The Station - By Robert J. Hastings

The other day my grandma shared me this wonderful piece of writing. It was a snip-it from a newspaper she estimated to be from the 1980s. Yet shes kept it all this time as she read it often. This piece of writing is so beautiful yet so discrete that I had to share it.

Cheers.

The Station

By Robert J. Hastings

Tucked away in our subconscious minds is an idyllic vision in which we see ourselves on a long journey that spans an entire continent.  We're traveling by train, and from the windows, we drink in the passing scenes of cars on nearby highways, of children waving at crossings, of cattle grazing in distant pastures, or smoke pouring from power plants, of row upon row of cotton and corn and wheat, of flat lands and valleys, of city skylines and village halls.

 

But uppermost in our minds is our final destination – for at a certain hour and on a given day, our train will finally pull into the station with bells ringing, flags waving and bands playing.  And once that day comes, so many wonderful dreams will come true.  So restlessly we pace the aisles and count the miles, peering ahead, waiting, waiting, waiting for the station.

 

“Yes, when we reach the station, that will be it!” we promise ourselves.  “When we're 18...when we win that promotion...put the last kid through college...buy that Mercedes-Benz...pay off that mortgage...have a nest egg for retirement.”  From that day on, we will all live happily ever after.

 

Sooner or later, however, we must realize there is no station in this life, no one earthly place to arrive at once and for all:  the journey is the joy.

 

The station is an illusion – it constantly outdistances us. Yesterday's a memory, tomorrow's a dream.  Yesterday's a fading sunset: tomorrow's a faint sunrise.  Only today is there light enough to love and live. Yesterday belongs to history: tomorrow belongs to God.  So gently close the door on yesterday and throw the key away.  It isn't the burdens of today that drive men mad but rather the regret over yesterday and the fear of tomorrow.

 

So stop pacing the aisles and counting the miles.  Instead, swim more rivers, climb more mountains, kiss more babies, count more stars.  Laugh more and cry less.  Go barefoot more often.  Eat more ice cream.  Ride more merry-go-rounds.  Watch more sunsets.  Life must be lived as we go along.

 

“Relish the moment” is a good motto, especially when coupled with Psalm 118:24: “This is the day that the Lord has made; we will rejoice and be glad in it.”

How to Save Money as a University Student

As a student you probably don't have a ton of money to spend that is why I have quickly compiled a list off the top of my head of my best student money saving tips!

1. Don't buy the text book until the course shows that you must.

A lot of the time a course that you are enrolled in states that you must have a specific text book. Don't listen to these claims until the course shows you itself. Lot's of professors like to set up there classes so that a text book a not needed. Even some provide a free copy of the text. 

Now I am going to use an example in my own schooling career to explain why I stated "Until the course shows that you must." For instance I had taken the course Statics, which is fundamentally a course on teaching how we analyze stationary structures. I thought going into this course that I would NEED the text book, after all Statics sounded like it would be calculation heavy so i'd need to do lots of practice in the text. Welp. I was wrong, the prof provided all the practice problems so I didn't open the text book once. In contrast I took a calculus course and I bought the text. I used this thing like how a dog drinks water. Also used the same textbook for 2 other calc. courses soon to be 2 more.

So what can you learn from me. Just wait a little to see how the class is structured. If worst comes to worst you will be behind in text book studying by like a week and we all know nothing exciting happens in the first week.

2. Utilize Googles Products

This one almost seems like a no brainier to some but may be hidden pure gold to others. I sense that some people feel that the only good document processing programs arise from the Microsoft Office platform. If you are lucky like myself my school provides free Microsoft Office Products but if you are not, use GOOGLES PRODUCTS. Dang, even I still use them.

Hidden inside of you google account is google docs. Inside google docs is 4 different programs, 3 of which are direct clones of Microsoft offices products. There is: Docs, Sheet and Slides, which respectively are Word, Excel and PowerPoint Clones.

These programs are phenomenal and are honestly basically the same thing as using Microsoft office products only better cause they are free! Also, these google programs let you save files as their respective Microsoft office product file type. Meaning they are completely compatible! There are so many benefits to list but I can't list them all here, do some research for yourself! (But one being that it is all stored on you google drive so you have automatically take your files everywhere :) )

3. Student discount bois.

Okay, I am a huge music user. I will listen to that stuff till the end of time. But when it comes to school paying you Spotify subscription or Apple music subscription is a real money sink. $10 bucks a month really does add up. But...because you're a student I got good news for you.

Both Apple music and Spotify offer their service for $5 a month. Saving you $5 a month which could be put towards that yummy coffee you crave.

I personally love ordering packages online and I am sure all of you do too. It's like a Christmas day every time you receive one. So take a look at amazon prime as well, they even offer a student discount. This discount almost $4 a month on prime subscriptions. 

If you were already paying for both of these services might as well get the student discount ones right? It's almost a $10 a month savings...*calculations happen*...meaning you save $120 a year! Not bad that's almost the cost of a page from a text book!

Overall look everywhere! Services for students are actually a thing, they are just poorly advertised. Enjoy.

Cheers.

The Best and Easiest Way To Save Money

When talking about saving money the conversation can go in all sorts of different directions. "Make a budget," they tell you. "Buy less Starbucks," maybe they even tell you to, "Just spend less money." While these are all fantastic methods to help you save money these ideas fail in one area: all of them entrust you to them. That is where my method of saving money succeeds the most, you don't have to be in control at all.

Generally people in today's world partake in online banking. It is only a minute population that still religious use tellers to do there banking. It is with immense benefit to be on the online platform because you can really take control of your finances. And this is where you can really optimize you savings.

READ - How to Start Investing

The Method

Firstly what needs to be done is for you to have a savings account. If you already have one open - congratulations you are almost there to saving more money. If not...open one. 

Savings accounts are great for two reasons:

• You can earn interest on the money that's in your account
• Gives you a place to store your money outside of your chequing account.

The point I want to focus on is the 2nd point. This point is extremely important, by having a second home for your money (not just having one account) this allows you to have money that's somewhat out of sight. Ever heard of the saying "Out of sight, out of mind?" Exactly, it applies here.

Cottage Cheese

"Cottage cheese please," cried the man with a wheeze.
"Oh no, please let me have my cottage cheese."
But what the cottage cheese please man with a wheeze didn't know is that he didn't have a wheeze for it was just Febreze.
So the cottage cheese please man with a wheeze who cried "Oh no, please let me have my cottage cheese," started spraying Febreze with ease.

"And that kids is the story of how the Febreze air freshener became known to the public," I said to the kids as I closed the book.

Cheers.

The Parallel Between Pelicans, Geese, Ducks and Humanity

Where I live there Is a small pond nearby. Lately I have been starting my days sitting by it and observing nature. The pelicans, geese and mallard ducks are what I particularly watch, they are fascinating creatures.

The pelicans - the big birds - appear to patrol the perimeter on different ground, hesitant to mingle with the other two groups. On the odd occasion they do, but it doesn't last long as the pelicans soon get territorial and would rather sit among only each other.

The geese have their own unique behavioral pattern. They act like the pelicans in the sense that they scare away the mallard ducks but this happens less frequently. They in turn cannot scare away the pelicans because the pelicans are much too large. Unlike the pelicans, when the geese are not scaring mallard ducks away they tend to mingle amongst them, they seem to not mind sitting with them. However, geese do sometimes scare each other away, most of the time they like their group.

Now, at the bottom of this small chain you have the mallard ducks. These are by far the smallest birds but even they behave territorial, mostly among themselves. They are far too small to scare other creatures away so the only creatures they can scare are each other. While this doesn't happen all the time the "scaring" between their own groups happen much more than it does within the other two groups.

A notably remark the doesn't have anything to do with behavioral patterns is that the population of pelicans world wide is around 650,000. For geese their population (in 2000) sits around 4 to 5 millions. But the mallard ducks on the other had have a staggering population of 9.26 million (as of 2018). [Sources from Wikipedia, Wikipedia and ducks.org, respectively]

To summarize what I wrote. The larger bird exists in a small group, they like their own group, but they dislike the other groups. The smallest bird (mallard duck) exists in large number and cannot scare away the other larger birds. Because of this they more frequently scare away each other.

This is a parallel to all of humanity. At least it is to western culture. The rich people are the pelicans, and the poor people are the ducks.

Look at world famous actors as an example. In reference to the population of the world very few people are world famous actors (just like the small population of the pelicans). These actors are forced to get along properly among their crowd or their connections with others may be disrupted. And acting is all about who you know in the industry. I am no famous actor but I will assume that when you are world famous you don't really want to be friends with the "normies" of the world.

What to Expect on mysillyblog

Hello there! Matt here giving you an update on the direction of mysillyblog. At first when I started this blog I had no idea of what types of posts i would make. But as I've been blogging for while now I had managed to compile a list of things/topics you can expect from me on this blog. 

The Topics:

1. Personal Projects. In the near future I have some plans in motion to work on a couple projects, which I will be hopefully documenting. These projects would most likely be engineering projects. What's on my mind for these right now is building a quad-copter, go-kart and pulling down images from satellites overhead..
2. Educational Material. I really enjoy teaching people new things - specifically math, science or business. I am no expert in these materials but I do have more knowledge in them than the average Joe and love sharing it.
3. Random Stuff. Some days when I get to writing stuff for my blog I just start typing and don't even think about what I am writing. That is why some posts might be a bit sporadic, wild and make no sense. I do think it's nice though because stepping away from the educational content is important to do once in awhile.
4. Thoughts. Because this is my personal blog you have to get a dose of my own personal thoughts. Whether they are my views or just a cool thought I will share them.

So overall you could say mysillyblog is my own personal blog. It's not a brand, it's not a company, it's just me. And if you like who I am, well, you're at the right place. 

Cheers.

When Life Gives You a Rock

When life gives you a rock, do what ever you want with it. Is that not how it goes? Damn. Well it is to me, you want to know why?

If, "If life gives you a lemon, make lemonade," was the quote you lived by I'm sorry for you. There is no depth to that quote, it's simply what it states. Life gives you one lemon and then you'd be inclined to make lemonade. (But maybe you'd also want to make a nice cesar salad topped with a slice of lemon.) 

While this is good and all what if you were going to go for a  swim in the pool before life gave you that lemon. You are not going change the entire path of your life to make lemonade are you? But that's what this saying says; drop everything and make lemonade. 

Instead what my new and improve random quote that I made up on the spot signifies is something completely different.

Read: The Jones Philosophy

In my quote you are given a rock. Rocks are some of the most basic material on earth... Heck we live on a rock, spinning through space, with no care in the world. 

It is will this same lack of care which rocks poses that you should have towards people's thoughts on what you should do in life. That was a mouthful. All I'm saying is be like a rock, don't care what people think, do what you want. 

With my saying it's your life, you don't have to make a rock smoothie with the rock you get. Instead, alongside my saying, do what ever you want with it. You're in control. You have the rock. Some basic words can't tell you what to do. (Oh the irony of that statement). 

 Cheers.

(P. S. I wrote this randomly) 

If you liked this read: Who would be the kind of the jungle if it want George?

Please Listen To Audio Books

Okay, i'm going to be real with y'all. Listening to audio books are next level. You can learn so much from doing mundane everyday tasks.

Cleaning your room? How about spice up your life with some educational audio. Doing your taxes? Listen to an audio book on how to do your taxes! Now that's big brain thinking.

Maybe you are going for a run and while music is good, you wished there was another way to not get bored on your jog, maybe your songs are running out...AUDIO BOOK.

Also, these ear books don't even have to be educational, instead they could be funny, it don't matter. You do you dawg. The world is your oyster.

All I am saying is even while you're driving to work you could be productive in your life. Please at least try one out.

Cheers.