Burke's Bits

A Peek Into My Personal Development Journey

This post was originally published as a guest post at The Life Uncommon blog and I thought I'd share it with you.

 

If life is a journey to find myself, then how do I cope with being lost until then? *sigh* Yes, I asked such a question once. I was annoyed.

For many years, well into my 20s, I had the misconception that life was all about ‘finding myself’. I would hear an encouraging word from a teacher “not to worry, as you grow up you find out who you really are”, or from a wannabe hippy aunt “life is all about the journey and finding yourself”. I also read books and watched movies that encouraged people to find themselves. I met high school seniors who wanted a year off from school to take time to find themselves before going to college. I felt sad because it seemed that we were all lost in a journey of trying to find ourselves. Then I felt anxious, because no one told me when I would know that I had found myself. Now that I know the truth I’m really annoyed. The well-meaning people in my life had stolen my power from me.

It’s Monday – Do I Have To?

Sometimes I wake up feeling just like this. Scritchy, slow, cumbersome, and just plain icked out at the thought of it being Monday. What about you?

It doesn’t matter that I have great clients. Nor does it matter that I have interesting and challenging projects to work on. And I don’t recall a nightmare or uneasy sleep. Then again, I was sleeping, wasn’t I?

I guess my point is this: I am human and sometimes I just don’t want to participate in the day.

I Appreciate Labor Day

My first paying job was at the Baskin-Robbins in Frankfort, KY. I was 14 years old and had a few years of retail experience under my belt, just not paid experience. A side note for clarification - my father was the manager of a big box retail store and I helped out after school and on holidays. My favorite spot was behind the jewelry counter because I could interact with the customers and help them find the right piece for their mother, brother, sister, aunt or Grandma. I already knew that I enjoyed working, but when I received my first paycheck is when I truly felt rewarded for my efforts. Then I spent it all on pizza for me and some friends.

Declaration of Independence

My favorite line in the Declaration of Independence is "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." This post is more about our personal declarations of independence.

My husband and I spent the 4th of July weekend with family. On Friday the 3rd we left our home at noon and drove four hours to northern Indiana. First order of business was to hug everyone already there - mom, brother, sister-in-law, cousin, aunt, niece and nephew. Second order of business was for my husband to take my 10 yr old niece to the store because it was her turn to pick out the fireworks.

Did you Know - Words?

Rose madder was made from the juice of a plant brought back from Palestine by Crusaders.  This was so precious that the price was fixed by the French authorities and it was first known as La garance (guarantee).

Massachusetts is a tribal word for 'the blue mountains'.

Malaria used to be rife in East Anglia which is why the Canaries (Norwich City Football team) wear yellow jerseys - a relic of the endemic jaundice which killed King James I, Oliver Cromwell and Sir Walter Raleigh.

The precise hues of Phoenician purple and perse have long been forgotten.  As have: Quercitron (or flavin): a yellow dye from the bark of an oak.  Celadon: a pale fusty green.  Fulvous: a dull tawny yellow.  Luteous:  a deep orange.  Carthamin:  a red from the safflower.  Kermes:  a bright red made by tiny bugs.  Sinoper:  a red pigment.  Almagra:  a deep red ochre.  Rubescent:  a reddening.  Turnsole:  a violet/purple.  Smalt:  a deep blue.  Tenebrous:  dark, obscure, gloomy.  Lapis lazuli:  a bright blue.  Murrey:  a medieval word for the color of mulberry.  Puniceus:  an orange color derived from a wax used by painters in ancient Greece.

Did You Know? - The Origins of Mechanism?

The Lunar Society of Birmingham was founded by Erasmus Darwin in the 1760's.  The group of self-styled 'Lunaticks' formed a nucleus for the industrialization of Britain, and between them had a hand in the origin of almost every mechanism used in the technologies of today.  Among the members were Josiah Wedgwood (pottery), William Small (taught Thomas Jefferson), James Watt (steam engines), Joseph Priestley (oxygen), Benjamin Franklin (electricity), James Keir (chemist).

Eramus (grandfather of Charles Darwin) was physician, poet, and inventor of a speaking-machine, an artificial bird with flapping wings, a sun-operated device for opening cucumber-frames, a horizontal windmill to grind colours, pumps, steam turbines, canal lifts, internal combustion engines, a compressed-air-powered ornithopter, a hydrogen-oxygen rocket motor and a water closet that flushed when the door was opened to leave. He was also obsessed with the vision of a steam-driven 'fiery chariot' to replace the horse-drawn post-chaise. 

The society only met during the full moon as the ride home late at night was less dangerous.   

Did you know? The Typewriter

The first patent for a typewriter was granted to William Burt of Detroit in the 1860s.  The QWERTY keyboard, so called for the six letters in the left top row, was designed so that people had to type slowly.  To ensure this the commonest letters were scattered on the left side to confound the majority of right-handers.  This machiavellian strategy was to avoid adjacent keys jamming when struck in quick succession.  In addition, salesmen could also acquire fluency in typing the letters TYPEWRITER as these occur in the top row of the keyboard.  In 1888 a star pupil of the Shorthand and Typewriter Institute in Cincinnati entered a widely publicized contest and won on a typewriter with a QWERTY keyboard - thereby QWERTY became so entrenched in the public mind that it is still the layout of today's computer keyboard. 

The famous German encrypter - the ENIGMA machine - had the first six letters as QWERTY.  Hmmmm.