This is about your Life Dysfunctions. We all have them.

Most of us have problems that I call Life Dysfunctions. Some of these are permanent, they can’t be overcome. I’d like to think that the only ones that are of this nature are those that are genetic and physically unchangeable through therapy or medicine.

I would like to believe that any other Life Dysfunctions can be eliminated, curtailed… or changed in some way.

It’s a very difficult process to look at yourself and tell what your dysfunctions are. Why that is is anyone’s guess and there are many guesses about it. I just know it’s a very difficult thing, to look at myself and try to guess what my dysfunctions are.

First, lets go over some of the dysfunctions that exist. Let’s define what I’m talking about since you might call it a different term or phrase altogether.

A Life Dysfunction is something about you that is at odds with society or yourself and that is causing you some discontent. Maybe some anger. Maybe some sadness. Some problem. Simple enough, yes?

Life Dysfunctions can be:

• a genetic predisposition
• a habit
• a behavior or group of behaviors
• a personality trait
• persistent negative or dysfunctional thoughts
• a dysfunctional agenda (something you want to accomplish with your self or with others)

Life Dysfunctions cause problems in your life. If you never analyze what your L.D.’s are, then you’ll likely live a life that’s not quite “being all you can be”. Sure you’re not joining the ARMY, but still I have this idea that we’d all be happier if we were being all we could be instead of “being all that we are” without any effort.

I’m guessing that all of us have some LD’s that cause us some kind of problems. If you look at yourself and don’t come up with any then you must be living an incredibly fulfilling, peaceful, magical life and I want to hear from you. I want the recipe.

I started to examine my own LD’s by asking and answering this question…

What is causing me a problem right now and that is affecting me on a daily basis?

The first thing that came to mind is having Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD). It has caused me trouble every day of my life actually. Well, as far as I can remember. I have an attention span that lasts only as long as my interest is being tweaked. When the interest dies, something must take it’s place. As I work on this blog post in “ScribeFire”, my blog editing software in this FireFox browser, I am not just working on this one post. I have 14 open blog posts for Aim for Awesome that are in various states of completion. It’s not because I like to plan ahead, this is just the state of my mind - always in flux and always creating a new idea that holds my attention for a little while. Until the next idea. I have 17 Blogger.com blogs. I have 3 WordPress blogs. I have 2 complete web sites. I have a book (bio) mostly written at 127,000 words though I may never finish because now it’s in the editing stage and I’m not eager to do that very often. I have a fiction book halfway complete at 42,000 words. I’m working on it daily but there’s no telling if I’ll really finish it and submit it for printing somewhere.

So, ADD has been a major obstacle in my life. I have come to accept this as my life. I used to be at odds with it but in the last couple years I’ve just realized, this is IT. Make the best of this. I don’t want to take any medication as I love being creative.

I am still at odds with society because it’s rare that I can come through with things that require constant attention and effort. I’ve given up working a 9-5 job because it’s completely at odds with my mind. At every job I’ve ever had I have worked on all of my other projects at the same time. It isn’t fair to the people that hired me. It’s not fair to me to subject myself to an environment where I can’t be me. Blogging seems to be the ideal outlet for me. I can write on any of thousands of different topics. If I tire of writing I can podcast. If I tire of that I can video blog (vlog). If I tire of that I can work on search engine optimization of my sites. If I become bored at that I can write a book…

Recently I was listening to a podcast by StevePavlina.com. I usually listen to his podcasts about 5 times before I’m happy that I ‘got’ all that he was talking about. He speaks fast and it seems to just flow off the top if his head. He’s hard to follow sometimes, but eventually I get it all. He was talking about aligning your creativity with the outlet that you use to express the creativity. Wow. It really hit me that blogging is a great outlet for my creativity, it’s a great match. If you want to hear that podcast, it’s really powerful.

Steve Pavlina’s Podcast 20: Creative Self Expression (MP3 format, 13.7Mb)

In the future I’ll tackle the other life dysfunctions as separate posts in this series…

Best of Life,

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I blogged this at one of my other blogs and everytime I look at this girl’s face I feel like I should do more, so I’ll blog it here too.

In Thailand it’s normal to live on a fraction what we live on in the USA. The average person here WITH a college degree makes between 3000 and 7000 Thai baht per month. In one year that equals $1080 - 2520.00 USD. Living on 3000 baht is difficult here - for me I’d say impossible as I like to eat too much. Thais eat very little that are making 3000 baht per month. Wonder why most are skinny?

This story came from an online city newspaper that operates out of Pattaya Thailand. I know the owner of the site, he is a foreigner and we’ve exchanged emails some over the last few months. He is a good guy and occasionally his Thai reporters stumble across a human interest story.

This one broke my heart as I know there are MANY Thai families living like this - but so few times is anything done. The deputy mayor and the school staff opened an account for this girl and her father so they could take care of basic expenses. Here in Thailand it’s VERY easy to transfer money between ATM machines into anyone’s bank account if you know the number and name on the account. So - they made it easy for this poor family to receive some cash.

It’s bad enough that the family had so little cash that they hadn’t enough for food sometimes, but when I read the part about the girl being excluded from social groups in school - probably because she was so poor, dirty maybe? smelled? Anyone’s guess… all of it heartbreaking.

If you feel like you have $5 or something to contribute, would you? I’ll accept the cash in our PayPal account and then do a transfer into their account (and take a photo of the receipt and send it to you if you donate). (trythaifood@gmail.com is our PayPal account)

How’s that?

Or, I’m sure you could find someone in your own city that needs the cash. If you have it and you’re not hungry today - why not find someone to give it to and make their day a little easier?

Story below…

Story from Pattaya City News (.net)

Here’s something we should see more of… not being Thai I don’t hear about this stuff often. It’s not that Thai people don’t care, but each Thai person probably knows 20 families like this one. Send them a few baht by transferring from your Thai bank (any) through the ATM machine. Follow the instructions for transferring - it’s easy and you’ll have no excuse for not doing it. Really, you’ll feel like you did something…

The article said she was always excluded from social gatherings - do the Thai kids exclude poor kids from their groups? There must be a hell of a lot of poor kids, how do they choose who gets excluded? I haven’t seen that in Thai schools, but of course I was teaching in the ENglish program and all the parents of those kids have enough money.

Man, a very heartbreaking story… even if I don’t know the whole story and background…

Deputy Mayor helps 11 year old Student living rough behind a Chinese Cemetary.

Deckjing Saroshar aged 11 is a bright student who attends Pattaya School Number 2. Everyday she arrives at school in her white and blue uniform and appears to be a happy child. However, Teachers have been concerned why she is constantly excluded from social gatherings at lunch and afternoon breaks. They were also concerned about her weight and decided to do some investigation into her living conditions and were shocked to find that she was living with her jobless Father in a tin hut behind a Chinese Cemetery in Naklua. Information was passed on to Khun Ronagit, Deputy Mayor of Pattaya who was told that the girl’s father, Khun Tongpraer aged 35 would sometimes not have enough money to feed himself or his daughter. He had come to Pattaya 10 years ago to search for his Wife, without success. He was unable to find work and now collects recyclable items from the street. He uses most of the money to educate and feed his daughter. The Deputy Mayor decided to help out the pair and opened an account for the girl at the Government Savings Bank and placed an undisclosed personal donation inside the account. If you would like more information on the Girl and her Father please call the Pattaya City Call Center on 1337 or you can send a donation direct to account number 03-2105-20-112608-2 at the Government Savings Bank.

Story from www.pattayacitynews.net

For some reason, I think because my posts tend to be on the long side I lost my feedburner feeds for a while. Quite a while from what it appears.  Below is a valid feed - the only valid feed to get these posts delivered to your RSS feeder. It works with all the top feeders.

Just click to subscribe in your favorite reader and delete your old feedburner feed for Aim for Awesome if you would.

http://feeds.feedburner.com/AimForAWESOME/

Thanks!

Vern

This is my inspirational photos index that I created here in Thailand, (Koh Samui).

Hope you enjoy them…

Inspirational Photos Index >

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Best of Life!