Basic Income Guaranteed is BIG enough for Animals - Animal Rights

A Solution for Animal rights

There are Charities that focus on caring for animals. They also take animals out of abusive situations like for example in the news the other day there were horses found starving on a farm and some found dead so they took them out of that situation to take of them. This is cool that they were able to assist those horses. There are many such situations out there and many animals suffer. 

Unfortunately the reason Charities exist is not cool. The reason why charities exist is because there is a problem with this world and system we live in. People cannot afford food and so charities are there to feed them. People cannot afford to take care of animals and so th

ere are charities to take care of the animals. There is a pattern here – charities are band aids, the cleanup crew. It is like having a bucket that is overflowing with water and all you do is mop up the water – you keep mopping up the water, but the water keeps on coming – instead of getting to the root of the problem which is closing the tap to stop the water.

You will find countless animals that are neglected in poor countries/areas which makes sense, because how are you going to feed a dog when you can’t even feed yourself? The problem with animal rights is that human rights do not exist. Food and water should be a human right – effective housing should be a human right, but it is not. People basic needs are not met and the animals suffer along with the humans. 

That is why Basic Income Guaranteed would benefit not only the humans, but the animals as well. There are people who would really like and have a passion to work with animals, but they can’t support themselves. If they had their basic needs met then they would go for it, go work with animals. Human rights and animal rights are linked. Then you will see an increase in people that work with animals. 

So, if you support animals and would like to end their suffering and help them then the Basic Income Guaranteed is the solution for this.  

The Integrity of Gaming - Best Game Review

I was born in the computer age – before windows was here to make things simpler. Our first computer was running DOS. I was very young when I first played computer games and these games were running on DOS so it was very simplistic fun games of which the games I cannot remember. I played more “television games” with a console box and the time spent there was not allot. See, I was still in an age where we actually “went outside to go and play”. Our play time was almost always outside – whereas now kids spend most of their time inside with TV and Computer games. 

Unfortunately nowadays it is simply not safe anymore for a bunch of kids to play on the streets – and with technology and smartphones physical social interaction is becoming a thing of the past.

Back to my topic – the Integrity of Gaming. I was not a heavy gamer in terms of computers and consoles. In school I basically played 2 games all the time which was Heroes of Might and Magic 4 and Red Alert 2. The only reason why I only played these games was because it was the only games on my computer and I liked playing them. I did not have the need to find other games to play – that did not even occur to me and the fact that there might even be a Heroes of Might and Magic 5 did not occur to me at all. I was not a heavy or even a casual gamer. What I liked about these games was that I create a Massive map and it would take weeks to finish. I was introduced to the gaming scene only after I finished school and a new world of fun and games awaited me. 

Now seriously, Back to my topic: The Integrity of gaming.  The Best game I have ever played in my life is…The one and only…totally amazing… The Mass Effect Series. Bioware really did a great job with this game. It is a total of 3 games. Mass Effect 1, Mass Effect 2 and Mass effect 3.  All of them are great games and if you do want to try it out you have to start with Mass effect 1. This game is Good for many reasons and one of them are that your choices has an effect throughout the series. The choices you make in number 1 will affect the game in number 3. And seemingly small choices and decisions you make can have great consequences throughout your adventure. 

 Another reason the game is the best is the amount of work that went into it. You can really see it – the dialogue and voice actors is excellent. The Storyline and the way the game progress and tells the story is done very well. I played the Mass Effect series  a few times over, because it is that good and there aren’t many other games that are this good.  Another good game they made was Dragon age, not as good as Mass Effect, but good. They unfortunately messed up with Dragon 2 which is not as good as Dragon age 1.

I played other games that were good as well like The Witcher 2, Command and Conquer 3, Anno 1404, Anno 2070, Skyrim, Warcraft 3, Rage, The settlers, Dawn of War(not number2), Assassins creed 1,2 and 3, Portal 1 and 2. Just to name a few. They are all great games to play, But the way Mass effect plays and how it was made is excellent. They did the best they could and then did even better.  

The game has integrity – some games that come out now are not very well done. You play it and tell yourself that they could have done such a better job with it. You have those game developers that make one good game – and then the second game of that series is crap. Almost like they are cashing in on the name of the first game.  Not Cool. Some strive to do even better and get it right.

I have read that Bioware is busy developing a new Mass Effect series and I will patiently await its arrival. 

For those who would like to know – The Witcher 3 and Dragon Age 3 are also in development and is estimated to be out early 2014. I will be playing those game So that is it – A very well done game deserves to be written about.

s if my computer can handle it.

Day 189 - Why Speaking is so Difficult – The Silent Type

 

Thus far I have covered preferring to be alone, not being good with people and not being able to communicate effectively which are some of the dimensions behind a typical silent type character. Today I am going to write about speaking.

I have never been able to use words effectively to express myself. I could not say how I felt, because the words simply did not come to me in way that can explain it exactly. So I decided to not speak allot, because I felt it was a waste of time. What I did not realize back then is that the reason why the words did not come was because I did not have the words – I did not have the vocabulary. It is fascinating how such a decision greatly affected my life. If I realized the importance of vocabulary in my school days I would have done better at school. Instead I compromised myself and developed a personality and defined myself as being the strong silent type. A wonderful justification and excuse.

Looking at this whole situation I see now that being the silent type was not “just who I am”, it was a choice I made based on my fears and not having the tools to communicate effectively. I was not born this way – it was a choice and now I choose to rather be effective with communication. Now to go venture forth on my journey. Without an effective vocabulary I cannot be specific with words. I did not understand the importance of vocabulary back then. In School they say it is important to read – good advice I ignored.

The first step in effective communication is developing your vocabulary in order to use words effectively so that is what I am going to do – learn, understand and apply new words. Interesting point here is with me being a musician and writing songs I always had great difficulty writing lyrics for my music and that is because I did not have an effective vocabulary. If I had an effective vocabulary writing would be easier.

A very useful phrase I have learnt is that knowledge is useless without application. The next step is to place myself in situations where I use words and speak to explain things. This will assist me to communicate effectively and support me to get over that uncomfortable/nervousness I have whenever I explain things. A simple thing to do here would be to start doing Vlogs so that is what I will do – push through the resistances and make videos until speaking effectively is as natural as breathing.

Speak, king, quest, journey, video, vlog, support, DIY, directive, practical, loner, silent type, personality, Desteni

Day 188 - I Prefer Being Alone – The Silent Type...

 

I am On the topic of defining myself as the silent type.

Another point regarding the silent type is preferring to be alone. I always preferred to be alone in most situations. In school my high point of the day was spending time in room playing guitar or playing a game on the computer. I was comfortable with being by myself and liked it. I also liked being with friends since I was also comfortable around my friends. It would seem that comfortably is the main point here and the question is – Why was I more comfortable with myself?

I was not really a full on silent person that did not say anything – I was outgoing and all that. When I was in a group of friends and everybody talked I usually did not say much. One on one with friends or small groups I would engage in conversations, but mostly I liked to would listen. That is one cool thing of not saying much – I became very observant and noticed things. Anyway – the point is that I was more of an observer and did not participate much with anybody expect friends. One of the reasons was that I was not effective with participating or engaging conversations with people and the conversations I did have was me listening and the other conversing. Within this I see now that me preferring to be alone was actually hiding from people.

The consequences of my inability to communicate effectively was me being the silent type and because I was not effective at communication I preferred being alone since there was not need to converse with myself. Unfortunately back then I did not understand the importance of communicating – You cannot function effectively in this world if you lack communication skills. Really – if you have effective communication skills life becomes a bit easier. I did not develop these skills for myself, because talking to people was uncomfortable for me. I did not step beyond my comfort zone to expand myself which resulted in me being stuck. So it is time to do that – Step beyond my comfort zone.

This is the only way to expand yourself and become more effective – to push yourself beyond your limits and push through any and all resistance's along the way. Otherwise you stay the same. A simple example is learning to drive – at first it is a bit scary and tricky to get used to clutch control and traffic on the road, but you did not allow that fear and resistance to keep you from driving. You push through and eventually it all became second nature. Driving is like natural now. Stepped out the comfort zone and made driving a part of it.

I am not saying that being alone with yourself is wrong/bad. It is cool that I developed a point of comfortably within being alone by myself and its cool if you have done the same, but not being able to communicate effectively with others and hiding yourself in a room is limiting yourself extensively. Writing is cool practice – using the written word to communicate. It gives me time to look at what I write to bring out a message effectively, but If I would to speak this it would not be as good. Now it is time to use my lungs to push air through my vocal cords to produce a sound that I can manipulate with my tongue – or in simpler terms: Speak.

(More on speaking in my next blog where I will start a step by step process on how to speak effectively.)

Day 187 - Not being Good with people - The Silent Type...

 

Today I ran into somebody and said hello and the usual greetings. I notice that I am always uncomfortable in these situations and usually simply smile and find ways to end the conversation. I have always been “the silent type” and was never really good at meeting new people. I have defined myself as being the strong silent type and told myself it’s a “lifestyle choice”. That is a very nice way to hide from the fact that I am not good with people, because I never really worked on this point or developed the skills in order to be effective with people.

What happens then is that when I run into somebody I know the uncomfortable feeling I have is not knowing how to handle myself in this particular situation. I see other people being al relaxed and genuine when in the same situation, like it is natural and then I would judge myself for not being so natural and ask myself why I cannot do this. The answer is simple – I never taught myself how. I have the tools to do this and it is time to start.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to be uncomfortable when running into someone I know

I forgive myself that I have not accepted and allowed myself to investigate the reason why I am uncomfortable and to simply accept it as a part of me.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to define myself as being the silent type – not realizing that I did this, because I was not good/effective with people.

I forgive myself that I have not accepted and allowed myself to work on becoming good/effective with people and push through to make it happen.

I forgive myself that I have not accepted and allowed myself to realize that the uncomfortable feeling I have is because of thoughts and feelings and the belief that I have created that I am not good with people

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to when I meet/greet people to allow thoughts and feelings to direct me and then want to end the conversation based on that instead of not allowing myself to be direct and to direct myself.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to even before I go to the person to meet/greet them create anxiety within myself, because I am already thinking about how I am going to do this and remember that I am not good with people.

I forgive myself that I have not accepted and allowed myself to stop the thoughts and feelings and not to participate in the moment with the mind.

I forgive myself that I have not accepted and allowed myself to breathe and be here in the moment focusing on what I am doing right now when I meet people – within this I realize that doing this removes all that unnecessary bullcrap that complicate things from the equation and give me the opportunity to actually participate within what I am doing.

I commit myself to stop defining myself as being the silent type and not good with people – instead I push myself to practice and develop a natural expression in order to be effective with people.

I commit myself to stop participating in thoughts and feelings and beliefs when I meet/greet people that I define as being uncomfortable – Instead I breathe and be here in the moment focusing on what I am doing

I commit myself to stop wanting to end conversations based on how I feel at the moment – Instead I Direct myself and don’t allow feelings and thoughts to direct me

Sneaky, Very Sneaky: Brand shrinking

 

 

This is something I did not even notice for a while. Cadbury's chocolate have effectively reduced their 200g slabs down to 180g and the 100g slabs to 90g while keeping prices the same and not telling anybody about it. They say they do this to keep away from hiking the price – basically for the good of the consumers. Unfortunately, reducing the amount of grams that is bought while keeping the price the same is still making it cost more. And now the prices have gone up anyway.

It is not just the chocolate - Colgate toothpaste was reduced from 100ml to 75ml. All Gold tomato sauce shrank from 750ml to 700ml and some cold drinks cans shrank from 340ml to 330ml. Very sneaky, because the product is now more expensive so the companies get more money.

And people do not notice – I did not notice. One day I went into the shop and say a special on 90g Cadbury slabs and asked myself “was it not 100g before?”. It makes me wonder what other products we usually buy have decreased the weight sold. Interesting.

Prices are going up and packages are shrinking – This is happening all over the world . When I was a kid I liked buying chips, but they had almost no chips in them. Only a quarter of the packet had chips in it and the rest was air. It was like paying for air. Today I was feeding the cats and noticed less food came out than I remembered. I am not a 100% sure of this, because I never really looked at the weight of the cans.

At the moment there is not really anything we can do about this – sure you can stop buying the product in protest, but it would not make a difference. Even if everybody stopped buying from one company – that would hurt the company yes, but result in people losing their jobs and there aren’t a lot of those around lately. Without a job you have no income and with no income you cannot afford the house or even food. We all are trapped with the fear of money. And with no money to spend it is less money for the economy and so the economy suffers.

Investigate the Basic Income Guarantee – this would end poverty and inject more money into the economy which would result in a stable economic system.

Day 185 - No time to RELAX!

 

No time to RELAX!

Today I was walking around a bit inspecting the fruit trees and looking if there is any new growth. Our peach and nectarine trees have started flowing a bit early this year since we are in the middle of winter and they usually start at the end of winter. I occasionally simply go for a walk and look around being here and today I notices a bit of anxiety. A though crossed my head “I’m wasting time!” .

This comes from the idea and belief that doing nothing equals wasting time which I developed from directing it. It was from a drive to keep myself busy to distract myself from myself to use it as an excuse saying I have no time for myself. This also links into the fear I had of getting older. Everything is connected. It got to a point where I did not allow myself to simply do something I like like watching a movie or something.

I forgive myself that I have not accepted and allowed myself to take some time for myself.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to create anxiety within myself when going for a walk doing nothing in particular.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear simply doing nothing in particular and taking time for myself to do something I enjoy and to see it as me wasting time.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to create the Idea and belief that doing anything for myself is a waste of time

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to become a workaholic as a distraction from myself.

I forgive myself that I have not accepted and allowed myself to realize that my fear of getting older is the reason why I fear wasting time.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear taking some time for myself.

I commit myself to stop the belief that doing nothing and taking time for myself is a waste of time – instead I allow myself to take some time.

I commit myself to stop the fear and anxiety when I take some time for myself – instead I realize that taking time for myself is important

I commit myself to stop being a workaholic as a distraction from myself – instead I focus on myself.

I commit myself to when I take walks to breathe and be here in moment and not allow thoughts and feelings to direct me.

Day 184 - Frustration with Making music.

 

It is not easy making a song. There are lots of challenges involved. From writing the music to writing the lyrics and placing them all together in one flowing song. Then comes recording the song which brings new challenges. Those who do record their own music know what I am talking about. Sometimes it works out great and is an easy process, but mostly it is difficult to get it “right” and so it gets frustrating.

When I write a song I use my guitar or piano and it sounds cool, but with the recording process it does not always come out the way I want it to. I am now working on a song that sounds great when I play it on guitar and sing it, but recording it does not sound do great. Mostly due to the fact that I am out of practice with my voice and guitar which makes recording it a pain in the ass, because when recording guitar I have to play precisely on beat and recording a vocalist that is out of practice takes forever. And so it gets frustrating.

In my previous blog about me getting older I mentioned the need I had to rush things and this is one of the reason I wrote that blog. In my rush I wanted to quickly record it and sing it and get it out, but in my rush my vocals are terrible and the guitar track is not so great. So now I have to redo it anyway whereas I could have prepared myself more to make sure I am able to effectively record the track. Unfortunately I do not have talent for singing and practicing vocals takes a long time to master it so I will have to make another plan there.

To me it is frustrating that a song sounds great and then turns out not so great when recording it, but I have faced challenges like this one before and with time and dedication I made it work. It took as long as it took and rushing will only make things worse. Only after I tested all points with a song will I drop it and write a another one which does happen occasionally. Update to follow soon

Day 183 - I am getting Older: Fear and Anxiety

 

I am turning 26 this year. There was a bit of anxiety within me when I looked at this – that I am getting older. Soon I will reach 30 and eventually 50. I am getting older. Time is going by seemingly faster – we are already more than halfway through 2013. The fear that came up was not that I will eventually die one day, but that time is going by. In just two years It would already be a decade since I graduated from school. A whole 10 years would have passed and it felt so short. In another decade I will say the same thing.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to go into fear when I saw that I am turning 26 this year.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to create anxiety within myself that Time is running out and that one day I will no time left when I do die.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear that time will go by too fast for me and that I would not have enough time to do all the things I want.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear that I will regret the way I lived and feel that I have wasted it.

I forgive myself that I have not accepted and allowed myself to realize that if I use my time effectively and do all that I am able to with the time I have then there can be no regret.

I forgive myself that I have not accepted and allowed myself to realize that even though time is going by – there is absolutely nothing I can do to slow it down or stop it.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear that one day when I am old I would be too old to do the things I am able to do now and thus believe that I should rush and get things done quickly while I have the time. Within this I forgive myself that I have not accepted and allowed myself to realize that IF I rush through life I will miss out anyway.

I forgive myself that I have not accepted and allowed myself to instead of rushing and wanting to get things done fast while I can – to instead to the best I am able to within the things I do now and only when I see that I have done all I can and still did not get to everything then I can say I did all I can and there is no point to worry about it.

I commit myself to stop linking fear with my age and growing old – instead I live in the moment

I commit myself to stop creating anxiety about the fact that time is going by and not to see it as time running out – instead I do the best I am able to with the time I have.

I commit myself to stop the fear That I will one day not be able to do the things I do now and then rush through things to get it done – instead I slow down and make sure I do things effectively with the time that I have

I commit myself to stop the fear that I will regret how I used my time – instead I realize that there can be no regret when I did in fact do all that I could to the best of my ability.