Old & Opinionated

May 25, 2025- Sunday Are you a trust first or a trust last person? Try trusting others a little more at hello and you’ll usually get a like response.   When I first meet people, I take them at face value .  I assume what I see is what you get with them. Through my life, I have found that to be fair .  I have also found I was wrong many times .  Mostly wrong to the negative but not always .  When I first meet people, I adm it to being somewhat gullible . A person can easily sell themselves to m e .  I have tried to learn from the phrase, “You can’t judge a book by its cover.” In the beginning of a relationship, I try to give the person every benefit of a doubt. I think that is fair .  That is the type of reception I hope to receive .  However, I limit my trust to a minimal level at the beginning .  I won’t provide any information I wouldn’t mind being public. If someone begins to trust me, I am more likely to begin to broaden my trust in...

March 18, 2025- Tuesday   “ Live what you believe...” Live the questions first, then what you believe...Then you have your own person style. What’s your personal style?   My personal style has changed over the years and that may not be that unusual for people.  One of my key “styles” was to be diplomatic.   I think it is a style because it is something that I think has applied to all season s of my life. I learned to be diplomatic when I was a kid because I learned it was a way to avoid harsh punishment from my parents. I also learned in my junior high and high school years, being diplomatic helped me to avoid rejection which is my number on fear in life. Being diplomatic paid en ormous dividends for me professionally in more ways and more situations than I could ever remember.   I am also usually calm. I may be stressed and anxious on the inside, but I stay calm on the outside. I also think I have a casual style in most situations.   I remember as a yo...

  May 15, 2025- Thursday The Topic is “I am Good at what I Love .  I don’t love all that I’m good at.”   This subject is one of great conflict for me .  I spent 40 years as a Registered Nurse .  This i s the profession I know God wanted me in.  I had the people skills needed to work with patients in need .  I was equipped with good critical thinking skills to respond well in emergent situations or compl ex situations .  As a healthcare manager, I worked as a servant leader and created positive work environments which I know was all part of my mission .  I always had very low turnover rates in my departments .  I was very good at it .  For the majority of the time, I didn’t like it .  I hated the corporate environment and all the use less corporate games, and I could not get out of the profession fast enough. I found ways to tolerate the profession and ended up in IT which helped my tolerance, but I have not missed an...

May 6, 2025- Tuesday Question: Kowing who we are is hard.  The Process of elimination is the first step. Who am I not.   I do think it is interesting to look at yourself as what you are not versus who you are.  I don’t think I am your usual male.   I’m not interested in a lot of machismos .  I halfway joke about being a Renaissance man , but I don’t feel you have to strut around and be mean to people to prove you’re a man.  I don’t like nor use rough language.   I’m also not stup id by any means but I also don’t always see all the angles of all situations.  I know I didn’t fully apply myself when I was in school and that has hampered me throughout life.   I’m not a jerk.   I think that is important because so many people think th ey need to be a jerk to get what they want.   I’m not confrontational because that just alienates people.   Very little gets done positively with confrontational situations.   I’m...

  May 3, 2025- Saturday One thought I recently read was this, "Knowing the truth, seeing the truth, and telling the truth, are all different experiences.  Truth is a moving target in our world today.  People portray their perspectives on subjects or situations as truth when it is actually just their own opinions.  Many problems have more than one solution but, based on a person's worldview, it becomes truth to them. Sometimes this becomes an absolute truth to them.  There was a time in our society when people depended on the news media for the truth in different situations. Those days are gone. Those running the news media outlets today are working to shape the public's opinion on topics, which usually means they are presenting a half-truth. Lester Hold of NBC News said they did not have to report both sides of an issue, they just had to report the truth. Interpreted, that means the truth as he and NBC wants it to be.  Again, after watching many, many hours...

May 2, 2025- Friday I was raised independently.  We lived in west Texas when I was a kid so there was a lot of time spent outside, and it was a safe environment.  My dad was rarely around, and my mom did not spend much time checking on me.  I basically had the run of the small town of 10,000. So, the real question is how did I learn to be a productive adult in the world without adult or parental guidance?  First and foremost, the grace of God.  I am convinced God knew I was operating at a deficit, so the Holy Spirit intervened on my behalf. I began to be sensitive to how other adult did work with their kids.  I learned by trial and error what type of behavior was well received by others and what was not. I listened and learned from the Sunday School teachers I had and what I learned from basic Biblical principles and how to apply those principles on a daily basis.  When I was a teenager, I began to learn from people I worked with.  Sometimes this ...

May 1, 2025- Thursday We all ask ourselves questions, let's make sure we answer them.  This was a topic posed to me.  I've never been very good at asking questions. My first problem with asking questions is that I don't always think about them in the course of a conversation.  I usually have to review a conversation or a subject and analyze the information and that is where I come up with questions.  The other factor I am aware of about asking questions is that many times I simply do not care enough about the situation or the subject to ask questions.   Yet another reason why I do not ask enough questions is that I'm afraid to ask dumb questions. There are those people who say there are no dumb questions.  That is inherently wrong. We see that on almost every sporting event televised in the inane questions the sideline reporters ask players after games. It is embarrassing to me to ask dumb questions because I know what kind of lasting impression that l...