Stories - FD Thornton

It's Sunday morning (Happy Easter!) and I'm doing my usual Sunday thing reading the opinion sections of the Sunday papers. In  The New York Times  Sunday Review section I came across an interesting piece by Thomas Friedman titled, Need a Job? Invent It . Basically, the opinion piece is about changing our education system from prepping for college to prepping for innovation instead. A number of his thoughts and ideas are worth the reading and thinking about.  My point for writing this because as some of you may know, I'm a recent college grad, trying refocus my career settings for the remainder of my work career. Much like the article mentions, I too had skills I developed over the years that needed discipline and training. Not so much skills like code writing or network routing (which I studied), but skills in asking questions, investigating, critical thinking, and innovation. Skills that I also see our young people truly needing.  Now, I stil...

Good Morning Everyone. I kinda had a rough weekend, an aliment I have has flared up and is making my days a bit painful. It's hard to think over the pain and the medicine is just as bad as to pain itself to me. So I try to avoid it and use my more natural remedies, which aren't doing a whole lot at this time. But you know, this isn't my first rodeo with this so let's see who wins. Fortunately, my plate was fairly empty this weekend and our rainy weather may have helped, first by washing out the pollen and then by keeping me in bed. But a new week has started and the sun's shining bright, but as the morning passes, the pain increases. So I lay here ill and not feeling too well. As I have learned to listen to my mind when things are getting too much and to just slowdown and refocus. So to I need to do the same with my body and to listen for the signs and do what is best for it.  So with that are today's thoughts.  Don't push yourself too hard, know where...

For those of you that follow my blogs you know I work from home. For me it is a "no-brainier" simply because of the cost savings, lack of having to commute to other location, and the fact that I have a large enough home to have a separate office area.  Working from home helps me, not only for the reasons mentioned above, but because of my special needs family members that I care for. Plus the lack of a corporate setting allows me to think, research, and analyze in a more relaxed setting. Giving my clients a much clearer unhurried picture of their situation. ( It's much nicer to hear a bird singing, than to hear car alarms, or traffic, or to smell god knows what kinda perfume from the next cubical .)  With that said, having these kinds of pluses in favor of working from home, it surprised me that the new CEO of Yahoo, Marissa Mayer, said that Yahoo workers were to start reporting back to their offices. It caught me a little by surprise simply b...

Over the past week I have been side traced by a home project. I had to have some work done on my house that could not be ignored or put off. So over Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, I've had contractors in and out of my home. Contractors walking in and out, contractors turning the water and power off and on, and contractors finally repairing the problem.  When I worked as a sub-contractor many moons ago, I didn't realize how distracting it is to have strangers parading through your house. When I worked on residences I pretty much stuck to my job just to get it done quickly. I didn't take time to "sight-see", so to speak. And, I'm sure our contractor was thinking the same thing. Still you can't help but think a lamp is out of place or heaven forbid a piece of paper lay on the floor. It truly felt like a home invasion. But thankfully now the jobs done and we are quite happy, to be alone.  The reason I bring this up is to note that while the contractor...

Does anyone remember the Garfield craze of the early 80's? When all your friends had Garfield books and stuffed Garfield's hanging on their car windows? Well, Garfield had some memorable quotes from back then with one being, "I hate Mondays", another being "Diet is die with a t", and another lesser known one "Bored. Bored. Bored.". (Yes, I know my Garfield.)  Well recently the last one bored, bored, you know the rest, has been playing over and over in my mind again. I mean, I have my studies and my business, and my life for that matter, yet I hear that little cartoon cell saying, Bored. Bored. Bored. It's usually here that I make some profound revelation or write out a piece of wisdom I've discovered to counteract the problem, but here I don't. I guess for so long I focused on the dark, haunted places, where all I could do is cover myself and hide. So then when I finally peaked out at the light and slowly embraced it, I found myself...

Well, it's 3:40 am my time and once again I find it hard to sleep. But that's OK, I tend to do my best thinking at this time of the morning. I guess it comes from all those late nights with friends and driving down to the beach at Tybee Island and watching the sunrise after a night of being young. That said, I noticed I finally got my 500th view. Wow, (there not Gaga numbers) but, I really never thought 'd get here. After so many years of focusing on my family and working, I forgot about really being with people other than "my four and no more". I don't know how I ended up such an isolationist, maybe because of my location or maybe because of society in general? I mean, our neighborhood it's middle-class, a little (a lot) rural, just a simple quite place to be. Still, the only time I've seen a neighbor out was if the power went off. It's nothing like it was growing up. We played outside literally all day from sunrise to beyond sunset. The kids ...

One of the bad (?) habits I have is that my mind is racing all the time. Morning, noon, or night, my brain is always putting out something. Now a lot of you may feel the same way, that your brain is constantly in motion. Either writing a project proposal or thinking about what to fix for dinner, all day long the thing won't shut off. My main problem with a mind on overdrive is, being able to focus on the task at hand. To take all that spinning, moving energy and focus it into one thing. Well, I'm not gonna tell you I discovered a full proof cure. What I am gonna tell you is these tricks work for me (most of the time). So here they are. One thing that I do is find a quiet place, close my eyes, take deep breaths, and sorta' empty my mind. Now this may sound very Zen Buddhist of me, but no matter what your faith it works. I don't chant mantras or hum my brains out, I simply breath in and out, with my eyes closed and do my best to think nothing. You may ask, how can I d...

Do you remember what you wanted to be when you were a kid? I guess I wanted to be a cop like "Adam-12" (the '60's version not the '90's version) or a paramedic like the guys on "Emergency" with Squad 51. But as I got into high school my influences were teachers like my drafting teacher, Mr. Burroughs. He was so cool, he dressed well, drive a Lincoln Mark V (the size of a small ocean-liner) and the girls loved him. Because of him I wanted to be an architect, I even designed two houses in his class (they looked like the Brady Bunch house, but it was 1978).  After high school graduation I lost focus, I started and dropped out of college within a year to a good paying job at a print shop. Money became my main motivator, I worked just to make money. The jobs became just that, jobs. I had lost my focus my aim, I simple worked to live. When I got married in the '80's, jobs became more than just for weekend parties or beer money. They became surv...