March 14, 2008
I don’t turn on the news much. I leave it to my wife, who is always up on the latest gossip, to fill me in on anything relevant… Britney did something whacky, somebody famous died, there’s an asteroid coming in a few days to end life as we know it… you know… important stuff. The rest of the news is generally a combination of irrelevant to my life and depressing. One or the other I might not mind exposing myself to, but both? Forget it.
It gets to the point that I’ll spend weeks of my life not turning on the news once and, for TV-served brain food, subsist mainly on a varied diet of Science Channel, History Channel, Sci-Fi Channel and whatever whacky Japanese game show I can find on G4. Sometimes I check the stock market, but even that’s getting depressing lately. Then I’ll feed my morbid curiosity for a week, watching all the news that’s fit to hang yourself to, before retreating again into my little box of denial.
The beauty of the internet is that I can, for the most part, choose the news I want. Sure, there are snippets in the headlines to dodge. I know, for example, that Gov. Eliot Spitzer is tied to prostitution and is tendering his resignation. I even know what his favorite escort looks like thanks to a picture on the front page of one news outlet (very important stuff, you see). I guess the latter might be a nice conversation starter should somebody happen to see her sitting across from them at Starbucks. But I’m blissfully oblivious to most of the sordid details about that and other stories.
My salvation on the web is the ability to bypass the big news sites (msnbc, cnn, fox, etc) and custom search for something, anything, that will serve to boost my spirits. One such find that I feel worthy of mention is Honesty Blog. This blog, barely a year old, is largely reader-fed and serves up one inspirational story about people behaving decently after another. It’s definitely one of my go-to’s for a little bit of cheer in an otherwise down-themed news world and serves to remind me that people aren’t that bad, it’s just mostly bad people who make it to the front page on the major outlets.
Be kind to yourself and pay http://www.honestyblog.com/ a visit. You’ll be glad you did.
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Categories: Inspiration.
Tags: Excellence, Honesty, Honesty Blog, Inspiration, News
March 13, 2008
I average 4 hours of sleep a night. I average 1 migraine every 2 weeks. Study results are still out, but I’m beginning to suspect a correlation. I was averaging 2 migraines a week until I conceded defeat and started taking a nap after work to try to make up for that sleep deficit. If you work for a large company in the US and aspire to success, you’re likely suffering sleep deprivation as well. It’s all too common here and linked to everything from weight gain, elevated accident rates and a multitude of health problems. The advice is always the same - get more sleep. I liken it to a doctor advising you take it easy, reduce your stress and take some vacation right in the middle of a critical time-crunch at the office. Great idea, Doc. I’ll get right on that!
The sad truth is that too many of us sacrifice ourselves in the pursuit of a successful career and, all too often, it isn’t selfish stupidity. From supporting a family to preparing for the next market bust, accounting scandal or over-taxed social security system, many Americans feel they have no choice but to push themselves, quite often, into an early grave.
So if it simply isn’t practical to reduce your stress or go on a vacation, let me recommend a nap. Tell your family to leave you alone for an hour. Unplug the X-box and force the kids out of the house. Then find yourself a nice sunbeam and catch a snooze. You might not be able to recover all the sleep you lost but in lieu of a day at a spa, it’s at least one little way you can be kind to yourself.
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Categories: Health.
Tags: deprived, Kind, kind to yourself, migraine, nap, napping, sleep, sleep-deprivation, stress, work
March 12, 2008
Ok, I’m a fairly typical guy so I haven’t watched more of Oprah’s Big Give than my wife forced me to watch (10 minute’s worth) before stumbling off in my loincloth, club hefted over my shoulder, to scratch myself and resume my quest for fire. Ogg cook meat now. But I did get the post-show highlights from my wife and browsed some articles about it and I’m a little annoyed at the cynicism rampant in the media today.
Several stories I read were written by authors who seemingly went out of their way to devalue the premise of the show by pointing to the convenient access to corporate sponsorship Oprah’s team of do-gooders enjoyed. “Hey, it isn’t like it’s coming out of her pocket,” they implied, “the tab is being picked up by insert-corporate-sponsor-here!” They suggested (without having the testicular fortitude to come right out and clearly state) that Oprah’s generosity is somehow less deserving of praise given the commercial revenue the show surely generated.
I’m a simple person and my feeling is this… how it happens doesn’t matter as long as nobody gets hurt. Ok, Oprah may not be dipping into her own personal savings account to pay out the prize, but she is giving her time and her celebrity power to the cause. What’s that time worth? Salary.com has a cool salary timer that allows you to compare your real-time earnings against the rich and famous. I won’t tell you how my income from my day job stacked up but I will confess to feeling a little emasculated after running the comparison. Go here to try Salary.com’s Celebrity Salary Comparison tool for yourself. The site estimates Oprah’s hourly earnings at $111,500. I repeat…, hourly. In the time it has taken me to write this sentence she has earned over $400. To put that further into perspective, if you were paid $100,000.00 per year, in the time it would take you to earn enough to buy one McDonald’s Big Mac, Oprah would have earned enough to buy 2238 (according to Salary.com’s Burg-o-meter). Now apply that to the amount of time she personally invested in Oprah’s Big Give. Think of everything that goes into a production like Oprah’s Big Give
- Conceptualization
- Meetings
- Scripting/Writing
- Travel
- Sponsorship Solicitation
- Interviews and Research
- Filming
- A random assortment of other things I know nothing about
Add that all up and how many hours do you think she’s given? Yes, television is a long hall full of smoke and mirrors but that doesn’t change the fact that Oprah has likely given tens of MILLIONS to this project in her valuable time alone.
Say what you will about Oprah. I know it’s popular to slam the successful, but, as a very insightful friend who runs thaiphoonblog.com once told me, opinion cannot be substituted for fact. Regardless of where the actual prize money originates or how much her star power served to influence the corporate sponsors who are really shelling out the prize, Oprah is giving BIG to those to whom she has no obligation beyond her own kindness. Being wealthy is the just reward her compassion and dedication to her craft has earned. Rather than pursuing the popular American pastime of hunting for the flaws in anybody so brazen as to be more successful than average, perhaps we should be content that there’s at least one person out there trying to do good with their success.
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Categories: Charity.
Tags: big give, money, Oprah, salary
