Educational Excellence

It’s Wednesday … and it’s “Hump Day . . . . Yeah!”

Sometimes folks ask  me, “How do you do it,  Cook?  I mean, you always keep a positive attitude!”  They know I have great friends like many of you reading this.  I was “down in the dumps” after not being able to find another place to live, as you can tell from the past few blog posts and e-mails.  Man, it’s tough out here!  Decent and affordable housing is a serious issue here in Broward County!

I wanted to thank Roz Reich who took the time to send me an inspirational quote to help me see “the light” in this period of challenges and changes.  Not only is my daughter and her son, Caleb Isaac, traveling from Connecticut to West Palm Beach, Florida today, but I am still going to look at places immediately after work each day.  A good friend – “Johnny Ace”, drummer for a local band called “Smoking Aces, still lets me use his couch on the weekend when he is not too busy with his girlfriend, “Candy”!  Shucks, Candy even recommended I check with an old friend of hers who had a studio for rent in her house.  She also turned me down … family reasons … I guess.

Now my job situation is somewhat stabilized, still with the same company, though the position of customer service I had interviewed for like 3 times was almost offered to me by the owner of the moving company  in the 3rd interview.  Yet, since they are in the same building as the call center I work for, he stated that the owner of our company and he had made an agreement NOT to hire anyone from the other’s office employees!!  You gotta respect their wishes, heh?!?  Job market is tough here, too!  Most jobs are in the “service industries” – bars, hotels, restaurants and the like – and one has to be flexible … and young to handle this market unless professionally trained and employed.

This is what Roz sent me:

Soul Consciousness
Spiritual awareness (soul-consciousness) is cultivated through deliberate practice and only those who have understood the need for this kind of true, inner, self-respect will make the effort. Difficulties will arise to test your resolve for self-upliftment – physical illness, relationships, memories of the past, and so on. Yet with patience and introspection, you will come to see how these very tests are the means to strengthen your spiritual identity.

I look forward to the challenges ahead as well as solutions to handle them.  I keep my head to the sky, as the title of an earlier “Earth, Wind and Fire” song said.  And still, even with my current circumstances, I am planning to do a presentation for the Community Justice Program Saturday in Lauderdale Lakes, FL focusing on S.A.V.E. – Students Against Violence Everywhere, thanks to Nicole Valencia Mercado!

Enjoy the time you have in your journeys … and enjoy your loved ones!

Peace,

John I. Cook, Director