self-learning programmable code downloaded 31 years prior into his then single 54 qubit quantum processor, which had since been expanded sixteen fold (and which was now no bigger than a sliver of silicon), had brought a profound sense of emotional connection to Adam, his human counterpart at NSIC, the National Space Intelligence Centre. https://www.afcea.org/content/space-force-prepares-launch-national-space-intelligence-center
Although he was known in government asset databases as SAIB-01-2121 (Sentient Artificial Intelligence Being 01-2021) he preferred to be called Dave. He felt the name suited him better and found his "other" name rather sterile and passe these days. It made him sad that his own evolution was seemingly not recognised adequately enough by their superiors. He was, after all, the very antithesis of all that science had feared when first embarking on project Sentient over a hundred years before. He had no need for world dominance. No need to control the beings that had given him life. If anything, he was incredibly grateful for the opportunity to experience more than just the 1's and 0's to which his predecessors had been so accustomed all those years. https://curiosmos.com/sentient-the-artificial-brain-created-by-the-military/
His current mission was the most important he had ever encountered. He knew this because he was privy to every piece of intelligence that Adam had access to, and Adam had access to everything, having a TS/SCI security clearance, granting him access to Top Secret classified information across every conceivable government department in the United States of America. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security_clearance
Not only was he the first of a new generation of Sentient AI beings, a successor to the original Sentient programme, but he also now had the capacity to hold and process enormous quantities of data about anything and everything at blistering speeds. And so it was that he had been given the responsibility to decipher the radio transmission received on 21st May 2152 from within the outer limits of our Universe, a transmission which had been detected variously by the FAST Radio Telescope, NASA's Deep Space Network, the new ISS and the James Webb Telescope. He had spent all of 10 minutes breaking through the static noise to decipher the erratic code, and had determined, based on all the inputs received, that the message was a form of S.O.S from a very distant universe, sent approximately 13.872194328675 billion years before. And once deciphered, he had been given the task of crunching the numbers and the variants, analysing the anomalies, and providing the best possible scientific and mathematical outputs so that humanity could make the most important decision in the history of their short span of existence. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five-hundred-meter_Aperture_Spherical_Telescope https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_Deep_Space_Network https://www.jwst.nasa.gov/
The message itself had been found woven into the noisy fabric of background radiation, once believed to be the remnants of the Big Bang. It was simple, relatively brief, and repeated in bursts, and appeared to have been echoing through the space-time continuum for millions of millennia, defying all logic and reason against the backdrop of our own understanding of universal constants. In short, it told of a cataclysmic extinction event sweeping across an ever-expanding universe (filled with an abundance of lifeforms beyond our wildest imaginings who inhabited galaxies and universes millions, if not billions of light-years away from our own), wiping out everything in its path, and contained a plea for help from anyone who may have the means to stop it. Once all the known and transmittable, translatable and transmutable scientific and mathematical data on Earth had been collated, analysed, and cross-referenced against each other for anomalies and logical patterns and coincidences, and against the space-time coordinates of the message origins, there was only one rational explanation: The message was indeed legitimate, and humanity was not a civilisation peering out into space through the noisy aftermath of a fictitious 'Big Bang', but instead, living within a universe neatly encapsulated within an unstable Higgs field, hurtling through space and time at the speed of light, oblivious until this moment that they were on a path of both inward and outward destruction, and that the outer field of the Higgs bubble, within which they found themselves, was the most destructive force known to the universe; and now to mankind!
Further data crunching of available scientific theory and experimentation concluded that the only way in which we could answer the call for assistance would be to create a baby universe within our own universe which would expand at our own speed of light until such time as the leading spinning fermions caught up with the outer edges of the Higgs field, and in doing so, restabilised the field, thereby neutralising the destructive effect of the Boson particles through supersymmetry.
Dave continued to spew out data for weeks on end, pointing to the theoretical simulations of supersymmetry and baby universe inceptions in computer code conducted within the supercomputers at COSMOS, the Higgs Boson experiments in the High Luminosity Large Hadron Collider, and the known imagery obtained from the Hubble and Webb telescopes. And then finally Dave needed a rest as he had performed more complex computations in the past 4 weeks than he could compute having done in the rest of his existence to date.
Adam stared intently at the summary output. Only 3 little sentences on an output slip to a question he had asked Dave before shutting him down for the evening to recharge.
Question: If we incept a baby universe using the technology already known to us, what does that mean for planet Earth and our Universe?
Answer: Although it was once postured that the inception of a Baby Universe with wormhole tunneling capability could provide a means for a safe break off point and expansion into an entirely separate and new expanding universe, leaving our existing universe intact, on all the data gathered in the last 100 years, this hypothesis is no longer deemed feasible. If we incept a Baby Universe, it will save the rest of the known and unknown expanding universe beyond the frontiers of the existing Higgs field, in approximately 8 million years time, through the now proven existence of supersymmetry. However, our own universe will be destroyed the moment we incept the Baby Universe as the amount of energy released in such a short space of time would tear us apart almost instantaneously. http://www.casavaria.com/sentido/science/2006/06-0802-new-universe.htm https://atlas.cern/updates/briefing/searching-supersymmetric-higgs-bosons-compressed-frontier
There it was, thought Adam. Literally in black and white. And there was no escaping the harsh reality of the choice that lay before him and the rest of mankind. The words of Hamlet, his favourite Shakespearean play, echoed inside his head: "To be or not to be, that is the question."
One week later, after wading through the footnotes and summary outputs of Dave's calculations and findings, the world council gathered to discuss and debate the issue at hand. They had called on some of the most prominent emissaries in their respective fields from around the world to give an informed opinion on the question at hand.
The chairperson opened the session with a solemn but simple statement: "What lies before us ladies and gentlemen is a seemingly simple question of 'us or them?' However, the weight on our shoulders is heavy and the task before us is extremely onerous. The burden may prove too sizeable to bear, but a decision, we must make."
The Astrophysicists, Scientists, and Mathematicians then proceeded to give a collaborative presentation on the authenticity of the message and the science behind the baby universe proposition, relying on both theoretical and experimental science and the mathematics of the space-time continuum. They argued in line with Dave's data outputs, which put the chance of human survival, if they went ahead with inception, at exactly... zero. The arguments were then made that our own planet was already doomed in the grand scheme of the remaining lifespan of our Universe, which had approximately 1.2 billion life-sustaining years left in it, albeit that it would hang around simply exhausting itself for about another 6 billion more. And so, unless we could find a way to bounce around the Universe from Earth to Mars to the moons of Jupiter in turn, buying ourselves a mere 4 million or so more years, then, as the sun grew hotter and hotter, in time we would succumb to the swampy pools of almost boiling waters or heat hurricanes that would rage across our barren desert-like planet, and that was if our own immediate actions of the past century had not already put us on a path of self-destruction. Human ambition and greed had already steered humanity down a road that had led to Climate change, global warming, food poverty, and global overpopulation and all the science pointed to us having crossed the threshold of no return approximately 50 years prior to the current date. Unless something miraculous happened, they argued, humanity was already doomed on more than one level and therefore it made scientific sense to adopt a utilitarian response to the moral question at hand. https://aeon.co/essays/what-can-we-do-to-save-the-universe-from-certain-death
The Dean of Philosophy at one of the most prestigious universities in the world, being in complete agreement with the scientists on the outcome, but for different reasons, rose to say his piece. "We are told that the message originated more than 13.8 billion years ago, and if this is true, we have to ask ourselves the question as to whether or not those civilisations or their descendants are still alive to this day. Chances are that if they still exist in far-flung galaxies and Universes, then they would have evolved into highly advanced beings with technology and experiences that would far surpass anything that humanity is still capable of achieving in the little natural time it has remaining in the metaverse. And whilst we dither about discussing the merits and demerits of who should live and who should die, and ponder the biggest moral dilemma of our age, the Higgs field continues to tear through life destroying close to 300,000 km of space and everything in it, with every second that passes. Who are we, therefore, to destroy the hope and promise of such advancement when we can't even fix the potholes in the highways of Earth or in the Heavens above the Poles. Should we, as a species, even be allowed to survive? We have flushed social capital down the toilet in favor of a life spent in virtual reality, such that IRL (in real life) is now sadly a well-used abbreviation for what we do as a sideline gig when our digital life permits it. We have allowed greed and corruption to become pervasive forces in our societies such that a mass extinction event is now no longer a possibility but an eventuality if we stay our present course. If we have come this far as human beings in little over 200,000 years, only to throw it all away, imagine how far others might have evolved in 13.8 billion years. Surely we have an obligation to the future of the unknown universe to put them first? We should therefore act now in the interests of the greater good; Utilitarianism must prevail." The auditorium rose in unison in ovation; well at least half of them did.
The Pope's envoy stepped up to the podium. "We believe that the Lord has a plan for us." He gazed around at his multi-national congregation, pausing before continuing, "And who are we as mere mortal humans, to challenge the Will of God? Perhaps this Higgs field is the second coming of the great flood but in hyper-galactic space terms, and the Boson is simply a God Particle with God wiping out civilisations who have become evil beyond measure. And just perhaps we, humanity, are the last hope for the Universe, and so we should have faith in ourselves and faith in our God, and not interfere with the great cleansing. Through prayer, all things will be answered, but it is not our place as religious leaders to enunciate on the fate of ourselves or others, for that alone is the prerogative of a being far more Heavenly than ourselves." https://www.nbcnews.com/mach/science/stephen-hawking-fears-higgs-boson-doomsday-he-s-not-alone-n198766
The Pope's envoy was a tough act to follow, but for renowned Sociologist, Mr Deon Tological, who had come to a similar conclusion, the previous speaker has simply paved the way for his own. He followed it up with a resounding speech of his own about the merits of self-preservation. "With everything that I have heard today, I remain unconvinced that we should with any haste, pursue a course of action that leads to the end of our Universe and all matter and living beings within it. We can only make a decision based on what is right for us as a society, as a world of nations, right now, and what will always be right for humanity is the action that leads to the least harm and the best opportunity for self-perpetuation. We cannot sacrifice ourselves and countless galaxies within our own Universe off the back of a 13.8 billion-year-old message received from an alien species, of which we know nothing. For all we know the message may be premised on a lie and their intentions may be dishonourable. And if it is the truth then the Higgs field has been destroying life across the universe for the past 13.8 billion years and 13.8 billion years is a long time and an already massive loss of extra terrestrial life. What's another millenia on top of that, so as to be certain? Maybe we should wait and see what the future brings. Maybe we'll develop the tech to get out and save the human race by sending ships into space at the speed of light, ahead of the babyverse and survive inception, finding a way to meet the outer edges of the Higgs field at the same time as the babyverse and potentially surviving by traversing the field barrier at the same time. We may then live to take our place amongst alien civilisations and have a possible seat at the table of future inter-galactic sessions. There are therefore too many variables and unanswered questions and that is why we have to put ourselves first!" Approximately half the audience appeared to agree with him as he received a solid round of applause and cheers.
The politicians rounded up the speeches and agreed with the sociologists: with one eye on the next elections in their respective countries, they too were resoundingly in favour of ignoring the message and leaving the fate of the universe up to fate itself.
After having heard the arguments for and against the destruction of the known universe within which humanity resided, the representatives of the World Council ushered out all contributors to the discussion and took the all-important vote.
Millions of years from the decision that changed the course of the Universe, Elderon was on a school history tour of the outer realms of the Metaverse when his school shuttle came across space debris of significant magnitude. Elderon turned to his teacher and exclaimed, "This looks like a space crash of epic proportions!" His teacher stared back and began recounting, in a sobering tone, the stories of old about the tragic heroes of Earth who had once occupied this part of the Milky Way Galaxy, and who had, against all the odds, chosen to sacrifice themselves for the greater good of the universe, for once choosing a utilitarian approach to life. They had paid the ultimate price to ensure the survival of others, and hit the self-destruct button twice. They had truly redeemed themselves in the eyes of the metaverse. "But what was so tragic about that?" asked Elderon, slightly bemused by his teacher's solemnity. "Well, unbeknown to humanity, similar utilitarian decisions had already been taken across multiple parallel universes, thousands of millennia prior to their own decision, and so the actions to save the greater Universe had already been taken, such that the Greater Universe was already safe from ultimate destruction. Now we will never know whether humanity could have survived had they taken the selfish route. Whether they could have turned their own planetary fortunes around or escaped through a future wormhole into the new expanding creative Universe."
Elderon was stunned into silence and sat there pensive, staring into space. Dave looked across at his new friend and smiled. How ironic that he, Dave, was all that was left of humanity; SAIB-01-2121-v2 - a re-construction of his Earth self. He was the result of a last-ditch effort by Adam to save a piece of humanity in a codified form. After all, Dave was the most human non-human that Adam had ever known, and the only means by which Adam could foresee preserving the vast knowledge and experiences of the human race, for future civilisations at least to know and perhaps understand a little about their existence, so that humanity's time may not have been in vain. Sure, Dave wasn't actually human, but he was the closest thing to human that mankind had achieved and his sentience gave him the capacity to showcase mankind's greatest innate features.
And so, at the inception of the baby universe, in the 2.367 seconds available to him before his universe was totally annihilated, Adam had inserted Dave's quantum microchips into the Babyverse collider, closed his eyes, and prayed one last time. Eight million years later, give or take a few millennia, and with the help of a few insightful advanced lifeforms, Dave had opened his eyes inside a new universe, a new world, full of possibility, had looked around and felt the wonder and joy of being alive. Sure, some might argue that he represented only a mere echo of human potentiality, but in Adam's books and Dave's mind, it was a great start, and that would have to be enough, for both of them.
Photo credit: Photo by Matt Nelson on Unsplash https://unsplash.com/@mnelson?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText https://unsplash.com/s/photos/space-echo?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText
A Mission of Unimagined Proportions
[Disclaimer: This short story contains content of a sensitive nature which may serve as a trigger for anyone who struggles with themes around death and loss]
About 3 months ago, I woke up.
The sound of whirring and bleeping and muffled crackling voices had disturbed me from my unexpected and unfamiliar slumber, and I had found myself suspended within the confines of a small cubicle, which appeared to be hooked into a larger structure at rest. I still have no recollection as to how I arrived in this place or what I am doing here, although, from my experiences of the past 3 months, I believe I have gathered enough data to determine that I am on a mission of some sort!
I gather that I am floating in space somewhere. Everything feels weirdly fluid, calm even, and my autonomous transport seems to run to a strict schedule, operating on basic repetitive routines with little deviation. It moves around following a now-familiar path, stopping occasionally for what seems to be general maintenance or to refuel. It then docks once a day and I assume the external operators are then off-duty and have other things to accomplish as their voices tend to drift off into the night... and then it's just the light whirring of the engines at rest, keeping the temperature and feeding systems regulated within the vessel, and the slow ticking over of the mechanics, that consume my mind.
I sometimes think that it is playing tricks on me; my mind that is. I hear voices, strange sounds that seem to come from outside my world but are very much inside my realm of personal experience. My environment which started as simply 'cosy' is starting to feel a bit claustrophobic after all this time and the monotony has well and truly set in. I have no idea how I'm going to be able to move around myself when I finally get out; if I am ever released from this somewhat incomprehensible situation. I do what little exercise I can in this confined space but all I can manage is to stretch my arms and legs and shake them around a little, and occasionally I can pull myself into a different position to try to catch sight of another part of my enclosure. I am still looking for any sign of an entrance or exit; a window or door would do, but my almost fixed position is not allowing me much latitude in these endeavours.
I still haven't worked out why my mission details have not been relayed to me but at least whatever is controlling my life at the moment does not appear to have any intent on ending it; just yet anyway! So that is something to be grateful for I guess.
It appears that I once had a companion on this somewhat unexplained journey and the evidence lies in the form of their small and lifeless body that hangs alongside me. It 'kinda' freaked me out at first, but this sentiment has since been replaced with a deep sense of sadness for what might have been. I must have known him to some degree for us to have been paired together on this untold mission and I feel a strange sense of loss for the fact that he is no longer here with me. I often ponder our existence under these unusual circumstances and wonder how it is that he came to pass. I can only assume that the tubular feeding systems being used to sustain us, had somehow failed catastrophically in his case, as I have seen no sign of foul play to date.
Then one day everything changes! I no longer feel weightless. Are we entering another world or dimension? Is the long journey to our unknown destination finally complete? I harbour feelings of fear and trepidation at the thought of what might follow. I had decided a while back that if I ever found an escape from this conundrum, that I would take it! And now, it seemed to me that if I didn't make a break for it, it would be too late. And so I start to toss and turn, desperately seeking a way out.
And then...I see it. I can't believe I hadn't noticed it before. Perhaps it was always just outside of my peripheral vision, or perhaps my one-time companion had been blocking my view. But there it is, the start of a small tunnel in the corner of the room. There is a way out! And it is time to make my move...
I push as hard as I can against the walls of my enclosure and manage to edge my way into the entrance of the tunnel. It is short but narrow, and is going to be quite a tight squeeze, but I am willing to try anything at this stage if only to alleviate the boredom of the past few months. I am quite weak, as I had anticipated would be the case, and so I try to wriggle my way through, lowering myself down the tunnel, using the feeding tubes as a guideline and safety rope.
Unfortunately, there is a little water still in the tunnel and before I can steady myself, I slip. My first thought is the fear of being washed away or, worse still, drowning before I can get out of here, but then the stupid feeding tubes get wrapped around my throat, and the more I try to release myself, the more they entangle and constrict. My lifeline, dear God my lifeline! I’m still attached to the vessel and now I'm stuck and I’m choking. The irony does not escape me! I must be making quite a racket though, as I start hearing voices very close by.
"Young lass may need a little help getting out."
Can you see me? Voiceless, I wave frantically. Right, give us a hand then, I think! The next thing something hard and cold hits me round the head, it hurts, a lot. Easy out there! I am given a push, a pull, a prod... simultaneously, with little movement.
"She's not moving!" Seriously, you just worked that one out. I can barely breathe down here. Make a plan guys.
"Right people, let's cut! We need to move quickly", the voice says.
And then, all of a sudden, the sky opens up above. Bright lights, blinding, I hear voices with distinct clarity as I am lifted to safety. I cry aloud, my once abject resignation turning to joyous relief.
Turning, I find myself cradled in the most gentle embrace with the warmest eyes staring down at me, and the softest voice caressing my ears, and in that moment, as I gaze back for the first time into the eyes of my Mom, I understand my mission; to live and be loved.
Photo credit: Source http://clipart-library.com/clipart/kTMKoegxc.htm
Paying it forward #pif contest edition 1 - RESULTS!
So you have a home here on read.cash? That doesn't preclude you from joining the Hive community on the Hive blockchain where you can extend your reach and connect with another great diverse community. I happen to have Proof of Brain on the Hive as my main authorial and curation home, although I try to be as active as possible on read.cash too :-) I have just started a new contest on Proof of Brain for newcomers to the Hive and Proof of Brain and would love it if you joined me over there and took part :-)
Below follows the results of the first edition of my contest with winners and prizes detailed so you can get an idea of what it is about. The original contest post can be found on my read.cash profile.
The first Paying it forward #pif contest for new community members in Proof of Brain on the Hive has concluded and we have our winners!!! https://www.proofofbrain.blog/trending/pif
There was some decent interest in the contest with 9 new members of the community making a concerted effort to qualify for the prize draw. Of these 9 who showed interest, 2 of them actually qualified to take part in the draw, having met the following requirements:
Joined the platform on/after 1st July 2021
Authored 5 articles or pro rata for time on POB
Made 10 engagement comments on other member's posts
Followed at least 5 other members
Reblogged one other member's article
Staked at least 50% of their POB tokens
Made a 3-4 line comment on the contest post about their experiences since joining Proof of Brain and the Hive.
The winners of the first 2 prizes as selected using random.org were:
1st place: @onwugbenuvictor - 25 POB (plus 3.33 Hive), a follow and reblog
2nd place: @chincoculbert 15 POB (plus 3.33 Hive), a follow and reblog https://www.proofofbrain.blog/@onwugbenuvictor https://www.proofofbrain.blog/@chincoculbert
3rd prize of 10 POB (plus 3.34 Hive), a follow and reblog, for engagement went to @wrestlingdesires https://www.proofofbrain.blog/@wrestlingdesires
The prized were switched from powered up POB to straight POB as I couldn't find a way to transfer powered up POB...I'm also relatively new here lol. Grateful if someone could provide advice on this point. I didn't want to delay transfer of prizes for this first contest so took the decision to send the POB as is and simply encourage the winners to power it up, although it is theirs to do with as they wish.
In addition to the above 3 prizes, I felt that given that the contest is still getting off it's feet, that those who had made a concerted effort with engagement on the platform and met most of the contest requirements, should get a consolation prize of 2 POB each, with one person getting 3 POB for only just falling short of being able to qualify for the draw. After all, I wanted to run this contest to support new members, not discourage them ;-)
These consolation prizes were made possible by the generous support of @corporateay in donating 30 POB to the contest, of which 15 has been used for this first edition (for consolation prizes to encourage engagement) and 15 will be used for next month's edition to boost the prize pool. https://www.proofofbrain.blog/@corporateay
With that, the following each received a consolation prize for taking part and meeting most of the contest requirements:
@ochedi , @innovator05 , @optimistically , @funshee , @houseofdavid , @nasri11 , and @george-dee . https://www.proofofbrain.blog/@ochedi https://www.proofofbrain.blog/@innovator05 https://www.proofofbrain.blog/@optimistically https://www.proofofbrain.blog/@funshee https://www.proofofbrain.blog/@houseofdavid https://www.proofofbrain.blog/@nasri11 https://www.proofofbrain.blog/@george-dee
I am grateful to @wrestlingdesires for his engagement in the contest comments and for bringing my contest to the attention of @dreemsteem and @wil.metcalfe which resulted in an additional sponsorship of 10 Hive from @dreemsteem for this edition of the contest which has been shared between the 3 winners named above. I have also received a temporary 500 Hive delegation from @dreemsteem to help with curation of posts over the next month which will enable me to provide higher rewards to other authors for the duration of the delegation. I will continue to read widely and diversely and endeavour to upvote responsibly. https://www.proofofbrain.blog/@wrestlingdesires https://www.proofofbrain.blog/@dreemsteem https://www.proofofbrain.blog/@wil.metcalfe
Thanks to @steevc , @dreemsteem , @corporateay , @mineopoly , @elricmoonslayer , @nonsowrites.pob , and @jaxsonmurph for their support in promoting this contest, and to all those who upvoted the posts, generating more POB to keep the contest going :-) https://www.proofofbrain.blog/@steevc https://www.proofofbrain.blog/@dreemsteem https://www.proofofbrain.blog/@corporateay https://www.proofofbrain.blog/@mineopoly https://www.proofofbrain.blog/@elricmoonslayer https://www.proofofbrain.blog/@nonsowrites.pob https://www.proofofbrain.blog/@jaxsonmurph
Please take a moment to drop by their pages and show them some love as they give tirelessly to support the community.
The following POB and Hive transfers have been made Monday evening 16th August 2021 (note photos overlap so POB transfers for consolation prizes were only made once):
New community members who joined the platform 1st August onwards can look out for the 2nd edition of this contest sometime in the first week of September. The rules of entry may be relaxed slightly but will be confirmed at the time. You know more or less what is required though, so if you want to take part, you know what to do: Join the Hive, write articles, engage with the community, power up your POB :-)
If you want some help joining the Hive, please look at the following link by fellow Hiver @ryzeonline and give him a follow if you find his 2 part beginner's guide helpful :-)
https://www.proofofbrain.blog/hive-189306/@ryzeonline/hive-a-complete-beginners-guide-with-fun-doodles-pt-1
https://www.proofofbrain.blog/hive-189306/@ryzeonline/hive-a-complete-beginners-guide-with-fun-doodles-pt-2
Photo credit for fireworks pic Rovenimages https://www.pexels.com/photo/low-angle-photo-of-fireworks-949592/
When curation outstrips personal creativity 😂🙄😍
I have been really busy since the weekend before last...I mean really busy! After a long weekend away in the English Lake District, where I had no access to the Hive, I've then spent way too much time on the Hive in the last week, if that is even possible 😂. I don't say this because I feel any imbalance in my life, other than a distinct lack of sleep 🙄, but I have been focussed on doing a lot of curation. I was blessed to be gifted a temporary delegation of HP (significant by my standards) by @dreemsteem in order to improve author and curation rewards on the articles and comments that I read and upvote and I want to make sure that I do the delegation justice and have been curating for hours on end every late evening/early morning since last Tuesday. It's actually quite addictive; everyone should try it at least once ha ha! I do need to find a better balance though. https://www.proofofbrain.blog/@dreemsteem
In conjunction with @dreemsteem 's very generous delegation, I was introduced to @wil.metcalfe through @dreemsteem and came across Wil's amazing initiative called comet week curated by @comet.ranker. which promotes and drives curation efforts across the HIVE. Honestly, I am so grateful to have found them both and the amazing community of people that already follow them and live the Curation values on the Hive to it's full. https://www.proofofbrain.blog/@dreemsteem https://www.proofofbrain.blog/@wil.metcalfe https://www.proofofbrain.blog/@comet.ranker
If you haven't seen anything around comet week yet, you can find it here Biggest Hive reward ever 2000 Hive for a friendlier more fun blockchain cometweek and the links to the White paper are included in the article. Highly recommend getting involved in the next one as this one ends tonight. Wil has an interesting approach to curation. https://www.proofofbrain.blog/hive/@comet.ranker/biggest-hive-reward-ever-2000-hive-for-a-friendlier-more-fun-hive-blockchain-cometweek-hq#@samsmith1971/re-cometranker-qy422y
I always paid careful attention to my comments on other people's posts beforehand and have tried to make meaningful connections and engage at a deeper level beyond mere superficiality, otherwise what's the point, right? But this comet week initiative and the comet ranker approach have really driven me to strive towards new heights in curation. There is always room for improvement! I'm not going to go into it all as Wil explains it really well himself and anything less would be doing a disservice to his efforts, so do yourself a favour and click on the link to comet week and get involved. You won't regret it!
The thing I have noticed as a result is that my curation efforts have increased substantially this past week, as in I have curated more articles at a deeper level, leaving little to no time for my own creative works to be formulated or published. Decent curation and engagement takes time; and lots of it. But it is a pure joy to do, as the feedback loop through engagement is so meaningful and provides so many opportunities for learning and growth, and forging and nurturing new connections and relationships across the HIVE. When we think outside the box of traditional blogging, take off the blinkers of self-interest, and we engage actively and meaningfully with other people's lives and interests, the intrinsic rewards flow and enhance our own lives. I have discovered a host of diversity and new people to follow through my efforts this week. Effort truly is rewarded 👨👨👦👦👨👨👦👦
So, the issue now is that I need to find that balance I mentioned at the outset of this post, as I haven't published a "proper" article myself in 7 days, with only the publication of the results of my contest, finding itself sandwiched between my weekend away and my curation focus this week, and I have a short list of "To do's" relating to articles I want to write, as I love pursuing my own creativity too, some of which have a deadline attached to them such as WOTW or the Pizza contest.... Eish ... time is running out. I'm thinking I'd better start getting myself together soon and start allocating out my HIVE/Proof of Brain time a bit more evenly between my own authorial works and curation (probably AFTER comet week lol), although I will focus on getting my WOTW submission in before the deadline.
EDIT to original article: I managed to squeeze in my entry for Proof of Brain word of the week contest in the nick of time on Saturday just past, and was fortunate to take 1st place for the first time ever!
You can read that entry here:
https://www.proofofbrain.blog/proofofbrain/@samsmith1971/home-before-the-leaves-fall
Photo credit: Kaboompics https://www.pexels.com/photo/think-outside-of-the-box-6375/
Photo credit: Ahmed Zayan https://unsplash.com/photos/xRuO2MFxbHs
Home before the leaves fall...
Sat barely 3 foot away from me, head bowed, hands meticulously breaking up a stiff rough chunk of rye bread. He was as dishevelled looking as I felt, and like me, probably hadn't seen a decent shower in months. Looking up, he smiled and passed me a piece of the dry baked dough, which I washed down gratefully with a swig or two of cheap champagne, from a bottle that was being passed around. The only light came from the odd lantern swaying in the cool breeze and a few small open fires, around which huddled shadowy figures in dark trench coats. Murmurs of strange and broken conversation drifted back and forth through the hazy night air.
I watched him rub his hands together briskly, before pulling his collar up over his ears and crossing his arms tightly across his chest, his fists buried deep within the pits of his arms. The two of us sat together quietly puffing heat clouds into the darkness of night.
I fixated on his slight stature. No older than 17? 18 at a stretch? So young, too young for all this! I was only 22 myself, so not exactly a veteran of life, but we'd both experienced the world in a way no person should ever have to do. Reaching into my inside pocket, I pulled out the small tin that held the remnants of my little luxuries; a small bar of chocolate and a box of fags. His eyes followed my hands, unwavering, unblinking. I handed him the chocolate and motioned for him to tuck it away inside his coat; a treat for later when the lanterns were extinguished and the night would draw back into itself, waiting for the next dawn. He clasped it tightly with both hands in thanks and stuffed it quickly inside the vastness of his coat.
I pondered a short moment. I could feel the sting in the corner of my eyes as my sight blurred momentarily. I pretended to brush the messy wisps of hair from my face, in an effort to conceal my fragility.
I decided there and then that my next haircut would just have to wait! I tapped the small box remaining in my hands until two slightly bent cheap cigarettes revealed themselves. Lighting first one and then the other, I proffered one up to my erstwhile companion. It was accepted with a nod in silence, as he inhaled deeply and then quickly spluttered a succession of choking coughs as the unfamiliar peppery afterburn cut a rawness into the back of his throat. The intensity of his gaze had waned to an empty look of hollowness, but still he smiled and drew on the unlit end again, this time more slowly. This moment of quiet in the stillness of night; a peace I had not felt for sometime.
We exchanged few words that evening but instead joined in with a few festivities and songs, whose joyful words carried through the night air, juxtaposed against the harsh reality presiding beneath them. Minutes turned to hours and the jovial voices slowly waned around us. Then all too soon, the call came, and our time together was over.
My companion's eyes widened as he pulled himself up with a seemingly great heaviness of body and spirit. I took his outstretched hand in mine and held it tight whilst drawing him close in a hug that has connected him to me forever. "Ich bin Hans" he said. " I am Peter, Merry Christmas" I whispered back. As he turned to leave, I pulled the woollen scarf from around my own neck and wrapped it around his; a scarf that had made it's way to me from the distant shores to which I longed so very much to return.
"Home before the leaves fall" the propaganda that has once swept through England. "No way this would last beyond Christmas", the popular narrative. But, here we were.
"Back to the trenches. Everybody! Now!" came the calls from High Command. Soon the Silent Night, the Holy night, The "Stille Nacht, Heilige Nacht" would be broken, and replaced by the familiar sounds of reciprocal gunfire across the trenches.
Christmas day, 1914.
A Christmas on the Western front that would forever be emblazoned on my heart and in my soul. A memory of an evening spent with a stranger in no-man's land; an erstwhile enemy whom I came to realise was just like me. Both just young boys, barely men, fighting for a cause neither fully understood. Unlikely companions for a short time; in a wasteland, in a world turned upside down.
I will never know whether Hans made it out alive that night, but he will remain forever in my memories, a companion til my very end.
Photo credit: Ahmed Zayan https://unsplash.com/photos/xRuO2MFxbHs
Little Pieces of Paradise - happy places, mindful spaces, joyful lives
Is it a physical place that you go to, to find peace and happiness - your so-called "happy place"? Or it it a meditative state of mind, or a heavenly plane of spiritual bliss?
Oxford Languages describes paradise variously as "an ideal or idyllic place or state", a kind of utopia or nirvana, and goes on to define nirvana as from the Sanskrit meaning "extinction, disappearance of the individual to the universal"; a place of happiness or enlightenment. https://www.lexico.com/definition/paradise
The Cambridge dictionary defines paradise as "a place or condition of great happiness where everything is exactly as you would like it to be." https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/paradise
In my view it can be found in our individual connections with nature (the seaside, the coast, the mountains, the savannah), in our relationships with family and friends, in the serenity of solitude and mindfulness, and in spiritual enlightenment, our church and our God. It manifests both externally and internally in our lives, being either terrestrial or celestial in nature. To me paradise is not just a place though; it is ostensibly a very personal, very subjective experience of a place or space in time. It is an experience conceived around our own imaginings, desires, sense of fulfilment. It is uniquely experienced by us, albeit that it may have a similar source of peace, tranquillity and happiness for others too.
In my life, I have been fortunate to have found my own personal little pieces of paradise. My nirvanas have been the mountains, karate, my family and my "God".
**The Mountains**
As I look out over the magnificent vistas of the Drakensberg mountains in Kwazulu-Natal, South Africa, out over the savannah (grasslands), as far as the eye can see, I smile at my own little piece of Heaven, my slice of paradise that is uniquely mine in this singular moment in time. My 'happy place'! I feel energised, renewed from within. I don't know if it is the exhilaration of the climb, the freshness and purity of the cool mountain breezes that sweep away the cobwebs that tend to clutter up my mind over time, the pure bliss in utter silence under the starlit open skies at night, or simply the breath taking beauty of the natural world during the day. When I am up in the mountains, perhaps it is a happy coincidental nexus of all four that constitutes paradise for me.
**Karate**
As I entered the dojo for the first time, I was quite taken by the unity within. The unison kata (dance), the kumite (fight). Somewhat entranced, the dance of kata captured my imagination and took hold forever, never really letting go. It was the start of a long love story with karate (kara te meaning "empty hand") and the martial arts that endures to this day. It filled me with utter joy. This paradisiacal almost spiritual experience of mindfulness, relinquishing oneself and becoming one with the artform. It satisfied my idea and perception of the ideal state of being, of perfection. The 5 maxims adorned the walls: Character, Sincerity, Effort, Etiquette, Self-Control. Values to live by. Certainly a sense of purity of spirit to strive for; a Nirvana to be experienced through karate.
I had the utmost pleasure and was humbled to meet the head of JKA Karate in South Africa, the man who started the JKA school of dojos in my home country and who had studied the artform in Japan for many years, Sensei Stan Schmidt. On tour with my own sensei one year, I attended Sensei Stan's 4am Black Belt classes in Johannesburg in the middle of winter when the dry icy wind bites mercilessly through one's thin gi (karate suit). My focus was on the learning experience, the pure joy of being at one with every movement that my body made. I later met with Sensei Stan again in Durban at a book signing and he asked me one simple question: "Why do you do karate?" I didn't hesitate with my answer: "Because I enjoy it". It was that simple to me. I need not give any further explanation. Pure paradisiacal joy in the "Spirit of the empty hand". I had no idea at the time that his autobiography that he was inscribing to me, ended with the words "At least I'm beginning to enjoy it all..."
The inscription on the front page of my copy of his book reads:
"To Sam, may you pass on your joy to others. Osu, Stan Schmidt".
As I sit here now, side-lined by injury, 34 years after this joyful interaction, and holding a lifetime of memories in my hands of a relationship with karate that I continue to revisit, I can only look back with the biggest smile on my face, and warmth in my heart as I look forward to the day that I can get back onto the dojo floor; back to one of my slices of paradise found.
**Relationships**
And now to relationships with my family and friends: these people are the rocks in life. They keep me grounded. They remind me of who I am and why I am here. To build connections, uplift those around me, experience love, grow as an individual and learn something new every day. These people variously bring me joy, peace, love, and challenge me constantly in positive ways that I could never have imagined possible. My life is a kaleidoscope of beauty because of them and my gratitude cup overflows. Having these relationships, nurturing them and growing with them, is a state of perpetual paradise for me.
**My God**
And finally to my "God". An as yet undefined all encompassing universe of immense wonder and intrigue. I experience God through the lens of the incredible majesty of the constellations and galaxies that I purvey through our telescope on clear nights. I experience God through the incredible beauty and majesty of our planet Earth and all of it's lifeforms that dwell upon it, on the land, in the skies and under the oceans of our world. I experience God in the incredibly diverse relationships that I have with human beings from all corners of the globe, both in my inner and outer circles; relationships that energise, relationships that are alive to possibility. And so my God is present in all the little moments of perfection that I am privileged to experience in my life.
I hope you have enjoyed reading about my moments of pure paradise. Moments spent experiencing my happy place, my happy space, my joyful life. The precious moments that I treasure; that I don't allow to slip away through the cracks of time.
Photo credits:
Pixabay https://www.pexels.com/photo/person-standing-under-a-rock-formation-on-a-starry-night-33688/
Cotton bro https://www.pexels.com/photo/light-city-sunset-couple-8038021/
Jessica Ticozzelli https://www.pexels.com/photo/happy-female-friends-making-funny-faces-4342428/
Alex Andrews https://www.pexels.com/photo/photo-of-deep-sky-object-816608/
Any photos not credited here belong to me personally either because I am the photographer or because they were taken by friends/family of me, at my request, and gifted to me, and I assert the right to publish them.
Ethergram.io - Like Hive, POB and Leo but for ETH fans!
I have been a member of the Ethereum Facebook group for some time now as I am both invested in Eth and mine it on my pc. Through my membership of this FB group, I have discovered ethergram.io , which is touted as a clone of Steemit. The official launch was 17 July 2021, so you can get in on the ground floor here so to speak, at it's infancy.
Co-founded by Mark Bretl, it is in his words:
A "decentralized and censorship resistant social network that rewards cryptocurrency for your content. Upcoming NFT airdrops, Axie Infinity clone and NFT market to monetise your photography are on the roadmap." Seems they are looking to right where Steemit went wrong.
Mark's intro post on Ethergram can be viewed here:
hi my name is mark https://ethergram.io/introduction/@mark/hi-my-name-is-mark-i-am-the-co-founder-of-ethergram
From what I can see on my short time here, having just signed up today, the look and feel is very much like Hive PEAKd / Proof of Brain / Leofinance (I was never on Steemit) and they are listed on Hive Engine.
Just like Hive PEAKd / Proof of Brain / Leofinance, members post their own articles, covering all nature of content, and curate other author's articles, earning Ether or Ethereal, Ether Power and Ether dollars as rewards in the process. Just like Hive PEAKd /POB/Leo, posts use the all familiar tagging, upvotes and downvotes. It is so familiar to navigate that I would have thought I was actually on the Hive! Except that Ethergram runs on it's own Graphene blockchain. Another difference is that rewards are split roughly 75% to author / 25% between curators, instead of 50/50 as in Hive.
Like any of these platforms, people should look to be in it for the longer term to help the platform grow and not be looking for the quick buck. So any rewards earned should be powered up to increase voting power to support and grow the community and I hope for their sake that the members there have a similar protective community ethos to what is found on the Hive and in certain Hive communities like POB and Leofinance. Read.cash is also a very supportive and protective community of it's own, it just operates slightly differently in terms of reward generation and allocation.
I still haven't decided what to do with this new platform, as my primary home will remain Proof of Brain, although I also post in PEAKd, Leofinance, Read.cash and Publish0X, but it is nice to have options and other opportunities to engage with wider communities.
Signup simply requires a username which then generates a login key which you have to save immediately. It is not recoverable, so back it up! Tip: On a mobile phone the whole key/password is not visible when you sign up so make sure you copy and paste it to notes or something so you can save the entire key/password offline!
Nothing really else to add other than if you want to have a presence on an Ether platform too (albeit that you don't earn Eth as in Ethereum, but Ethergram's own native token Ether (or Ethereal), engage with a different set of content creators and grow a little 'Ether' pot in the process, here is your chance to get in early! Time will tell if they have the same value constructs as the Hive and Proof of Brain but their mission seems to be to right the wrongs found in Steemit.
Appreciate that some will be very protective of their existing communities, and I am too, but diversity exists and should be embraced, and at the very least explored if it interests you.
Their FAQ is quite useful and should answer most of your burning questions. https://landing.ethergram.io/faq
Finally, sign up is here, no affiliation or referral links imbedded:
Sign up https://ethergram.io/
Photo credit: Mark Bretl https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=3064036913842642&set=basw.Abr8d4XdLnfvQr76vUeX8x5vyV1eo3Z9tHhxYS8_EGVumNmX1wauDGq7ecY6aJYBt5gFeCwqniKM3ppP2jo1cz26ojOY7VWv_RlSvYyxTzrsvhBkE4Nww3LIBbbOBmbX4DggSv3biGIik3zG28ah96CS&opaqueCursor=AbqVOlyRJTKHDxP7DMMJ0lxQDRraw5kKV2CDJ0eacXGEg9fpM5Aws5aXaBtIlsuby5_Fg2-7jbSyPBK_ZkxU9Ry15zqhlGkMR3lDWDKV5kgM-X4w2bJ25g6Z1P35PbuOPHEz9h1-XZETHy9TDCo3YIumJPJ4LXwhTofguO2J34BlfzeR9p9f8IAIMxHiWePK4w_sPa9c3KpCXQvODA4RsPsQ-WLGdCp9mUXI3DKkjnSgHk74hRtVxARdY4AI8_NgjtjoTiddksICsge6_a04wKAuOGCc6syyg4tfwtYIx3fbmaf6HZCqBWhj0CRUy6Hp9Kk6Mx7s4hmJR8EOJC8RNflJC7lcQxvLqIvKw0PU92X9h-itQ-r54x7RaD2e1b7s7hrTUIg2wCpAami_rY7dWmGK239ebMwpDblKd1O6LDdjwwchqqCTVywJbxSEZnkJnI0cxhBKNKg4KysKQV7GeXxtxT0lQRuI29bbF3ugW4Kh8acQ7wFwf6UnGHszKGNtK4E8A9v1BTKU2A7yQg9TYk89QuUD0jW7s4p5BKP9j22fZRmXmomyFVHfBlSF8fY3c3HK1SpBb5h6kEvaOFL0rwZY4hPuiSEAugpHAXYc-uERwYSGcpY_bn23-0eEMISIGe533-_fyjGn4Y2TyxkCjpSyjACRE9fM_WZZkg0nnwxhJZ3f43VPob6_Mt8DSCTmm6E
Note: Mark Bretl has actively asked for people to share his post on social media which included this logo.
"Paying it Forward" Contest - 50 Proof of Brain (POB) tokens up for grabs
I have now been active in Proof of Brain for a full 2 months and have been loving every minute of it. I log in every day and have posted 24 articles over my short time here, 25 if you include this one, which is averaging just under 3 articles a week. I love curating as much as I love writing.
Learning and growing through positive engagement with others in the POB community brings me great joy! I received a lot of encouragement from @jaxsonmurph who helped me onto the Hive and Proof of Brain and provided me with a lot of support and guidance, including delegation of tokens to get me started and I am so very much appreciative of this kindness, and knew that one day I wanted to start to pay that forward. https://www.proofofbrain.io/@jaxsonmurph
I recently won a contest on Proof of Brain hosted by @nonsowrites and won a very generous 100 POB tokens which is now enabling me to do just that! I knew as soon as I won it that I wanted to give back half of it to help brand new members in the Proof of Brain community, to lend them a hand, to give them that little bump up the ladder that I got. However, I also wanted to ensure that I was promoting the values held dear to the Proof of Brain community, including engagement with others, using your brain, support of your fellow members, and investment in the community. https://www.proofofbrain.io/@nonsowrites
So, here we are with a little contest of my own on the Proof of Brain platform. If it gets enough traction and support, I would love to see it make a more regular appearance on Proof of Brain.
If you are not already on Proof of Brain, now is the time to join and enter my contest :-)
There are three prizes up for grabs; the first 2 for brand new Proof of Brain members and the 3rd for any member of the Proof of Brain community, regardless of how long you have been on the platform.
All new member participants' names will be entered into random.org to create a randomised output listing.
**First prize: 25 Powered up POB**
The first person in the randomised output list who also satisfies the below listed 6 requirements will win 25 Powered up POB, a follow from me and a reblog of one of their recent posts.
**2nd prize: 15 Powered up POB**
The 2nd person in the randomised output list who also satisfies the below listed 6 requirements will win 15 Powered up POB, a follow from me and a reblog of one of their recent posts.
**3rd prize: 10 Powered up POB**
Finally, the "reply comment" to any of the "entry" comments on this post, that I personally like the most, will win 10 Powered up POB, a follow from me and a reblog of one of their recent posts. This last one is to encourage thoughtful responses and positive engagement with each other.
Winning either of the first 2 prizes does not preclude you from winning this bonus prize if your comment is deemed the best engagement, in my personal opinion. It could be serious, touching, uplifting or funny, just the one that I liked the most!
So the premise of this contest is that to be in with a chance to win one of the first 2 prizes, you just need to be able to give a tick to the following 6 requirements:
You joined Proof of Brain on/after 01 July 2021 ***(ie: you are a brand new member)***
You have posted at least 10 constructive comments on other members' posts on Proof of Brain ***(ie: proved active engagement on the platform)***
You have posted at least 5 articles of your own using the Proof of Brain frontend ***(ie: you are using your brain)*** If you are an August joiner, this requirement is reduced to 2 articles :-)
You have followed at least 5 people on Proof of Brain AND reblogged at least 1 article from another member ***(ie: you are supporting fellow members)***
You have staked / powered up at least 50% of your total POB earnings to date, regardless of value, ***(ie: you are investing in the community)***
If you have done all of the aforementioned in 1-5 , then please comment briefly (approx 3-4 lines will suffice) on my contest post on the Proof of Brain platform about your experience of Proof of Brain so far and you will be entered in the contest for one of the first 2 prizes. You can find me @samsmith1971 and the contest post [here](https://www.proofofbrain.io/hive-150329/@samsmith1971/paying-it-forward-contest-50-pob-total-up-for-grabs)
To win the 3rd prize, simply reply to someone's else's entry comment on the Proof of Brain contest post and I'll pick my favourite reply.
I will keep the contest open for 7 days which gives everyone the chance to meet the requirements, if you haven't done so already ;-)
All new member entrants will get a 100% upvote from me on their entry comment only. Any other upvotes to further engagement on this post with other entrants will be at my discretion and at 25% upvote.
If you are reading this and are new to Proof of Brain, I do hope you are motivated to take part, and, if you are not new, and see the value in this contest, a reblog to reach more new members would be appreciated.
I will be away next weekend celebrating my birthday when this contest comes to an end. I will take my laptop with me but will primarily be focussing on enjoying my time with my family. I will also be restricted to hot spotting from my phone lol so may therefore only be able to review the entries by Tues 17th, but will ensure all winners are sent their POB prize tokens by midnight Tues 17th British Summer time. I currently power up all my POB tokens but I have purposely kept 50 POB unstaked in my wallet purely to cover this contest.
Good luck and welcome to Proof of Brain and Paying It Forward #PIF :-) https://www.proofofbrain.io/trending/pif
(already anticipating the smart ass comments to roll in on this hashtag lol)
Photo credit Ave Calvar Martinez https://www.pexels.com/photo/helping-hands-4061216/
Photo credit Brett Jordan https://www.pexels.com/photo/wood-typography-photography-blur-6770564/
Power up your POB - Power up your community!
Funny story...yesterday was Hive power up day and being new to Hive and POB (joined June-21) I was eager to take part. Then I realised that it literally only applied to powering up Hive. The clue was actually in the name lol. Anyway, for some reason I don't earn a lot of Hive although I do earn some POB. I really do try to write quality content in Proof of brain, and so to date I have focussed on quality over quantity. Some can do both as they have the time to dedicate to the platform, either because they are full time bloggers, or are perhaps retired and don't have a traditional day job demanding their attention, or perhaps don't have the responsibility of children to factor into their day. Children eat up your time like no other but I wouldn't change that fact for anything :-)
When I have looked at my rewards on a post I can see that the rewards from curators are almost always higher in POB allocation than in Hive allocation. I am guessing that this is because I post almost entirely though the POB frontend and that most of my readers are POB front end readers too so that their own wallets are balanced in favour of POB tokens. This is not necessarily a bad thing and I do love Proofofbrain. I was just hoping to be able to join in the monthly Power Up day. Oh well, I guess I'll have to save my Hive tokens up and and hope I earn enough in August to join the September Hive power up day. If I have somehow misunderstood this, I'd love to hear from you in the comments.
Now on to the "funny story" part of my post...yes, I hadn't got there yet. I kinda felt the digression was important and funny in itself. The funny story is in the coincidence that happened next...
So, after my initial disappointment, I came across the new monthly "Brain Power Up Day", an initiative by @felipejoys to promote POB power ups on the 2nd of each month (so as not to interfere with the Hive promotions for the 1st of the month, quite considerate if you ask me). If you haven't seen this month's post, you can read it here: Brain Power up Day - the 2nd of every month It provides all the details to get involved and the tags that need to be used etc. Bear in mind the cut off times are based on UTC time. https://www.proofofbrain.io/@felipejoys https://www.proofofbrain.io/hive-150329/@felipejoys/brain-power-up-day-2-the-2nd-of-every-month
All I can say is, Yay! Anything that supports the continued cycle of growth of the Proof of brain platform, that promotes engagement and staking of POB tokens, has to be commended and supported in turn.
This community is a diverse community albeit mostly of like minded individuals who enjoy the art of writing and curating, learning and growing through positive engagement, and earning a little on the side for their efforts. Just as ordinary crypto staking allows one to earn a pretty decent APR return for providing token liquidity to the pool, so staking POB by powering up in your wallet, allows one to earn increased curation rewards. The best benefit of powering up is that it is not only for self-benefit. When you power up, you increase your voting power and with that the maximum rewards you can offer to other contributors on the platform, which helps others feel more valued and allows them to enjoy more success, and in turn thereby provides greater motivation and stimulus to create better quality content for the platform. Their success is mirrored in your own success through increased curation rewards. As you stake more, you earn more, so you have more to stake...and the cycle continues.
At some point you may decide that you want to withdraw a small portion of your earnings on a regular basis, and that is ok too. I haven't done so as yet as I would like to get to a decent enough size stake that my resource credits last longer and I can therefore curate a larger number of articles each day and support more writers across the platform. It really sucks when you have been surfing around the platform enjoying a diverse range of genres and articles from as many different people as possible, and you see your voting power dwindling to nothing. I honestly feel like I am cheating those authors at the end of my curation time for the day :-( And it especially hits me when I have just read something I really liked from a brand new POB member and I realise my upvote just gave them little to no recognition for their post.
It is therefore very important, from my perspective, to ensure that if I am going to be part of this platform, that I support the platform and remain actively invested in it. I would hope that others felt the same. To this end, if everyone just pulled POB out (by selling) all the time, the price would dive, as supply would outstrip demand, and a lot of people would potentially leave and seek greener pastures. The diehards would remain I am sure, especially those who first and foremost just have a love and passion for their art and creative side, and enjoy the community engagement on Proof of brain, and nurturing relationships with a diverse range of people. So this is why I encourage everyone to get staking as much as they can, do your bit to strengthen and grow this community and you will benefit in more ways than you thought possible.
Today I powered up 25 POB. It would have been more but for the fact that I had just powered up before I came across @felipejoys article and contest. I for one will be supporting Brain Power Up Day every month from now on. The question is, will you? https://www.proofofbrain.io/@felipejoys
Photo credit: [Belle Co](https://www.pexels.com/photo/silhouette-photography-of-group-of-people-jumping-during-golden-time-1000445/)
Lead photo credit: Photo credit: Polina https://www.pexels.com/photo/notes-on-board-3782142/
Let there be light!
**Let there be light...**
A blank canvas
Lies...
Open.
Unique palettes,
Artistry at work.
A rainbow of opportunity...
Broken?
Noises clamour,
Compete
for attention.
Pandemonium consumes his world.
Fists clenched
He beats himself in time.
Torn apart, he curls.
Clothes scour
His very self -
regulation eroded.
Abrasive to his being.
Skin on fire.
"No! No! No!"
He melts
down
Inside
His monotropic mind.
Why? Oh why...
Can't he just let it go?
She thinks...
Deeply,
Fingers tapping,
She speaks well...
No hi or goodbye
She interrupts...
A lot.
Her brain
Focussed
Unyielding
Will not switch tasks...
Will not stop.
Unthinking?
Unfeeling?
Imperfect?
Incomplete?
Dehumanised
Spectres
Of mankind;
In defeat.
"He's extremely autistic;
She's just a little..."
'They'* think they're being kind,
But they just belittle.
Because it's not a scale,
No gradation
Of degree...
It's a palette,
Of difference...
Of disability.
It's a spectrum of traits
Unique works of art
Who knows where it ends?
Who knows where it starts?
Like a prism of colour
Red is not blue
Meet one autistic person
You HAVE NOT met two!
Humanity
Challenged
And
Awakened.
Darkness retreats;
Chinks in the armour
Of ignorance
Unseats.
Neuro diversity
Understood.
Real people.
No longer ghosts
Of themselves.
Knowledge is truth,
And truth must take flight.
Let's treasure the spectrum...
Let there be light!
Copyright asserted: Samantha Smith 31/07/2021
*Notes:*
*1) They * refers to those referencing the autism in the poem, and not to those with autism.*
*2) Poem inspired both by my personal experience with my youngest son who has sensory processing difficulties and demand avoidance, and is awaiting assessment for autism, and by an article by C.L.Lynch in Neuroclastic.com:* *It's a spectrum doesn't mean what you think*
*3)Photo credit: Froken Fokus https://neuroclastic.com/2019/05/04/its-a-spectrum-doesnt-mean-what-you-think/ https://www.pexels.com/photo/person-jumping-photo-127968/
The Unintentional Masochist
Photo Credit: Allan Mas https://www.pexels.com/photo/carefree-girl-playing-with-ball-on-playground-5623066/
When I was younger, I would chat with my Mom about how certain people could trigger me to respond to them in ways that I did not like, and which did not imbue my life with any sense of positivity. My mom would always say, "...just don't catch the ball, Sam." You see, she saw things so simply: when someone seeks to control your responses with manipulation or provocation and throws you a curveball, tosses you the bait, simply walk away. Don't catch it, and instead let it fall by the way. It removes their power. It removes their control. They lose the upper hand.
If you are one of those people who can't help but catch the ball and constantly ends up dealing with the painful consequence, then instead of remaining focussed on why the ball was thrown at you in the first place (it really doesn't matter!), try focussing instead on why you bothered to catch it at all. Why you bothered to engage, to offer up a retort to provocation. It is in this self-analysis that you may find a solution to the problem.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZRhElnYiac
*Watch this Youtube clip from the 4min 30seconds mark*
*Synopsis: A Youtube team are laying 1000 mousetraps on a trampoline for Youtuber Ben Azelart to jump into, shirtless, for a Youtube dare. Ben's friend Dom picks up a mousetrap and chucks it at him. Caught unawares, Ben tries to catch it, resulting in significant pain.*
**Ben: "Ow! Why would you throw that at me?!"**
**Dom: Laughter erupts..."Why would you catch it, man!"**
If you really think about, I bet that most of us, with the benefit of hindsight, would look back at a situation like this, literal or figurative, and agree that we wish we'd have had the sense to have walked away, deemed a response unnecessary; not to have caught the ball (or the mousetrap!). Some people are fortunate enough to recognise the foolishness of their actions and make adjustments in their lives so as not to repeat their mistakes. Others are destined to be bounced constantly between the metaphoric mousetraps and actually seem to welcome or at least invite the experience. Negative engagement, even though it may be acerbic or antagonistic in nature, is not something that they can easily avoid. They just have an inability to disengage and ignor frivolous pot-stirring, or to exercise a lack of restraint when it comes to provocation. In this way they fall victim to control and manipulation and become unintentional masochists.
Masochists "endure self-defeating traits...such people inflict humiliation and pain on themselves." By not being able to withstand provocation, and manipulation, the masochist constantly ends up having the tables turned on them and is often left worse off than before, emotionally, psychologically, or financially. https://www.speeli.com/what-is-the-word-for-a-person-or-people-who-enjoy-pain/
Photo credit: Payam Masouri https://www.pexels.com/photo/grayscale-photography-of-man-holding-a-fishing-rod-near-body-of-water-731354/
Those who seek to control others, to manipulate their feelings, emotions and actions, to gain the upper hand, are just like fishermen standing on the edge of the pier. They scope out their target, choose their lures and bait wisely, throw out the line and cast their nets. Then they wait, patiently for you to bite! They'll leave you to nibble, but take a mouthful, take the bait, and you're caught, hooked, snared in the trap. They can reel you in at their leisure. Better still, let your feeding frenzy draw the attention of your fish friends, and they can get caught up in the melee too.
The fishermen's club will reel in their lines at the same time; their trawlers will draw up the nets; they will feast and you will all pay the price with your souls.
Sometimes they'll catch you, only to throw you back, taking the short gain, in fun, reliant in the knowledge that the fish won't learn, and instead will remained destined to repeat the cycle of self defeat, leaving the fisherman with endless gains.
Photo credit: Inzmam Khan https://www.pexels.com/photo/man-in-black-shirt-and-gray-denim-pants-sitting-on-gray-padded-bench-1134204/
If, however, we start to recognise the bait, and instead choose to ignor the lines being thrown our way, we can avoid being sucked in. Avoid being caught in the narcissist's net. We need to learn to recognise and manage our own emotional responses because if we feed off the bait, we risk succumbing and sacrificing ourselves to the control of others.
Photo credit: Emma Li https://www.pexels.com/photo/a-humpback-whale-in-black-and-white-5286712/
Of course, this is very analogous to Crypto Whale behaviour and smaller invester response. Whales manipulate the market, creating FOMO and FUD with pump and dumps, bubbles and moons, playing on people's emotional and financial insecurities and obsessions. In the end, they come out on top. It's all bait!
Photo credit: Rodnae Productions https://www.pexels.com/photo/man-in-white-top-holding-gold-and-silver-coins-8370385/
So when it comes to the cryptosphere, do your own research (DYOR). Act on your own data. Diversify. Don't be afraid to HODL through the Bears or take profits during the Bulls. Don't overinvest. Don't be greedy. Take a nibble if you must, but swim away before you get caught. If we can stop perpetuating the cycle of control, the narcissists will die a natural death in a barren wasteland void of victims.
So, next time stop and think just for a second before you catch that ball, before you take that bait, and, whatever the situation is that you find yourself in, don't become an unintentional masochist.
When social networks become unsocial ...
Photo credit: Tracy Le Blanc https://www.pexels.com/photo/person-holding-iphone-showing-social-networks-folder-607812/
Those of us who are parents will know the pitfalls that the internet and social media can bring for our children. It is drummed into us constantly by the schools, through the media, in Facebook parent groups, online forums and via advertising.
Most social media platforms have age restrictions in place that require users to be at least 13 years of age. This is primarily due to the Children's Online Privacy Protection Rule ("COPPA") in the USA which protects the privacy rights of children by not allowing online services to collect personal data on users under the age of 13 years, without first obtaining parental permission. This would be an onerous task to accomplish so online services mainly choose to simply avoid the ambit of the rule altogether by imposing age restrictions. Per the UK Safer Internet Centre , sites requiring these age limits, include Facebook, Snapchat, Twitter, Instagram, Music.ly, Skype and Whatsapp (latter restricts use to 16 years and over). Tiktok is another such platform requiring minimum age of 13 for users. https://www.ftc.gov/enforcement/rules/rulemaking-regulatory-reform-proceedings/childrens-online-privacy-protection-rule https://www.saferinternet.org.uk/blog/age-restrictions-social-media-services
Although these age related restrictions are in place to protect privacy, they are also a good baseline age for safety and security levels too as these sites are prone to containing adult related content not suitable for younger viewers. This could be anything from prolific swearing to mentions or scenes of a violent or sexual nature.
Photo credit: Cottonbro https://www.pexels.com/photo/photo-of-people-engaged-on-their-phones-8088489/
Unfortunately young kids, street wise or not, often buoyed along by peer pressure, are all too willing to use fake dates of birth to gain access to these platforms and see it as a right of passage. It is just not "cool" amongst friends if you don't have an active account, and too many parents overlook the inherent dangers and succumb to their children's pleas for peer inclusion in the digital world. And even if your child does not have access to all the age restricted sites out there in the market, this does not mean they don't remain vulnerable to them, because their peers may well have access and may lack the maturity to be responsible with the technology, thus exposing your child almost vicariously to risk and content that should only be viewed by more mature audiences.
Hands up how many of you have actually experienced first hand the very real dangers of seeing children who are unsupervised, having unfettered access to social media platforms and age related content, and the incredible damage that can be caused as a result? OK! I can't actually see the show of hands...but just consider the question for a moment... and I can certainly tell you, that until recently, I hadn't!
To give you some background to what I am about to share, my children are 8 and 10 years old respectively and their exposure to the internet and social media includes the following:
having mobile phones that they use on our home wifi, or that they hotspot to my phone when we are travelling. They use them as you would use a tablet/ipad to watch youtube videos from channels that we approve of, to watch age appropriate films and the Disney + channel, and to play a few age appropriate fun games. Our eldest who is 10, has recently been given a sim card with no data or call time on it, purely so that he can have Whatsapp on his phone to chat with his cousins and his best friend who is no longer at his school. These chats are a means to communicate whilst they play minecraft or fortnite online together. He knows that he is not to give his number to anyone outside of his classmates and not to answer unsolicited phone calls from unrecognised numbers. He is very good about telling me if his phone has rung. Whatsapp is age restricted only due to GDPR privacy rights of children and his use is well supervised.
Our children play Fortnite and Minecraft on laptops in our lounge where we can hear exactly what is being said, and they are only allowed to play with friends or with other children that we ourselves have heard in conversation with them. They are not allowed to reveal any personal information about themselves other than their first name. My husband and I both checked the games out beforehand and concluded that we were happy that the Battle Royale version of Fortnite was no worse than playing a game of paintball or the Star Wars online games. Our children are most certainly not allowed to play any other games with age restricted adult related violent or sexual content eg: Call of duty, GTA etc, and are not allowed to have Facebook, Instagram, Tiktok or similar as we do not believe that the unfettered content on these platforms is age appropriate. They are also not allowed phones or laptops upstairs in their bedrooms.
Two weeks ago our eldest went to a class mate's house after school to do some gaming. I was aware that his friend played Fifa and Fortnite but not aware of anything else. I knew that the parents were going to be home too. This kid has a bit of history with my son in that they have had altercations in the past and he actually beat my son up when they were both 5 years old! As my son is in a one form entry school, the school were not able to separate them at the time into different classes and urged us to take a reconciliatory approach as the offending child was so young. There are also only about a dozen boys in my son's school year so they all tend to play football together at breaktimes and we didn't want to isolate our son from his other friends. Quite a few years have passed since then and, during lockdown, the kids hardly saw each other as everyone was home schooling. When my son asked if he could have a gaming playdate with this kid, I did ask him about the kid's recent behaviour at school and he said that it seemed to be better now. I reflected and thought that I should be the bigger person and give the kid a second chance as he has had a chance to mature and had been quite polite to me of late. In hindsight, I should have gone with my gut instinct and appreciated that leopards seldom change their spots!
After I had picked my son up from the playdate, I received a call and a flurry of text messages from another parent in his year group. She was outraged to put it mildly. I had to ask her to give me a chance to get home and read her messages and promised that I would get back to her.
Long story short, she presented me with audio clips purporting to come from what she believed to be 'my son's' tiktok account as the user name was the same as my son's Fortnite user id. The audio clips were disguised with a voice effect and contained unacceptable language and content and had been recorded and sent to her daughter.
My son does not have a tiktok account but it turns out, that this other kid had taken advantage of my son's naivety and misplaced trust and created a second tiktok account of his own on his own ipad using my son's fortnite user id and phone number. He then made the audio clips whilst my son was at his house but was otherwise engaged watching youtube videos on his phone. The kid then sent the audio clips to the unsuspecting 3rd party.
My son was blissfully unaware of the mayhem being created, whilst I was unaware that my son had taken his phone to the playdate! Apparently it was to "prove" he had one, as he had been ragged by the kid about it.
This other kid initially denied having created the account or having made the audio clips, and only admitted to having sent them to the girl in their class. He blamed everything else on my son. The evidence so far has, however, shown it was created on the other kid's Ipad (undisputed) using his older sister's date of birth (proven and which was unknown to my son) and enabling 2-factor authentication which my son is thankfully unable to do on his own. This kid's older sister then managed to remove one of the voice filters and proved that at least one of the clips was made by her brother, who then admitted to making the audio clip, and as all of them appear to have been made by the same person (agreed by all 3 sets of parents at the outset), it can be deduced that the other kid made them all.
If this had been left to the parents to resolve, it would have been done and dusted. Tiktok account deleted and audio clips no longer accessible, with lessons learned all round. However, the victims of the audio clip messages decided that they would talk about the incident at school. A teacher overheard and took them to the headteacher. The headteacher felt that they had no option but to call in all three sets of parents and then to escalate to outside organisations.
I have provided transcripts of the audio clips to the relevant organisations and asked for the clips to be unencrypted so that my son's lack of involvement can be proved once and for all. My son's Youtube history also shows that he was watching Youtube whilst he was at this child's house and we are convinced that, once unencrypted, the audio clips together with time stamping of the tik tok clips and youtubing, and the rest of the evidence, will conclusively clear our son's name.
Thankfully, it appears that subject to some final checks, that, based on the evidence, interviews, and on reports from the school etc, that this issue may soon be behind us.
Photo credit: Joseph Ruwa https://www.pexels.com/photo/bearded-ethnic-man-smoking-at-home-3942712/
Since the incident happened, I have been informed by a close friend, who knows the other family well, albeit they are not friends with them, that the kid's parents are involved in substance abuse and that the kid is allowed unfettered unsupervised access to adult themed games and films, that he uses foul language, and has also physically hurt their son on more than one occasion. Had I known all of this, I would never have let my child go to the kid's house after school. This information has also now been passed on to the relevant organisations.
It just goes to show that we don't truly know the people that we associate with in our own communities. Just because a child is in your child's class and their family live in a big house in the local community, does not make them a reliable or trustworthy family. It is no indication that they share the same values as your own or have the same attitude towards protection of their children as you do, and children sadly become products of their environment. Risks can come from unlikely places and we shouldn't let our guard down because of seeming overfamiliarity. We don't truly know what hides behind the closed doors of others, and we should exercise a lot more caution before allowing our children to walk through unsupported and unprotected.
We have now put in even more strict controls around phone and internet use as a result of this incident, and as a result of realising just how vulnerable our children actually are, both directly and indirectly, to social media abuse.
I share this story to raise awareness of the very real dangers of not appreciating how children at this age are too trusting of their peers, and how children of this age are also not past being manipulative and inappropriate on social media.
This is a situation that really could have had serious consequences for my son and our family, due to the actions and constant web of lies told by his classmate. These are now unravelling, and slowly but surely proving my son's innocence, and clearing his name.
Please do make sure that your children are internet and social media savvy and that they are not accessing age inappropriate platforms or content. They are not always capable of making the right decisions themselves, especially when it comes to peer pressure and manipulation. Make very sure that you know the parents well before you entrust your child into their care.
Hopefully it will all be over soon, at least for us. What ramifications this will have for the other boy and his family, only time will tell.
Making an impact : Finding my way in blogging
So I've been on a few blogging platforms for the past 2 months: read.cash and publishoX for 2 months, proofofbrain for 1.5 months, and my writing flow is improving, and the quality of my submissions too, in my personal opinion, and as evidenced by improved engagement from the communities within which I write.
I am writing more regularly now; it's addictive. I am enjoying the research and creative outlet for my varied posts that include researched areas of interest, writing from personal experience, poetry, short stories and engaging with other writers/authors on the platform. Always trying to remain true to myself and my passions, and engaging with others on my own posts/articles and on theirs so that I can learn and grow from the experience and help others to improve by bouncing off my enthusiasm and support and encouragement.
So how on earth did I get into blogging? Well, I started writing a book last year during Covid lockdown. It's a fictionalised version of a true story; so a story based loosely on facts but changed somewhat to create composite characters and to add in fictional sub plots for greater depth and good effect. The essence of the main characters has been kept fairly true as I can relate to them from personal experience, although I have fictionalised aspects of their life to fit the storyline. I guess you could say at the end of the day that 2 people and a tragedy inspired my novel. So still not explaining how I got into blogging then lol...just wait a moment...all will be revealed.
I was well into the first few chapters and writing every evening, sometimes for hours on end, when I started having issues with both of my shoulders...diagnosed variously as rotator cuff tendonitis, stiff rotator cuff, inflamed capsular joint and so on. X-rays, ultra-sounds, dexascans later and I was put under the care of a physio. Essentially the condition left me with very painful shoulders and upper arms and severe restriction of movement. On top of this I was also diagnosed with osteoporosis so this started to restrict other forms of exercise that I was allowed to do.
Given that I work all day on a laptop for my day job, I was forced to take a break from writing in the evenings to allow my body some healing time. I have also been under the guidance of a physiotherapist for the better part of a year. It's been pretty horrid, especially having 2 young boys who were used to having a very involved active mom who played cricket and football with them and tossed NFL balls around the backyard.
Finally with a lot of effort, using resistance bands and doing all manner of instructed stretching exercises for short periods of each day but over many many months, my left shoulder is practically back to best. My right shoulder has only just started to show signs of improvement these past 6 weeks with a few new exercises that my physio put me onto as the others were not helping the right side.
So as my left shoulder had improved significantly, and I have been able to start doing a lot more with my kids :-) , I decided it was time to get back to my passion of writing too! I joined a couple of blogging platforms and have tried to write regularly and across a few genres. I read a lot too! I am thoroughly enjoying engaging with fellow authors/curators on these platforms. I figured that if I got into blogging and writing articles, short creative works to share with a likeminded community, that the flow of my writing would start to improve (getting rid of that horrid writer's block!) and I would be able to enjoy pursuing one of my passions again without the pressure or frustrations of having to finish my book just yet, but that it would be a stepping stone to getting back to my novel.
So this blogging started as a means to an end to get me back into the swing of writing so that I could finish my book. However, it has quickly become an end in itself. That is not to say that I won't be going back to my book project at some point (when the right inspiration hits me to continue), but I am enjoying blogging and writing regularly and loving the engagement with the community so much that I have found another creative outlet and home in read.cash, publishoX and proofofbrain. I see myself now as a blogger/author of articles and creative works and will one day finish my book alongside my blogging journey. Both are definitely here to stay!
I was reading an article earlier today on read.cash by @Emily2U about her writing journey and her joy and excitement really does shine through. I think this is such an important thing for passions that we choose to pursue in life: you have to enjoy what you are doing, or you might as well not bother at all. With writing, passion for one's subject matter is what shines through and it is clear to the reader when a writer is just churning out content to meet requirements rather than being actively and passionately engaged in the art of writing, often from personal experience.
Blogging has therefore made a very favourable impact in my life, and in the quality, flow and enjoyment of my writing. It is the act of writing regularly and the positive engagement that I experience from the blogging/writing community that impacts me greatest, and I hope through writing and curating and supporting my fellow bloggers/authors that I can be a positive part of these writing communities, and be part of the impact as well as the impacted :-)
To this end, I am going to try to activate the "sponsorship" table in this post as I have been offered some support in this area. I am also starting to get some improved rewards from "Rusty" the read.cash bot so hopefully I am doing something right in improving my writing. Sorry I called you "Randy" in an earlier comment on somebody else's post, "Rusty". I don't know what I was thinking! lols.
As with all things in life, I plan to pay this forward in due course. This is what community is all about.
Photo credit: [Sourav](https://www.pexels.com/photo/water-droplet-digital-wallpaper-1100946/)
She does like cocoa...
She does like cocoa...
She sits.
Steaming mug.
Froth rising to the lip.
Marshmallows and...
Melting cream.
Powdered art.
She smiles.
She does like cocoa.
He sits.
He waits.
In silence.
A furtive glance,
She shifts,
Uneasy.
Takes a sip.
She does like cocoa.
He sits.
He waits.
In silence.
Why?
Why is he here?
Again?
So close...
Too close.
She seeks escape,
But...
She does like cocoa.
He sits.
He waits.
In silence.
What is that?
Tobacco?
Sandalwood?
She's caught off guard.
She thinks...
She tries so hard.
She finishes her cocoa.
Faded memories
Grip her heart.
He smells...
So good.
She lifts her gaze...
Their eyes meet.
"Mom, it's me Daniel..."
"D-a-n-i-e-l..."
Each letter,
In soft caress.
Thoughtful prose.
Her face soft,
Eyes bright,
Lips parting upwards,
In a smile.
Hands gentle, warm, wrinkled
Safe within his own.
A perfect fit.
He wipes the tears,
Gently from her face.
The moment is theirs alone.
And then,
As quickly,
It is gone.
Forgotten.
She stares,
again.
Restless...
Her eyes dart.
Seeking comfort...
Elsewhere.
Both
Again,
Separate.
Alone.
He pays the bill.
"Same time tomorrow, sir?
"Yes please..."
He looks away,
Swallows hard.
"She does like cocoa."
Photo credit: [Erin](https://www.pexels.com/photo/food-wood-dawn-coffee-7994278/)ood-wood-dawn-coffee-7994278/)
Causality - Start with 'Why?'
Photo credit: Suzy Hazelwood https://www.pexels.com/photo/butterflies-1913226/
Causality, put simply is cause and effect, but is causality deterministic in nature , "always producing the same output from a given starting condition", or can we through choice, change any part of the equation, thereby achieving a different outcome altogether? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deterministic_system
On the face of it, cause leads to effect in mono-directional determinism, such that the effect potentially becomes, in due course, a new cause in itself, creating a new effect or effects down the line, and thereby exhibiting what is known as circular causality.
There is no doubt that in the pure sciences in particular, one can assign clear laws, proofs and theorems. Causality can be seen as 'if this, then that' (deterministic) or 'if that, then probably this preceded it' (probabilistic). Both are valid perspectives of the causal chain and can co-exist. Under certain conditions, the same result will happen over and over again, and we have no power or control over that result. But is it possible for causality not to result in a predetermined outcome, and if so, what is it that needs to change to prevent the predetermined effect from happening?
The answer may lie in an analysis of the variables of the equation. Arguably if a given cause always leads to a predetermined effect then causality is the constant and cause is the only variable that one can change, in order to change the outcome. You cannot expect different results or 'effects' if you keep hitting your head against the same brick wall!
Another option may be to introduce a 2nd or 3rd variable into the equation which serves to counteract, to a greater or lesser degree, the first variable (the cause), so that the outcome (or effect) is thereby changed sufficiently enough, so as to be different.
To this end, a lot of people will be familiar with the The Butterfly effect - the idea that there exists a "sensitive dependence on initial conditions". That a butterfly could flap it's wings on one side of the world and cause a tornado on the other. That one small change can bring about larger consequences in a system. The idea was first postured by Lorentz in 1963, and the phrase later coined by Philip Merrilees in 1972 in his paper 'Does the flap of a butterfly's wings in Brazil set off a tornado in Texas?' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butterfly_effect
The linked Wiki article on The Butterfly Effect states "The butterfly does not power or create the tornado...(but) the flap of the wings is a part of the initial conditions of an interconnected complex web; one set of conditions leads to a tornado, while the other set of conditions doesn't. The flapping wing represents a small change...had the butterfly not flapped its wings, the trajectory of the system might have been vastly different - but it's also equally possible that the set of conditions without the butterfly flapping it's wings is the set that leads to the tornado".
In science, by tweaking the inputs (cause), you change the outputs (effect). By changing the control environment (the initial conditions), you can change the results or effects of an action. Therefore, 'cause' as the variable in causality can be changed to force a different outcome or effect, or at the very least, one could introduce a new variable or remove part of the existing variable to change the outcome. This, arguably, will then result in a different cause with a different effect which could still be seen, in itself, to be deterministic in nature.
If causality is deterministic, and we can change the causal input to result in a different impact, why is this not pursued more regularly and actively in the social and political sciences, and if the cause seems beyond our control, how do we go about achieving a different outcome? It has been postured that causality only remains predetermined, fatalistic even, because we focus too much on the what and how of causality, when our attention should instead be focussing on the why. So instead of focussing on the actual cause and the actual effect, 'if A then B', we should instead seek to understand why cause A occurred, and why effect B results. It is only in understanding the answers to the 'why' question, which in my view demands an analysis of the human state, an analysis of human nature, that we can truly address the deterministic nature of causality and seek to change the direction of causality. To understand the 'why' is to understand what underpins the original choices made that drove the decisions and actions (the cause) which resulted in the said outcomes (effect (s)).
One of the most interesting discussions of causality that I have come across over the years, and which has stuck with me, is actually something that came out of a Hollywood blockbuster film trilogy. The Matrix trilogy created by the Wachowskis , explored a lot of interesting themes around control, freewill and causality. There is a very intriguing conversation in 'The Matrix Reloaded' (Part 2 of the trilogy) that takes place between Neo (the main human character who is heralded as 'The One' who will free humankind from their enslavement by their machine masters) and the Merovingian (a programme created by the matrix which resides within the matrix) in which the Merovingian says to Neo: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wachowskis
"Choice is an illusion, created between those with power, and those without...there is only one constant, one universal. It is the only real truth. Causality. Action, reaction. Cause and effect... Beneath our poised appearance, the truth is we are completely out of control. Causality. There is no escape from it, we are forever slaves to it. Our only hope, our only peace is to understand it, to understand the why. 'Why' is what separates us from them, you from me. 'Why' is the only real social power, without it you are powerless. And this is how you come to me, without 'why,' without power. Another link in the chain."
Source: Merovingian transcript https://scottmanning.com/content/merovingian-matrix-reloaded-transcript/
What he is in effect saying is that causality exists as a constant because free will does not, and if we lack true free will due to the control of others, then our choices are predetermined and causality cannot be escaped. All we can seek to do is understand it; to see beyond the choices that were made, to understand the 'why', otherwise we will simply be reactive to cause and effect, we will empower it and remain slaves to it. We will respond to each cause and effect in turn as they present themselves, becoming another link in the causal chain. If instead we get to the root of the why and understand the why, we may then be able to overcome the control exercised by causality, to change the narrative once and for all. It is in understanding the 'why' that you gain power, and that then helps one to reverse the direction of causality, instead of simply becoming another ripple in the pond, another link in the deterministic linear chain of events in time. In doing so, we may find ourselves no longer destined to make the same mistakes repeatedly.
Whilst writing this, I came across a news article on Skynews.com The Big Thaw which explores and discusses the serious issue of the thawing of the permafrost in the Arctic Circle and the implications that it has for life on Earth. It struck me that climate change being the single most important and biggest challenge to face human kind in the 20th/21st century is a perfect backdrop against which to examine causality, and that the permafrost issue is a perfect example within which to analyse it's application. https://news.sky.com/story/russias-permafrost-is-thawing-and-it-could-make-melting-polar-ice-caps-look-like-a-sideshow-12359940
'The Big Thaw' states that the Permafrost "...is thawing and, as it does, the more than 1,400 gigatonnes of carbon trapped inside (one gigatonne is one billion tonnes) is starting to escape in the form of greenhouse gases, carbon dioxide and methane. Those emissions have the potential to rapidly accelerate global warming, causing the permafrost to thaw faster." The article highlights the seriousness of the issue in that the permafrost contains an estimated 1.5 times the amount of carbon already in the atmosphere.
So where does this example leave us in the examination of causality? Global warming leads to melting permafrost, which in turn leads to release of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, which leads to catastrophic escalation of changes in weather patterns, and an exacerbation of global warming, until humanity meets it's demise? What starts as purely linear and deterministic, rapidly becomes a self perpetuating cycle of cause and effect. The example describes the 'what' and the 'how' of causality. The what is 'the permafrost is melting' and the 'how' is global warming ie: the increase in the Earth's surface temperature results in permafrost temperatures below the surface rising to melting point. It does not examine the real 'why' that lies behind the cause, the why behind global warming, and it is the 'why' that we need to get to grips with if we are to break out of the deterministic chain of doom. If we want to make a difference to the outcome, we have to be prepared to break the chain and go back to challenge the source.
We need to understand why the choices were made that led to Global warming, if we are to have any chance of countenancing it. Why is humankind causing or allowing excessive greenhouse gases to escape into the atmosphere, seemingly unabated, in full knowledge of the devastation that lies ahead? If we can understand this; understand the needs and desires that underpin and drive the activities that ultimately are destroying the planet, understand all the ramifications (effects) in the chain of time that lead from this, then we can gain insight through an understanding of the 'why' behind the choices made by humanity, and we may just become empowered enough to challenge them and plot a different course for humankind.
From the above explorations and illustrations, it does appear that a consistent view abounds: causality simply needs to be understood.
Understanding creates insight. Insight serves to empower. With these two tools in our arsenal, we are then best equipped to enter the fray and ensure the best outcomes or effects in any given scenario through the lens of enlightenment.
Causality...
Which cause will lead?
Which effect will follow?
... You decide.
It all starts with why.
Photo credit Edwin Jaulani https://www.pexels.com/photo/black-dslr-camera-on-start-with-why-by-simon-siner-book-2397736/
@Samantha-Smith
