Tag: value

Inflation – 1st February 2024

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ Leave a comment

You can’t keep your dreams under a mattress
Where they’ll be surely forgotten and flat
They have value worthy of investment
There’s really nothing better than that

First line appropriated and the rest inspired by a thought from David Elikwu’s newsletter

Today I’m feeling:

I woke up tired but was able to easily plough through my abs workout because I had things on my mind. I feel a little in and out of depression too but it’s very vague and dissipates quickly. I think some days I wonder if what I’m doing is actually worthwhile. It happens.

Today I’m grateful for:

Nancy and Aob at TLC for helping me get my visa sorted out since I forgot to get the re-entry permit last October!  Despite the hard time they give me and the amount of money they make off me I still appreciate what they’ve done to help fix this.

The best thing about today was:

Getting another year’s stay in Thailand with my new visa.  Though whilst I was sitting there watching the officer stamp and shuffle papers I started to brood on the fact of how much longer am I going to go through this annoying process. Tomorrow I’ll probably forget about all this until next November when I’ll have to start preparing for the next application again.

What was out of your control today and how did you handle it?

I got the message that next week I have to help in the Primary school for Scout week.  It probably will be pretty easy but not as preferable as doing nothing, or even as a regular workweek. Still, a change can be good.

Something I learned today?

From The Jimmy Dore Show on YouTube:

The Internet was abuzz recently after MSNBC host Joy-Ann Reid, while showing a video of Joe Biden, was caught by a “hot mic” revealing her true feelings about Biden by saying “… starting another fucking war.” 

Of course, Reid would never have intentionally said anything so overtly anti-Biden on the air, so she was forced to apologize, although she only mentioned having dropped the “f word.”

Review your acts, and then for vile deeds chide yourself, for good be glad. — Discourses 3.10

As I passed Rista after class on the third floor of building six I saw that she had some rubbish to throw away. As I already had my coffee cup to take to the bin I offered to take hers too for which she gave her appreciation.

25 THINGS ABOUT LIFE I WISH I HAD KNOWN 10 YEARS AGO –  10. Pick an Industry, Not A Job. If you want to become good at something, you need to spend years and years doing that. You can’t do that if you hop from industry to industry. Pick an industry you love and start at the bottom. You will find the perfect role for you eventually.

 It seems kind of incomprehensible to me that I would ever have a choice of the kind of work or job I would do.  When I left school at sixteen any job was considered good and a starting point.  There were also more jobs available back then too.

When I started my first long-term job it wasn’t something that I was particularly interested in (electrical wholesale) but I did enjoy the hard work when I was a storeman and did work my way up to be the buyer.  I wasn’t interested in progressing any further though, which would’ve meant becoming a manager.

With the opportunity of moving to Australia, I discovered an interest in computing (beyond just playing video games) and was able to spend a year or so studying for that. Then I got in at a low level and worked my way up and sideways for the next 18 years.  Once again I was not interested in (or offered) a management role.

While working an office job I knew one thing and that was that I loved coffee!  After getting laid off it was a simple step to take courses learning to be a barista or bartender and I got into making coffee until injury stopped me short.

Moving to Thailand then forced me to make the decision to become a teacher because there are only a few things that a foreigner is allowed to do here for work.  With each change of job or industry, I’ve always pushed myself to work hard to learn what I can about it.  Teaching has really tested me but when I get it right I do love what I’m doing.

As I mentioned above though, there are times when I am unsure of myself and can’t balance the effort-to-reward ratio properly in my head.

I feel that the idea of this question is a little privileged.  Many, maybe even most people, don’t have choices a lot of the time and just have to take the opportunities that they can get.

Poetry is Useless – 30th June 2021

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ Leave a comment

I like this quote from Michael Longley (a poet) – courtesy of Rob Walker’s Art of Noticing newsletter:

“One of the marvelous things about poetry is that it’s useless. It’s useless. ‘What use is poetry?’ people occasionally ask, in the butcher shop, say. They come up to me and they say, ‘What use is poetry?’ And the answer is, ‘No use.’ 

“But it doesn’t mean to say that it’s without value. It’s without use, but it has value. It is valuable. 

“And the first people that dictators try to get rid of are the poets and the artists, the novelists and the playwrights. They burn their books. They’re terrified of what poetry can do. … Poetry encourages you to think for yourself.”

The picture is from the Drawn and Quarterly book by Anders Nilsen ‘Poetry is Useless’ – I’d like to read that one day!

25th Mar 2024 – Although I didn’t really write much myself here I submitted this to the Living Poetry page.

Return Voyage

All the striving, the work, the living
Has brought me to my lifelong dream
What now that I have nothing to be giving
Just floating by, on my way downstream
What for me? A challenge, just because?
The journey is far better than the arrival
A brain stimulation, a stress all a-buzz
Life – is it anything more than my survival?
A challenge now I must myself set
To instil my life with some meaning
I’ve found myself before and never forget
I must no longer neglect my dreaming
A journey like this may only be complete
On return to the place that I came
Those from which I ran in defeat
Though I know I will never return the same

Gratitude Journal

I am so happy and grateful to the colony of ants that ingeniously built a huge nest behind our washing machine without us noticing. It’s amazing to see – they bought in bits of mud to build the nest, millions and millions of tiny pieces to make a huge pile in the corner. Unfortunately for them, we are going to remove it this afternoon!