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Survival and Change #1

It was most certainly anti-climactic to emerge from the woods on a cool Sunday morning and walk into a well-appointed campground bustling with car campers making breakfast over Coleman grills and disheveled children wrapped in Disney character blankets, quietly playing with IPads. In that moment of familiarity and habit I almost forgot what I had been doing for the past few days as I picked at the continental breakfast laid out by our instructor to welcome us back to civilization. I wanted a shower, a change of clothes and much more than a grocery store muffin (which I ate anyway). I wanted my foods: the nut butters and trendy high protein "superfoods" I am so used to and have come to expect.   Three days before, I was skinning a garter snake, awkwardly and squeamishly removing its guts, cutting it into one bite-sized piece for each of my classmates and adding it as the main part of a stew made up of pond water, wild garlic, a handful of tadpoles, a slug, a cricket, multipl...
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Starting Over

Reboot of the Blog I'm winding down my Facebook use. That whole destruction of democracy thing weighs on my soul. I know that it's probably impossible to give it up completely. Social media is like oxygen in our disconnected society as well as the general precarity of our jobs. But I am committed to using it less and less and definitely not getting my politics and news from it. So, I'm going to bring this blog back and start using it to corral some of the things that I am reading and share them out. I'll probably set up an email list too for anyone who's interested. I'm sorry that we're having to go back to walled gardens, but between foreign disinformation, surveillance capitalism and generally more challenges to social media use, it's going to have to happen. Even this blog content itself is product that someone is monetizing. I'm going to start using some of this extra time I'm now blessed with to explore alternatives to "free" ...
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Managing Through Plateaus and Disappointment

This is the hardest thing I struggle with. And I struggle with many things. I'm constantly amazed at how feedback (or the lack of it) drastically impacts me. I'm very motivated by positive feedback in general and very demotivated by a lack of feedback. I’m actually slightly less demotivated by feedback poorly given.  So, I take this as a challenge to me. Of course, I can complain about the delivery or quality of the feedback, but it seems more constructive to inoculate myself to it, especially when it comes from those with whom I disagree with or don’t share their perspective. The best feedback comes from those who a) have actually viewed what I've done over time and don't rely on one sample, b) give me meaningful points to build on and finally c) have struggled to build skills themselves versus having some degree of natural aptitude or demonstrating that they indeed need to practice.  But the problem is being too driven by feedback, good or bad. That means you are ...
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