Valued Blog Post of the Week!

I’m giving myself a writing challenge for the next three months. I will pick a personal value as part of a writing exercise as an experiment to see how the topic affects my daily stress level.

All are welcome to join in my weekly writing prompt experiment.

Friday write-in

Picking a personal value

“Pick one value and write about it for ten minutes. Describe why this value is important to you. Write how you express this value in your everyday life, including what you did today.”[1]

https://www.flickr.com/photos/pictoquotes/21318580630 — Image courtesy of creative commons license via Flickr.com by Unsplash

Acceptance – the quality or state of being accepted or acceptable

Recognition

Approval

Tolerance

Acknowledgment

Belief

Credence

Toleration

Favorable reception

We all have specific values that have become a part of our personality over the years. Those values are not something that I have given much thought to until recently. One of my values is acceptance. We all like to feel like we belong or accepted by our community, school, or workplace. If not, then questions begin to surface as to why we continue to engage in that setting. But why would I decide that acceptance is a part of who I am?

I have this habit, and I’m sure it bugs the hell out of my co-workers, where I will greet everyone I see no matter how many times we cross paths during the day. I can see the same person ten times within an hour and feel the compulsion to say hi or hello each time. Like I say, this has become more of a habit than a need and developed after working in the retail setting for over five years. The habit has become part of my nature.

Acceptance does matter in other ways. When I enter a room, it is nice to know that those who are there will acknowledge my presence and not completely ignore the fact that I exist. A simple hi or hello suffices.

But I am not without tolerance. I have a high tolerance level for most people, places, and situations which brings me back to acceptance. Accepting something is admitting the situation, person, or location can’t be changed and is beyond control.

So, if you don’t want to say hi, I can tolerate your choice and will accept that this is who you are and we both don’t have the same values.

Acceptance is more than a personal greeting. It is a belief in one’s self and approval for our actions, building on credence that leads to trusting of the self and others.

Note

[1] (McGonigal 2016, 72)

Reference

McGonigal, Kelly. The Upside of Stress. New York: Avery, 2016.

670px-a_small_cup_of_coffee-1

I have no complaints.

The holidays are here and before we know it, the New Year will be here. I am looking to 2018 to be another great year. 2017 ushers out one of my most significant accomplishments to date. I received notification that I will be attending my first graduation since 1983. May of 2018, I will be given my Business Associates degree. For the past 30 years I have wanted a college degree, and now I am finally getting one. But I’m not stopping at the Associate level. I am continuing on with my education and should have my Bachelor’s degree by 2019.

Last summer, at the direction of my student advisor, I applied for the Business Plus program which will put me in the Master’s program immediately following the Bachelor degree.

My next accomplishment was Stats.

I passed Statistics. That class was hard, like Calculus for Business. It wasn’t my favorite class though toward the end, it became interesting. I will never look at a bar graph the same way ever again.

NaNoWriMo – only made 4k words this year.

Stalled but not forgotten. I did learn how to use Scrivener. Outlining is easier, and I can now format my books utilizing this program. I have not worked on the work in progress in the past few weeks. I will confess that I took my vacation week of leisure to play World of Warcraft. I now have my demon hunter at level 110 but not yet high enough gear to take part in any raid events.

I still have a list of books to read too. This month’s book of the month is still not been read. I’m half-way there only because there never seems to be enough time in a day to do all the things I want to do and now entering the holiday season time becomes even shorter.

In 2018, I would love to finish the first draft of at least one work in progress. It is a doable goal if I can keep myself from being distracted by video games and Netflix.

I would have a major dilemma if GRR Martin published his next book of the Game of Thrones. That would be one more item on my to-do list and to read pile.

Keelaa

Out cute fur child misses her big sister. I don’t think she knows where Julie got off to. She may not even know that she has died. Sometimes she sits outside waiting, hoping she will come back home. The plan is to have her leave Santa a letter this year asking for a female kitten as a new companion. She is more partial to cats than other dogs. During her first year, her best friend was a 20-year-old cat named Gracie who has also passed on to that great beyond.

This Term Classes are:

Accounting 2 –

This class is the continuation of the first Accounting class from a year ago. I am stunned to discover how much of the first accounting class I did retain. So far, Accounting 2 is much easier than Accounting 1.

I am getting much handier at putting excel spreadsheets into Microsoft documents.

Race and Ethnic Relations

Interesting topic –

How diverse is your city?

Well, my sleepy little town is not very diverse as far as race and ethnicity. I believe the community is about 98% white, maybe even higher, but if you travel across the border into the state of Massachusetts, which is a half an hour drive away, you will find that the city of Fitchburg has quite the mix of race and ethnic diversity.