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Reading a book and the OJ case just came up, in a fiction book. Reminded me how that event was a big part in my life. NOT that the event was, what was going on IN MY LIFE , it just coincided with the OJ case.

In June of 1994 I was living and working in Southwest Michigan, WHFB was in Benton Harbor and we lived in Stevensville Twp., MI. The information highway was being built, but it was going slow. I found out on the morning of June 13, 1994 that there had been a murder and OJ’s name was involved somehow.

At the time my daughter was dealing with left over remnants of JRA, pain and testing were the norm. We had already made the decision to move, to move to Florida, that was not going well…

Imagine, October 3, 1995. The day that OJ was acquitted. What has taken place in that year and 4 months.

I found 2 partners. We bought a radio station in Ocala Florida. We moved the family to Ocala. My brother in law was in a jet ski accident, the Friday before Father’s Day 1995, and now was a quadriplegic.(Ironically we closed on the radio station the same day) I was about to turn 40, 4 days from then.

October 3, 1995

That day was quite remarkable in itself. I received a call at the office that the little chickens my daughter had bought for a project had got out and were running all around the porch behind our house. I went home from the office to take care of the situation, and did so, with A LOT of frustration. Somehow, while handling this chickadee caper, I locked myself out of the house with the keys inside. I figured out a way to crawl through a window and get back in, not an easy chore.

I decided to make some lunch and flipped on the TV, only ONE thing was on, OJ TRIAL. Verdict coming down, NOT GUILTY! I finished up lunch and needed to get back to the office. While stopped at the entrance/exit to our neighborhood, waiting to turn left, a car driven by a very young lady, crashed into the front of my white Toyota Camry. Destroyed! Nobody hurt, she was shook up and understandably so. We waited for her dad, the police and an ambulance to get there, she needed to be checked out, I was fine. I called my insurance company and the dealership that I was leasing the car from, I had it for less than a week. So this was my day.

Work

Chickadees

Locked out

Window crawling

OJ acquitted

Car crash

Like I said, the OJ Trial had a part of my life, just all in the timing…

So many years ago, and today as I write this, Trump is indicted … oh the irony or lack thereof…maybe that is a subject matter for another day. Sometimes it is just good to get your thoughts out and let them hover for a few moments…down the road, they will be forgotten just like so many other things AND people…

Be your best always,

Bob

I was sitting on a friend’s porch sipping a coke and talking golf. I could not help to notice that the physical nature of the porch had changed from when I was over last. Just three weeks ago we had enjoyed watching a replay of the 2005 Tiger Woods, Master’s victory, now that television was gone. What happened? I asked. “Mel thought it looked better this way” Mel being Melissa, my friends’ wife.

Look better? My friend’s house backs right up to forest, a piece of land that can NEVER be built on due to zero access to the property…NOBODY will ever see this unless they are invited over and in the 14 years that they have lived here, I am one of the few that have come over. I wonder why?

Practical or image, what are your thoughts?

I know people that wear clothes that are two sizes too small. Why? So they can tell others they wear a size __! Imagine that, to live in misery so that someone else thinks you are a size ___? You do not fool them, they see it…

Another one that I see at times is furniture. People will have the most uncomfortable furniture in their house that never gets used, but it looks nice. Even if you have a lot of company, how many hours are they going to spend at your house in a month? 5 hours? More? Less? You LIVE in that house every day! Why not have comfortable furniture? That is being practical. People want that image, I should say, SOME people want that image.

I was visiting a client, potential client, within their home a couple of weeks ago. Beautiful! Absolutely beautiful, PLUS it was spotless, fantastic image and it looked LIVED IN or practical… Now that couple had it all.

What happens when the subjects are not “Things” and it is our “Thoughts” or “Who” we are that is being manipulated. Can people put on an “Image” so that others think they are different than who they really are?

Sure! AND THEY DO!

Social media is full of the IMAGERY of a person. The “Making of” someone from what they are to who they wished they were…

What are some of the areas that people like to hide their true TRUTH of who they are?

Age, you know it, they dress, get adjustments, use creams, coloring, yes indeed, there are many ways that we invest, purchase and endure pain just in order to look younger. The best way is to take care of yourself. To buy a gym membership and use it. Eat healthy, drink in moderation and work out…but that is too hard for some, so they let it slide, dress different, get the injection or just go for the full overhaul.

Money! Again, you got it. Run that debt until it cannot be run anymore. Yes, we can afford one more credit card we only have 16 now. That fifth mortgage on mom and dad’s old property should net us another 20k, I already told the kids we are not leaving them anything. Well, maybe a bill or two…(Good spot for canned laughter) Imagery is BIG in the money world, right? Success, wealth…yes sir, go ahead and buy that 16-year-old a brand-new Porsche Cayenne, nobody else will be looking down at her again! We do it, yes, we do.

Happy?!?! I cannot figure it out, ? or ! which should I use? Oh, so many people walk through life with a ball and chain around their neck and do not have the guts to unhook it. You see them in public, seemingly happy, THAT again is what they WANT people to think. misery is not fun and it is not something that you want to advertise.

We could have some fun with this one and maybe it will be a topic on the podcast. Get two or three other people in and we could really run this one up and down for an hour!

Here is the reality and why I write it.

LIVE YOUR LIFE.

Do you want to be an imagery person, be it. Do you want to be practical, be it! Do you want to be a little of both, then do it. It is your life. I believe you will be the happiest and most satisfied when you live a life that is more on the transparent side of the issue. Putting on a front for others only leaves you with a false sense of being. Really, a fictional character that you have built and that most of the time, cannot be maintained.

Nothing here to read…just out of my mind on a Monday Moaning! Get it? Today was MONDAY MORNING…MOANING? Oh, let it go…

Enthusiastically,

Bob

This morning I took a short walk out my back door and onto the 12th fairway of the golf course we live on. The sun was bright, the cool crisp 35-degree air nipped at my ear lobes. I strolled up the green grass, yes the grass is green here in Georgia and took in the surroundings of the course. Not a soul in site and the only sound was the cars in the distant traveling north and south on I-75. I was not thinking about the game of golf, I was just taking a few minutes to connect with nature and the beauty of the moment. As I walked back up the hill to our yard, I could not help but to chuckle over the fact that nobody was on the course. You see, I lived most of my years in Michigan, and if we had a morning like this in March, where you could see the grass, the sun was out bright and the temps over 35, the golf courses would have been bustling with players. Office buildings would be short a member or two and there would be business being done at the course.

Why is it that I would have no interest to even think about playing a round of golf in this weather in Georgia, yet in Michigan, I would have been one of the first ones to get a group together to play?

We get so used to our surrounding environment that we shift our ways of life. We get spoiled by things that we take for granted and forget the obstacles that we once dealt with happily in other places. The things that could not hold us back in once place become stifling in another. The same goes for the culture in your office.

During my years in radio, I worked in many different markets, many different stations and of course, many different cultures. There were positive, negative, sales oriented, program-oriented, and some that were a mixture of both. I had General Managers who were brought up through the ranks of being a disc-jockey and those that came out of sales. Each one brought a new and different approach and in turn, we had to be flexible. The key to longevity and success was being able to navigate through the different environments.

In my world today, in Dale Carnegie, I get to listen to our participants talk about their work environments, their obstacles of navigation. The stories can be joyous or heartbreaking, though some handle both ends better than others. We know that employee engagement is driven by three major points, your relationship with your supervisor, your belief in senior leadership and the pride one has in the organization. Now even if you click on all three it is not a guarantee of strong employee engagement, ultimately that is up to the individual. What it does do is help to create an atmosphere that is conducive to positive employee engagement.

Culture is defined as, the set of shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices that characterizes an institution or organization.

Work Culture…how is yours?

There really is no direction to this piece, no purpose or intent, at least not at the beginning. I am not writing to try to be witty, clever or seem intelligent. I just sit here, December 17, 2020, with a few minutes before a zoom meeting and I had a desire to empty my brain of thought, in a manner that the thoughts climb in, I am trying to shoo them out…

The year was interesting, if I tried to explain it to someone that had passed away years ago, they would think that I went off the deep end. I was thinking, imagining if you will, that I was talking with my mom and dad and they asked me how the year has been like they used to ask me how my day was. Dad left us in 2012 and mom in 2016, so of course they would not understand nor do I think they could even imagine what I was sharing. I would not know even where to start.

“Well, work has been interesting, no or little income now for over 8 months. Why? Well Covid had a lot to do with it. Covid? Oh, you do not know what Covid is? We had a pandemic, yep you heard me right, a pandemic. China, it started in China. We all wear masks now, that’s right, masks.”

Can’t you just imagine THAT conversation and where it would lead! LOL

February was a trying month. My middle sister had fallen in January and had been in the hospital for a long time. She had broken, and virtually destroyed, her left leg. They tried with all their will to save it, but on Valentine’s Day of 2020, it was amputated. Friday February 14, she endured hours of surgery while doctors took her leg above the knee. As I sat in her room she shared with me pictures that our niece had sent her of my oldest sister, her mother. When I saw the pictures, I immediately called my nephew.

My oldest sister had been fighting cancer for over a year, I had seen her at my daughter’s wedding the previous September and she seemed to be on the road to recovery. She had a setback in January that she described as minor, and we spoke often and her spirits were high. When I saw the photos I was devastated and knew the end was near. I called my nephew and told him to get on the road and go see his mom. He arranged his world to get there and arrived on February 18, an hour or so after he got there, she passed.

I had been driving to class that Tuesday, session 6 of the Dale Carnegie Course in Valdosta, GA., my phone rang and it was my nephew telling me she was gone. It was just before 5 and I was on the exit ramp getting ready to turn left and go to class, she is gone. Had a great session, nobody knew, until the end of the night. The next week we have an inspirational talk to give and the class asked me for an example, at that moment the most inspirational person I knew was my sister and her courage, so I shared it.

The rest of the year would be dominated by words like Covid, pandemic, recession, elections, impeachment, shutdown and such.

Typical of what this year is, I received a call in the middle of this writing time, which took me away for a bit and now I have to go to the zoom call, so finishing this up might take another day or two. That in a nutshell is the year 2020… Be back in a bit, or maybe I won’t.

Bob

Digging deep into my memory this morning I was able to come up with some strong feelings about those days of living in Michigan and experiencing the different phases of a snowy day. From the freshly fallen snow to the matted down leftover frozen ground snow.

While watching a show on television they had a picture of a snow-covered yard somewhere in Minnesota. Immediately my mind rolled back 30-40-50 years to days of my youth of snow-covered days. The cold, the smell, the way the tire tracks were almost like ice.

I think of the freshly fallen snow, like powder. We would get 10-12 inches and then we would go out and play in it. Not the kind of snow that you make a snowman, just the kind that finds a way into places it is NOT supposed to be and places you do not WANT it to be. Like over the top of your boots and into the boot itself. Or under the bottm of your glove and into the palm of your hands. COLD!

I can remember frozen fingers on my gloves, the tips were just frozen, icy. The bottoms of your jeans would get a crust of ice, right where the top of your boot, your socks and skin all came together. That ice would seem to migrate into areas that were unprotected, bringing a sensation that is hard to describe.

Sometimes memories come from the most unusual places.