There was a time after college where I lived in an efficiency apartment in a historic building from around 1900. It had a beautiful facade and an open lobby with a visible staircase and one, narrow elevator. The elevator had an old diamond pattern sliding door that you had to manually open and close. The elevator was very slow - about as slow as taking the stairs. It vibrated enough that it would often cause that gate to open a bit, causing the elevator to stop. You learned to hold a foot against the gate after it was jarred loose and stopped you between floors a few times. The halls were narrow, as were the doors. It has steam heat and radiators that would knock loudly, and on cold nights the regulator valve would hiss like an angry snake or dissatisfied theater goer all night long. The single pane, metal sash, casement windows radiated cold in the winter and let bugs in during the summer due to a lack of screens. The single room had a tiny four burner stove with an oven too small for...
Congratulations! You made it through another year! I would say more, but LinkedIn learning courses have taught me the art of delegation. So, congratulate yourself and take a moment, a one-on-one moment if you will, to really appreciate and praise your accomplishments. While it is impressive that you survived another year, the most impressive part is that you did it as part of a team! Too bad they don’t give out Certificates of Completion for enduring another year, amiright? It doesn’t matter how you did it, it just matters that it’s done. Maybe you survived the year of work through the judicious use of the mute button during meetings. Maybe you had your mouse taped to an oscillating fan to keep your activity status in the green. Maybe you kept your opinions to yourself. Maybe you set your indicator to Do Not Disturb in Microsoft Teams as the default. Maybe you kicked ass and took names this year, which admittedly is a little weird that you would take someone else’s name. Most people ha...
When I was growing up and going to college in Western and Central Pennsylvania, it was not uncommon to see railroad boxcars occasionally dotting the landscape. I'm not talking about the little red caboose that might sit at an old, defunct railroad terminal in some small town. I'm talking about the big rectangular box cars, usually wooden, with the big sliding doors, sitting on the old rusted frame with metal wheels. And they weren't sitting on some abandoned rail line. Most of the time they were in a field, or a gully along a stream bed, or simply in the yard of some farmhouse. I always thought about "The Boxcar Children" series of books that I read as a child from my elementary school library whenever I would pass one. Another thing that was talked about quite a bit in movies and in the classroom when I was young was the hobo movement. Another societal group living, even temporarily, in boxcars. I used to fantasize about running away and traveling the country as ...
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