Doing anythi
ng a hundred times will give a deeper understanding than the first attempt. After writing 100 blogs, I have learned or “relearned” a few things.
Writing improves communication. Writing pushes us to discover the lost words — if the right word does not come in conversation, we skip over them, but not when we want to write well. The pause in writing hits me often and I face this supersize room of improvement to better articulate what is in this world and what is inside our head. Putting the words down brings clarity of thought (well sometimes). It is the processing as we write something down, that helps to reflect and brings a level of clarity. It is a revealing experience.
It needs extra effort to generate followers. The readers and the writers all have their story and their lives. Those, who have tons of followers, are never a pure luck. I am 
not there, nor do I want to be there. They may just make it look easy.
Appreciation comes with understanding. Writing daily to make a living is a different game from writing at leisure. There are just days that the inspiration is on vacation and the output becomes gibberish. I admire those successful and productive writers, not an easy profession, even more challenging under timeline or financial pressure. If you ever find it hard to respect a profession, try to take that up for some time. If there ever are more people putting themselves in others’ shoes, the world will be different.
A relaxed min
dset brings more inspiration. Three years have gone by between the 1st and the 100th. There are changes every day, let alone three years – mindset, parents, children, friends, career, workload and health. When we are relaxed and happy, the same thing looks more interesting and the world looks wonderful; no wonder the tennis players p
erform better when they are happy outside of the courts. When our mind is occupied with unwanted difficulties, our tank of inspiration gets empty quick. The publishing frequency reflects the state of minds between blogs.
When there is a choice, we only do activities that interest us. To find that out, check out those time demands that you choose to meet, or keep coming back to. If there is nothing coming up, that will be a sad discovery and it is time to start a (re) discovery journey.
he summer reading list of President Obama, it raises enough curiosity to pick up this book on a foreign topic – the history of species evolution and extinction.
cks a species that is emblematic – the American mastodian, the great auk, an ammonite talks about extinct species; the increasingly fragmented Amazon rainforest, the ocean acidification and the endangered corals at Great Barrier Reef talk about the present landscape; plus many more around mammals and human. If any of these is new to you, the author will carry you to these new territories.
n theory of mega fauna extinction, it is mind boggling on how human arrival may correlate the closest the species extinction when human predators unintentionally disrupts their long reproductive cycle; and the species reduction triggers forest overgrowth, then climate change. And how modern human species drive to extinction o
am Malala” covers her fifteen years of life in Pakistan, her families, her childhood, her schools and the global terrorism before she was almost shot to death.
she relentlessly advocates for education through her blog, her speech and her bravery. When her family became internally displaced, 
the thing she missed the most was her books. When she recovered in the hospital, she wanted her books, and she missed the school examinations. Malala’s love of learning and school is a lesson for all the kids in many countries, where education is taken for granted.
d me ahead what has happened since, I probably would have no idea. It is not that the past three years have been dramatic; just that the daily drudgery sometimes limit our imagination.
ring is not rewarding”, yet, volunteer rate was reported to be 25.3% in US in 2013. It is a mystery to me.
more time doing other jobs than his/her first position. With that, listening skills, communication skills, self-management, versatility and ability to learn become as important as the current job fit. Among these skills, listening skills seem the most under-appreciated. It is a skill that seems to disappear over time; it takes lots of practice to keep the curiosity and humility. We don’t learn things by saying what we already know; we know new things by asking questions and seeking a new answer.
e motivation is valued and needed.
g nature that goes well with peanut butter, or ice cream or fruits or other companions. There are fries or pastries that are presented in the shape of a mini-waffle, which alone, improve their appeal. My best and worst waffles were both at a hotel near university campus. My best experience happened nearby the Harvard campus at Cambridge. The hotel was upscale where the ingredients were organic and carefully selected; the restaurant was filled with Harvard students with their families. It could be the ambiance, it could be the vacation appetite – the waffle breakfast was absolutely delicious. Fast forward a couple of years, I arrived at Ann Arbor near University of Michigan, just off a red-eye flight. Tired with little appetite and much time to kill, I was at this buffet-style breakfast served at the hotel. It could be the sleep deprivation, it could be the lack of diners, and it could be the waffles have been waiting for a diner for days, the waffle tasted so poorly that it was hard to reproduce. Waffle continues to be my favorite choice, though its carbohydrates make it a challenge now.
nforgettable. The best, in my book, is served in this modest and absolutely cramped 
the highest priorities at some stages of our lives. If we can earn money, can we earn happiness? There was a song about “happiness” by the Canto pop superstar Sam Hui in Hong Kong years ago. Many of the lyrics still hold true to this day. The lyrics translate into:
“Happiness is driving a car with a full tank”
re time, it was impossible to avoid extra persons in the background. Many desserts were on display at the refreshment tables, from brownies, macaroons, cupcakes, banana bread to different types of cookies. The sugary booster was fitting for the graduate students as they got ready for a night-out. The school bus would take them to a secret place and they would not be home until next morning. Is this also an experience for families to be ready for the many more nights ahead without the child sleeping under the same roof?
There is no lack of encouragement to ask many questions. That sometimes translates into effort to overcome a self-inflicted intimidation factor as people around are smart and young. The laissez faire culture nurtures self motivation and some never-enough sentiment though freedom also breeds insecurity and alignment issue. In comparison, the status report and weekly progress report, adopted in traditional companies, give more gravity, even it becomes counter-creative over time. A majority of hard-core engineers in a house don’t make much of a social environment, nor business-savvy organizations.
The longing of a dream is gone at the same time when the dream is realized. Friendly co workers warned, with certainty, a plateau would be ahead, and likely a sense of disorientation for a period of six to twenty four months (or forever). It is a new cycle to start from somewhere again. And one tends to morph into similar species of the surrounding. It reminds me of the beginning in another high-tech company many years ago.
be a stressful month for college-bound students and their parents – a month to choose which college to spend the next four years. Such a decision is weighty for a teenager and more so for the parents. College is expensive in US, the four years of education involve hundreds of thousands dollars even for public school. We don’t make such decision often in our life.
f the ‘site’ visit, there is the financial planning. College in US is outrageously expensive with 5-digits spending annually to cover tuition and boarding. If the parents do not provide, the students will be in a six-digit debt the day they graduate from a 4-year public college education. The more economic way to get a degree would be attending a 2-year community college, then transfer to a state college. Or they can crawl through thousands of scholarship opportunities, and that requires a level of motivation and hard work not often found in the teenagers of this generation. For parents who can afford to provide the 4-year, the debt-free students may not empathize the many years of parents’ hardwork to just afford their education.
decision making in the same way as their parents who are thirty more years older. The beauty of a youth is that they can afford some costly decision. In between supporting a teen’s decision vs dictating a decision, a final decision will be made by May 1st.
oliviatamccue 