Jordan Neely and Us

Daniel Penny walked out of the courtroom in New York City free of all charges after the chokehold he used against Jordan Neely ended the life of the homeless man.

Neely had schizophrenia and was famous as a Michael Jackson impersonator. Using Google Images and typing in Jordan Neely it’s uncanny the resemblance in the photos.

The New York Post newspaper on the front page claimed Penny shouldn’t have been arrested to begin with. That the case shouldn’t have been sent to trial.

You kill someone you should be arrested and receive a trial by jury to determine whether you’re guilty or innocent. There’s no subjectively NOT arresting whoever you don’t want to arrest as you think it’s OK that they killed someone.

Conservative Christians and others contributed a million dollars to the ex-Marine’s legal fund. Penny was hailed as a Hero for intervening when Neely was psychotic and threatened riders on a NYC subway train a year ago.

It begs the question as to Fear: what people going about their ordinary lives every day should fear and what we should not fear.

The prosecuting attorney’s argument was weak if you ask me. After the verdict of innocent protests took over in the streets in New York City.

The fact is in light of a person like Neely with untreated mental illness acting out in public there’s guilt by association. You and I might not be violent. Yet once we tell another person we have a mental illness they’ll think we could “snap” at any minute in the future.

We who are recovered and doing well must advocate for individuals like Jordan Neely who fall through the cracks. Those cracks are as wide as the Grand Canyon and easy to fall into.

The Mad crowd are against using medication at any time. They think psychiatry is a pseudo-science. In this realm the anti-psychiatry folk have pulled sway in society.

The choice to take medication is the right of the individual. For those of us who’ve discontinued our medication and had a severe relapse I would say the only choice is to pop those pills again.

How would Open Dialogue or any other “hold their hand in a quiet room to cure them” philosophy help a person like Neely who was severely ill to begin with.

Right. Right.

I will always talk about how taking pills allowed me to recover. It’s not my place to tell others what they should do or not do. My story is out there in my first book Left of the Dial. Pretty convincing that narrative was on its own.

Jordan Neely didn’t deserve to die. We don’t need people like Daniel Penny taking matters into their own hand like a vigilante.

My uncle was a Marine who served on Iwo Jima in World War II. He would be horrified that a former Marine took the life of a person with a mental illness.

Coming up I’m going to give a lighter look at how to fight stigma courtesy of a holiday event I attended.

Booting Stigma

In the December/January issue of Harper’s Bazaar fashion magazine was a feature showcasing jewelry. The models wearing the necklaces were not the traditional runway girls you see in photos. This was interesting to me as their identities were not given.

So beautiful it is to me to think that you can live and love [and laugh!] in society without making your gender the focus of everything you do. For others they want you to know.

The fashion spread got me thinking about how best to fight stigma. Likely there’s no one best method to do this. It depends on the person’s comfort level. In a coming blog entry I’ll talk about my stance in more detail.

In fact I’m no fan of working in a cubicle in a corporate office after my failed first insurance field career. My friend Robin had schizophrenia and rose up to be the CEO of a corporation. So I could not tell you flat-out to rule out an office job.

What I can say is that I think it’s still dice-y to disclose when you work in a business setting. This is up to you. It’s your choice wherever you work.

The link to the fashion article in Harper’s Bazaar is this: I dream of a day when disclosure isn’t necessary as there’s no stigma anymore. Yet even should this happen we can talk of intent versus impact: in the atmosphere where educating others has become unnecessary:

Hiding in a closet could cause emotional distress even when there’s an outside openness to talking about mental illness. Should the day come when there’s mainstream acceptance everywhere then disclosure would likely be okay.

It’s a question of do as I say not as I do as my recovery is an open secret. Since I’m no fan of tossing out details of your diagnosis to coworkers like candy corn on Halloween.

The issue is that stigma still exists in the hearts and minds of people interacting with a person who has a mental illness.

I and you and others might be on the lucky end of the luck of the draw: recovered and doing well. On the opposite side there are those of us who have “disclosed” simply because we’re acting bizarre out in public.

In the coming blog entry I will talk in detail about this as the fact is it’s a stereotype at work when it comes to stigma.

We each of us should be having compassion for others who are not doing well. We’re not in opposing camps.

In this holiday season gratitude is call for. And empathy along with eggnog.

See Who We Are

This week I had my new article published on the Mental Health Affairs blog website. I’m going to give readers the link to the essay here.

What should be added here as the corollary to what I wrote in the piece is that “geography determines biography.” Where you are born can determine your personal history and where you go in life. Or whether your opportunities are limited forever.

The failed trajectory of obtaining the American Dream is a reality for the very people shut out of the thriving cites in the Northeast corridor or elsewhere.

What I’ve been thinking about is how to best aid individuals living in rural or Rust Belt areas. They are the very ones the government can help out by giving every American a $1,000/monthly Universal Basic Income (UBI).

Sadly, elected leaders resist creating this option. They’re selling billions in arms to Saudi Arabia to fight wars in the middle east.

Where has that money been going once America gets it?

Here’s my See Who We Are article.

Office Holiday Party

Once in the 1990s I attended an office holiday party at a restaurant. Something was off with the food served. We cut into the meat and found out that it was veal.

That was long before the protest against eating veal was popular. We were upset to be served the veal back in the 1990s at the holiday party.

Closing out the 1990s I attended another office holiday party. The attraction was the shrimp which two of us piled on our plates.

One year recently at a holiday party at a restaurant I lost my hat. It was my favorite crimson knit cloche that I had bought at a holiday gift fair in the 1990s.

Where the hat went I had no idea as others saw me wearing it when we went to the restaurant.

The thing I can tell you is that on 12/26 the day after Christmas it’s not advised to ask a coworker how their holiday was. Unless you know that they celebrate Christmas.

As I found out when the person told me they don’t celebrate the holidays after I asked how their holiday was. You can try asking if the person celebrated the holidays. Then if they did you can ask how it was.

I would also like to say that the holiday party is not the place to get drunk or stoned on weed with coworkers. Not matter how nonchalant your workplace code is.

I say treat yourself to a holiday gift if you celebrate. Though it makes no sense to go into debt buying gifts for yourself or others or to host a dinner party.

On a humorous note, to end with:

In December 2017 I bought a sweater online from Uniqlo. The USPS listed that the item was delivered when it hadn’t arrived.

Waiting on hold with the USPS to find out what happened a recorded announcement told me that the USPS is the best way to ship holiday gifts.

Not so. The package didn’t arrive from Uniqlo that December 2017 with the USPS.

In March 2018 I arrived home to find a plastic bag in front of my door. I hadn’t ordered anything. the label listed that it was shipped from Uniqlo.

Opening the package I saw that it was the sweater that should’ve arrived in December 2017!

Staff Kitchen Blues

I wanted to talk about The Staff Kitchen at the workplace.

Too often your sandwich goes missing from the refrigerator.

I’ve had a jar of honey I kept on the table placed in the refrigerator.

The honey hardened so could not be used. Twice.

Then be aware that if you bring a glass to use to drink water in:

The glass could be stolen.

Food should routinely be discarded when it’s in the refrigerator too long.

You should also not keep in the refrigerator food like onions that smell. At least, I was called out for doing this.

The holidays are coming up and I will have tons to say about the office Holiday Party too.

Having lunch in the staff kitchen should be an enjoyable experience.

I’ll end here with this caveat:

It’s OK if you can’t bring your own lunches to work 5 days a week.

I advocate for making your own lunch food three days a week. Buying food on the other two days.

I figured this out recently. Compromise is called for in this area. As you’ll feel like a failure if you can’t bring food from home 5 days a week.

Having a sustainable routine is the goal. I venture that setting unrealistic expectations will tempt you to give up on your goal(s) altogether.

I also recommend eating your food in the staff kitchen not at your desk.

Loving Your Job is Possible

At least three non-fiction books rail against the myth that you can find a job you love:

Work Won’t Love You Back

Do What You Love (And Other Lies)

We are All Fast Food Workers Now

In my career guide I made the distinction I want to reiterate here:

You CAN love your job even if you’re not doing what you love to do like bake cookies.

You might like to cook. That doesn’t mean you should become a chef. Maybe you’ll bake pies to take to work to share with coworkers. Or have a side business selling those pies to earn extra cash.

I happen to love my job. I didn’t have this career until I turned 35. Proving that it’s not too late to pivot start over or even begin a job for the first time.

A guy I met 15 years ago told me he decided at 55: “Enough! I want to get a job!”

Then there’s the story of the gray-haired lady in her sixties who attended library school with me. Other people were ending their lives and she decided it wasn’t over for her.

In coming blog entries I’m going to talk about workplace woes and wonders. Using a sense of humor to talk about these topics.

Again: you can love your job even if it doesn’t involve your wildest passion of what you like to do.

Outside of the workplace is where we shouldn’t skimp on doing what thrills us every day.

The BrAIn Drain

A friend used ChatGPT to create a poem for me one year ago. The poem was great. Though I had hoped he wrote it on his own. I’m no fan of outsourcing your intelligence.

AI or Artificial Intelligence is here to stay. It generates “hallucinations” that is false information and contains biases.

Though I’m no fan of AI at the end of this blog entry I’ll link to a Vault article on AI software you can use to create a resume. A person I interacted with 2 years ago used AI to create a resume that got them a job interview. They were offered the job.

When using AI to create a resume this way you should absolutely customize the resume from there instead of merely doing a cut-and-paste of what the AI software spits out.

Using AI is taking us in the wrong direction relying solely on using interviews instead of requiring candidates to give a work sample or do one-day trial work.

The risk I see is that using AI job seekers will be creating identical resumes when applying for jobs.

AI is being co-opted in every business arena. It can produce misleading images and violate copyright. Students are using AI to create term papers.

Sadly I likely will be forced to use AI even though I’d rather not. I obtained an MS in library and information science with a 3.89 GPA. You can see that I prize natural intelligence then.

It’s a slippery slope we’re going down with the extended lack of using our own originality and creativity to innovate new ideas, products, and services.

I’m not against the careful and judicious use of AI to create content and decide what to do. It’s just that the industry should be regulated precisely because of the existence of AI=generated bias and false information.

Here’s the vault article on the Best Free AI Resume Builders.

Acing a Job Interview

The new book pictured is the ideal primer on how to ace the interview so that you get a job offer. I Hate Job Interviews was published this year. So It was too late to include this guide in my book Working Assets. In the updated career book I hope to publish I will refer to this.

Each chapter segues into the coming chapter so the book should be read from the first chapter to the last. I checked this book out of the library.

Employers commonly use interviews to determine who to hire. Other career book authors rail against using interviews. They recommend giving a job candidate a work project to turn in as a sample.

Yet still hiring managers use interviews to decide who to give a job offer. This won’t change anytime soon.

One interview question listed in the new book is “What kind of flavor would you choose if you were going to sell a new donut?”

The author Sam Owens thought salted caramel and Godiva chocolate options would be great answers. From the standard to the wacky everything you experience on an interview is covered in this book.

The fact that upwards of 85 percent of the customers I helped create resumes got job offers is not all because of my effort. Once those people got the job interview they wowed the hiring manager.

So that reading a book like I Hate Job Interviews! should be required in tandem with other strategies.

HERO Traits

In reading one of the burnout books I alighted on the concept of HERO traits. Those of us who possess these traits are thought to do better on the job and in life.

The HERO traits are:

Hope

self-Efficacy

Resilience

Optimism

Gratitude

Empathy

Mindfulness

Social media algorithms purposed keep people on sites like Facebook and X (formerly Twitter) using metrics designed to keep people antagonistic towards each other.

I say lay off getting sucked into these agents of acrimony. Try asking a real live person out for coffee. To talk about what makes them tick. To have fun. Instead of wallowing in online fury.

Red and blue make Purple. Purple is a gorgeous color. United we stand. Divided we fall.

Why not devote time to using the HERO traits to better ourselves.

We can also use these traits interacting with others like coworkers.

Surviving Capitalism

I checked out of the library the book in the photo above. The author Madeline Pendleton is the Founder & CEO of Tunnel Vision. The company is a million-dollar online clothing seller where Pendleton pays herself and every other employee the exact same livable salary.

According to Pendleton: productivity increased 40 percent when Microsoft Japan implemented a four-day work week without reducing pay for its employees.

In fact: “The more you work, the less accurate you are.” Overwork causes ill health too.

In I Survived Capitalism:

“One study by University College London found that employees working a 55-hour week faced a 33 percent increased risk of stroke. In another study, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found working 61-70 hours per week increased the risk of heart disease by 42 percent.”

Madeline Pendleton was a teen who gravitated to the punk rock culture. Today in the Tunnel Vision office you can hear music by the band Crass on the speaker.

Pendleton tells the reader:

“Start with revolutionary optimism. Believe a better world is possible. It’s the first step to getting there.”

Now go out and buy the book since I’ve quoted it in this review. Geared to Gen Z and Millennials it’s also for others who could use a shot of empowerment to opt out of chasing bigger better more and not getting hoodwinked by materialism into thinking capitalism as it exists today is acceptable.

Coming of age in the 1980s I too was spellbound by the punk rock ethos. A disc jockey on FM radio in college I played the Dead Kennedys and other radical bands on air.

Like Pendleton does I too believe a better world is possible. I’ve always been an optimist.

The difference is that like Pendleton asserts happiness in life comes down to having what you think is “enough.”

You could be a millionaire and still not be happy.

The root of what I’m attempting to do is create economic justice for individuals with disabilities like mental illnesses who too often are forced to live in poverty collecting government checks.

Should you be compelled to want to make things better you can do so in your own inimitable way too. We cannot let fear of what others will think of us stop us from acting to make possible the better world we think is possible.

One person’s small actions and another person’s small actions and everyone’s small actions working together can create the change we want to see.