updates

I been in a rut as far as writing goes and things in general I suppose. I just got back from a work training seminar thing all expenses paidfor three days o better serve customers and make more monies and so on. We learned about how important active listening is (everyone thought it was act of listening) when a customer says something like, "I have a 2000 Ford Ranger" and you say, "cool. Can I get the year make and model of the vehicle?" Customers feel like they aren't important and are much less likely to part with their money. It sounds straightforward enough, doesn't it? The thing is employees greet and talk to over a hundred customers a day and we get burned out of pretending to be interested in every one of them after years of work. SO we learned how you have to stop pretending and start caring, picking up on the things that customers think are important and using them to sell tires to them.

We also learned about positive attitude, and I learned that I dont have that. And I was surprised because I thought I was a positive guy. And I am in certain areas, but deep down I'm not. A great example of that is when my mom showed me an article in the Ojai newsabout a class mate of mine from highschool who published a book. My immediate thoughts were: I bet it's lame, and he published it througha website which will publish anything, even lame stuff. It sounds boring. I bet I could write something better. And then a little voice in my head said, "whoa whoa whoa Brian! What a shitty attitude that was. Look how negative you are. You should be happy a class mate published a book. And it should encourage you, mr fancy pants writer to write your own book and get published instead of whining about it. If all you do is whine and complain about how everybody else's stuff sucks and you could do better, and yet you dont write anything. Don't worry about everyone else. Stop whining and get writing! The only person responsible for not being published is you. So lets go!" That voice had a lot to say.

Than today my Grandma called and asked what I was doing, and I told her about the work training seminar thing and how work was going and she said, "oh great. Now listen here. I want you to read a book called the last lecture by Randy Pausch."
"Ok, I'll check it out."
"No, I want you to read it right now. I am serious."
"Oh. Um. Ok."
"And I want your brother to read it, and your mother and your father."
"I'll tell them."
"You better. You can check it out from the library or even go to the internet and watch the lecture there, but the book is better."
"Alright I will do that now."
"Alright. Have a great day."
"Thanks, you too."

so I checked out the lecture on youtube which had 10million views about this computer science professor at carnegie mellon university who has 1 month to live on account of his pancreatic/liver cancer. He died last year.

Anyway I couldn't finish it today because I have work but I got 10 mins into it and he said something That hit me especially hard. He said: We cannot change the cards we are dealt, only how we play them.

Time for work. Have a great day!