Thursday, October 16, 2008

Day One-hundred-and-eight: Wow! What a moon!

Tonight was my second Pacifica Toastmaster Club meeting, although my first one as a member. I'm already scheduled, next week, for my first speech, the Ice Breaker. I need to read more about it but in general it is supposed to be about me.

This perpetuates a phenomenon that I've noticed in several other venues. When I was young, entering 11 different schools in K-12, everyone in the new school would know my name and I wouldn't know anyone. This developed into a problem for me that exists yet today, I have a problem remembering names, particularly of people I've just met. In fact, when I was in high school, people would walk by me and say "Hi [my name]" and I would respond "Hello, hello."

In the business venue, the use of email to manage projects has resulted in subsequent hires onto growing projects missing out on significant portions of project history that were sent out to a distribution list that couldn't have included them. This is why blogs are making inroads in Corporate America as well. This contributes to yet another phenomenon, which by writing this Life after Layoff blog I am contributing to: an inundation of information. There's just too much to read.

Speaking of Life after Layoff, I was really doubting that I would be able to fit in my tag line into every entry. I have put those doubts to bed. In fact, if you read my last two entries and now this one, I have managed to fit two tag lines into the entry.

Coming back from Toastmasters I saw this wonderful moon just after it came up. Not only was it an oval shape that I think is more interesting than even a full moon, particularly when it is at the exact point of having difficulty determining which side is being added to or dropped, but the atmospheric magnification while it was close to the horizon made it huge. It must be at least 2,000 miles in diameter. When I got to my house deeper in the canyon, I couldn't see it as it hadn't yet made it over the nearer hills.

But what it made me realize is that I am not getting out enough. Now, at a time I can take off and see an ocean sunset, I haven't. When Marilyn and I toured the Chabot Observatory, which included people making their own telescopes and I thought what a great hobby, I didn't. I've been too reserving, preserving my availability. Now that I've broken through that barrier with Toastmasters, even though I will be gone for up to six weeks, missing at least four meetings, I'm eager to see what other opportunities exist. I'll let you know in this blog what I decide to do.

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