Author: Kenneth Moris

Well, work itself has. For several thousand years, work was really work, and everybody who was anybody sneered at it. A huge population of slaves, serfs and peasants used their muscles in grimy toil to support a tiny aristocracy of warriors, lords, and priests who devoted their lives to art, religion, small mercies to the poor, and killing each other.

This system was not particularly efficient. The game for a slave, who has no opportunity for pay or advancement, might be to do as little as possible. The same could be said of the minimum-wage “working poor” of today.

It was technology that began providing opportunities for a new middle class of entrepreneurs, and the Protestant Reformation that changed Western attitudes toward work. The leading philosopher was a French clergyman named John Calvin, one of those dead white guys you’ve scarcely heard of whose thinking nonetheless rules your life.

Calvin made work not just cool but obligatory. He believed certain people were predestined to go to heaven and others to be damned, and the only way to tell the Elect was to see who was working hard and had money, wealth itself being a sign of divine grace. He not only turned Catholic teaching about the perils of riches on its head, he contended that losers should blame themselves, not the system.

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THE ANCIENT GREEKS knew all about work. Their word for it was ponos, which meant not just toil but suffering. And pain. Work was for slaves. The role of free men, according to the thinkers, was to avoid work as much as possible so they’d have time for war, philosophy, and art.

Them were the days.

Nowadays, everybody works, even Bill Gates, richest man in the world. We’re supposed to (Protestant Work Ethic), most of us have to (Money) and in theory, we want to (Personal Fulfillment, or Meaning).

But wait. Financial author Phil Laut has defined work as “doing what you don’t want to do.”

Certainly, I know the difference between hard work (industrial painting and scrubbing pots and pans, which I did during high school and college) and head work (writing stories like this one). My manic-depressive editor will proclaim she has the best job in the world one moment and kvetch about it the next, but we all know there’s a big difference between daily dreariness and occasional discontent, and between working poor and working rich.

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Springtime is the time when the seeds that were planted into the tilled ground begin to produce a harvest and flowers begin to bloom.  It is also the time when, after some consideration, the decision was made that after your teen earned his GED, he goes to college. So think about college admissions and financial aid award letters.

Families who are not familiar with the terms used in financial aid documents, may begin to feel overwhelmed and confused about what their child is receiving.  Well, this article is for you.

First, we will start with some basic information.  Financial Aid basically is aid that comes in the form of loans and/or grants to cover the cost of college. Parents will complete an application providing information regarding their assets and availability of money.

The government and the school student’s apply to will assess the financial aid packages per the predetermined guidelines to determine the need value and expected financial contribution (EFC), the number used to determine your federal student aid eligibility.
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Maybe today’s a good day to take our well-being self-assessment. That’s a good thing to do right….check our vital signs every once in a while?

By the way, why do doctors take time to check our blood pressure, temperature, and reflexes when we go for a visit? It’s because they’re indicators of our physical well-being.  Turns out, the same principle applies to our spiritual health, only the vital signs differ.

So let’s take a moment to reflect on how we’re doing spiritually through this self-assessment exercise.  Rank yourself from 1-5 for each of these categories, one being lowest, and then we’ll reflect on the results.

Ready to get started?….ok, go ahead and turn your head and cough:)

THE 12 VITAL SIGNS OF WELL-BEING

1.  TEMPERAMENT

How patient are you?  Do you have a short fuse, or become irritated easily?  Are you frequently in a bad mood?  Our temperament is often indicative of two things: our level of consciousness and degree of presence.  When we’re discontent with the present moment or in some form of self-loathing we become irritable and impatient.  To read more on our level of consciousness, check out a great article by Justin Mazza here. (more…)

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Is It Truly Necessary To Vote? Does My Vote Even Make a Difference?

I believe that the importance of voting depends on who you ask.  The bottom line is that it is a constitutional right for every American citizen, although it was not granted to everyone until the pioneers of the civil rights era fought, bled and died for everybody to have this right.  Unfortunately, this right is still being challenged today in 2016. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Just as there is a maturation process with eating, there should also be a similar progression in how we think, act and conduct ourselves.  In the eating process we start out on milk, move to cereal in our milk, onto baby food and ultimately graduating to solid foods.  So, I must ask when are we going to get off of milk and graduate to the level we should be on? The good book even confirms this principle:

As a child, I talked like a child, thought like a child, and reasoned like a child, but when I became an adult, I put away childish things.  People its past time for us to wake up and rise to the occasion.

It is also written and has been proven that people perish because of a lack of knowledge. I will dare to say this is truer today then it what was before.  Unfortunately, some of us are still in grade school, while the rest of the world is operating at Master and Doctorate degree level.  They are playing chess and we are stuck, complacent, and content with playing checkers.

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School’s out! You’re now faced with two to three months that you have to fill with something productive to do so that you don’t waste away in the house all day. There are a variety of options depending on what grade you are in and what your interest are:

1) Get Employed! One way to have a productive summer is to get a part-time summer job. Many people don’t want to work during the summer because they think that it may be boring. Work doesn’t have to be boring though. If you like kids, for example, there are summer camps that you can work at.

You can also try and find jobs with people who are working in careers that you are interested in, that way not only do you make money but you get to see if you really like the field.

Also as you get older, especially once you reach college, your back to school cost will get more expensive and parents may be less willing and or unable to help so having some extra money at the end of the summer is always a plus.

2) Internships. If you are in college, internships are another summer possibility. There are both paid and unpaid internships. Regardless of which type of internship you participate in, they can be very rewarding. Internships look great on resumes and sometimes can help land you a job post graduation. Networking and hands-on experience are key for being marketable after you graduate because employers like to see that you have experience in that specific field.

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The Power of Being Patient Enough to Slow Down and Hear from God

God has had me on an amazing journey since 2014. But the real pivotal point came in the spring of 2012. It’s a faith walk like I’ve never seen before. He was preparing the way for me.

I had an idea of what I wanted my life to look like, but God had other plans. I had just graduated the semester before from college. I was home again, not quite sure of what the next steps would entail.

My family told me I needed to go out there and go find a job. The problem was…I was either overqualified or I needed to go back to school for a Masters’ degree.

So I even applied for jobs out of desperation; doing things I could never see myself doing at one time. I had let others define for me what my life should be.

My family couldn’t understand why I wasn’t getting hired anywhere. They were convinced that I was doing something wrong. I had applied to be a mental health worker, unit secretary, banking jobs, retail, social services, and at a mortgage firm to become a loan processor. But none of them hired me. (more…)

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Childhood Memories May Be Tied to Your Purpose!

When I was growing up, I would read huge books, write novels, and make up characters, and act them out. In the fourth grade, I was tested and determined to have a 12th grade reading level. I was placed in gifted classes, and went to Montessori school at one point.

I would create board games from scratch, put together detailed ‘school plans’ and stay up for hours into the night, making fake school lessons. I even would spend time replicating each page dozens of times, because I had no copier.

It pleased me to see people take something I had put together and learn something. I spent lots of time alone and to me it made no sense.  I loved to tell long stories and hear long stories.

People would get aggravated with my endless questions “and then what happened? And how did you look while you said that to her? What was her response?” I loved to paint mental pictures. I spent a lot of time alone in isolation, but it gave me time to develop my imagination.

I constantly read books and among my favorite was Helen Keller, and usually other stories of people who had difficult upbringing and overcame the odds. I loved Strawberry Shortcake. I owned everything from her clothing to every toy that came out to the point where my Grandmother called me ‘Strawberry Shortcake’ sometimes, Pippi Longstocking, and Annie.  These were all examples to me of independent children who lived on their own and were happy and thrived.

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Assholes seem to rule the world. Take a look at our politicians and prove that one wrong. Unfortunately one has to use the word “seems” because truthfully speaking they no more rule then their opposites, but they are so blatant in their asshole-ness, one would think they rule.

We all have a little asshole in us – hell, we all have assholes, but this post is not about that kind of asshole. Lucky for the definition both types of assholes pretty much do the same thing – exude plenty of shit. (See what I did there, me so clever.)

Every year we at the Hideout do a show about assholes in media. You have to have a good guy, a bad guy and there must be an asshole in order to make the story work.

Look at William Atherton in Ghostbusters or Real Genius or Die Hard – he’s the asshole in every each of those movies. William Zabka made being an asshole an art form and it took him years to break away from the role. Can you imagine those casting meetings? “We need an asshole, is Zabka available?” Asshole makes the plot move foreword, giving the villain just enough edge to add 20 much needed minutes to the movie.

Assholes break the couple up so that the romantic comedy can get a few more laughs before the predictable ending. Movies, TV shows, video games, novels, even comics need their assholes. (more…)

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