Postal Strike

Here we are in a mist of a postal strike and there are going to be a lot of challenge that we all need to deal with. There are so many challenges that we need to deal with, and it fill depend on who you are what your requirements are with regards to the postal system 

Here are some of the challenges that everyone is dealing with:

• Senor citizen – if you are someone that received either CPP or OAS cheque through the mail you will continue to receive these cheques because the government has made a progress that these cheques will continue to flow.
• Credit card statements – if you receive your credit card statements through the mail you will have to figure out how to get them electrically because they are not going to be mailed to you while the postal workers are on strike.
• New credit cards – where is a challenge that I am not certain how it is going to be handled because there are a lot of individuals whose credit card is up for renewal, but we are uncertain how or when we will be receiving our new credit card.
• Parcels in the process – if you have a parcel that was shipped prior to the strike the parcel is current sitting at a facility waiting to be released once the strike is over.
• I want to order something – here is a challenge that some of us are going to have to deal with and that is wanting to order something but knowing that the parcel isn’t going to be shipped for a while.

Yes, it can be a challenge when we are all dealing with a postal strike and we have to deal with a bunch of issues that might not make us happen. We might want something quickly and we have to decide if we are willing to pay the additional cost to have it delivered through courier or not. Of course, there are going to be the challenges and additional costs that we might have to ensure but we need to figure out is the cost worth it for can I just wait and order it later once this issue has been resolved.

I understand that the Canada postal system is on strike because there are issues that they have issues with but I also must say that we need a postal system that works within Canada and if it isn’t what you had in the past but something that will work in the future we need to accept the new normal. For me if I need talk a short distance to pick up my mail versus not having at home delivery, I am willing to accept that. I know that there are a lot of individuals that that want this change but when you look at a lot of the newer developments, they have to walk to a community box to pick up their mail and that is the normal for them.

Our postal strike is about the community boxes versus at home delivery and maybe what we need to see is that community boxes is what we need to keep our postal system viable. For a lot of us that are used to being able to go our own persona mailbox (at home) to get our mail is what we dealt with in the past but maybe just going out for a bit a bit of stroll to check our box is going to become our norm. I don’t mind that new because it means that I will figure out what I get in the mail and also I can get some exercise when I need to get that box.

When juggling cross stitch projects doesn't work

I have been watching a lot of people that say that they would like to get some progress on projects, but then they bounce between multiple projects and then get frustrated that they don’t seem to be making the progress that they would like to get done. They are bouncing between the multiple projects during a week which given everything else in life, it is hard to see any progress on anything this way.

Something that I have found that doesn’t work for me is bouncing between multiple projects either daily or even weekly, because I don’t seem to see any progress on anything and that doesn’t make me happy. Sure, I might be able to get a couple of hundred stitches in a project but when I am bouncing over multiple projects in a week, when I look at the progress for the week, I don’t see much progress at all. 

What I have found is if I can focus on a project for even multiple days at a time or better yet a week at a time, I an see some good progress on the piece. One of the things that I have figured out is that each day of the week I will have a various amount of time to do the stitching so I can’t say I will get the same number of stitches completed each day. A workday of stitching versus a weekend day of stitching without obligations can really vary with the amount of time I can work on a project.

It is amazing how many people have said that they don’t seem to see a lot of progress on their stitching projects and all I can say is instead of bouncing around so much maybe spend a week working on a project and see what progress you are able to make.

I understand that depending on the project the progress from week to week isn’t going to be the same. I know that for me when I pick up a project for a week, I can quite often get just over 1,500 to around 2,000 stitches completed for the week, and I can see some good progress on the project. This is what makes me happy and I am seeing progress on a fewer number of projects.

So, if you are not seeing progress on the projects that you are working on maybe look at how often you are changing what you are working on. If you don’t give a cross stitch project enough time to even see some progress, you aren’t going to feel good after a week when you sit back and say what did I work on this week and what progress did I make on my projects.

 

Why are you asking me for details, I have posted multiple times

For people that are posting within a group please remember that admin/moderators cannot track every single person that is posting things. Recently I was told that someone had posted multiple times providing information so I shouldn’t be asking for info. Well to it put it plain and simply “we cannot track every person that is posting and who provide good information and who doesn’t”

If you are posting in a specific group, remember that posting the normal things over and over again is very important. You may think it isn’t important for each post but there are too many people that just think they can post a minimum amount of detail and that is accepted. It might be something that you don’t think is important to post each time to post a picture whoever n this group that information is extremely important.

Within a lot of groups when the admins/moderators are asking for details to be posted for each post they are asking this because too many people are not providing information. If you happen to miss posting the information and get a question about the details don’t get upset because the admin/moderators cannot track every person and every post that they are posting in the group. If you have missed providing the information either edit your original post or provide the additional information to help everyone in the group.

This is a comment that I received in a group, and I was just asking for them to show that they were using the app the group was about:

"sorry, but posts go so quickly, there’s no way someone would see if you posted a request and it gets buried in posts. It’s not in the group rules - it may be something to add (from someone who admins multiple groups myself). I’ve scrolled down through the group quite far and see no posts requesting this so maybe add to the rules or pin it or something. One would think that people wouldn’t post or even be in this group unless they were using the app. Not trying to be difficult at all, but please understand as an honest person it was really jarring to be questioned like that instead of celebrated. Leaves a really bad taste."

There is a new rule that has been added to the group that people must provide information about the pattern they are using and if they are using the app. 

People think that some people will only post within a group if they are using the app but there are too many posts that show that people are not using the app but just want to try and promote a pattern, a designer or something else. It is rather difficult as a moderator/ administrator of a group to totally manage everything and when we ask a simple question, we are just trying to protect the group.

I understand that you might think that you are posting correctly but remember that the admin/moderator of each group is going to have different times that they can allocate to monitoring the group so if they ask you to provide information, please just do t hat because it is in the interest of the that group not every other group. You might have provided the designer but not the actual pattern name so that is something else that you have to be aware of.

It is rather difficult for a group admin/moderator to be able to track everything so yes it might not be in the rules currently but if they are asking for some more details don’t assume that everyone else is doing thing correctly. Simply provide the information and then privately message the admin/moderators to let them know you noticed something that was missing in the rules. Being polite and part of a group can make a big difference, if you star to challenge ethe admin/moderators you might find out that this group isn’t for you.

When a team jells

There are going to be times when a bunch of people that have different skills get together to form a team. It doesn’t have to be a formal team but is a group of four individuals that get together to be a team when there is a booth that needs a team.

This team that I am talking about is a group of four of us that jelled together to make sure that we were able to form a team that was able to be there for a booth and we all have different thoughts and ideas and knowledge so that means it is going to be challenge in some areas. It can be a challenge to make sure that everyone can work together to make sure that the booth functions to the level that is required but it doesn’t take long to see when a team starts to jell.

It is easy for a lot of people to jell as a team and one of the biggest things is knowing that everyone has the same common goal. The goal can be as simple as promoting a community group or any thing else, but you need to know that the goal is the same for everyone that is part of the team.

In our case it is promoting a community group where there are a lot of individuals that might now know about the group but have told to come by a booth to find out about this group. There are also the people that have heard about the community/group but haven’t joined because they aren’t certain if the group is a fit for them.

What is extremely important to say is that you need to figure out how to join a group and then after that figuring out if this group meets your needs. Not every group is going to be there for you or your needs, but you need to give it a bit of time because what you see in social media immediately after joining might not be what you see moving forward. Being able to make sure that you have been able to evaluate the group outside of a couple of ports is very important. A couple of posts might make you feel unwelcome but after that you might feel like you are part of that group and you have found a group that you enjoy participating in.

Dementia/Alzheimer's journey times 2

For those of you that have gone through a Dementia and/or Alzheimer’s journey once I am going to say I know that it can be a challenge, because we have been through that and we understand the challenges. We aren’t going to say that we know what you went through because every journey is different, and we have seen that. What we have been through is two different journeys and both of them have been so different.

The dementia/Alzheimer’s journey is going to be different for everyone because there are signs that we may have missed and different routes that this journey is going to take moving forward. I know for example we have gone through two journeys, and both have been entirely different. We went through a journey through Covid that was extremely fast, and it went from first being diagnosed with dementia in a March and then losing my dad in the January of the next year.

The first diagnosis was frontotemporal dementia (FPT) and that is something it can happen rather quickly and that is what we experienced. We went from having a dad that was able to manage his life and understand all the different things to someone that wasn’t able to understand that we were there visiting him. My dad was always hungry no matter what much food he had because his system wasn’t able to communicate to itself that he had food, so he just wanted to keep eating.

The second diagnosis of dementia wasn’t fullly diagnosed until very later in the journey because no doctor wanted to say that my mom had dementia because that was something they didn’t want to sign on a dotted line about. The basic thing we heard was given my mom’s age she was just old, and all the symptoms pointed to her age. What is funny about all of this is during all this my mom was living on a memory care floor which was for someone that had dementia or cognitive impairments. She hadn’t been diagnosed formally with any of this until I had to talk with a geriatric nurse who finally said that yes, mom had dementia, and it was recorded as a formal diagnosis.

I had been fighting through the system to figure out what was wrong with my mom because no one wanted to say yes, she had dementia/Alzheimer’s even through she was showing all the signs. If someone is put onto a memory care floor in a senior’s care residence, make sure you ask a lot of questions because they are there for a reason.

One thing to be aware of is that if someone is getting a lot of medial assistance make sure you have got the written/official diagnosis as it can make a big difference with regards to income tax. This at least applies to those living in Canada.

When writing doesn't seem to work

For someone like me who enjoys sitting and writing it can be a challenge when the words just don’t seem to come. Sometimes not writing is because I keep getting distracted on a bunch of other things and that breaks my train of thought, so it takes me longer to get anything achieved and I do get frustrated when that happens. I have found out that there are times when I can just sit and write and lose myself in my writing and then there are times it’s a challenge to even get a few words done. 

Something that I have found sometimes helps me get back to the writing that I want to do is give myself a time limit. This time limit is I need to write for x number of minutes before I can do anything else. I know it sounds a little crazy, but it is amazing how much writing you can achieve when you give yourself that block of time. For me, sometimes it is even 10 or 15 minutes before I can even think of checking email or anything else, but it does work. Quite often that 10 or 15 minutes turns into a lot more writing because I get on a roll and the words then seem to flow. During this block of time, I also try not to think about the punctuation because I can do back after this time and make sure that I have all the commas in the right places.

Another thing that I find helps me get back to the writing level that makes me happy is to put my earplugs in and just let the words flow without all the various sounds around me. I have different earplugs that I use depending on what I want to achieve. I have some earplugs that block out most of the sounds around me and then I have other ones that will block some of the sounds. When it is very windy out, I quite often put the earplugs in just to block out some of the whistling that happens.

When writing doesn’t work it can be a challenge but knowing different things that help you get the writing done that you want to achieve does help. Another thing that I do is change where I am sitting when I am trying to get the writing done because sometimes a different location or a different device makes a big different. I normally do most of my writing on my computer, but I also have my tablet and a keyboard that I use. The different devices can make a difference and sometimes just being away from the multiple screens that I have when at the computer helps a lot.

So, if you are finding that writing doesn’t seem to work maybe try one of these ideas and see if it helps you. I know that these have worked for me and I get back to the writing that I want to do. This entire blog post was written when I was finding it difficult to write so I said 10 minutes and then you can do something else. Well, it was more than 10 minutes, and I was able to get back to writing which makes me happy.

 

Social media and drama

I have been watching a family channel on YouTube, and I have some to realize that both kids that are on the channel need some education on how to manage things. Part of these kids have been home schooled all their life, and their mother doesn’t seem to have the discipline to manage that.

The girl has just started college, and I don’t think she understands the demands on her time because after her fist day it was total drama because there were things that she needed to get done in the next week. She has 5 courses and four of them are online so that means she doesn’t have to sit in a classroom for four of them, but she was complaining because she didn’t know how to manage the courses. Her questions were should I do all of one course, on one day a week or should I try and work on a bunch of them each day. I think part of the issue is because she has been home schooled, they haven’t had to learn about having glasses a couple of times a week depending on the schedule.

The boy that is shown in this family seems to be able to get away with way too much and if he doesn’t want to do the home schooling, she seems to let him get away with it. Of course, letting him get away with not getting everything done isn’t helping him at all and he seems to spend quite a bit of time playing videos games or knee hockey. Once again, the discipline of making sure that school is getting done each day and he is up and ready for school at a specific time doesn’t seem to be happening. He also never seems to clean up after playing knee hockey in the living room, so that to me is also showing that he isn’t learning how to clean up after himself.

Yes, it is a channel on YouTube so I understand that they are paid per views to the challenge but when you have two students that are complaining about having to do homework or schooling why should I continue to watch you. I have now decided that it is time for me to walk away from viewing this family channel because when your children/teens don’t understand the demands on life it is showing that it’s ok for them to behave like this and get away with it.

Watching YouTube channels that only show the drama within a family isn’t what should be happening. Yes, all families are going to have challenges, but you also need to show that the children/teens behave nicely, and they don’t always complain when they are asked to do something. Also, showing children/teens that appreciate things that are done for them is also important.