Editorial Post:
Wow. A lot has gone on this week. And the more and more busy my life gets; the more and more simple I want it to be. I mean, I think in comparison I have it relatively cruisey – no kids, no school pickups, no extra lunches or homework, no after school activities. Just work during the day, chores around the house, training and caring for my husband and animals. In comparison, its cruisey.
We deal with some more important things this week. The predominant one being internet privacy. I heed you to stay with me and read through to where my blog title makes sense. The theme image is a great depiction – it suggests that we now live in a world where there is a convergence of the traditional and the new…that our interactions within the digital space will continue to develop, and that the world is becoming a ‘smaller space’.
Reading the morning paper though and seeing that a new skydiving center is being built right where my work is has given me angst. It’s one of the busiest shopping centers north of Brisbane and I’m already struggling with having to drive there every day. Coming from what’s colloquially called ‘Southside’ (meaning the South of Brisbane CBD), I waste (and lose) 3-4 hours every single day commuting to and from work, because I get stuck in the worst ends of traffic. And this is still the good end of it. If I were to leave later, my return trip would be more like 5-6 hours…I’m not even kidding. And if I were to drive to this same location in no traffic it would take me an hour each way. But the roads in Brisbane are so badly designed that even the new toll roads, which people refuse to use mind you, are just in the way.
This is what is making me think of wanting an easier life. Yes there are options for me through my new job to access work from home options or potentially, hopefully, even move locations to a south side location which would reduce my travel time to 30-40 minutes one way, but I’m only half way through my probation period and so I still have another 3 months to go before I can even negotiate this. I’m not the only one in this boat, but in comparison, others who have this available to them are able to negate the effect of wanting to mow people over because they’re causing you road rage by spending a day or two working from home.
But it isn’t just that ya know. Sometimes I think of just doing something completely random. Like going and doing something I would never do. I’ve been thinking a lot about having a little coffee shop in a country town, specializing in low-carb and whole, clean foods, sourcing local produce and just having a better footprint in society. Something like this would need a lot of work to start with because I’d be making a lot of the pastries and cakes and recipes myself. So it wouldn’t be something I could start up and slide into every so often. I’d really need to be giving it a lot of my time, perhaps even take some time off work and all to set it up.
I guess it’s something I can consider. I mean we are now looking to get a country property, even though we live semi-rural, but we’re looking for greater land and to have some animals on there for our own purposes. It’s something I can give some greater thought to.
Side note – Nelly Furtado with Say it Right is playing right now on my Spotify list. It’s like this song came on at the right time as I’m writing this. The mood of the song is just so right!
Now, back to business after that weird intro. A few great things occurred this week and I really wanted to discuss them. Honestly, I was thinking to do a mid-week post but I wasn’t feeling the prose flow despite being pretty fired up about a particular issue.
So, using my journal, I’d like to nominate a few key points for discussion:
- New jobs popped up in my field of work
- Goals checklist and journaling
- Cancelled/Deactivated Facebook
- Documentary screening of “The Magic Pill”
New jobs
In my field of work, jobs come up like hen’s teeth. It’s one of those areas very tight knit and very private. Often, people get earmarked for positions because they know the people in the know and they know the job. It’s sensitive work all the time. Despite whatever job you currently have, when new jobs pop-up you apply for them, or you miss out, and then when you miss out, you kick yourself for not giving it a go. I made that mistake once where a position popped up pretty close to home. It wouldn’t have permitted me to get a promotion for some time, but it was close to home! I kept debating over it and never applied for it and then got messed around for ages in these other whack jobs and I always regretted just not putting in for it at the time. So now, my rule of thumb is when you see it, apply for it. Even if some of the requirements are more technical or you might not have full proficiency for that field (as in it’s a developing proficiency and not knowledge of) you chuck in for it. You never know when it will come back to you, or who will remember you.
Same happened with the job I currently have – I have a very specific knowledge of my discipline and I’m very good at it in this particular section. This job was effectively the next level which I had minimal training in and had only done a very small amount of. But my new boss has the same background as I do and has worked at exactly the same places in the past, and he remembered me from an interview more than 6 months before and said he thought I still had the necessary skills to do my current job. He basically headhunted me, and gave me a 2-level promotion to come over to his team, which is why even though I complain about the driving and commute, I’m still willing to give this job and new workplace a hell of a go, because my boss believed in me and chased me, instead of me chasing them.
These jobs that have popped up are more in the specific areas I have expertise in, and more what I would like to do, so I am still going to put in my applications and see how I fare.
Goals checklist and journaling
I’ve been writing in my journal daily. Mostly for planning purposes and to make sure I am on top of everything. I can definitely say it has made productivity a lot better! I do want to consider writing more for just writing, as in getting my thoughts out. Lavendaire who I mentioned last week, had a great Youtube video about this type of writing.
I am writing down every single thing. For example, here is a re-typed snippet of Wednesday:
-Email from lease company stating lease will be ceased. Fwdd to HR.
-Do washing!
– Pay $100 off electricity bill. Schedule payments!
NBN message. Rebooked for 11/AUG/2017 @ 0800-1200.
Cancelled/deactivated FB acc.
This has been an excellent task in timelining tasks into smaller things. For example, I pay $100 a fortnight to my electricity bill. This has helped immensely when it comes time to paying your bill at each quarter, because you find that often you are in credit, or, only need to pay an extra $100-200 off your bill. It definitely makes budgeting easier. It’s also a reminder for me to setup a regular payment schedule each fortnight so I don’t forget to pay it.
In the case of the vehicle lease, it provided a chance for me to timeline events, emails, and contact with the company as they hadn’t changed my vehicle over to my new job in over 2 months, and I was out of pocket for the vehicle expenses to the tune of $4,000 as a result. Again, an excellent way to be able to be able to go back and see everything that has happened and be able to provide it as a holistic representation of an event. Specifically with the lease, I was able to provide all my relevant corro to the company with emails and dates to prove my point when I did call them two days later and gave them what for.
It doesn’t matter how organized you think you are, and how good you think your memory is, you simply cannot remember everything in your own mind these days with the amount of interference everywhere.
Another side note: There’s dew on the grass. The sunlight is shining from the rear neighbor’s side through to our backyard. The fog is only just burning off because the air looks wet, and despite the sun being out, it’s only about 5 degrees C. A phenomenal morning for coffee, slippers and blogging!
Now…this was a pretty serious one. The basics of what happened:
- I ordered whey protein from a company I’ve never used before. I paid for the whey protein using PayPal which is linked to my private primary home email as it is the most secure.
- I had Facebook on my phone through an app, but I used a separate login and email for FB, using an alias name also. I have never linked my mobile number to my profile.
- The company I purchased the whey protein from sent me a message through FB messenger saying “hey thanks for your order, it’s on the way!”
- The company had my mobile and my mobile is also attached to my PayPal account.
- I attributed that they were able to search my mobile on Facebook and send me a message through Facebook messenger, despite me having no social media or other relationship with them.
- I raised the issue in a group I was part of for low carb high fat #LCHF eating. A lot of people were alarmed. Some said it happened to them and they couldn’t work out why. Others who had small businesses stated that this was an option provided to them. One woman said that knowing what kind of a reaction it could generate from the consumer, she was not going to be adding this service to her business. Many were appalled at the intrusiveness of this feature and a huge discussion developed. A good discussion where people were able to talk about their experience.
I started the post as a way of saying, you guys are great, but I do not want to be a part of this and will be deactivating Facebook, and henceforth leaving the group.
There are SERIOUS issues with this in relation to privacy. It isn’t just about ‘tailoring advertising and marketing’ relevant to you, as the consumer and in the way Facebook is marketing this bullshit. But why does an American company need the mobile numbers of Australian people? What purpose does it serve them? For law enforcement purposes their law enforcement and intelligence agencies have no jurisdiction here, the same as ours and other countries have none over there, so for what fucking purpose do they need that much of our private information? The issues result in a large company such as Facebook having the large-scale ability to look at our behaviors and actions, our patterns. No-one needs to know this about us. We seem to be providing this company a hell of a lot more information than ever before, and yet if a Police Officer came to your house and asked you information you could very easily tell to them to fuck off, or return with a search warrant. So why people, why, are you GIVING UP FREELY, all your personal information?
One of the women was talking about how she didn’t even have her Facebook open, but was talking about buying something with her husband in the car and the next time she opened up social media there was random adverts for it. Is Facebook listening? Is it all a grand conspiracy?
I’m not into the whole, aliens and reptilians are ruling the world and the Queen is a reptilian crap that losers like Alex Jones or David Icke spread hype and rumors about. But I do get concerned when this type of shit happens. It’s happened to me before and yet I chalked it all down to a weird coincidence. My husband and I were driving and I said to him I really felt like iced milk (which is my way of saying iced coffee). As I opened my Facebook not even 5 seconds later, I had ads for all these different pre-mixed iced coffee and chocolate milk products you could purchase from Coles and Woolworths in Australia. Like WTF?
You really need to be asking yourself about what you want the world to know. For the sake of social media, are you willing to give up the privacy, safety and security of things like, your personal mobile number, your location, what your children and family members look like, your private vehicle and anything else you think is “safe” to unleash on social media? What do you use it for? When I started thinking about mine, it was a feed full of pages and memes about thing I liked which I was already capturing on Pinterest and Instagram – so why do I need another social media site to capture the same shit I am capturing in other places? Also – it wasn’t as if I was keeping in touch with family or doing anything like that. Some of my family were interactive, the ones who actually gave a shit. The rest……Why interact with the cunts on social media when you don’t do it in real life anyway? Why be around people who just put you down, ridicule you, tell you to fuck off or whatever other shit they do, only to follow them on social media? No thanks. You can be blood all you want but you’re fucking rude assholes, and you have no right to tease me, belittle me, make fun of me, put me down or put my sister or my parents down….so in that case, what do I need it for?
Side note: As I write this rant a second time, Michael Jackson’s They Don’t Really Care About Us….still gives me goosebumps this song. I actually stopped writing and just turned this song right up and sang. No no, we won’t just hyperlink the song, we’re also going to add the video clip.
Another thing to consider, and this isn’t a wives tail because we’ve seen the media thrash out reports recently of this occurring, is the ability of hacker groups and other online activists (aka Hacktivists) to chase higher profile companies for the information they hold about consumers. There is no doubt in my mind, and I am no cyber crime expert, but there is no doubt in my mind that Facebook is targeted often by hackers for a variety of purposes. And yet, here you are, regular social media consumer, uploading pictures of your baby or your new car, or selling something in a local buy, swap and sell group and giving your number away to whoever can read making ALL of your private information freely available.
The worst thing is that even when you deactivate your social media profile, it isn’t entirely gone. I’ve tried twice to remove myself from Facebook and both times within a month or so I was able to come back and my entire profile was restored. So, deactivating is only removing you visibly from the interwebs – technically, Facebook still has an archive of your life in their mega data storage somewhere in the world.
And unfortunately, Facebook seems to gobbling up and acquiring other social media. Instagram, which I do like using as there is no need for too many words, is owned by Facebook…
Now that we’ve ranted, what I also want to mention is how much wasted time was Facebook taking up? I was listening to a Ted Talks I believe, podcast episode, about how much time we wasted on entertainment, social media and gaming apps on our smart devices, yet they were evidenced as being the ones that gave us the least joy. Apps requiring interaction and learning fared much better. So what does that say for our current state of being, and our minds? I noticed immediately I reached for my phone less, and was more in the moment. Whether it was paying more attention to something, or taking the time to go out for a walk or whatever, I’ve removed myself from scrolling mindlessly through my phone. On the other hand, my husband, seems as if his Facebook addiction is not entirely gone. We went for breakfast yesterday and he spent the majority of time fast scrolling through his Instagram feed instead of having a fucking conversation. And then came home and spent the entire day with his headphones on. I’m all for having time out, I am truly because I need it regularly, but is it timeout you need or some other simulation? What are you bored with?
Rant over!
Now, I know it made it this far, and I hope you’re still with me (I wasn’t planning an editorial post but it kind of came out that way!) The headline of my post this week is from the Michael Jackson song They Don’t Really Care About Us. I was reading an article about the recently shot down Justine Damond, the Australian woman in America who was shot by Police. Horrific…but there’s this article talking about how the Black Lives Matter protest movement (who have been protesting since Philando Castile, an African American male, was also shot by Minneapolis Police and the perpetrator was found not guilty of committing any offence) have joined in solidarity the people protesting the death of Ms Damond. I mean, I love that everyone is joining in solidarity, but it shouldn’t be like this. I just don’t see why people or how people, can hate each other for their differences in religion or race or nationality. I just don’t understand. To me, people are people. If you’re an asshole, you’re an asshole regardless of your values, ethics, morals, religious background, sexual orientation or the colour of your skin.
Damnit people we’re not fucking Neanderthals. It shouldn’t be black versus white versus whatever in this day and age. It should be human helping human. Our hearts all beat the same for fucks sake.
One more thing – I was going to add the review on documentary movie The Magic Pill here, but I think this post just got serious really quickly! And I like talking about serious issues, but let’s also take a step back. I will do a review for The Magic Pill in a separate post.
Goals for the coming week – practice mindfulness and really consider what it is you’re doing on social media…make plans and lists to increase productivity, and tackle something you’re afraid of. Stop looking at your phone and redirect your energy. Don’t waste energy! I’ll hopefully discuss my experiences with these topics next week, provide an update on my weigh in and #lchf way of eating, and some pictures of my new ducks!
Tell me what you think! Was this editorial type post good for you? Did you lose interest? Do you prefer me to tackle larger issues, or just write short and sweet? I’d love the feedback! Email me at thatfitologylife@gmail.com.
Until then.
**Edit: As I’m boycotting Facebook’s intrusiveness I thought I might like to use Twitter to promote my blog posts. Not happening. I made an account specifically for this blog and they would like to use my mobile to verify my account ID. As such, I will not be using Twitter either.
That Fitology Life 