Gray Wolf Productions

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  • Mothers Day: Time To Bring Back The Original

    women take power

    Modern Mother’s Day is one of our older holidays turned into: “buy something” days.

     It once was a day to honor women, mothers, and originated as an anti-war poem by Julia Ward Howe.

    How far we have come from the original sentiment.

    But in this current world climate and what can only be seen as war mongering, it is time to go back to the original.concept.

    Mother’s Day Proclamation by Julia Ward Howe

    Arise then…women of this day!
    Arise, all women who have hearts! 
    Whether your baptism be of water or of tears! 
    Say firmly: 
    “We will not have questions answered by irrelevant agencies, 
    Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage, 
    For caresses and applause. 
    Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn 
    All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience. 
    We, the women of one country, 
    Will be too tender of those of another country 
    To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.” 

    From the voice of a devastated Earth a voice goes up with 
    Our own. It says: “Disarm! Disarm! 
    The sword of murder is not the balance of justice.” 
    Blood does not wipe our dishonor, 
    Nor violence indicate possession. 
    As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil 
    At the summons of war, 
    Let women now leave all that may be left of home 
    For a great and earnest day of counsel. 
    Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead. 
    Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means 
    Whereby the great human family can live in peace… 
    Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar, 
    But of God – 
    In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask 
    That a general congress of women without limit of nationality, 
    May be appointed and held at someplace deemed most convenient 
    And the earliest period consistent with its objects, 
    To promote the alliance of the different nationalities, 
    The amicable settlement of international questions, 
    The great and general interests of peace.

    I have said, and written, that women need to take power. Women need to step up and get into elected positions, become CEOs, and run everything they can. I think men have had their chances, and ruined the world, and ruined it for many of us. And for future generations.

    Below is a link to my book on women

    mother earth

    Mother Earth is a woman, she needs women to help her survive!

  • Happy? Happier? Happiest?

    happy

    I have been focusing on creating a course about being happy, being happier, or happiest. 

    ​​​​Before this I was focused on life as an adventure – which I still think it is – and there are many paths one can take on that adventure. I focused on four of them – and one of those paths was being happier.

    But for the past few weeks, I’ve been thinking that maybe the main path we all really want to be on is “happier” – and that we all have a different way to get there.

    I also have been thinking that we would all like to be able to reach a state of happiness at when we want to be there.

    We would like to be able to get out of unhappy moods and create happiness – and, yes, there are ways to do this.

    And hence, the course I am developing!

    thinking of ideas

    .So, I thought [I think a lot, a real lot]  maybe I should just post what my brain has been working on and see if people have ideas about this happiness topic and if they would like to hear, or learn, more.

    Here are some questions

    Would you like to be happier?

    Do you know how to create happiness?

    Would you like to learn about happiness and creating happiness?

    If you are interested, please reply in the comments below….

    thank you

    If you would rather not leave a comment, here is a link to the current  happier adventure
    where you can read more and sign up for info if that appeals to you!! 

    And because making videos and graphics, and taking photos makes me happy – I did this……

    And – if you would like to know more – about the course on happiness – or more about the topic – fill out the form below….

  • Telephones and Me!

    I hate ringing telephones!

    ringing telephone

    When I was a kid, actually probably until well into my high school days, I loved talking on the phone to my friends. Then again telephones were relatively novel and they didn’t ring constantly. When they rang it was a person you knew who calling for someone in your household.

    By the time I got to graduate school, phones began to ring a lot more often. We didn’t call them spam or scam calls at that at the time but my roommates and I just almost never answered our phone. We could let it ring and ring and ring and did not care. 

    But over the years, I have had friends who have to answer telephones – they cannot stand to hear a phone ring without answering it. This even in the modern days of cell phones, caller ID, and with too many of your calls being of the spam scam variety-  they still answer..

    I was the first of my friends to get one of those newfangled answering machines. It was the late 70s and it was one where the top lifted up and you put in 2 tapes. One tape was for your  or message and the other tape was for people to leave messages. It was expensive for those days and I remember going to Jordan Marsh in downtown Boston and paying approximately $250 for that machine. It lasted a long time, through a few moves, until it got zapped I think by some nearby lightning once and it became an a.m. radio station. 

    That machine paid for it self the very first day. I set it up  after arriving home and then went about my business. Hours later I remembered I I had a machine. I went to my office and there were lights blinking. A message!  Inviting me to be a keynote speaker at an event! I called back said yes, and as I was going to paid more than the cost of the machine – from that point on it was a freebie.

    smart phone

    Now, most of us carry our “answering machines” in our pockets. It’s actually a multi use computer that we can use to make phone calls. But if you are like many of us, phone calls are the leas used aspect. Even we elders text, use social media, etc. to connect and phone calls are becoming a rarer way to communicate.

    And I can shut off the sound so I don’t hear it ring!! Ah – I love modern technology!! 

    PSA – please try to not answer your phone all the time… 1) it’s rude and 2) it’s usually a scammer.

    Questions? Comments? Thank you!!

  • Make any day the start of YOUR new year!

    new year

    As we leap from 2017 to 2018, let me ask: why make January 1st the start of YOUR new year?

    There.are many cultural and religious starts to a “new” year. Here for example, is a wikipedia article where you can look by month for the differing new year starts.

    And personally, I can add several new year starting times. Most of my life has been spent in some sort of educational system or academia itself. Therefore one of my mental new year starts is usually September. And this happens to be a relatively shorter year because a school year is basically September through June.

    Then there is our birthdate. We celebrate the ending of a particular year of life and the beginning of the next number. For many that is basically a start of another sort of year.

    And of course there is the universally accepted January 1 new year. It comes with all sorts of hoopla these days and big celebrations – and for people in business [and even in their personal lives] it is a time where you get a lot of messages: “what are your New Year’s resolutions”” what are you going to do differently in your business starting January 1?””  “what are your goals” “what are your plans”  “You need a planner.” The weeks before January 1 there were lots of planners for sale so that you could organize your entire year before January 1 rolled around. 

    failure

    And then, not surprisingly but rather appallingly negative, came a bunch of messages beginning around January 3rd or 4th that basically said now that you’ve already failed at all of those resolutions  [a subtle “you loser you”] – it’s time to buy my bright shiny object so that you get back on track and have a good year.

    Yuck. Why do we try to talk people into making resolutions and promises to themselves when we know that most never keep any? Resolutions made for January 1 are generally doomed to failure for many reasons but mostly because they are set haphazardly and often under some peer pressure – online or in your offline life.

    While I do live in a culture that has a major January 1 thing about it and I sometimes get caught up into thinking about “day 1” stuff I have come to the realization in my own head that I don’t care what day of the week or year it is – or what number!  – I was not going to get caught up in this “January 1 stuff!.”

    I decided I needed a mental health break from what I was doing and figured that I had several books to read,  there were also some good football games on, cooking to do [I got a VitaMix as an early birthday gift]  and I originally said I was going to make January 8th the start of MY year. But January 8th came with some fun social obligations, then January 9th just felt “off – so  I decided that MY year was going to start on January 10th, a day that has no meaning at all to me – and so today I am saying happy new year to me and that’s fine – but you, the reader, can pick your own date. This post is obviously published on January 10th – but if you’re reading it in August or September hey it could work for you then – or even July –  or even January 1. The point is that it doesn’t matter – what matters is you stay true to you and stay on the path that you want that you choose and not what everyone else says you should choose.

    Choose your own start to your own new year! Go for it!!

    new year

    Questions? Comments? Thank you!!

  • Niches: Yes! You Can Have More Than ONE!!

    niche pressure


    You MUST have a niche!
    You must have only ONE niche!
    To be successful, you must describe the one IDEAL person
    to whom to market your niche product or idea!

    These are the sorts of messages I see so frequently – online and in emails. I have tried to follow these “rules” and describe me and my interests to [alleged] marketing gurus and am too often told, “that’s too broad,” or even asked “are you ADD?”  

    I TRIED!

    I tried so hard to discover MY niche. I worked at the suggested steps – and I always “failed.” 

    MY BRAIN!

    My brain goes in many directions, often in rapid succession – or maybe  all at once.

    Was I a failure? NO! What I was up against was an understanding that my brain is not like everyone else’s and maybe yours is not either. There are people like us who have different kinds of brains and we are called nonlinears, scanners, polymaths, and Renaissance thinkers.  We make up a very small percentage of the population so it’s not surprising that people do not understand us. We understand us and we understand those marketers who want us to have one niche. 

    What I’ve come to understand for myself is that I have many niches – based on my many interests, many so-called passions, and my many levels and areas of expertise. 

    And I can work on one at a time so when I’m asked these days about my niche I can turn it into “yesterday I was in X niche, today I am in Y niche, and tomorrow I may be in the Z niche” and next week I may be in any of the rest of the alphabet. It depends on me.

    If you would like to learn more about this topic, please use the form below

    Comments? Thoughts? Thank you.
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  • I Was Challenged; And I Won [we all won]

    Today is the last day of a ten-day blog challenge. I was challenged. It was easy for me to do the posts once I did the challenging part of thinking about what it was that I was going to focus on for the next part of my life. I think the others in the blog challenge also came up with good things which is why I said we all won.

    Today’s challenge was to say which of the 10 days was my favorite. I looked back through them they all made me do a lot of thinking but the one I like the best was about my superpowers. In fact, in talking with someone online at some point during the day she said that was brilliant I added that yes I am brilliant but I did not put that into my list of superpowers. So maybe I should add that now. I am smart. I am very smart. I could be called brilliant but I don’t usually say that. That’s part of an issue – ever since I was a kid I’ve known I was smart but we were also admonished to not tell everybody how smart we are. 

    That was my favorite day and now my take away is that I am going to change the admonition I got as a kid and I am going to put it down here as self praise is great and you probably know what that is taking the place of but I am not going to say the words. I am learning to keep those negativities out of my mind.

    I started this challenge knowing that there is another challenge about doing a project coming up soon so I had the idea to put it all together into finally getting to my aging project. Interestingly, I had asked my son and daughter-in-law what they saw as my good qualities and their answers were interesting. I’m not going to put them in here but they were very positive and much in line with what I want to do about the aging project [which has been on my computer for many years] and like many of the things on my computer they are slowly getting done. My next step[s] to reach my goals is that the next few months are going to be focused on the aging project. Yes – there are those other books I will finish as well because I promised my head that they would get done. But among  my superpowers are that I am smart. I write well. I write easily – and dammit I am going to get all of these things done done done.

    Thoughts? Comments? Thank you!!

    This blog post is in response to Natalie’s 10 Day Freedom Plan Blog Challenge Day 10
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