Stream of Consciousness

I'm going to try an exercise when I just type for 10 minutes with a stream of consciousness. I've always felt that I try to be too precise with words and start to overthink what I want to write. As a result, my message gets convoluted and get caught up in the details of what I'm trying to say. Writing has always been something I enjoyed even though I rarely take the time to hone this skill. I still remember an essay we had to write senior year of high school in Mrs. Barbarics' class. I made an observation about a piece we had to read and she called it out for the class to discuss. The exact details of what we talked about has been forgotten, but she and the class applauded me for the critique and analysis and that has always stayed with me.

Writing is a powerful tool to convey your message and story and I highly respect the writers at the Economist and some of my favorite authors. The Economist itself has a witty tone of humor that has a bias towards a certain goal - I think periodicals shouldn't always get caught up in trying to be objective.

My favorite author is the one that made me start to enjoy reading - Michael Crichton. The first novel I read was in 4th grade when my mom randomly bought me The Lost World. It gave me my first glimpse of where a good book can take you. I've always loved dinosaurs and it gave me my first opportunity to be in the same world as them. Afterwards, I voraciously read as many Crichton books as I could. Sphere is my second favorite of his works and to me it was the first science fiction psychological thriller that I read. Afterwards, I remember being really interested in trying to understand where he got his inspiration from. I read Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World and was pretty disappointed in it. It's just a different type of interest from when that book was written. 

Let's go exploring

If money weren't an issue I would travel the world taking photos of the people and places. My focus would be on the people and how their environment affect them. I would want the audience to think about the clothes they're wearing, the food they're eating, and how they are interacting with their friends and family. I would want to tell stories about how these subjects are half-way around the world but want exactly the same thing you and I want. I would want others to understand that we're not so different from one another if we chose to listen to each other. I would want to start here at home.

Doing the right thing

When is it right to be PC at work and when is the best time to apply pressure on your coworkers? The past couple of days has really put that in perspective. For context, a last minute situation occurred where the legal team forced a team to update their terms of service and for my notifications team to be the distribution channel. This was clearly an overreach in resources, expectations, and more importantly, improper use of my team's products. Because of the pressure applied from the various teams involved, I caved into their demands and was disappointed in myself for not sticking with what I believed to be right. However, my coworker was adamant and pushed back hard and we were able to get the solution that we wanted - eventually. I don't know if I'll ever be comfortable pushing back as hard as he did and question if being adamant (intransigent?) is necessary to be successful at an American company. I do believe that it is important to stick with what you believe in, that's always a great lesson to take away.

News and money

Every morning I wake up and check the news and my brokerage account. I've always believed that it was important to be up to date with what's going on in the world to understand why something is occurring. For example, North Korea is currrently threatening with missiles again and the question really is about "how did we get here?"  The "why" is important but that's just a narrow view of the situation that we got ourselves into now.

Looking at the stock market is different. I've always been interested in it and am thankful my dad taught me to invest early. It made me not fearful of it and to be patient. The "how" is notoriously difficult and a lot of times it doesn't make sense. The most important thing is patience and buying at the right time.