Archive for March, 2014

Financial Discontent

In these days of a failing economy, high unemployment, and massive home foreclosures, you would think that anyone who had a job that covered expenses would feel blessed. Instead, the opposite seems to be true. It sometimes seems as though a whole society is discontented with their lives even when they have so much to be thankful for. I can understand wanting to improve your lot in life and setting goals for yourself. I can even understand feelings of failure …

When people have an identity crisis, it’s often because they confuse who they are with what they do. If their career hits some bumps in the road, they could feel like a failure on a personal level as well as on a business level. What they don’t understand is that when their professional life hits some sustained roadblocks, it’s often a message that they are in the wrong career and they may need to make some changes in the kind …

When we think of bloodsuckers we usually think of animals that suck the blood of humans, or we think of people who extort money from people who are still living; we don’t usually think of extorting money from people who are dead. And yet, that’s exactly what a Manhattan Beach, California Toyota dealership is doing to a widow because her 83-year-old husband died of prostate cancer nine months before the end of his rental lease. A man leased a Prius …

I just read an interesting article saying that taxi drivers will become extinct. It talked about technology and self-driving cars becoming the norm and said “the requirement that a taxi has a driver will fall by the wayside.” Their contention is that taxi drivers will be replaced by impersonal artificial intelligences that never try to take you on a shortcut that ends up adding five dollars to the fare. My first thought, after I got past the disbelief that there …

This may be a difficult concept for today’s children to accept but school attire does have a great deal to do with behavior. In fact, clothing, in general, does influence behavior. When you are dressed casually, the tendency is to behave casually. It might not seem fair to make a sweeping generalization like that but I’m comparing today’s dress code and the attitudes associated with it to yesteryear’s dress code and the attitudes associated with education and work. Our school …

There’s an old saying, “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.” But what if we’re fooling ourselves? Think of the myriad ways we fool ourselves about little things. We look at people and only see what we expect to see; we don’t look for things that are out of character for them. It’s as if we give permission for them to hide in plain sight. We hear what we want to hear and we block …

When I was in college, I read a poem by Emily Dickinson that spoke of those who had not lived while they were alive and, only in their death, did they become alive. It was one of those poems that made me look at the life I was living and this was a turning point in my thinking. After I thought about it, I decided that I was going to fill my days with the things that gave meaning to …

The original saying is that too many cooks spoil the broth but the cultural definition is that too many people who are involved in managing an activity can ruin it. The dictionary says that this expression alludes to each of many cooks adding something to the soup, which finally tastes awful. This is a perfect example of government. There are so many layers of bureaucracy that nothing gets done, everyone plays the blame game, and corruption exists in every strata …

As blasé as we have become about so much of our lives, one thing seemed to remain unchanged and that is the excitement of getting engaged and receiving a diamond engagement ring as evidence of your boyfriend’s love for you. In 1949, Carol Channing introduced the song, Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend, in the Broadway production of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, and four years later, in 1953, Marilyn Monroe immortalized the song in the movie version of the story. From …

I just read a news article saying that colleges were paying students to take a year off after high school to travel or volunteer. This gap year program will pay for housing, airfare, and visas, which can add up to $30,000 or more. The rationale behind this asinine idea is that students are so burned out by the time they graduate that they need this gap year to reenergize and figure out what they want to do with themselves after …

Connie H. Deutsch

Archive for March, 2014

Financial Discontent

Who You Are and What You Do

Bloodsucking Toyota Dealership

Are Self-Driving Cars Here?

Leggings and Yoga Pants

Do We Fool Ourselves?

Pushing the Envelope

Too Many Managers Spoil the Broth

The End of the Engagement Ring

Students Paid to Vacation

My Books

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