Greaving

I went to the funeral for one of my friend's dad today. Emma has been one of my friends since Grade 1 and her dad was suffering from H1N1 and past away suddenly on Monday.

The only close death I have ever experienced suffering through is my grandpa's on my dad's side. I never saw my grandpa that much and as much as I miss him, my life didn't drastically change after he was gone. The main thing that broke my heart about him dying was seeing my dad cry and how devastated he was about the loss, because other than that time, I have never seen my dad cry.

But it broke my heart to hear about the passing of her dad because I just felt for Emma, her sister and her mom, putting myself in their shoes. He will never see Emma's younger sister graduate and I'm glad he at least got to see Emma graduate. He'll never give his daughters away on their wedding day. They're all quite quiet people and because of this, it's hard for me to tell how they're actually feeling. I talked to Emma today and she seemed fine and could still laugh at funny things and had a positive attitude towards everything which I absolutely love, but I know it must really be hard and I want to support her, though I don't know how.
(Pictured right: Emma and I in Grade 1)


This is a short post because as you can imagine, it's hard to know what to say when these things happen, the main thing is to remain positive and see the goodness inside each day; the sky is most beautiful right before it darkens and turns to night. And right after that. If you're reading this, take a quick minute to say a prayer for Emma's family; even though you don't know them, God knows.

Finding Talent VS Creating Talent

Third post in one day because I'm outta control apparently, but I just really wanted to talk about an article I read and what my dance teacher said on Monday because they were both pretty bomb. 

For my SGMA (Strategy and Global Management) Class we're supposed to read news articles about business and what not so that we know what's going on in the world of business and how political things affect business (I find this completely interesting, but since I assume not everyone's a political/economical geek like I am, I'll cut the description off there). Anyways, so I was looking through newspapers to find business articles (kind of, I was mostly looking for Sudoku puzzles that I hadn't already done) and I found one that caught my attention and it had to do with K-Pop and business structures, and if you're anything like me you're thinking how the heck...? So I read the article and it touched on, to me, what seemed like common sense even though I had never thought that before; instead of looking for talent, firms should create talent. 

Now before I expand on this, we need to back track a little. So near the beginning of the Fall semester, a guy came into m Econ class and gave a quick speech on College Pro, which is, if you haven't heard of it before, a painting franchise that helps college kids run their own business in a way that practically fail safe because they use a method that has worked for the past 50 years or something. Anyways, so that really caught my attention because I want to run my own business one day and thought this would be a great help/start. I went through the long interview process and got accepted. I felt very pressured to do it and because of that pressure, I bailed too close to starting time, I know, but I had to think through staying or leaving a ton. 

But that's kind of a sob story that's beside the point; when I was in the interview process, the guy interviewing me said that a lot of kids have degrees nowadays, but no one has work experience so they don't get hired, and I could believe that, because even for me I have a hard time getting a part time waitressing job because the economy for one, and because restaurants seem to think, if you're not a professional, you're not good enough. So instead of hiring a fresh, energetic, ready-to-work, poor university student, they hire an "experienced" 40 some year old bag lady to bitterly wait tables (I probably milked that too much, but it's all about dramatic effect right? ...Right?). People should be hired out of potential, not experience, because experience turns into routine, and people with potential are fresh minds with fresh ideas. Finding people with talent instead of creating talent is honestly a lazy way to employ people, in my opinion. 

To end on a more positive and only slightly related note, I wanted to repeat what my dance teacher said on the first day of class and that is to "never take learning seriously" and that's not a direct quote, but that's the main idea in the best way I could describe it. It resonated with me because I honestly take nothing seriously, and people who take me seriously will have a very flawed perception of me. But learning is no fun if you're only serious about it, and if you try to hard to learn something, you miss out on the learning part of it. Plus seriousness is not fun, and if you're not having fun, you're doing it wrong. 

Also, here's a complimentary picture of the sunset tonight:

New Year, New Me...who dis?

It's currently 12:14 AM and I have an 8 AM tomorrow morning, but sometimes you wake up in the middle of the night on a Thursday (actually Friday now I guess) with the great idea to start a blog even though I doubt people actually read blogs anymore (if they ever did to begin with). Like many others, I am a huge fan of YouTube and all the beauty tutorials, the education videos, and of course the new thing (I think it's new; to me at least): Vlogs. At first I didn't realize why anyone would want to watch someone else's trip to the grocery store, or to put it bluntly: why would anyone want to watch videos on someone else living their life, instead of actually living their own. But like many others I'm sure, I discovered Casey Neistat through my best friend and brother, and there was just something so captivating about watching him live his life. A big hit is probably the fact that he lives in New York, a place I'm absolutely in love (even with only visiting it for 5 days last April), but more than that it was the way he made each day a story, a lesson, just something to be gotten out of each of his videos. So like any other person (obviously) I wanted to make a vlog of my own, I got a fancy camera, and hope for the best and...didn't do much with either of those but take some bomb pictures of sunrises (no complaints there).

Basically, my vlogging dream didn't get too far because at the end of the day, it's not about the camera, it's about the story (a concept Casey emphasizes whenever the topic comes up) and videoing your day and hoping the footage leads to a story is much harder than living the day AND THEN telling the story.

So that leads us to 13 minutes ago when I whipped out my laptop and decided to start a blog after reminiscing in my bed instead of sleep. I have journaled (basically) everyday since October 10th 2014 when I was in Grade 10 and had an empty journal, so how much harder could this be? Plus it's the twenty first century, if you're not sharing every detail about your life online, you're doing it wrong.