A Select Few of Us Earthlings ...
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pestebalcanica
Jul 15, 2016
0
#161
Jul 15, 2016
0
#162
.. Actually - More than a 'select few' of us 'earthlings' are 'refugees'!
http://mashable.com/2016/07/14/raqqa-norway-refugee/#QrOOKVn.P5qq
Jul 16, 2016
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#163
..An observational, aside -- I have some reason to believe, that 'Bowie'..{among Many others}.. Are now on, a 'higher' {vibrational}, plane.. Simply, by having 'expired'! ..{Not that, I'm in any 'Rush'!} ..chuckle.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/art/what-to-see/david-bowies-other-alter-ego-the-art-collector/
Jul 17, 2016
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#164
Pardon, the 'link' redundancy.. But, some acquaintences I'm aware of.. Only know to 'look'.. on my own personal 'bb' {topic} 'threads.
"Life, Is a 'Stage Play' "
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_W-PLmMwl2o
Jul 18, 2016
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#165
Aspiring nun crowdfunds to pay off $12G student loan debt
Published July 17, 2016
CLIFTON, N.J. – An aspiring nun who was told she couldn't enter a convent until her student loan debt was paid off has used an online appeal to get the money.
Alida Taylor, 28, was accepted to join the Sisters of Life in New York City in September.
The Clifton, New Jersey, woman started a GoFundMe page late last month, hoping to get $12,000 to pay down her student loans. She surpassed her goal Thursday, raising more than $22,000.
In an update on the crowdfunding page, Taylor said the extra money will be used for a vocation fund for Casa Guadalupe, a house of prayer and discernment for Catholic women, where Taylor is currently staying.
Multiple attempts to reach Taylor were unsuccessful. But she told WCBS in New York that "The Lord when it's his will, he always provides, and I just trust him."
Officials say most Catholic religious orders ask people to delay applications until they have repaid debt.
"Religious life is a full-time job so to speak, so she wouldn't be able to work and enter into religious life," Sr. Mariae Agnus Dei said, noting that nuns with the Sisters of Life have no salary or stipend.
After graduating from college in 2010 with a degree in fashion, Taylor moved to New York and got a job making costumes for Broadway shows. She said she enjoyed her life, but felt something was missing.
"When I moved to the city I had all these desires. I wanted to have a career, a family, and marriage, but your heart begins to shift," she said.
The Sisters of Life invited Taylor to attend a "Come and See" retreat with them so she could learn more about the order, and she eventually decided to move to New Jersey and at Casa Guadalupe. It was there that she decided her calling was to join the convent.
Jul 19, 2016
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#166
The one per cent are coming to Canada’s Arctic
A luxury cruise ship will test the limits of remote Arctic communities—and Canadian sovereignty
Residents of Ulukhaktok, N.W.T., population 402, may feel as though New York’s tony Upper East Side has come to visit when Crystal Serenity steams into town later this summer. The towering cruise ship, the biggest to traverse the fabled Northwest Passage, will be carrying 1,070 passengers who paid between $25,000 and $155,000—and 655 crew members—for a 32-day trip that promises “intrepid adventure, the great outdoors and immersive cultural experiences.” Which is where Ulukhaktok comes in. Crystal Serenity is not the first cruise ship to visit the coastal hamlet, mind you, but it’s by far the largest. “There was one back in 2012 called the World,” Janet Kanayok, the local economic development officer, says of the privately owned luxury yacht that carries between 150 and 200 passengers. “But it wasn’t nearly as big as this.”
Nor is Crystal Serenity likely to be the last giant, gilded passenger ship to come calling. Rising temperatures and receding sea ice have opened more of the Northwest Passage’s interconnecting waterways in recent seasons. In 2013, MS Nordic Orion made history by becoming the first bulk carrier to make the historically treacherous trip, hauling a load of B.C. coal to Finland and shaving about 1,000 nautical miles off its usual route through the Panama Canal. The following year, the MV Nunavik, operating on behalf of a Canadian firm, sailed from the Hudson Strait through the passage to China carrying nickel concentrate. In all, there were 25 full transits of the Northwest Passage last season, according to data from Fisheries and Oceans Canada. That’s up nearly 40 per cent from five years earlier.
With the Arctic’s defences melting, Los Angeles-based Crystal Cruises is understandably excited about a huge opportunity to wow well-heeled cruise junkies who’ve grown bored of sand and sun. The company’s inaugural Northwest Passage cruise, from Anchorage, Alaska, to New York, sold out quickly, and tickets for next year’s trip are already on sale.
RELATED: Frozen out of Arctic shipping
Less thrilled are those asked to make sure such voyages go smoothly and safely. Though Kanayok says Ulukhaktok locals agreed to play host, others have expressed reservations about having their tiny hamlets—Cambridge Bay and Pond Inlet in Nunavut are also on the itinerary—overrun with hundreds of camera-clicking cruise-ship passengers, who are not known for spending as much money in local communities as other types of tourists. The Canadian Coast Guard, meanwhile, has devoted considerable time and resources to planning the transit, holding meetings with Transport Canada and the U.S. Coast Guard and even participating in “tabletop exercises” that attempt to simulate what would happen if Crystal Serenity ran into trouble. “An undertaking of this nature, it must be said, is not without risk,” says Jeff Hutchinson, the Canadian Coast Guard’s deputy commissioner. “This is adventure tourism. This is not a cruise ship leaving Miami.”
Indeed, the straits and sounds of Canada’s Arctic archipelago are mostly uncharted and, depending on the day, can either be totally clear or choked with hull-cracking sea ice. Add to that the unpredictable weather and a general lack of Arctic infrastructure—like deepwater ports or search-and-rescue bases—and it’s easy to see why the Guardian asked whether Crystal Serenity might be “a new Titanic.”
To Crystal’s credit, however, it’s taken the project seriously from the beginning—probably because it knows the world is watching. But what keeps Hutchinson up at night isn’t so much the safety of Crystal Serenity’s champagne-sipping passengers as it is what they represent: the arrival of the cruise industry’s big leagues to Canada’s unprepared North. “As long as we deal with companies that are this engaged, I think we’re on a very good footing,” Hutchinson says. “But we are concerned about the companies that are looking at the potential profitability of this undertaking and might attempt a similar voyage without putting the same level of planning in place—possibly because they don’t have the financial resources to back it.”
A general view of Cambridge Bay, Nunavut. (Chris Wattie/Reuters)
It’s no secret that the Coast Guard’s resources are wanting, too. This summer there will be a full complement of seven icebreakers patrolling Canada’s Arctic—an area that spans some 4.4 million sq. km, including both land and sea. Russia, by contrast, has more than 35 in its fleet. Further complicating matters is the fact some countries, including the United States, don’t recognize Canada’s claim that the Northwest Passage is territorial waters, but instead view it as an international strait—a position that could be strengthened if Canada is unable to demonstrate an ability to respond to cruise-ship incidents and accidents in its Arctic backyard. “Do we have enough capabilities to meet one big, honking ship? Yeah, we do,” says Robert Huebert, an associate professor of political science at the University of Calgary. “But do we have enough when five or six medium-sized ones start going? That’s when it starts to get more complicated.”
Crystal Cruises began planning its first Northwest Passage voyage in 2014. That was the same year Parks Canada, with the help of former BlackBerry billionaire Jim Balsillie and several other government departments, found the wreck of HMS Erebus in the eastern Queen Maud Gulf. The wooden bomb ship was one of two that went missing in the mid-1800s, when Sir John Franklin and 128 Royal Navy sailors set out from England to map the Northwest Passage and conduct experiments on Earth’s magnetism. The doomed men spent two winters trapped in the ice before succumbing to the brutal conditions, with several resorting to cannibalism in their darkest hour.
MORE: Inside the first tour of the Franklin Expedition wreck
Passengers aboard Crystal Serenity are promised a more uplifting voyage. The US$350-million ship’s nine passenger decks boast 535 staterooms outfitted with “100 per cent Egyptian cotton sheets, down pillows, plush duvets and featherbeds (upon request).” Penthouse guests have access to a personal butler service, complimentary beer and wine and full Jacuzzi tubs. Elsewhere on the ship, passengers dine in a variety of restaurants, including a sushi bar created by celebrity chef Nobu Matsuhisa, and imbibe at any number of cocktail bars and cigar lounges. There’s a casino, a cinema, a spa, a driving range, two paddle tennis courts, an outdoor lap pool and a shopping arcade with four stores selling clothing, jewellery and other items. In addition to sightseeing from Serenity’s decks and making scheduled stops in Alaska, Canada and Greenland, passengers aboard Crystal Serenity will have the option of taking “Arctic safaris” aboard kayaks, Zodiacs, ATVs and even a helicopter. Other planned activities include fishing, hiking and a round of golf at Ulukhaktok’s rocky, windswept, nine-hole course, billed as the most northerly in the world.
One thing Crystal Serenity doesn’t offer, however, is much tolerance for sea ice. So its owners set out to hire a support ship as an insurance policy. But finding a suitable vessel in Canada wasn’t easy. “There’s been a long-term rundown of the fleet,” explains Dermot Loughnane, the CEO of Tactical Marine Solutions in Victoria, who was hired to give Crystal a helping hand. Crystal eventually found what it needed on the opposite side of the planet: the British Antarctic survey vessel RRS Ernest Shackleton. The sturdy, red-hulled ship will carry two helicopters and containers full of extra water and emergency rations for Crystal Serenity—enough for three days. There’s also emergency oil-spill and damage-control gear on-board. “By having the Shackleton there, we can make up for quite a few things,” says Loughnane, who spent 11 years of his 35-year career working in the Arctic. “It’s above and beyond anything that’s required.”
The planning didn’t stop with equipment. Crystal Cruises did an extensive analysis of Arctic sea ice in past years, including the most likely choke points. One of those areas is the Victoria Strait, to the west of King William Island. “I describe it as the toilet,” says Loughnane. “Ice that migrates south tends to collect there.” Three experienced Canadian ice pilots—two aboard Crystal Serenity and one on the Shackleton—will work with the ships’ captains to determine a safe course based on information gleaned from ice-detection radar, searchlights, thermal imaging and other high-tech gear. If anything goes wrong, as many as 500 passengers could be transferred to the Shackleton to wait until helped arrived, according to Loughnane. Others could climb into one of 16 Zodiacs or be whisked to safety in one of the ship’s two helicopters. “The discussions we’ve had with the search-and-rescue people—we did an exercise with the U.S. and Canadian coast guards—was that, in their opinion, they could be overhead dropping supplies within six hours.”
Hutchinson, however, disputed the six-hour figure, saying it was impossible to provide any guarantees. “A search and rescue in clear skies and calm seas that would result from, say, a grounding is completely different from a search and rescue that results from communications going down in weather that suddenly turns foul,” he says. “The American coast guard has assets and so do we. But it’s a vast region and it’s hard to reach.”
Since the moment Crystal first announced its ambitious Arctic adventure, critics have warned it puts Canada’s environmentally sensitive North on an icy slope. “It’s this process of death by a thousand cuts,” says U of C’s Huebert. “Last year, there were ships carrying 300 or 400 people. Now it’s 1,600. But because it’s happening over a gradual period and they’re following all the rules, it eliminates the newness and the shock. But it doesn’t change the fact that, all of a sudden, we have some of the largest cruise liners in the world coming to the region.” Crystal won’t say what its ultimate plans are for Canada’s North. When asked, a spokesperson said only that “our luxury guests are affluent world travellers who seek and crave adventures in whatever form that term resonates with them.” But it’s worth noting that Crystal has inked an agreement to build a 1,000-passenger polar-class ship, to be ready in 2019, and has plans to buy two more.
While Canada has a relatively expansive Arctic surveillance system to monitor the increased traffic, comprised of data gleaned from satellites, ship’s reports and aerial reconnaissance, its capability to respond to trouble is already stretched. And there’s plenty of potential trouble. Only about one per cent of the Canadian Arctic is charted to the highest international standards, while about 10 per cent is charted to what’s considered a “safe” navigational standard. The percentages go up slightly—from 10 per cent to 30 per cent—if ships stay within narrow corridors, although it’s still far from reassuring. Cruise ships present a further challenge because, in addition to carrying delicate cargo, they’re under pressure to follow their eyes instead of their brains. “If you see something really spectacular and try to move toward it, suddenly your risk starts to go up,” Hutchinson says. It’s happened before. In 2010, the MV Clipper Adventurer grounded itself on a shoal near Kugluktuk, Nunavut, during a 14-day Arctic cruise. It took the nearest Coast Guard icebreaker nearly two days to travel the 500 km necessary to reach the stricken ship and evacuate its 128 passengers.
FROM THE ARCHIVES: Charlie Gillis’s 2011 report on who owns the North Pole
If more and bigger cruise ships might tax the Coast Guard’s resources in the North, they threaten to dramatically alter the lives and livelihoods of those who actually live there. “This is going to open the floodgates to the Northwest Passage,” says Ross Klein, a professor at Newfoundland’s Memorial University who maintains the website Cruisejunkie.com, noting that the cruise industry has sometimes been accused of wielding its tourist-boosting promise as a cudgel when it comes to negotiating favourable deals with port cities, and hasn’t always kept its word. “I don’t think anyone has prepared these communities.” As an example, Klein points to a 2003 incident in California when a Crystal cruise ship discharged 138,000 litres of waste water 14 km offshore into the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary. Though the dump didn’t technically violate any marine laws, it did run afoul of a written promise Crystal made to Monterey, which banned the cruise line for 15 years. Crystal, which has similarly promised to leave the Northwest Passage mostly the way it found it by burning low-sulphur diesel fuel and storing or burning garbage, called the incident “unfortunate” and noted, “We are scheduled to return to Monterey in summer 2018.”
Bernie MacIsaac, Nunavut’s assistant deputy minister of economic development, acknowledges that cruise ships present as many challenges as opportunities for the region. “Some communities have been overrun,” he says. “Others have put a lot of time and effort into preparing for a cruise ship, but, in some cases, the cruise ship never showed up.” At the same time, it’s not clear cruise passengers contribute as much as is often promised to local economies. At least one recent study showed that cruise-ship passengers in Nunavut spent, on average, just $692 in the territory, whereas other types of tourists shelled out closer to $2,500, with the difference attributed mainly to a lack of revenue from meals and lodging. In fact, many passengers don’t even bother getting off the ship.
Crystal, for its part, says it’s doing whatever it can to make sure the experience is rewarding for passengers and locals alike. Ben Lyons, CEO of EYOS Expeditions, which is working with Crystal to organize the trip, says the goal from the outset was to do everything in a “respectful and responsible manner.” To that end, the cruise line made several trips up north to gauge local communities’ interest and identify possible friction points, including concerns about 1,000-plus passengers tying up the local cellphone networks. Crystal also agreed to limit the number of cruise passengers brought ashore at any given time to 250, according to Lyons. To ensure locals benefit economically, Lyons says Crystal has hired residents to act as tour guides and put on demonstrations of local culture, including on the ship itself. “Crystal will also be purchasing Inuit carvings in bulk for distribution on-board, and has taken an additional step to make donations.”
Like the Coast Guard, MacIsaac says he’s pleased with Crystal’s conduct, but harbours concerns about others that may not be so accommodating. He says Nunavut is scrambling to put in place a more robust framework to govern cruise-ship visits, and is studying everything from passenger fees and taxes to requiring direct commercial relationships between communities and cruise lines. “We’re thinking of some kind of permitting process where the cruise ship would be mandated to have direct consultations with communities, with certain guidelines for passengers,” he says. In the interim, the territory is making do with whatever rules it already has on the books, asking Crystal to apply for two outfitter’s licences in Cambridge Bay and Pond Inlet. “It was the only avenue we had to mandate certain types of activities,” MacIsaac says.
Back in Ulukhaktok, Kanayok and the rest of the hamlet are busy preparing for their first visit by a floating city. “We’ve never really had cruise ships that come in here and ask permission,” she says, heaping yet more praise on Crystal for its attentiveness. “It’s a very large amount of people, but Ulukhaktok is very friendly and welcoming, whether it be one person, 50 or, in this case, 1,000.” However, she deftly sidestepped questions about whether Ulukhaktok had agreed to participate in Crystal’s 2017 Northwest Passage cruise. “I’m not thinking that far ahead yet,” she says. “We’re just focusing on the one that’s coming at the end of next month.”
If all goes as planned, Crystal Serenity’s passengers will disembark in New York on Sept. 17 feeling relaxed and refreshed, with heads full of rich Arctic memories. For Canada and its northernmost residents, by contrast, the headaches are likely only just beginning.
Jul 20, 2016
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#167
.. A Good distraction 'read'.. If nothing else!
http://www.trunews.com/article/Is-Incirlik-Air-Base-being-held-hostage-by-Turkey
Jul 21, 2016
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#169
Here are the chances of you having a doppelgänger
Let's just hope they're not evil.
Most of us have, at some point in time, been told we have a doppelgänger - someone out there who looks just like us. But what are the chances, scientifically speaking, of that happening?
According to the research, having an exact doppelgänger is less likely than you might think. A 2015 study by researchers in Australia crunched the numbers and investigated the probability of two people matching up exactly in eight key facial features.
They found that there's about a one in 135 chance that a pair of complete doppelgängers exist somewhere in the world. But the likelihood of someone walking around looking identical to you, specifically, in all eight facial features is only one in 1 trillion. Creepy, but not very likely.
To come to this conclusion, biologist Teghan Lucas, from the University of Adelaide in Australia, and her team examined 4,000 different faces from the US Anthropometric Survey (ANSUR) database – a record of anthropometric data created by the US Army to keep track of the bodily measurements of soldiers.
She measured and compared them across eight distinct facial features - although didn't disclose which features these were.
The team concluded that the chances of someone looking exactly like someone else in all eight features is about one in 1 trillion.
Which means that there's definitely a mathematical chance for two doppelgängers to exist, but it’s highly unlikely. According to the BBC’s Zaria Gorvett, doppelgängers can be explained by the infinite monkey problem, which states that if you sit a monkey in a room with a typewriter for an infinite amount of time it will – at some point – pen the works of Shakespeare. As she reports:
"It’s a mathematical certainty, but reversing the problem reveals just how staggeringly long the monkey would have to toil. Ignoring grammar, the monkey has a one in 26 chance of correctly typing the first letter of Macbeth. So far, so good. But already by the second letter the chance has shrunk to one in 676 (26 x 26) and by the end of the fourth line (22 letters) it’s one in 13 quintillion. When you multiply probabilities together, the chances of something actually happening disappear very, very quickly."
The best way to consider the staggering improbability of finding a true doppelgänger is to imagine the amount of genetic variables that would have line up just right for one to exist.
Plus, as Eoin O’Carroll points out for The Christian Science Monitor, a series of improbable environmental factors would also have to line up because nutrition and living conditions can vastly impact a way a person grows during maturity.
So why do people keep telling you they saw someone that looks "just like you" if that's so statistically unlikely?
The issue here is that people can perceive faces differently, meaning that just because a person's face isn’t exactly – mathematically speaking – the same, people can perceive them as the same because they gauge the sum of the face instead of each individual part, which explains why many of us think identical twins look exactly alike when – in reality – there are usually many differences.
This means that – even though a person might not be a true doppelgänger – we might think they are because we cannot calculate the minuscule measurements of their facial features like the team did in the study.
In other words, it's quite likely to have a doppelgänger out there that your friends think looks exactly the same as you, but if you were to analyse their features scientifically, it's unlikely they'd be a true match.
While the findings are just plain cool to think about, the team also says that they suggest that facial recognition might be as good as fingerprinting or DNA in catching wanted criminals.
"The use of video surveillance systems for security purposes is increasing and as a result, there are more and more instances of criminals leaving their 'faces' at a scene of a crime," said Lucas. "At the same time, criminals are getting smarter and are avoiding leaving DNA or fingerprint traces at a crime scene."
The team was able to show that by using facial measurements of the eight key features, they were able to accurately match a face captured on video surveillance footage and match it to a suspect – which is presumably why they didn't disclose the features they measured, in order to stop criminals outsmarting the system.
"This study has provided overwhelming evidence that facial anthropometric measurements are an effective means for identifying a perpetrator when video or photographic surveillance has captured a crime," she added.
So the good news in all of this is that the chance of a doppelgänger running around and committing crimes with your face is incredibly low – even if your friends might think you look the same.
The team’s findings were published in journal Forensic Science International.
Jul 22, 2016
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#170
Some 'intern'- {picture} 'selfies'.. are More representative, of the population-at-large.
http://www.phillymag.com/business/2016/07/21/comcast-selfie/
Jul 24, 2016
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#171
Jul 24, 2016
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#172
Police do not yet know how the weapon was acquired, but said he had no permit for it and the serial number had been obliterated?
He had an illegally held 9mm Glock pistol and 300 bullets in his rucksack?
Jul 24, 2016
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#173
On.. http://www.listen.hatnote.com
Listen to the sound of Wikipedia's recent changes feed. Bells indicate additions and string plucks indicate subtractions. Pitch changes according to the size of the edit; the larger the edit, the deeper the note. Green circles show edits from unregistered contributors, and purple circles mark edits performed by automated bots. You may see announcements for new users as they join the site, punctuated by a string swell. You can welcome him or her by clicking the blue banner and adding a note on their talk page.
This project is built using D3 and HowlerJS. It is based on BitListen by Maximillian Laumeister. Our source is available on GitHub, and you can read more about this project.
Built by Hatnote, Stephen LaPorte and Mahmoud Hashemi. For more, read about the story behind Hatnote.
Jul 25, 2016
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#174
Jul 26, 2016
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#175
"Cosmic Chess Match" - according to "L.A. Marzulli's" take. ..{a 'Spiritual'/ evangelical- prophetic.. Christian, perspective}. o:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N3VJoY096gI
Jul 27, 2016
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#176
'Btw'.. The following 'link' concerns the 2nd largest 'independent' bookstore, in the USA.. if-not-the-world.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/17/nyregion/want-to-work-in-18-miles-of-books-first-the-quiz.html
Jul 28, 2016
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#177
'Fwiw' .. A 'snippet' of the 'Pope's latest pontifications ..
God shows his greatness in humility, closeness, pope says
7.28.2016 5:34 AM ET
CZESTOCHOWA, Poland (CNS) -- God chose to manifest his power not by amazing feats of greatness but rather through small acts of humility, choosing to enter the world as a child born of a woman, Pope Francis said.
The Lord's "humble love" is reflected throughout Poland's history, particularly through "meek and powerful heralds of mercy," such as St. John Paul II and St. Faustina Kowalska, the pope said July 28 at a Mass outside the Marian shrine of Jasna Gora in Czestochowa.
"Through these 'channels' of his love, the Lord has granted priceless gifts to the whole church and to all mankind," the pope said.
Jul 28, 2016
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#178
.. Sometimes.. 'When it rains, it pours'!..{ie. sequential timing, of 'posts'}.
Jul 28, 2016
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#179
THE BLOG
Is It Irresponsible To Follow Your Passion?
You dream of throwing in the towel and pursuing what you really love! You want to unleash your zone of genius and know that you’re doing the work you were born to do. And yet, there’s a distinct, nagging part of you that feels like it would just be too irresponsible to stop what you’re doing and follow your passion.
I mean c’mon! At your age! You’ve got mouths to feed and bills to pay! Don’t be ridiculous. Get real. It’s just not practical. Sound familiar?
I was chatting to a lovely man about this the other day, and he confessed that he desperately wanted to devote the time and resources to following his passion and finding his dream career, but he just felt like this would be the irresponsible thing to do.
I get it. Especially if you’re changing careers mid-life. When you have commitments and a family to provide for, it can feel so hard to invest in yourself and your own happiness. And yet this is the exact moment when you must do something about it.
Here’s why. I would argue that the most irresponsible thing you can do for your family is to provide a poor role model for them. Kids grow up looking to YOU for inspiration. They want to be LIKE YOU. And if you’re miserable in a job you hate, then guess what? That’s what they will think is possible for them too.
I see this so much, especially with parents. But really, it’s all an illusion. There seems to be an unspoken rule, especially for parents, that we don’t deserve to invest time or money in ourselves - everybody else is much more important. This is a nasty little trap, my friends. And it will leave you feeling bitter, resentful and miserable.
Here’s something to ponder.
What do you think your kids want for you, more than anything in the world? They want you to be happy of course. Because when you’re happy, they’re happy, and everyone can relax.
The opposite is true if you’re stressed. Because more than likely, your family will get the raw end of the deal when you’re worried and uninspired. And it’s not your fault; we can’t help but affect others when we’re stressed and unhappy - because it makes us show the ugliest parts of ourselves. We get short tempered; we get frustrated, and we snap at our loved ones. Not because we don’t love them, but just because they are there. And we can’t help it. This has to stop. And it all starts by taking responsibility for your own happiness.
Did you ever think about it that way? I believe we all have a responsibility to be happy. And I don’t mean, we just flick the happiness switch on and off. I mean we have to work at it. Because happiness is not a constant thing, it’s something that comes and goes based on how we choose to live; our decisions ultimately create our own happiness.
And doing work that you love is so intrinsically linked with happiness because we spend so much damn time at work! We’re at work for two-thirds of our lives! That’s the majority of our time. So we need to make it count.
In-fact we have a responsibility to make it count. We owe it to those around us, those who look up to us as role models (be that friends, family or children). And more than anything, we owe it to ourselves. Because when we get to the end of our lives, these are the questions we’ll ask ourselves.
- Did I spend my life wisely?
- Did I contribute positively?
- Did my life have meaning?
I’m not saying any of this is easy because it’s not. But it’s better to think about these things now, before another decade slips by and it’s too late. Something to consider hey?
So how can you inch towards your dream career today? How can you be the role model that your loved ones really need? How can you take one small step towards taking responsibility for your own happiness?
Because great things start from humble beginnings, and someone wise once said:
“A journey of a thousand miles always starts with a single step.”
So take that first step today.
With love
Zoë B
This article first appeared on SimpleLifeStrategies.com. Zoe B is an acclaimed Career Strategist who helps thousands of people all over the world change careers to do work they LOVE. To get started with your own career change, register for
