in the bitter cold
the night moving with such grace
soon dawn approaches
Tonight’s Haiku: February 11, 2025
Author: Carl Setzer
A blogger blogging from just north of Seattle.
Daily haiku: February 9, 2025
a few hints of snow
guarded by the bitter cold
graced by the starlight
Haiku: February 8, 2025
sunlight's gentle way
moving slowly over snow
clouds cover the sky
Another day with snow. This snow, though, has settled in. Nothing new during the day.
I created this in Canva, which is a lot of fun.
Tonight’s Haiku: February 7, 2025
in the winter's sky
mountains rising through the wind
beyond bitter cold
Today’s Haiku: Thursday, February 6, 2025
the morning snowfall
soon to be trampled by life
fading in the sun
The past few mornings have featured snow. Usually it’s melted by early afternoon. I’m grateful that it’s not become a giant ball of ice overnight.
“Freedom” by Langston Hughes
My fellow blogger, Michele Lee, posted this classic poem by Langston Hughes. A very powerful one, and one that’s relevance is still strong.
Freedom
by Langston Hughes
Freedom will not come
Today, this year
Nor ever
Through compromise and fear.
…
Head over to her blog to read the rest. It’s well worth your time.
Social Media, Communications, and Career
I just updated my LinkedIn profile language to “maximizing the potential of technology”. I’m trying to capture my belief in the positive potential of technology while acknowledging the risks and downsides. My career focus will be technology focused, as a good chunk of my life has been. I’ve enjoyed the past few years of IT being my center focus and am eager to keep that going. A fun aside with this: IT is not that narrow a focus! Data, AI, networking, web development…all of these are so much more are encompassed by the umbrella of “IT”.
As I’ve been building a career plan, my research keeps driving home the importance of networking. Not in terms of information systems, but human connectivity. Now, this is not a new notion to me. And during my years in Real Estate, I saw so many times that it was connections that cemented business success. The main challenge in this: genuineness. Most people aren’t fans of being hit up only when someone wants something from them. “Hey, I don’t know if you remember, but we worked together 10 years ago. Can you help me get a job?” I know it’s wearying.
I’m taking this as a reminder to maintain connection with people I care about. For 2025, I’m making it a point to reach out to those my contacts and start with simply saying “hi”. Folks shouldn’t be in there unless I care about them, right? Now, I have hundreds of people in my contact list. Everyone I’d worked on a project with, was part of team with, all that sort of stuff ended up in my contact list. So, for the first step of this project, I’m going through and cleaning things up. If we worked together on a project 10 years ago, and we haven’t talked since, I’m just going to delete the contact. And I’ve been so bad at managing my contact list that there were people who’d died years ago in there. Yeah, this is a critical first step!
I deeply value my friends, and want you all to be more than potential sources of revenue. Being deliberate about maintaining these connections is but a first step. Yet this is an area that I really want to grow. It feeds my soul.
A Sunday Haiku
while the clouds moved past
winter's power continues
sleet and snow descend
Welcome to February!
So, we’ve made it through the first month of 2025! Congrats so far!
As I’ve noted earlier, I’ve lost a lot of my energy in January to sickness. This week I’m finally feeling solidly on the mend (though my cough is still annoying, but every day a bit less so).
I’ve spent this morning weeding through a backlog of email, and getting a few neglected tasks into my planner. I’ve also been able to do a bit of edification type reading.
This morning’s email about Complaining from Seth Godin struck me. I occasionally struggle with it, even though I find it (mostly) a waste of energy. Seth made some good points about it’s purpose.
- “The obvious reason to complain is to make a change happen.”
- That one is often not really the point. Though, if it is the goal, we need to “…focus those complaints where they’ll do the most good, and be prepared to do the work to have an impact”.
- He does list of other reasons, which is worth the minute or two it takes to read his post.
He also points out that complaining is the “evil cousin” of whining. And that whining is pretty wasteful in terms of effectiveness. Both are often simply functions of the entitled mentality.
His last point, which I’m going to embrace, is ““The best way to complain is to make things better.” At least, if positive change is your goal. If it’s simply to deflect blame, conceal fear, or anything else, then, well, go and do you.
Do you have strategies to keep complaining/whining at bay?
Tonight’s Haiku: January 31, 2025
this winter rainfall
gently upon the rooftop
silence of the night