"The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People"

Do you believe in signs?

I do. Sometimes. Within the past month all signs have pointed to me reading this book: My mother in law offered me a copy from her book collection, my Amazon wishlist recommends this to me a lot, AND in organizing my own book shelf I found TWO copies of this book. TWO!!! One literally dropped from the higher shelf and hit me on the head
What gives?

So I got the hint and started reading. One of the copies I found at home was old: yellow, fragile pages withering away.
The other copy is much newer and nicer.
I started reading only to find out that I must have attempted reading this book before as it was highlighted in my usual multi-color system.

I believe the mind is only able to accept profound information when it's ready. You can't force it.
I guess it must be the time for me to give this book a solid try.

Thus far I like it. It makes sense. It kind of articulates things I have found for a long time to be true but had not bee able to solidify into words.

In case you are wondering:

The first habit is To be Proactive. Don't let life "happen" to you, grab it by the horns and take reign.
Accept responsibility, take action.

It's so easy to blame circumstances beyond our control for the sad state of our lives.

Take responsibility and change whatever things you have control over. Don't worry about the rest.

"The fountain of content must spring up in the mind, and he who hath so little knowledge of human nature as to seek happiness by changing anything but his own disposition, will waster his life in fruitless efforts and multiply the grief he proposes to remove" ~ Samuel Johnson.

The 48 Laws of Power

The "48 Laws of Power" by Robert Greene was recommended to me recently.

This book is a 500 page anthology of all things power: history, politics, rhetoric, literary references, philosophy. You name it, it's there.

This book is a compilation of ruthless means to achieve the end of total domination. Means that have worked since virtually the beginning of times and that will, according to the author, continue to be effective ways to gain control.

Honestly, the books scares me a little in its amoral approach. HOWEVER, recently being faced with dirty little tricks from evil co-workers far more apt at manipulation that I; this book comes as quite an eye opener of what is being used against me.

This book quotes classic notables such as The Art of War, Machiavelli's The Prince, Nietzsche, Shoppenhauer, Cicero et all. Basically, it borrows from virtually all the usual suspects in a power game and draws out generalities (called "rules" in this book) and then backs them up with historical references.

Rule #1 is:

* Never Outshine the Master

Simple enough, huh?

Rule #7 is sleazy:

* Get others to do the work for you, but always take the credit.

OK. this one is dishonest and wrong. YET, it explains why I've been subjected to such unfair practices at work. At least this lets me know what to look out for.

I guess after a certain point you no longer work in an environment of idyllic collaboration. It's a cut throat work place and those who don't play the game (or at least know how to maneuver) end of a collateral.

Sad. Sad but true.

Had I only learned this crap earlier, I would have been less open to manipulation. But maybe I wasn't ready to absorb this "stuff" then. I probably wouldn't have believed such bull to exist in MY world.

Anyhow, another notable reference this book makes repeatedly is to a Spaniard called Baltazar Gracian.

Honestly, prior to this book I hadn't heard of him (pardon my ignorance) But I intend to read one or two of his pieces very soon.

His quotes intrigue me...

I also want to re-read The Prince. I read it in High School, but my mind was way to untarnished to grasp its validity.

Anyhow, the bottom line: Is this a good book? Kind of. It's a good compilation of ideas. It can expose the reader to a variety of famous pieces. But the author does not seem to come up with any original ideas of his own. He simply manipulated his way into publishing a "national bestseller"

Shocking!

Happy prances through a field of grass...

(That's what I would title the above picture)
Work by High Modernist architect Charles Gwathmey

Food for Thought

"Immerse people in universal and extreme situations which leave them only a couple of ways out, arrange things so that in choosing the way out they choose themselves, and you've won--the play is good." Jean Paul Sartre, Sartre on Theather

La Prensa Amarilla

yellow journalism (is defined) in terms of five characteristics:

* scare headlines in huge print, often of minor news

Image via CrunchBase

* lavish use of pictures, or imaginary drawings
* use of faked interviews, misleading headlines, pseudo-science, and a parade of false learning from so-called experts
* emphasis on full-color Sunday supplements, usually with comic strips (which is now normal in the U.S.)
* dramatic sympathy with the "underdog" against the system.

(Wikipedia)

Yahoo News, anyone?!?

I hate myself everytime I click on the headlines of Yahoo "News" ~ So misleading, so cheap, like reading the gossip magazines while waiting at the check out line...

I'm tempted not to, but what if I miss something juicy.

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

It's like watching Court T.V or CNN Headline News.

McDonald's for the mind...

Eloisa to Abelard by Alexander Pope

How happy is the blameless vestal's lot!
The world forgetting, by the world forgot.
Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind!

I love the vision these words conjure.

I think I suffer from the Eternal Darkness of the Spotted Mind.
And wonder how it would be to experience The Incredible Lightness of Being. Just being...
Words are heavy, thoughts are heavy.

Living in the moment. Such a fleeting thing!

Enjoying each sentence as it unfolds. Without anticipating the end and enduring the inevitable disappointment when the paragraph closes without warning.

35 mm film photography

Remember when cameras used to look like this?
And film was the medium instead of memory sticks?

(I feel like a relic when I reminisce about stuff that is so obsolete now a days that it seems like an feigned memory rather than something real.)

Like when I get the urge to go on the hunt for a blue Smith-Corona typewriter.
Not the kind that plugs into an outlet. The kind with winding ribbon and keys that are hard to hit; but make that addicting tick-tick sound...


Nostalgia.

I've been wanting a "big girl's" camera for a while now.

I have a camera now.
It's quite adorable, portable and pink. It fits in most pockets and it's quite fashionable. I don't even have to compromise between it and my make up bag when I am choosing things to put in my purse!

It perfectly suits most "social snapping" situations.
But it sucks at landscapes. Night landscapes are an infinite mass of blackness, no matter how hard I try. Or how slow I set the shutter speed. *sigh*

As a child, my parents had a leather bag filled with all things photography. A good camera, a tripod and a bunch of filters.
We were lucky in that we got to visit to exotic locales. And they snapped the most breathtaking pictures I could imagine.

I attached so many memories of...life to those pictures. To capturing a moment so special and unique that it had to be immortalized in a photograph.

The digital craze was decades away.
There was no instant way of knowing the end result. So you'd strive to capture the best with every shot.
And if unsure, tried again, again and again.

Only much later did the printed images show. Sometimes a week or more after walking through clouds in the mountains or jumping waves at a virgin beach.
Then the memories unraveled again, with the taste of saltwater or the chill of a temperate climate.
Life is sweeter through the lens of a 35 mm camera.

I'm still unsure, however, if I am ready to commit to a new hobby. Or I am simply enamored by the idea of looking through life through rose colored glasses.