How have We Changed; Let Me Count the Ways

I was sitting here this morning going through my last post and checking out the likes.  As I sat there, I saw another post by someone quite some time ago that lent my brain to the thought of “how much we have changed.”  I realized that this pandemic will have repercussions that will last nearly indefinitely in many cases.  I ask for your comments afterward just to confirm my suspicions.

First, I know that our Internet will be changed forever.  I see the slumps in time when many many people are more active.  Work is now being done from home, a lot.  That increases the load on all the carriers and slows us down as individuals.  This will, hopefully, lead to more tolerance as people “get used to” an already slow system.  Also, the vast variety that was already inherent in the Net has increased.  So many people have found so many different ways to get things done from home online and to express themselves more and with more variety in what they do.  We have also kept our friends on hand more through online services and methods.  No longer able always to just jump in our cars and drive to a friend’s house, we connect even more as we have done in the years past – online.  Facebook explodes with new knowledge; Youtube is constantly expanding with both commercial content (movies, etc…) and our personal films to show how we feel and what we are doing.

My biggest surprise during all of this has been that blog posting has dropped.  By myself, yes, but also I read about 1-2 posts a week now and it used to be 7-10+ a day before.  I have speculated on the why this is so, but really, don’t know as it’s not like we don’t have time to write.  I ask myself why I haven’t written a book or many stories in these last 5+ months and I find that I am not as interested in writing now…could this be it all around?  I do miss my other Internet friends. It feels as if I have been cut off from 1/2 my life.

Then there is cooking and groceries.  Mom and I used to go out 1 time or more to Cracker barrel a week.  That is down to zero right now.  Being 62 and Mom almost 86, neither of us has any business joining in on the reopening of restaurants and businesses.  I grocery shop once a week for both of us and I spend more time concerned about getting sick and not being able to take care of Mom than I do on my shopping.  Plus so much buying now for home meals has changed the way I eat.  I went through a horrible last two months trying to settle in and keep my sugar down.  Some drastic steps that will become habit and I am, finally, pleased to say my sugar is now normal and I feel better.

Sleep has changed.  I enjoy my quiet nights on the computer, so my day is up around 1:00p and bed around 2:00a, reading for about 1/2 hour.  My sleep has been drastically affected lately and I am, just now, getting it back somewhat under control.

Work has changed even more than just doing it online.  People are, finally, getting able and becoming comfortable with casual clothing during the day.  I never liked having to wear ties and dress pants every day.  I understand the reasons, but I like this new trend.  Hopefully, it will become more and more available to those going back to work.  I know that many are simply finding they can do more and more from home and, in the long run, this may well save money for employers.  I have my counseling sessions more often now and don’t mind as I get them from home.

The environment is changing.  Our air is getting cleaner.  There are still those who complain about not driving everywhere, but I have heard there are places in China where people can see mountains from their city homes for the first time in decades.  How cool is that!?  If those places are getting better, won’t we all benefit in the years to come, especially if some of these changes stick?

From an entertainment point of view, I watch many more movies, shows, and shorts than I used to (I know hard to believe!).  I am retired and handicapped, but I still have fewer things to do each day or week, allowing me more personal time at home. I am catching up on so much of the videos and shows that I had fallen behind on.  And, I read more!  Each night and most days I read for 1-2 hours.  This feels great as I had lost that in the shuffle of life.

I do play video games, though I find that to be somewhat less than it was.  That would seem strange to me, but I have begun to dabble back into game programming (mods and such) and reading a lot of scientific and how-to videos and writings than before.

Life has slowed down for me.  I take my time (something I have always hoped to do) and look at the world a bit more.  There is no big reason to hurry anymore (what are you hurrying for?)  I get things done in my own time.

Money is changing a bit, too. I am a firm believer in the Law of Attraction (join my Facebook group: at LofA ) and believe that this situation has done my income some help.  I don’t spend much on gas anymore. In fact, my auto insurance has dropped about $12 a month because of this.  I don’t spend as much going out, eat better now, and don’t buy things without thinking about it.  Online buying has helped that.

I am very certain that you can think of more ways that this pandemic situation has changed our lives.  Not all are for the better, of course, and I hope and pray for each and every one of you and your families.  Stay well and stay healthy and stay positive. Let me know what’s going on with you…

Namaste,

Scott

 

Time for a Fantasy

Well, here we are…all not dressed up and nowhere to go!  I, for one, don’t mind the restrictions of the virus too much.  I don’t like the illness or the death, for sure, but being at home?  It’s okay.  I am used to it and am making due.  I blog, at times (though not enough), and write some (less than blogging, truth be told), help Mom, email, Facebook, play video games, Scrabble, and… ta da binge Netflix.

I have come across some well-known and not-so-well-known shows and movies that have helped to bide my time and make my days.  I thought a brief, but good old-fashioned review of some of them might be in order: I love the scary-ish, dramatic, sci-fi genres most of all, so that may influence me, but not all…

1. Cursed (1 season) Fey Girl (think fairies) who thinks she is cursed may just save the world.
2. Supergirl (5 Seasons) – self-explan for most, I think
3. Sherlock (4 Seasons) – Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson now
4. In the Dark – (1 season) – Blind girl goes through a lot of changes when best friend is murdered
5. Star Trek Voyager (7 seasons) I I have watched this series 2 1/2 times so far plus the one-at-a-time deal when it first came out.
6. The Shannara Chronicles (2 seasons) A great book trilogy (The Sword of Shannara, etc…). Sword and Sorcery, romance and all the rest.
7. Homemade (1 season) short films made by people during this virus quarantine while in quarantine.
8. Star Trek Enterprise (2 seasons) The prequel to Star Trek.
9. Better Than Us (1 season) about what happens when you remove the Asimov Rules of Robotics from a robot.
10. Locke and Key (1 season) A family (Mom plus 3) move back home to a magical house and danger.
11. Black Mirror (4 seasons, I think) British-based strange, usually horror stories (don’t bother with the first episode)
12. Warrior Nun (1 season) a non-nun becomes part of a world-saving Catholic group of nuns when she dies and has an angel halo put into her.
13. The Old Guard (movie)  Charlize Theron – a nearly immortal group who helps keep the world peace.
14. Daybreak (1 or 2 seasons) An off-beat zombie-kinda show about a time when only kids are left to run the world.  A lot of vocal documentary added with the show (worth the listen, too)
15. Penny Dreadful (3 seasons) Penny Dreadfuls were the dime store horror stories (think Frankenstein, the Mummy, Dracula, Jeckle and Hyde) put together in one show – scary, interesting and good.
16. Lost in Space (2 seasons) The old 60s show updated and really good.
17. Z Nation (5 seasons) a fun, scary, dramatic, good, though gory-at-times zombie series in which a group of “heroes” tries to get a possible cure of a virus from East to West coast.
18. I Zombie (4 seasons?) zombie show in which not all become crazed killers.  This one is about a girl who works in a forensic morgue is bitten and infected.
19. Travelers (3 seasons) Group of people sent back, mostly 1 at a time, back to stock an upcoming apocalypse by changing key events in the past.
20. Flash (6 seasons) the Scarlet Speedster from the comics.

Okay, hopefully, just the first installment. Enjoy!  Let me know what you think and would you like other types of movies and shows from my past included?

Namaste,

Scott

They Might as Well Burn Them

I love comics; I love the crazy ones; but I also enjoy the ones that state a problem in a humorous manner.  For instance:

Sarah’s Scribbles

Well, the comic posted currently is not the one I tried for.  In that one, she tried on several outfits, only to have the bra show somewhere.  Her exclamation, “Do the manufacturers know that bras exist?” was the comment for my article.

The above one was humorous; however it also pointed out something I have wondered about for quite awhile.

Many, many fashion designers, artists, and department stores carry attire for women and the tops almost never cover the total bra area.

It’s not like it’s some kind of criminal scheme to run bras out of circulation.  It just seem that, indeed, sellers are recommending, by what they sell, that bras are not needed anymore.

I am not against women who don’t wear bras nor against those that do.  A woman’s figure is beautiful to me either way.

My concern is nearly always caught up with a pattern we are fed that could drastically change how things are now.  Some of those changes are for the better – seat belts, regulations about texting while driving, etc.  But on things that we get to do the choosing, we should, actually, have a choice.  Companies can say that women buy the outfits, so bras are not needed anymore.  But, isn’t that tantamount to saying how much crime has dropped in an area where many things are no longer crimes?  Women may “want to” wear bras, but if the clothes available are either backward or braless, then braless may win many times just because the others just are not in style.

Nope.  not a big expose. This is just a thing I noticed and thought everyone should see…or not see as they see fit.

Clothes and Foods and Getting Up – Oh My!

Have these last few months felt strangely unfamiliar to you?  Right?  Well, I discovered this week (with the help of my stroke counselor) that I have triggers.  I knew what they were, but I, certainly, didn’t think I had any.  I have a friend who rages at times.  The rest of the time he is wonderful, but at these moments, he is a different person.  Now, he doesn’t rage at me, but at things in general, usually. I realized how angry I was after we had spent some time on a video game together on the Internet.  I was seething at him and didn’t really care if I ever talked to him again.  This bothered me because he wasn’t mad at me and I really like him.  I mentioned this to my Counselor.  We are gonna talk more about it on Monday.  But, the idea is that my father yelled at me; my 1st wife yelled at me.  Both of these people set me up to hear any sort of yelling as a threat to me as an individual.  I want to discuss more with her on how to diffuse this, but I find it fascinating and it helps me understand others better.  To an extent, I am an empath for  angry feelings and yelling.

That was before my grocery trip to Walmart.  I went there because my Insulin Rx is there.  I decided to just shop since I was already there. Things had been decent in the recent past but, as things were starting to get back to normal, I noticed that the customers and, to a degree, the cashiers were getting a bit mean and dicey.   It was not a fun, enjoyable, and relaxing jaunt.  It was hard and I got home so tired of being out even for those few hours.

I read an article this morning. It stemmed from Facebook, somehow.  Anyway, it was the general public’s responses to a LA article about how we are dressing during the pandemic.  WHAT!!!???

We are just getting along the best we can!  I figured the author must be one of those guys who finds it fun to steal little kids’ ice cream cones from them.  I found out that, while I had never heard of him, he was kinda popular.  I am not so certain that is true now.  People were upset.  This may have been an article on Twitter, which sounds right.  Anyway, he/she stated that we are getting paid for sitting home, so we outta dress like it!  I want to yell and scream at this jerk!  I guess, in some ways, I am! lol  However, now I remember.  I wanted to know if I could safely wear shorts yet to the grocery.  This article was one I can across: work from home

I did like this one that is satirical in nature (please keep that in mind): pants?

Finally, one more shot to the midsection for my last 48 hours.  I chose that, for now, I would live more on a 2nd-3rd shift schedule and have told most people about this.  That, basically, means I go to bed between 3:00-4:00A, read for an hour, then sleep until about 3P that afternoon.  I don’t answer any calls except from my doctors or hospital, my Mom, and calls I consider emergency.  I try to let all of them go to voice mail so that I either see the phone number or hear the voice.   I am pretty firm about this.  I have told my family and friends and, for the most part, enjoy my days.  I had a stroke (severe) about 10 years ago and it reset my brain.  I don’t sleep well, so I simply make use of the hours I can’t really sleep well.  I live alone, don’t really date and with this virus, don’t go much of anywhere.  So it should be fine.  One of my friends doesn’t agree and tends to call me between 2 and 3 in the afternoon.  It throws me off of my early schedule and, for instance, I literally forgot to take my Insulin until almost 2 hours late.  My answer to this, after some thought, is that instead of getting angry, I am going to consider it his fault and simply not answer anymore until after 3 and take my time calling him back.  It might appear passive-aggressive, but I think it is a positive approach to not having the same talk again in which I tend to lose my temper.

Well, that’s my weekend.  How was yours?  Oh yeah, I still have Sunday to go, don’t I? lol

Namaste,  Stay Safe

Scott

And The Learning Continues

I write for Quora.com, which is a kind of Q/A on the Internet.  People write questions, pick some of the people they wish to answer, and anyone else can answer.  It allows a lot of things to be asked and answered in many different ways fairly quickly.  Here is one question I was just asked in the last two weeks:

 

My 12-year-old daughter told me when she gets older she wants to start stripping. What should I tell her?

Scott L. Vannatter

·

Fri

I love open-world games

I would like to give a sort-of controversial answer. It’s only because of a person I know quite well. This person was raised to the value of “use what you have to get ahead”. When she went to college, she chose stripping as a side job. It paid well, if you did it well. And, she did it very well. She did it to earn college money. Later, when she got married, she paid off her spouse’s student loan and her own, and bought their expensive home. She quit stripping when it no longer suited what she was doing. Now, she is a champion surfer, lives in Hawaii with her spouse and two children (adopted), and is debt-free.

Now, this is not to say that stripping is a great choice, especially for a 12yo to be thinking about. It is, merely, to suggest that there are worse choices depending on how you go about it and think of it.

My friend never got into drugs or really alcohol. She did not get into the sex trade at all. She is deaf, helps charities, and is a good person. I am not certain I really have known better. She has a clear head and a good mind.

Simply something to think about. That’s truly all this is.

1.1K views

View Upvoters

Now, if you want to know more about this person, she is a blogger, and goes by: https://aghostdancer.wordpress.com/  Michelle Styles.  She is one of the most wonderful people I can say I know because a good blog tells you about a person; they tell you about themselves.  I have not told her yet that I answered this question with her story.  I think she will be happy (perhaps, I am wrong, but I don’t think so).  I will drop her a note.

Please do with all this what you will.  Question me.  Counter me.  Yell at me.  But, do think….because these types of questions are being asked and need/deserve good answers.

This particular question  has been upvoted by 12 other users (That’s a record for me.  I believe 3-5 was the previous one and I have been writing quite awhile on Quora.com

It was viewed 1,100 times.  Probably another record for me.  But, it’s not about me.  It’s about a 12yo girl’s statement and her mother’s crying out for help/guidance.

Visit Michelle’s blog – I think you will be glad you did.

Namaste,

Scott