Blogtober: The Attacks

Today was meant to be a double post. One with the scheduling for this year’s Blogtober posts, the other with a post on the WAVE Media. But after reading the news today, I felt the need to return for a second helping of the Roast and share some thoughts.

The news of Las Vegas and of Marseilles shooting amongst other passings that occur further east every day, shines a raw light the volatile times we live in.

Whilst I can’t say I wasn’t born in straightforward times, with Manchester, New York, Afghanistan and Iraq all being very real events that occurred as I grew up and Egypt, Lybia, Turkey, Syria and the continuing war across Israel and Palestine during my young adult years.

But these days it feels like conflict is around every corner. In the last couple of years, Sousse, Brussels, Paris, London, Manchester, Charlottesville, Marsaille and Las Vegas to name a few have been in the spotlight.

I stand with others and agree, this has to stop. Let’s be honest, what do they achieve? If it’s not mental illness, it’s religion. If it’s not religion it’s to send a message.

Whatever the motive, there are better ways to achieve what you want to say, that don’t involve forcibly removing people from this Earth or taking away their opportunity to enjoy it.

If you suspect you, a family member or a friend are ever being tempted towards a horrific task – get them to help, be it medical, family and friend support, professionals, anything. As a wise man named Albus Dumbledore once said to his students “Every Day, every hour, this very minute perhaps, dark forces attempt to penetrate this castle. But in the end, their greatest weapon, is you. Just something to think about”.

You can talk gun/knife control and paint buckets filled with powder and electronics or nuclear warheads. In the end, the human is the real weapon behind it and the only way to protect each other, is to ensure first we protect ourselves.

Now I realise mere words like this won’t make the problem stop, and they’ll always be people that feel that way. But the more we educate, the more we safeguard and the more we can do to cut extremism from all sides, be it racial wars, interpretations of scripture. radicalisation of all kinds, the more safeguards we can put in place to defend ourselves, without creating fear, the more hope we can make a difference to reducing the terror in the world to the better times we all talk about.

If that doesn’t motivate you enough, here’s two videos that resonate the message with me. One cinematic, one real. Take your pick and if you want to discuss it further feel free to comment below:

Extract from Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1

 

Video from Brotactular on YouTube

To to the people and families of the fallen and injured, my thoughts, condolences and prayers to you all. And to those reading this from everywhere else, stay safe and stay informed tonight.

 

Mike


Blogtober: Returning to the Roast!

So, it’s been a while, again.

I know it seems a common theme of “it’s been busy”, but with a rather turbulent few weeks demanding my attention, my focus needed to be on what I’m paid to do as well as focus on those I love and on a little time for myself.

That time has been spent and I’m back and ready for Blogtober! If you joined me last year, you’ll know this blog is part of a family, so it won’t be posted to everyday per se, but again once a week alongside 6 other posts on the sister sites.

After that I’m thinking of trying something a little different to the standard written post …see what you think when we get there.

Happy Sunday everyone,

Mike


The Conveyor Belt

One week on from blogtober and a short break from blogging whilst I assemble a proper schedule, you’d think I’d be well rested and have stockpiled millions of posts and with a smaller schedule take a more relaxed view to writing to you all.

No.

It’s been busy. Very busy. I was lucky enough to have a week’s annual leave towards the end of October which allowed me to start planning on this new venture, but of course I was stillwriting each day and planning for the next. On Halloween, I was back at work and glad I started the draft of the announcement earlier in the week as ir wasn’t a particularly quiet day. The next one got even busier, keeping me past my normal finishing time with extra work added on. The next day was just as jam-packed running our major annual symposium for the RCPE with no real time to stop over the 9 hours so we worked for. The final two days were down with trying to catch up with where I was before my leave began and the evenings and the weekend were time to just unwind so I could rest for the next day ahead.

Without meaning to sound like I’m compalining it’s quite scary at how quickly our work escalated after summer (considering summer was a continuation of the spring and was meant to be a quiet period), but our workload now feels a lot like the classic comedy factory conveyor belt sketch that apparently was made famous by the I Love Lucy show version, but there are many varients out there including the original from the film Modern Times (TV Tropes explains here the mechanics for those that aren’t sure what I mean) and right now we’ve reached the “speed it up a little!” stage.

With this in mind, blogging won’t be as frequent I’m afraid to save things going into a constant stream of “overdrive” (and possibly becoming a “new normal”) – not through laziness but as a fellow human being I do need to eat, shower and unwind so that I can sleep in time for the next day (which is really important or the next day will be even more stressful). I’ll still post here weekly though and ensure you get at least one post a week on each blog (except for Friday which is still fortnightly).

I hope you will all understand and hopefully over time things will be able to become more frequent again as demand changes, or at least becomes more managable.

Hope you all have a great week and nobody feels too overloaded

Mike