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The Importance of Overcoming A Toxic Environment

Everyone has worked or been in a toxic environment at some point in their lives. If you are older than 21, it is almost a given.

Working in an environment that is uncomfortable is not something anyone sets out to do. A bad boss, bad co-workers, bad location, terrible office, etc. What I have learned in thirty-plus years of working is that it less about the environment and more about how you react to or handle it.

As far as I know, we are all human. Humans make mistakes and get angry. We don’t all like everyone we meet, and they don’ all like us. Here are some things I’ve learned over the years.

It’s not me, it’s you

Attitude, in my humble opinion, is the most important thing in this situation. If you are in a very uncomfortable work or school environment, how you react to it is much more important than how they handle it.

If you allow the toxic environment to control you, it will. For example, if you have a supervisor that belittles or demeans you on a day to day basis, you can either take what they say to heart or you can realize that their opinion of you isn’t the issue. The issue is usually their opinion of themselves that is the problem.

Calmness is the Key

It’s easy to get ticked off in a situation where you are right and they are wrong. Learn to be the bigger person. At the end of the day, you have to live with you, not them. If you stick to your convictions and stay true to yourself, everything else will work out in the end.

Does that mean the situation will get better? Rarely. Usually there is not much that can be done for someone who makes it there life goal to make sure everyone is a miserable as they are.

Decision Time

I’ve learned throughout my lifetime that I have the final say on how my day is going to be, no matter what the circumstances. We’ve all heard the stories of people with chronic diseases that just want to help as many people as they can before their time is up.

Be that person. You never know who you are going to effect with a positive attitude. While things my be awkward and angering, if you choose to let it all roll off you had have a good day, you will.

Now it doesn’t work every time, but the majority of the time your day will turn out better if you decide it is going to. I’ve been in some terrible situations in my life that didn’t bother me, and I’ve been in some easy ones that turned out to be awful because I convinced myself they were awful.

Conclusion

In the end, you should be the only resident in your brain. Don’t let other people move in with negativity or sour attitudes. If you do, remember YOU are the landlord and you can evict them.

It is up to you to clean up your thoughts. No one else can do that for you. Make every day a good day, ultimately it is up to you. You are the key to any situation, always remember that and you will keep the toxic situations to a minimum at worst. At best, you will remove your mind from any toxic thoughts.

The Wheel of Time: A Review

*This article contains spoilers for the Wheel of Time Amazon series and the Wheel of Time Book Series*

I started reading the Wheel of Time in the 1990’s. Book six had just been released when I began the series. For those of you that do not know, The Wheel of Time is a fourteen-book series by Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson.

Amazon Prime did a made for television verson loosely based on the book series. Very loosely based. To be honest, it is very difficult to take a beloved book series and turn it into a on screen production that book lovers will adore. It rarely happens. That is one reason it took so long for this to happen.

Amazon wanted to make it more adult themed by making the characters older than they are in the book series. That seems to happen a whole lot with teenaged characters and on-screen portrayals. Think Percy Jackson who is in his early twenties in the movies and 16 in the books. The main character Rand Al’Thor is a teenager in the book and in his mid-twenties in the series, as are Mattrim Cauthon, Perrin Aybara, Egwene Al’Vere and Nynaeve al’Meara is slightly older.

While those changes can be done well, my opinion is that the characters picked for some were not good. As in every modern show or series, the characters were picked to fit a certain narrative in the directors/producers’ political views and not true to the original series. The description of the characters in the books and their onscreen counterpart are not the same thing. I was pleasantly surprised by the acting of some of the people portraying people I grew up reading about, but some missed the mark by a long shot.

Josha Stradowski, who plays Rand, did a very good job at the role in my opinion. He looked the part and he played Rand pretty close to how I had him in my mind. Again, Barney Harris as Matt also did a good job. The writing for him could have been better, but they had to move his character along much faster than in the books and that bothered me a bit.

Rosamond Pike and Morraine Damondred and Daniel Henney as Lan Mandragoran also did a very good job. Lan was not exactly as portrayed in the book, but for me Henney did a very good job capturing the essence of Lan.

On the not as good side, Marcus Rutherford as Perrin Aybara acted the part well, but he was not given an accurate representation of his character. From him having a wife to begin the series to him killing her by accident and being all torn up about it, it was nothing like the Perrin from the books. Perrin was one of my favorite characters from the series, so to be honest it would have been hard to please me on this one.

Zoe Robins as Nynaeve captured only one side of the character, the sassy, always angry side. She played it well, but they made the character way too one dimensional. Not the fault of the actress, the fault of the director and the writers for being short sighted.

Min Farshaw was possibly the worst written character in the on-screen version of the story. Kae Alexander acted well, but she was not at all Min. the description of Min is happy and mischievous, where the Min from the Amazon series was somber and downright depressing. I was very disappointed in their interpretation of her.

Thom Merrilin was another major disappointment. Alexandre Willaume, who played the character, said they wanted to have a different Thom Merrilin than in the books. A darker, more brooding character. That seems like a bad idea for a gleeman. Thom is another of my favorites from the books, and they missed him by a mile on the series.

Now, the story was rushed at best, and the real story was neglected at worst. They had to add things like lesbians and political correctness to make sure all the critics who lean left politically would really love the series, leaving the series readers in the dust with shattered dreams of what could have been.

If you have not read the series, you were most likely lost, and the plot didn’t make a ton of sense to you. It felt rushed to a reader like myself, but I knew what was going on because I had read the entire series. If you had not read the series, they assumed you would get vague references to the series, which is incorrect.

The season finally was extremely loosely based on something that happened in book 3, but it was not nearly as good or understandable as the book version. I tried to hold my judgement for a period of time after watching the series, and now as I look back on it, I am disappointed but not completely turned off to the next season.

It can be salvaged with some better writing and some more time spent explaining the world to newcomers. It can be a good series, but they have to be either more true to the original, or they have to explain things better to the new people they are trying to bring into the Wheel of Time world.

Overall, I am disappointed. It was what I feared it would be but hoped it would not be. A modern telling of a well-loved book series with a political and social skew to it. It is never possible to do a book series of this magnitude complete justice with an on-screen version, but Amazon didn’t really try very hard to be true to the original. They, unfortunately, made it to be “modern”, which, to be honest, I am never going to enjoy completely.

The Best (Fill in the Blank)

best-pic-ever-5 Tiger Woods won the Masters for the fifth time in his career on April 14, 2019. It came after multiple back surgeries and the feeling around golf that he would never win again. It is being called the best comeback in all of sports, and the best sports moment of 2019. It’s only April.

I tend to agree that it was a big moment and it is pretty cool that Tiger won another major championship, but I feel like we oversimplify/over glorify almost everything in sports and society now a days. The Washington Post headline said:

It’s almost miraculous’: Tiger Woods’s return from back surgery is a medical marvel.

Not sure it is miraculous, but it is impressive. Do we overreact to the now a little too much in this country, or am I the only one who thinks so? Every time an athlete, a politician, or just a regular everyday person pulls off something that is impressive, we try to say it is “the best thing we have ever witnessed” or “historically the worst thing we have ever seen”.

Overreaction is a part of our society, and it is a part of our culture. I am not immune to it either. I overreact all the time. We (most of us) all do. Is there a way to fix it? I’m not sure at this point. It is burnt into our DNA. Historically, people like Hitler, Stalin, Castro, Dahmer, and others were actually some of the worst in history. Because a president did something you disagree with doesn’t mean he is like one of those historically bad individuals. It just means you disagree with him.

Maybe I am beating a dead horse with this post. Maybe I am the only one that is bothered by the over dramatization of our society. Everything in the world does not have to be the best or the worst, it can just be something good or bad. If you read history or are a fan of it, no one in our country has ever done anything as bad as some of the people I listed earlier in this piece. Sure, we have done a ton of bad things, some atrocious. People will continue to do good and bad, and some of them will go down as the greatest or worst in history. But lets stop saying everything that happens is the best or the worst ever.

Agree or disagree? Let me know in the comment section down below or comment on Facebook or Twitter. Thanks for reading and be sure to share these posts. Thanks!

Original Shows and Streaming Services

Image result for jack ryan When I first ordered the streaming service Netflix, I did so because there were certain television shows that I was hoping to see. Shows that were on network or cable television that I wanted to watch on my own schedule. Some of them were on the service, and some of them were not. I enjoyed the service and the reason I got it. I was a satisfied customer.

It seemed that the streaming industry began to produce their own original content. A few shows and movies here and there that were exclusive to the service. Hulu, Netflix and Amazon Prime all started this. All of a sudden, there were less and less network content and more and more original content. With the way we consume media, it seemed like a good move for the streaming services to offer original content.

Everything they began marketing to me was original and not even remotely related to something I had watched. Example, “Since you watched Burn Notice, we thought you might enjoy Orange is the New Black”. It became less about your watching habits and more about promoting their shows. I was getting frustrated with the whole thing and considered canceling their service.

Something happened that changed my mind. The services got a few right. I started trying some of their original content, and I enjoyed it. The writing and acting on the shows were not bad, the story was intriguing, and the production value was the same as network. They even took shows from traditional media and moved them to the streaming services, giving good shows that didn’t make it longevity.

I was hooked. I now have two of the main streaming services, and I watch almost as much original content as I do network shows. Shows like “The Good Cop” (Netflix) and “Jack Ryan” (Amazon Prime) were very entertaining. After all of my complaining in the beginning of the original content, I was now a consumer of it.

As I ponder why I am now enjoying content that I did not want in the beginning, I found that it goes back to me. I don’t like change or new things. I listen to old music. I watch old movies. I wanted to watch old television shows. I guess it is a flaw of being old and set in my ways. So this is me branching out and enjoying something new. And I actually like it.

So what are some of your favorite Netflix/Amazon Prime/Hulu shows? Asking for a friend. Let me know in the comment section down below, or on Facebook or Twitter.

DPS and The Time it Takes Part One

The following story may or may not be based on a real life event that happened to me.

Image result for people waiting at the dps

Thanksgiving break had come, and it was a week to celebrate and enjoy some time with family. My kids and I had a week away from school and a few things to do during that week. One of those things was to get a drivers permit for my 15 year old.

I must admit, I was not looking forward to introducing my child to a government agency that works, well, the way a government agency works. I was aware that it was going to be a long day when we finally decided to go and get the drivers permit. That day came on that Tuesday. We were doing the parent taught drivers education, and the child had already finished the written part of the curriculum. All we had to do was bring several pieces of paperwork and the child had to take a test.

I remember pulling up, both children in tow. I was thinking that maybe, just maybe this wouldn’t take as long as I remembered. I was wrong. I knew I would be wrong, but a man can hope.

The three of us went inside and looked around at the fifty or so people sitting in the waiting area, hoping that their number would be called soon. We walked over to a kiosk and my child got a number. Then we picked up the appropriate form to fill out while we waited.

There was no way that the three of us would be able to sit together, so the two kids sat together and I sat next to these two gentlemen who were very obviously not from around these parts. They also appeared to enjoy the type of activities that would leave you skinny and missing a few teeth.

The gentleman to my right informed me they had been waiting for a little over an hour, and hoped he would be called up soon. His friend grunted a second to that statement. I looked around the room and saw little to no hope on anyone’s faces. This did not bode well.

Numbers were called and the herd started to thin, but of course more people came in to replace the ones that either got what they came for or were turned away. The man next to me was looking at his phone. He didn’t appear to be very tech savvy, as he was having trouble getting to “the part that did texts”, as he called it. His friend informed him that he was going to go outside, he had to call someone. They were going to be late for an appointment. I didn’t ask.

After another three to five minutes (time slows down while you are in the DPS office, I assure you), the second man, leaving all of his personal information sitting on his chair, joined his friend outside. Apparently it takes two to make the phone call. Either that or they needed a smoke break.

“Now serving A-345, A-345 at window 9” the automated voice on the television screen said. I looked over at the mans folder, and on top of it sat ticked A-345. I considered going outside to try and alert him, but in very unusual fashion, a worker who came out and called for them one last time dismissed the number rather quickly. They had lost their chance.

Three to five minutes later (again, can’t be accurate about time in there), Both men came back in. I told them that they number had been called while they were outside. They both ran up to the window, only to be informed that they would have to get another ticket and wait their turn. Most likely it would be another hour and a half before they were seen again.

Finally, there was room for me and my two children to sit together, so they moved over by me. “This is fun” I stated. My children did not seem amused. We waited, then we waited, then we waited some more. Minutes turned into hours, hours into days, days into weeks (I may be adding some flourish for storytelling purposes). Finally, we got within two of our number. I could feel the excitement building. We had almost made it. I believe the gentleman next to me was asleep.

I checked and double checked my child’s form, making sure it was all filled out. It was. The decision to check it again was purely made out of boredom, not necessity. After what felt like another few hours, her number was called. It was finally time.

We walked up to the window where an angry looking woman in her mid to late fifties asked me what I wanted. I informed her that my child needed to get their permit. She asked to see the child’s social security card and birth certificate.

I gave her both documents. She looked at them, studying the birth certificate. “This is not a valid birth certificate” she informed me. I wasn’t sure what to say to that. It was a Texas birth certificate. I was a special one called a Heirloom certificate, but it was in fact valid. I informed the woman that it was valid when we got the child’s social security card and to enter into a public learning institution. She answered “I have worked here a long time and I have never seen one like this, so I know it is not valid.”

Frustration mounting, I smiled, hoping she would change her mind. She asked me for the proof of drivers educstion. I realized that I had forgotten to print that out and bring it. I had also forgotten a form from her school. This was not going to end well.

The grumpy woman gave me a brochure on everything I needed to bring next time I attempted to obtain a permit for my child again. She them dismissed us to be on our way.

All in all, we wasted over two hours of our lives not getting the child a permit, and we were all a little grumpy and disappointed. I knew that I had messed up, but at least we knew what we needed for the second go around. We left defeated, but hopeful that we could get it done on the second go around. I think those two guys were still sitting there when we left.

The Journey Begins

Welcome to my site. I have been writing for the last 11 years, mostly about sports, and mostly about the Texas Rangers. I enjoy writing on my other site, the Ranger Report. About 5 years ago, I began writing a book. The book has been a real labor of love and it has taken a lot of time and effort to get as far as I have in it. Along the way, I have started three other stories as well, and I need somewhere to keep track of my journey.

I will use this site as my personal blog to help me organize and categorize my thoughts and story ideas. I hope you enjoy going along with me on the journey of becoming a story teller and I look forward to sharing my journey with all of you.