Monthly Archives: May 2020

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…and the beat goes on.

There’s tea in that cup (as I don’t drink coffee). I’ve learned to deal with a non-coffee lifestyle, which is unusual I know, but it has seemed to work out for me. Not going to say it’s easy to get a jumpstart without it, but I prefer not to rely on it.

Was chatting (well, tweeting) with one of my followers (and vice versa) about this morning’s weather outlook. He was sitting on his porch, viewing a light rain, and working on writing his latest book. Me, I got out of bed at 5:30, prayed, showered, had my Bible devotional and prayed. Followed by a bagel with cream cheese, a quick check of the socials, some bill pay, and a notice that my first meeting of the morning is being pushed back thirty minutes. No complaints there.

it’s overcast here, as we had some rain overnight. I really like overcast mornings – there’s a certain type of tranquility that lends itself nicely to them. To the right of me is a double window that overlooks my backyard and my neighbors as well. It’s been a constant view for ten weeks now, working from home.

Today will be another quiet day. Outside of work tasks, there are somethings I’ve timeblocked on today’s calendar. I hope to accomplish them.

That said, I’ll hop off here for now. I hope your day is prosperous, safe, and in the midst of all that’s continually going on in this world, a lot that’s seems so heavy, I also hope you day is enjouyable.

Peace.

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Tech’s ‘n Effect

For those of you who didn’t catch the play on words in the blog post title, but are curious, the hint correlates to a well known R&B group from the 90’s, not just the subject of this post.

Though its four months later and 49 degs warmer right now, it is 11:55pm. After a long workday (even working from home), tonight we celebrated my son’s high school graduation.

As many are, during this pandemic, the usual gathering of friends and family was all for naught due to you-know-what. What was truly awesome in the midst of this was how, his school, the faculty, staff (of which my daughter is one of them), students, and parents managed to turn this into a joyous occasion.

As with all schools, they have been closed for the last few months and classes have been completed virtually. The process for preparing for a graduation ceremony to a great deal of planning, but was followed up by flawless execution. Being as though my son’s graduating class is very small, last week the process was to have two families come to the school, in thirty minute intervals so that each student can walk across the stage, receive his or her diploma, take the usual pictures with the headmaster (principal) of the school and family, then head home. That whole process took 20 mins. Only immediately family was allowed (because it was most likely the case that said family had no one suffering from COVID-19 symptoms), thus no family members who didn’t live in the household, or friends, were aloud.

Many of the activities you would see at a graduation – faculty speakers, valedictorian and salutatorian speeches, musical selections, etc, were all pre-recorded or provided by archived video. When all was said and done, each aspect of the graduation was coordinated together, in sequence, and streamed via Zoom. The Zoom link was provided to family and friends, weeks before, and from the beginning of the graduation exercise until the closing, it was as if you were watching a ceremony on TV.

Despite the necessity of conducting the entire event virtually, it was a seamlessly executed, blessed event. I, for one, am glad to see where advent of internet technology has taken us and allowed this Class of 2020 graduation to be a grand success in the midst of what is currently being called the “new normal”.

Have a safe weekend.

Fresh.

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Excursions and Immersions.

Greetings all.

It’s been a while since I actually composed a blog post that wasn’t technically oriented (I believe the last such one was about going to see Jeff Lorber in concert, last October or so). That said, I mentioned in a recent Twitter post, that with the ubiquity of “instant” social media platforms like Twitter and Instagram, blogging can (for non-professional bloggers like myself) can easily fall by the wayside. The other have of that tweet mentioned that I started blogging in 2007, and I miss the aspect of self-publishing from “my own garden”.

Well, we are all currently dealing with the global pandemic known as COVIC-19. Some like to refer to this as the “new normal”, a colloquial term, which is all well and fine. There are some things that from the “old normal” that are not present and I don’t mind making sacrifices for at this point, the thing that’s most bothersome today essential fall into two buckets for me. The first is the overall inconvenience of things. I don’t have a great deal of heartburn dealing with them but, nonetheless, they are here for the immediate future.

The second thing is more annoying and aggravating by far – that is having to deal with those who refuse to make, what I tend to think are, simple sacrifices like maintaining physical distancing and not following the CDC guidelines for wearing a mask while in contact with others. What that simply tells me is that you have no regards for your own life, in the midst of ALLLLL that is continually being reported about rising case numbers and deaths, which means you have no regards for my life. I’m going to leave my opinion regarding that in the last sentence before this.

I got out in the gorgeous weather today and was driven around town by my son, who is trying to get the requisite number of hours in to get his driver license. Considering the pandemic, I’m not sure that will happen anytime soon, but nevertheless, the hours have to be logged. We’re approaching summer and I’m glad, but it will obviously be a summer like none I’ve ever experienced. One thing I’ll say, this current situation has seemingly added extra time in my life for different things. One of them has been, what I like to call “introspection under quarantine”. I’ve seen a number of social media posts basically saying that when the pandemic passes, we don’t need to “go back to normal, because normal wasn’t working”. While it’s clear that when it’s said “back to normal”, that means the non-pandemic life. I get that, however there is, to me, a lot to consider in the message of such social media posts. I’m striving for a non-pandemic lifestyle, through the introspection I have been doing, that will exceed the pre-pandemic. Did a pandemic have to come along to drive me to that decision? No, however here we are. In the end it should always be about pressing forward and for the better, no matter what challenges arise. Easier said than done? Surely, but it’s “by all means, necessary”.

Hope you and yours are well.

Best,

Fresh.