Blogging

You know, blogging was funner, for me, before everyone was doing it (I'm quite aware of how teenish that sounds).

But now, I use blogging in my teaching and in professional development workshops.
Last year, everyone in my circle was talking about blogging in their courses and the news has also been using blogging more and more.

Of course I'm glad folks are blogging--writing and writing. But once blogging hit mainstream, I just lost interest. Now it's twitter and facebook, so I'm kindof back. But the pizazz isn't here.

It seems pointless to log these historic days from my insignificant (I'm just being realistic) point-of-view when thousands upon thousand are blogging theirs.

I wonder what Ruby Payne would say about this case I found on Yahoo! News:

Neal Wanless' [23 year old from South Dakota who won $232 million in a state lotto] winnings are certainly enough to set him and his family up for life, but past lottery winners have burned through vast fortunes in spectacular fashion or found that they were better off before they struck it rich.

Evelyn Marie Adams won the New Jersey lottery twice in the mid-1980s but still managed to lose the entire $5.4 million.

And there's West Virginia's Jack Whittaker, who won $315 million on Christmas day, 2002, and five years later was blaming the money for causing his granddaughter's fatal drug overdose, his divorce, his inability to trust and hundreds of lawsuits filed against him.

"I don't have any friends," he told The Associated Press in 2007. "Every friend that I've had, practically, has wanted to borrow money or something and of course, once they borrow money from you, you can't be friends anymore."

Susan Bradley, whose company in Palm Beach, Fla., the Sudden Money Institute, provides financial planning to the abruptly wealthy, said it's a good sign that Wanless took his time to come forward.

"No opportunity to buy or invest in all that is going to go away," she said. "They have plenty of time."

But she said Wanless will likely experience the same sense of isolation that many other large jackpot winners do.

"They've lost their peers. They are substantially different from everyone that they know," she said.

Bradley said lottery winners should make sure they have enough money to live a modest lifestyle and take a year or two before deciding to buy real estate or make risky purchases. It's important that the winners communicate that strategy to others hoping to direct their financial planning, she said.

These folks who do "backbreaking work" have no framework for economics--that's something people are born into. Instead of knowing how to invest, they are socialized to "take care of each other" . . .

I'm alive!

Security is tight though and I don't use this computer any more.

I've become a mac person.