Tuesday, September 05, 2006

Life Lessons


Denise, in her (new?) blog at Club Mom asks about advice and life lessons. She points to a bunch of smart guys in Fast Times @ Homeschool High: Life Lessons, then asks where are the women's voices answering this question. After offering my three and a half bits of wisdom, I wandered to some of the site she linked to.

First, I think Stephen Downes intellectually nailed it. I agree in principle with every one of his 10 offerings. So my first gut response is to just say ditto. I know, what a cop out.

Guy, sorry, but your advice is too narrow in the "pleasing bosses" category as Downes noted. Steve Wilhelm has a good one suggesting acting lessons (I'd add, IMPROV particularly.)

Second, where are womens voices offering advice? My first, flippant thought was "we aren't arrogant enough to presume we know what's good for YOU!" Is this true? It may be for some of us. I think there is a gender issue here. Self effacing may be a bit of it. Here is what I wrote to Denise in her comments - you will note I was NOT as thorough and thoughtful as many others. Fast and flippant may be more accurate. Maybe this leads to another bit of advice. Watch out for trying to do TOO many things!
List of TEN THINGS? You gotta be kidding. I'm not that organized. My list has three things:

1. Learn something new every day
2. Contribute something to the world every day (even if it is tiny and super local)
3. Have a little fun every day

For those who don't have health restrictions or allergies, I'd add, eat at least a tiny bit of good dark chocolate every day.

Beyond that, I feel advice is best given in the context of relationship, not generic to the world. Context matters! ;-)
Finally, I bet there are lots of women out there offering advice. If I didn't have a huge long honking "to do" list I would start researching it. But. I. Must. Resist. Must. Work!

So, back to work!

Tags:

2 Comments:

Anonymous Denise said...

LOL I like the way you put (new) in there. Yes, it's sort of new if the end of June is new. It still feels new to me, even though I've been doing homeschool stuff for awhile now on another blog.

I rather liked Guy's advice about taking solutions to your boss. There's nothing worse than going in all of the time whining about problems or even simply pointing out problems and never being brave enough to suggest solutions.

I did think about that whole "gender" thing but I thought that was sort of a cop-out. I've seen women a) give a lot of really great advice b) make lists. I haven't seen a lot of women giving great advice, of this type, in list form.

I don't know why that is, unless it's as you suggested - context. Women need context or specific situations?

I don't rightly know and as I mention, it's Hell Week: Next Generation so you just got all of the time I have to give to this topic. But, I do have a post saved in draft with just a subject line to remind me to come back and think about this some more.

Thanks for playing along, it was helpful during a rough time. :-)

5:12 PM  
Blogger eraser said...

I like the post and the comment.

11:54 AM  

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