Art of Listening

One of my school assignments: Create a narrative (personal experience) writing sample of three paragraphs describing listening and its importance in your future classes and your planned career. The first paragraph should be the introduction, the second paragraph should be the body of the message, and the third paragraph should be the conclusion to your writing about listening.

My Assignment I wrote:
Hearing is easy. Listening is a whole other ball game. A lot of people think because we hear we are automatically listening. Listening is vital to our survival. Though you don’t need to hear to listen. I have a journaling friend who is deaf. She wasn’t always deaf. She enjoyed hearing and listening till it just vanished. She may not hear now but she is still listening to the world. She just has to listen a little bit differently. Though I believe she hears a lot more than we do through her listening. And we listen to her as she tells her story. We are captivated by her overcoming the obstacles life brings her way.

I like to think about listening as being like sign language, a language I’m fascinated with. You have to “listen to” the signs, understand what the signs are saying and respond back in sign. It requires watching for signing clues, facial expressions and body language. You sign with your whole body almost.

Listening is vital to any job I think. You need to listen to understand what it is you need to do. Will need to use your listening skills to listen to your clients and understand what they want. I will listen with purpose and recognize the different types of situations that will require different kinds of listening skills. I will listen objectively. I will keep an open mind to what my client requires or wants. I will try to listen constructively. I will think on the information given by my clients to come up with the design they are looking for. I want to listen, not just hear the world around me.
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I survived my first week of riding my bike to work and back home. It's cool at night but not too cold yet. I have my mittens, hat and something to keep my neck warm. Besides my sherpa fleece lined sweetshirt I use as a jacket at work. I'm usually all hot and sweaty by the time I get home.

Mom has been trying to get use to riding her bike to work. She usually ends up walking most of the way to work but rides back home. It's kind of up hill on the way to work. Well enough of one for her. She'll get use to riding sooner or later. And besides it's good exercise for her.

It's funnie how the body knows when you have a day off. I woke up with a sinus attack. I don't know if I'd call it a Sinus cold. It's mostly a headache right now with drainage. It makes it hard to concentrate or to breath okay though.

I was buried in memories today. My sister wanted copies of some pictures. I hunted them down and scanned them for her. A long with a zillion others. It's neat to see the old clothes and hair styles we sported way back then.

Think I'll go vegetate and watch a movie. I got 3 school assignments to start tomorrow. Hopefully without the headache I had today!

World of Schooling!

Well I'm about to go into my 3rd week of school. This class is only 5.5 weeks long. So far it's teaching us about how we read, learn, and teaching us how to get along with the classroom atmosphere online. We are basically analysing ourselves.

I haven't come on here for awhile. I did that because I felt it was important to get use to school and my homework before I tried to add in other things. So far I'm maintaining a 96% grade in the class.

Embarking on a new journey:
Well it seems Mom isn't gonna get any breaks. She's had 2 car accidents in the last 24 months. And because of that they are taking her license for a month. They have a special permit that she can apply for to be able to drive back adn forth to work or doctors appointments. Paperwork she has to have for that permit is what is holding her up. So she bought her a bike and we'll have to ride to work until she gets the permit or her license back. I usually ride my bike to work but I put it in the back of the car when I get to work. This time I'm going to have to ride my bike home also. That means riding my bike at 11:30pm. Luckily there is hardly any traffic at that time of the night. And I have to ride past the Police station and Fire Dept.

Mom and I both got lights for our bikes.. the front and flashing ones for the back. We also have vests with reflector tape on them so we can be seen. I also thought it was fun to get those crazy lights for you wheels. So I will really be seen. We've noticed some of the other people from work who ride home don't have anything like this stuff. And they have been really hard to see.

And don't worry I have a helmet also. They have bike lanes but I don't trust myself on them. If the sidewalks are clear I'll ride on the sidewalks. I just hate it's suppose to be getting colder now. And we have some rain coming later this week. We both have rain gear though. We've tried to think of all of the different weather complications. I hate the cold. I'll have to stat taking my heavier jacket instead since I'll be riding at night.

Let ya all know how to goes...

Splinter in the Night!

They say sometimes the smallest wound can cripple a warrior. It this case it kinda works... I was walking between some palettes the other night... On my right was a palette of food waiting to be pulled out to the floor for the night crew to work. On the right was a tall stack of blue palettes (yeah they are painted blue). It was a kinda tight squeeze but I made it thru except I somehow whacked/scraped my hand on the stack of blue palettes...

It scraped some of the skin off. Though when I looked at it I noticed a dot of blue... that's weird... and it hit me.. I had a splinter in the back of my hand. I told my supervisor... with my permission he tried to get it out... mostly by squeezing it... after trying to find someone who could help me I ended up buying a cheap pair of tweezers and one of the ladies I work with got it out for me...

And boy was it a big piece... gotta say atleast a milimeter or so long.. and all I could see of it before it was out was a blue dot. Well needless to say I survived... my hand is a bit sore from being poked and scraped and squeezed...

Had to do a bit of minor "surgery" tonight after work... still had a speck or two of wood/blue paint in the wound. Washed it out again and used a sharp needle to get the specks out... Right now I'm letting air get to the wound to put a scab on it... Now hopefully it won't get infected...

Ohhh Our Wallie World is celebrating sorta.. We've gone a whole 24 days accident free... ::knocks on wood:: and hopefully will continue to be that way... we've had so many accidents since the store opened that no one has seen a bonus... :( And what we can't figure out is how we got thru the setup of the store with not a single accident (which is like very rare!).

oh and Xmas has come to Wallie World.... We are already starting to put out the xmas stuff... already got Halloween out and some Thanksgiving type stuff... The "It's a Zoo" season has begun!! LOL

Well I gotta stop and go check out my class reading assignments... We can start on the 1st 2 assignments before the class even starts... would be good to get ahead of the game!!! Class starts this Monday!

Twinkle Dreams from NoWhere, USA!

Painting the Town PINK!

Well since the Demise of the Journals of AOL land is coming up... I thought it high time to pack up and ship my little town somewhere else... Well since I already knew someone in this neck of the woods... so to speak... ::waves at JudithHeartSong::

I decided to Paint the Town.. PINK! atleast till I figure out the whole paint the town structure... And besides I do have a few webby visiters to the township... who I hope will continue to visit and comment... and hopefully I'll find new Visiters to come play!!!

I hate to see my old journal go... I might save my old postings to a webpage for anyone wanting to read the old stuff...

Especially my stories and poems...