mermaidcamp
Keeping current in wellness, in and out of the water
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Newton’s Third Law Goes Shopping
November 24, 2012
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In case you need to refresh Sir Isaac Newton gave us some basic concepts that we use today. He broke down movement and energy to define inertia. The third law of motion states that every action has an equal and opposite reaction. This may be easy to imagine in terms of tug boats or bumper cars, but how does this law pertaining to matter have significance we can use to make smarter purchases? When we play billiards we consider the angle, the trajectory, the speed of the ball as we direct it on its way. Do we ever think about the economic repercussions we create with our spending decisions?
Today is shop local, Small Business Saturday. At the same time the mega retailers are bringing in customers with loss leaders to hunt for extreme bargains. Santa is in business all over the country promoting the concept that a big spending binge is healthy, cheery, and designates the participants as Christians. Giant light displays and seasonal music beckon to those who are attracted to all that. Office parties with cocktails and perhaps secret Santa designate this month as Slack for Seasonal Cheer time. Monday while employees are paid to be working, a day to shop on line will be granted by workers to workers. Only a Grinch or a Scrooge would interfere with Cyber Monday. Culturally this is the time to allow employees to take it easy around the office as a reward for doing their jobs for 11 months. What equal and opposite harm can come from that?
Meanwhile over at Zappo’s every single employee is brushing up skills, checking them twice, because it does not matter if you are naughty or nice….you will be answering the phone and delivering happiness to customers during this busiest shopping season. The core values that run the best retail experience on earth include full collaboration from all staff all the time. When needs of the customers’ shift, they shift to accommodate. They do not carry the myth that by giving them a party in December the company fulfills the promise to make employees happy. The Zappsters know that an overall commitment to serve the happiness of both customers and staff is in place and being improved constantly. Their benefits, their work environment, and their personal satisfaction are at the very foundation of the success enjoyed by the company. I do enjoy on line shopping, in spite of the fact that it does not support my local economy. Since I am a speed shopper, I am not so much into the comparison of prices as I am into a superior selection and customer service. The happy Zappsters deliver, so much more than shoes. I like the idea that my purchase contributes to a happy healthy workplace if not to my micro economy.
Hip Shopping and Sugar Plums
November 23, 2012
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By definition, a purchase at a small business is an act of individuation. The effort to save small business, slow food, craft quality, and organic farming is valid from an economic standpoint. The local business keeps currency flowing in the local stream. Home Depot takes as much profit as possible home to the stockholders, as is their mandate. This does not make Home Depot evil, but it does mean that it is impossible to purchase anything hip at that Depot. The interaction with the customer is done to scale, as in, ‘What do we need to order from China for next season?”, or “How do we create a new line of seasonal treats our customers have requested?” The hip gift giver looks for the unique match, which is not to be found in the massive crush of deep discount mall shopping.
My mom just loved being swept away by merchandise. She shopped all over the world and stocked up on gifts for unknown future receivers. These ghost recipients were just taking up some of the slack in her giant shopping disorder. She was good anywhere, from the street market in Asia to Wal-Mart. She loved acquisition for no apparent reason. I spent way too much time in my childhood shopping for my taste. I believe this experience shaped me into the psychic speed shopper that I am today. First of all, like many traits we reverse (only to end at the same place), my goal is always to spend as little time as possible. Exactly like my mother I start with no need to shop, owning already more stuff than I could ever possibly use in this lifetime. If I buy something I need to feel that I have been guided, like the Star of Bethlehem, to that object. I want to feel like shopping commando, in and out without even being detected in the marketplace. Ruby (my mom) wanted to hang out and try on everything, being stimulated and thrilled by dressing rooms and the hollow compliments of commissioned sales people. She burned me out long before I was 9 on that situation. I never go to malls, and would simply die if I had to go to one on Black Friday.
Today for Green Friday I have no particular need to buy anything. It is the perfect day, however to take the public bus to Fourth Avenue to buy pecans and pistachios at the Food Conspiracy. There is a local party with live music, discount shopping and dining, and a chance to see the streetcar tracks they have been building for what seems like forever. By taking the bus right in front of home I will avoid all traffic/parking/road construction issues. I like to create gifts I decide to give, to make it a personal deal. The recipient will never be thrilled as in wow the expensive brand name thingy everyone else has!!!!!!!, but maybe years later will be able to remember how the sugar plums tasted. I freestyle my own sugar plums from nuts and fruit I find or have. This year I dried some awesome pears in September that are delicious. I want to try mixing them with pistachios and pecans, both of which are grown in Arizona. I encourage you to do your own, since it is almost impossible to make them taste bad. I think Alton is way off base with the fennel seed, and would never do that in mine, but that is why the creation is an individual gift. The ones in The Night Before Christmas were sugar-coated coriander …..drastic flavor if you ask me. I goes to show that your flavor will be savored by individuals, so take some time to do something tailored to them. Thoughtful and personal is the new mindless overconsumption.
Triberr is Toastmasters for Bloggers
November 14, 2012
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The blog sharing, syndicating, and supporting system known as Triberr is the blogging parralell to Toastmasters for public speaking. i was invited to a tribe about a year ago with my not so regularly published Tumblr blog. I met cool people, read their blogs regularly and tweeted them to my mini following. We do bond as a tribe, and some are founded around specific areas of interest. The personality of each tribe is vastly different as are the styles of each chief. Everyone is a chief if the initiative is taken to grow and lead a tribe of one’s own. I enjoyed my first tribal experience, and noticed that the tribe existed even after our chief quit blogging and abandoned the tribe entirely. This indicated the power of the structure, the system, the potential of place we do all of this syndication…Triberr. The obvious limitations of being in a tribe with no cheif, and having only one person in my own tribe,(who really had not fully registered or blogged) lead me to a fabulous decision. I made up my mind to meet my only tribal member in New York City for the first TribeupNYC event to check the vibe in person. I am pleased with my decision to go for all kinds of reasons, including the fact that I enjoyed lower Manhattan in a pre Sandy state of bliss and perfection. There was no sign of impending doom.
I had risen before dawn for many years to attend Toastmasters meetings at a hospital to fine tune my public speaking skills. Our diverse and dedicated group proved to me how many different reasons there can be for wanting to speak in public. I already was a total ham, and won every week the extemporaneous table topic event. I covered my office with blue ribbons from table talk. Conspicuously absent from the ribbon display were ribbons for prepared speeches. I maybe got one 3rd place…or none. This is easily explained by my fellow Toastmasters’ diligent hard work. Like ants they attended conferences and competitions, put hours of prep into the speeches done in the meetings. I was the grasshopper who did little homework because the table topic ribbons looked good enough to me, and I knew I would win another one every week. Resting on my improvisational laurels yet again, I learned a lot. I thought the critique and evaluations skills were of the utmost importance. The supportive structure resembles the blogging tribe in the simplicity of the mission. Both Toastmasters and Triberr are designed to improve by practice and critique.
Triberr is a modern-day literary soiree with bloggers tribing up to read and share each others’ work. It has the same individuality that each Toastmasters chapter offers, and many participants are in more than one tribe, just like active Toastmasters who speak daily at different meetings. It has the same few stalwarts who keep it going, and the same number of flakes who come and go without much impact. Toastmasters is modestly priced, as is Triberr Prime, the paid version of the system. I am working my way up to Priming it. I have grown my own tribe since the conference on the equinox, and been invited to join some others. I love the way it exposes us to each other and to an unknown set of others based on our own cultivation of a news stream. There is no doubt in my mind that this power is working well for me, and even has the potential of moving me out of the table topic section of the creative world. I do really appreciate the thorough work and preparation dedicated to the blogs I am reading from my tribe mates. Perhaps I will try it.
In the meantime, I have dedicated my Tumblr blog to a new tribe I formed around the Three Book Diet cult I have joined as a superfan of the ever brilliant Brother Brogan. The ability to have a book club about an intense interaction with the material rather than a cursory and meaningless consumption of words is something brand new. It is the opposite of the high volume book club…..no review and abandon…not this year..we will live our books, live our yoga, live our true Epicurean literary lives. I do remember that at the end of Trust Agents there was mention of using what you have just read rather than hurrying away to more reading. Chris and Julian are teachers, not so much authors, even though they have written these great books. Business Design is the new community management. By styling his own business as interactive with ease it is my opinion that Chris has figuratively reopened the ancient Greek schools of philosophy that required direct transmission from the master. Socrates did not believe in the written word, thought it would ruin education. I am sure he would freak right out if he saw PowerPoint. I think that Triberr and the book dieting cult can combine very nicely. Ironically diet books that tell you how to eat are always best sellers, but nobody I have seen has chosen a diet book for the book diet.
How to Become a Super Model
November 13, 2012
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Find the essence of who you are meant to be through refinement and distillation.
Mollie Lu and the still
Keep your options open.
Mollie Lu
Enjoy the ride.
Jumps for Joy
Take some calculated risks.
Letting Go
Remember to thank the fam.
Max, Mollie, and Ben
State that you are one, and firmly maintain it.
Mollie Lu Looks at You
Claim Your Acronym
November 12, 2012
To enhance communication of any kind it is necessary to address a specific audience, even if it is digital. In the book Impact Equation I have been presented with a concept that I have been living for the last few years. Brother Brogan proposes that for an idea to evolve and be refined the qualities that cause audience to be interested in your message must be considered. He mentions that presenting in public with instant feedback from direct observation is entirely different from the digital world of presentation. This is the understatement of the decade as well as the theme of my study and effort for the last 3 or 4 years. I have always taught in person to groups and individuals. If I say so myself I have done this so much that I do instinctively know how to teach and drive a message home to people I can see and hear. However, my in person methodology involves much humor and stealth to distract and weave fairy tales of deep lessons. With real live people it is easy to stop when you are bombing, change course, redirect. It is digitally difficult, since we are communicating blindly with no visual of our intended audience. We now have no idea why or how anyone pays us attention, but need to fill in that blank in some cohesive way.
To plant a memorable seed in the digital arena that is both considered and spread by evangelists, there must be an easy way to evangelize. This is exactly the point at which I, as the charismatic in person snake oil saleswoman, completely failed to execute my core beliefs to what I know to be a very large audience wanting to feel good and feel healthy at the same time. I always look to the ancestors for deeper meaning. My parents were extreme acronym adopters in the 1950’s. The created codes such as SUS ( sit up straight) and COP (chin over plate) to give me orders in public and at home about how to enjoy dining with them. Like many other of my parents’ futuristic practices, virtually nobody else I knew did such a thing. My giant aversion to all acronyms can be directly traced to eating with my parents. This does not serve me at all and can not hurt the feelings of my dead parents. OMG, is it ever time to stop boycotting the acronym.
Starting from scratch, one would have acro’ed in initially before going out and getting and international trademark, if one had been aware. Since I was in the less than aware group, and only recently liberated to appreciate the beauty and power of the acronym, I must start where I am. Floatli is my trademark and my invention for water exercise. It is for those who like to feel good while moving, and appreciate the fact that they can move. Today I step into this century and happily debut the Floatli acronym:
- First
- Love
- Own
- Ass
- Totally
- Like
- It is
This means that taking care of your own body for the most pleasurable healthy outcome will involve radical acceptance of what is. The sensual pleasure of water as an exercise medium is empowering. It can be a haven for injured athletes, a playground, and a social bonding agent. If your first ( and maybe only) consideration is the flawed appearance of your bathing suit look, the good feelings stop before they begin. I am an evangelist for loving your own ass, because if you don’t nobody else will.
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