If you are angry and upset

If you are angry and upset right now, it makes sense to take a moment to slow things down.

It is easy to talk about being calm vs finding calm. To find calm, you have to slow down the chatter. Talking to yourself, feeling all the input and information from the outside, absorbing everything. It is painful to feel everything. Even too much of a good thing isn’t a good thing. You need time to recover, to rest to rejuvenate.

Why am I so angry?

I have asked myself this question many times. I admit it, I am angry. It is always an undercurrent along with the hum and swish of my tinnitus. My anger doesn’t go away, it just dims to an extent.

Instead of trying to dissect this anger by myself or just roll into the pit of despair, I take action to live with it. I also look for space to slow down everything while I feel it starting to overtake me.

The great writer and philosopher of our time Stan Lee created the Hulk to explore the duality of human nature and aimed to create a character that was both hero and monster. He was misunderstood by and forced into conflict. His character explores identity, inner strength and outside of the consequences of science a lot of dynamics to our personality. Over the years, many writers took liberty with the character and made Hulk many things beyond what he was originally born to be. There are three things about Hulk that I’d like to share with you for consideration.

1. In the Marvel movies, when Banner was able to control becoming Hulk, he was asked how he could control it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Qq6dQwLh1s “That’s my secret Cap…”
2. In Hulk https://youtu.be/EbfyjiwTUIE?si=h5PCy3tRxFSda6OW “Do you think, you could live with it? Take it.. take it all!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”
3. https://youtu.be/dHSxQ2RRD9o?si=XITmzqBM7SI92klt “Don’t make me angry, you wouldn’t like me when I’m angry.”

Yeah, well, me too. I think some of us have our own version of Hulk living with us. Ironically, after Hulk comes out, he (mostly) is part of a good guy superhero team, but he is fueled by his anger and rage. I don’t think this is a good thing per se, but I do believe it speaks to our nature.

Hulk isn’t the first, we have a history of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde scenarios in all of human history.

So many places in culture that we reference this part of who we are. Instead of accepting it, we seek to put it in the box.

You see, I am not saying that calm solves for anger, what I am saying is that it allows us to explore our anger in a different way and manage it.

I am absolutely guilty of allowing Hulk to just escape and destroy things. In fact, I acknowledge that I have lost control of myself and been in such a rage that I was disoriented and watching myself as a third party.

That is all the more reason to seek out ways to slow things down.

If you are still interested:

We can certainly explore or discuss this more if you are interested. There is a few simple points I’ll share with you that I hope may help you. This continues to help me.

Acceptance and self-compassion are helpful. If you don’t take any time to be with yourself and you constantly distract yourself with things, you’ll never find peace.

Look for patterns in yourself and triggers. I try to figure out why I am angry sometimes and what is causing me to get into it. I reflect on it and sometimes I can slow things down enough to manage myself, still be angry and suffer less of a consequence.

I do the mindfulness stuff, I use Tripp (shout out to the Tripp team, it is very helpful).

I create things, I make them and give them away.

I see a doctor that I like and that “gets me.” Thanks to the VA, I finally have someone I can talk to about things and I feel he doesn’t judge me. I need that.

Finally, I work hard to stay focused on my purpose NOT legacy but my purpose today.

I don’t think Tyson was trying to be an asshole but what he says absolutely resonates with me. “I don’t believe in legacy. It’s just another word for ego. I’m just passing through. I’m gonna die, and it’s gonna be over. Who cares about legacy after that?”

What does this mean to us?

Something for you to think about.

Hey you, take a chill, relax, work on your stuff, be angry sometimes, do you, don’t worry about the things you can’t do anything about, live your life, and try to love and enjoy as much as you can.

Love ya!

H

A is for Accountability (Gov Edition)

 

Years ago, I worked at US Joint Forces Command before it was dismantled by the “machine.” People said that it was “wasteful”, and some declared that the services were already “joint” and didn’t need any help there. Well, most of that was bologna. Getting rid of the command was meant to save money. That is what CAPE advised and what it was supposed to do. Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation (CAPE) look it up if you’d like. HOWEVER,

Look at the DoD budget over history. Yes, we are in record high territory but if you ask most government people, they’d tell you they do NOT have enough money and resources to do the work they need to do.

Some reasons why:

• We do not run the government with a strong accountability system designed to make fast and reactionary decisions in a reasonable timeframe.
• We prepare meetings, briefs, emails and messages for people with a design framework meant for 4th – 5th grade intelligence.
• We don’t think and,
• we don’t hold people accountable.
• We don’t release people, we move them. Don’t get me wrong, if someone did something covered under an obvious federal law, they might be able to do something about it, think discriminatory etc. However, people could ruin a DoD program and spend millions of dollars or waste millions of dollars and never be held accountable. Unfortunately, they may remain in a position to damage the DoD for a very long time.

There is very little accountability and further, there is very little that senior leadership can do at the moment because for all the things they can do, they are hamstrung. That is the truth.

Let me put this into perspective for you in real life terms. You could be moved or taken out of a role for looking at someone the wrong way, but you can cause millions of dollars of damage, hurt our warfighter and the Amercian people, waste money and stay in your job while the building burns down, and NOTHING happens. People can report you; you can even raise concerns in a public forum, and NOTHING happens. #TRUTH

There is a ton of stupidity in the government.

Fire! Fire! Fire! There’s a Bravo class fire in compartment 3-130-0-E. Metal is melting, and people are in trouble. “Did you fill out the DoD 324.0001 PDF that you can’t access online because all the power is out”?

Bad things happen, stupid things happen, and we just traipse along without a care in the world.

Think about how much money is spent on cyber security. I think cyber is one of the biggest lies ever told to the public. https://comptroller.defense.gov/Portals/45/Documents/defbudget/fy2024/budget_justification/pdfs/01_Operation_and_Maintenance/O_M_VOL_1_PART_1/CYBERCOM_OP-5.pdf?form=MG0AV3

Billions of dollars and I mean BILLIONS but where is the value add? I’d challenge anyone to tell us what the risk management framework has done for us? What catastrophic issue did we avoid or protect ourselves from? In fact, most of the work force doesn’t even understand cyber security. They pass training that tells them not to click the link in an email. DUMB.

On top of this, we don’t have centralized IT cost accounting. No one knows who is spending money and what value is derived. We talk about things like “business”, but the DoD isn’t a business, it is a spend factory. You get money and the measure of success is how much you spend, how quickly and how well you did spending it. HOORAY!!!!! We spents all our monies!!! YaY for the AM3rica peoplez yall!

Seriously. Now people are worried about this thing called Schedule F.

I call it “Schedule FINALLY” because it seems that we have a unique opportunity to hold people accountable. Let me be clear with you all, there are good, smart, caring and passionate people in the DoD that not only mean well but are exceptionally effective. From where I stand, they are rare. The DoD and the greater Federal government have a disease of ineffective process and dumbassery that must be dealt with. The real world, nature, life has no opinion or position to debate. A hurricane doesn’t have time for your paperwork drill. DO YOUR JOB! Many people don’t do their jobs and for the ones that do, they suffer in pain and misery, driven by passion and purpose, they trudge on.

Do you know what Schedule F is?

Schedule F refers to a classification of federal employees in the United States. Introduced in 2020, Schedule F aims to reclassify certain government positions, particularly those involved in policy-making or advising, from traditional civil service protections to a new category with fewer protections.

Key Features

1. At-will employment: Employees can be fired without cause.
2. No appeals: Limited or no appeals process for terminations.
3. No union representation: Schedule F employees may not be represented by unions.
4. Performance-based evaluations: Evaluations focus on performance rather than seniority.

Goals and Controversies

Goals

1. Increase accountability: Hold employees accountable for performance.
2. Improve efficiency: Streamline personnel management.

Controversies

1. Politicization: Concerns about partisan influence in hiring and firing.
2. Loss of expertise: Experienced employees may be let go.
3. Undermining civil service: Eroding protections and job security.

Click to access 2025_MandateForLeadership_FULL.pdf

This is a link to a PDF that people are talking about Project 2025 — I am not FOR or AGAINST IT, just sharing it because it is part of the discussion.

From FNN Summarized

People concerned with the federal workforce and government operations are wondering if former President Donald Trump would bring back Schedule F if he returns to office. Schedule F was his plan to turn a chunk of senior career civil service employees into essentially political appointees. Washington attorney George Chuzi expressed his concerns in an interview with Tom Temin on The Federal Drive.

Chuzi highlighted that Project 2025, a plan involving several executive orders from the Trump administration, explicitly states the intention to reintroduce Schedule F. Despite Trump’s campaign distancing itself from Project 2025, Chuzi remains skeptical due to the involvement of numerous former Trump officials in the project.

If Schedule F were reinstated, it could affect up to 15,000 federal career civil servants, primarily GS-13 through GS-15 employees. Chuzi argues that this move threatens the nonpartisan nature of the federal civil service, which has been in place since the 1880s to ensure stability and impartiality in government operations.

The discussion also touched on the broader implications of executive orders and the balance of power between the executive branch and other government entities. Chuzi emphasized the importance of a nonpartisan civil service in maintaining checks and balances within the government. https://federalnewsnetwork.com/congress/2024/10/how-bad-would-schedule-f-be-anyway/

https://kettering.org/the-schedule-f-threat-to-democracy-a-project-2025-explainer

Well, regardless of Project 2025, the government needs to have accountability, audit and provide the senior leadership with mechanisms and tools to exercise their best judgement on their people and the outcomes. If we are meant to run the DoD like we do a business, we need to allow decision makers to make decisions. We don’t.. I’ll say it again for clarity, even the SMARTEST people in the DoD with the best and coolest titles are bound by an invisible force which restricts them from making decisions. Once confronted with this force, they have to move their concerns up the chain of command into an eventually abyss of “nevamakadecision” land.

I welcome the opportunity for change. If we are going to stop the madness of literal lunacy, we need to start with the letter “A” in the alphabet for ACCOUNTABILITY.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this post are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of any organization or entity. All information provided is for informational purposes only. References to sources are included for context and should be reviewed independently.

BTW, Happy Sunday and for my fellow Veterans.. THIS IS WHAT WE DO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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What I really wanted to say is...

THE world is literally getting dumber. If you have never seen the movie “Idiocracy” https://screenrant.com/db/movie/idiocracy/ get some popcorn, drink something green and enjoy a forward-looking prediction for today. It just took from 2006 to today to realize the satirical references of that movie.

I am honestly exasperated by the literal stupidity of people. I actually have limited to zero patience any more for it. I have increased my mindfulness practices by 3fold to offset rage.

I am from the generation of Clerks, we were thinkers, we were doers, we were the glue that held things together. Now, it seems we are leaning in and getting sucked into sociological stupidity in droves. Maybe, people like me are becoming dinosaurs. I believed growing up, we could make the world a better place. We’ve proven that we couldn’t do that and more over that it is boooorrriiiinggg.

We’d rather spend $1500 dollars on what used to be $5.00 tickets to a baseball game. Our popular musicians that spit out literal nonsense about sex, drugs and crime make more money than leading scientists. Of course it makes sense! It makes sense to pay baseball and football players enough money to buy an island. I mean that makes sense right?

We poison our food and our water. Literally, poison it and people are like “derrrr.” I’ll give you an example, because if you are reading this, you may think this is dumb as well. Last week, I found out that my water supply was contaminated. The people managing the water supply who call themselves “water company” are all volunteers that just “help” with the water. They were told by the state exactly what to do but their group think voting has them “trying things” instead of just doing what the state experts told them to do. Result equals “I’ll take care of it.”

Which is the real reason that I am uber angry and frustrated. People act stupid, they don’t do homework, research, there is no such thing as quality work any longer. You can’t trust anyone to do a job. You have to wind up doing it yourself or redoing work. If you try to hold someone accountable it winds up costing more money.

You see, there are no longer any experts, there are people who “do stuff” and who may have “done stuff” for 20 years but that doesn’t mean they are experts. Do you know why?

JUST BE COUZE

Here is one reason, if you replace your older car with a newer hybrid, the person who’s been a mechanic for 30 + years, doesn’t know how it works. That is the bottom line, replacing this ding dong with that one used to work fine. Growing up our car mechanic was 5 dudes from Jamaiaca working literally in the back of a bowling alley. Tesla put them out of business. I am not exaggerating; these guys could fix your car and make it run better than before for cold hard cash and you bringing the parts.

Look across all the industries and you’ll see that technology advances are putting people who knew how to do something out of business. Oh, that is a good thing, right? NOPE! Here is why it isn’t. First the dumbasses that created the new technology really didn’t understand the old technology. In fact, they didn’t enhance or make it better, they just replaced it with something that is “like” it. Then like dumbasses we accept it because it is shiny.

We get caught up in the branding and the marketing and all the hoopla and then things go downhill. It is in everything we do now. Someone replaced the Twinkie with a Twinkie clone made with ill-defined chemicals.

• A single Twinkie contains 37 ingredients, but only 5 of them are ‘recognizable’. Flour. Egg. Water. Sugar. Salt.
• Twinkies’ ingredients are manufactured with fourteen of the top twenty chemicals made in the U.S.
• Wholefood ingredients have been replaced by chemical concoctions. For example, less egg has been used, as they’ve been replaced by monoglycerides and diglycerides — chemicals to bind fats and water-based ingredients, and extend the shelf life of the product.
• It contains harmful ingredients that contribute significant risk to chronic disease including high fructose corn syrup (and 4 other types of sugar!) Yep there’s 5 types of nasty sugar in a Twinkie!
• The unhealthiest kind of fats are lurking in there — hydrogenated vegetable fats (trans fats) which are simply awful for your health!
• The vitamins, artificial colors, and flavorings come from petroleum.
• The cream center contains absolutely no cream! Instead, it’s full of shortening — a cheap fat.
• It also contains a small amount of sodium stearate — one of the most common ingredients found in soap! No thank you!
• So many of the ingredients come from overseas including China, where there are hardly any regulations placed on their use. Scary! ref-https://www.foodmatters.com/article/whats-really-in-a-twinkie

People, we can’t even get the Twinkie right… But if you’re kid asks you for a Twinkie, you’d buy them one because that is what we do.

I know, I am all over the map, right? Well, not so much partner. When you get up in the morning, have a cup of coffee and drink the chemical concoction, fake sugar and advanced non gmo, gmo, filtered, particle, micro processed but not enhanced, naturally unnatural radioactive, all certified healthy beverage, you’re impacted too. You are impacted as well. Not in one place, but in all places.

I can’t go anywhere, not one place without having to be patient and mindful. What’s more is the politics of this country have only taught me that stupidity was a mostly hidden undercurrent of our world. It was like honey in the walls. Now, that I see it, I can’t unsee it.

By the way, if your desire is to “get rich”, I can tell you how. There are few things you need to do first. First, I have to be able to berate and belittle you. Call you dumbass and tell you about all the laws you need to understand so that you can get around and evade them. Then I’ll teach you how to do something viral so that you can make a lot of money up front to fund your thing. Once there, I’ll show you how to get together with a bunch of friends and people you can convince to spend money, we will find a really low-priced stock and all invest money into it. The new market analysts who use only technology to analyze stock prices will see the move and automatically start investing other people’s money. Stock will go up until either someone starts questioning it, which will be a long time or people are attracted to the next trash can fire of a company to move money into. Before the stock drops, you sell and make baaa jillions. Once you make that kind of money, you move it all into crypto offshore. Sell everything you have, don’t make any more money and live in debt and possibly collect welfare.

Once all that is done, I’ll show you with my three-step process how to give up citizenship, go to Mexico or another country, get a “golden visa” and a path to citizenship. If you want to come back into the country for education and healthcare benefits, once you give up your citizenship, you can come in as an illegal. Register for benefits, live like a king and pay zero tax and make money from your TikTok account where you call Americans stupid with a fake Borat accent or whatever accent you choose! As long as you can find some part of that accent you are using in your Ancestry DNA because if you don’t you may offend someone.

Hey, btw, if you are not Jewish and you eat a bagel is that cultural appropriation? Just asking because every time I see someone that looks NOT Jewish, it makes me very upset that they can have bagels. In fact, we should be the only people that can use the word. Does this make sense to you?

Now, finally, I want to share with you that you can make a positive difference in the world, but it is very costly. Dealing with stupid ass dumb people is draining and literally sucks the air out of the room and your life. This means if you want to survive in this world, you need to train like a marathoner. Not in the usual go to the gym and look in the mirror at your massive testy shrinking gains. I mean mentally. You have to do a lot of mindfulness training. Find a quiet place and 4 box breath yourself into almost passing out. You do that, you won’t even need anti-depressants because active hyperventilating can get you into a chill place very quickly.

If that doesn’t work, please reach out and I’ll tell you about some secret ways without any medication. These ways have been around for 1,000 years and modern medicine ignored them. I found out about them when Dr. Mookiemookie came up on my Bing real news page. I clicked on it and found a Pinterest page that took me to a Facebook link with a TikTok video copied from a YouTube short. Unfortunately, once I followed all the way, it cost me 5k for the answer which I had to transfer to his village in Madagascar. That said, we can work something out, just message me on the side, I’ll hook you up, legit.

If you aren’t angry, upset or frustrated about the sheer stupidity around you, I’d be curious to your secret.