The Holiday Spirit

     The holidays have started and some have even finished, for many of us holidays are a time of new beginnings and for others it's a time of reflection over a year that has come and gone. For whatever reason you celebrate the holidays (or don't) , we can all agree that this special time of year always brings out a different side of people that we don't always see. This can be good, you might get gifts or even just a smile, or it could be bad, and your family could bicker the entire day and end up holding grudges.

     I had a great day filled with love shown not only from my family, but from my friends as well. I also saw some hate from family, but this was overshadowed by good memories. My mother, who is struggling to keep a roof over our heads got together money and framed my diplomas for me and surprised me with them early this morning. This kind of selfless love is what should characterize this season, but often gets lost amongst the selfish consumer whoring that we all are guilty of at one point or another.

     What I am saying is people forget that their actions directly affect others and we should try to work together as the human race, and not just around the holidays. We as people forget this, some of us try to make a world a better place and some just try to mask their inferiorities by breaking down the spirit of others. While others go spend at least one day out of their week at church to be reminded of how to treat others, but those lessons often times get left at the alter (that is a discussion for another day).

     So, what ever you celebrate, I hope you do so; happy, safe, and with people you love.

~Ben

Working Through It

    Today I want to talk about a situation that happened to a young man as he was nearing graduation and didn't know quite what to do.

    This young man didn't particularly know what he wanted to do with his new degree or what path he would take. He had tried in the past to make strides in his part time job and perhaps even form a niche role that he could fill post graduation, thus turning his job into a career. This didn't look like it would quite pan out for him so he decided to band together with two of his close friends from college and start to form an idea for a business that they could start up. The first idea they had was to start a restaurant, well this idea seemed to be in the distant future as they were all pretty broke (as most college students are). So they started doing what any good entrepreneur would do and they shifted their focus.

     With their focus now shifted they started to work on the idea that maybe they could start up a new business that would fulfill some of their wants to have a restaurant and be successful. That's when they began work on a bakery/cafe concept. They worked tirelessly through the nights both after school and on the weekends. All the while they were working on internships for their respective degrees. The young man quit his part time job, and decided to work more at his internship as it was paid and showed promise. Then tragedy struck and without notice the young man's internship was told to lay off some new hires in preparation for a shift in management. In a blink of an eye the young man was jobless.

The young man mentioned here was me, I faced these very real and very common problems that an upwards of 53% of college age people and college graduates face in these hard times. I would like to elaborate more tomorrow on how you can pull yourself up from a seemingly bottomless pit of problems and negativity.

~Ben