Monday's Opening Thought: January 3, 2022

This week’s opening thought: I’m not one for New Year’s resolutions. Never really have been. With that said, I believe that if you are going to resolve to do something over a span of 365 days that it should not be a toxic practice that could leave you feeling worse about yourself on day 30 than you did on day 1.

If you’re the resolution type, I implore you to look beyond the confines of 365 days and resolve to take care of yourself mentally, emotionally, and physically every day of the rest of your life with as little toxicity and societal pressure as possible. Make healthy life choices for yourself, societal and familial pressure be damned.

Use the next 365 days to start a lifetime of caring about yourself, because for many of us there will hopefully be life beyond December 31, 2022.

Monday's Opening (Year-Closing) Thought: December 27, 2021

I wasn't going to post a final opening thought for 2021 because, well, I'm chillin' at the crib and felt that I'd said all I needed to say this year. But then I saw that Dr. Fauci and the CDC admitted that they shortened the COVID-19 isolation guidelines to get people back to work faster. While hearing the CDC share their "reasoning" wasn't even remotely surprising, it did prompt me to give y'all one last opening thought. Consider this my ending thought for 2021.

Ending thought for 2021: your value to your family, your loved ones, your community, to humankind is much more than a job or career that is pushing you to put yourself and your community at risk during a global pandemic. Just because the government has given your employer the power to expect you back to work in a matter of days after testing positive for a contagious virus doesn't mean that all you are is a series of tasks you perform for financial compensation 5-7 days a week. Capitalism or not, you matter beyond the boundaries of a workplace and its culture and pressures.

I'll see y'all in 2022. Take care of yourselves and each other.

Monday's Opening Thought: December 20, 2021

This week's opening thought: your voice in the face of oppression or hurdles to progress is just as important and valid as the voices of those who do nothing with their time but take up space, shout down and drown the voices of others, and add nothing to the proceedings but misinformation, narcissism, ignorance, and hate. These voices that overtake the conversation and overwhelm others are seeking to make you silent, gaslight you, invalidate your thoughts because that is how they aim to maintain their power and comfort. But here's the thing: when someone's voice is a weapon of hate and oppression, their thoughts and words are invalid. Why?

Hate doesn't deserve validation.

Narcissism does not earn you validation or the option to be the center of attention.

Willful ignorance and misinformation do not make your words more valid just because you bulldoze others and speak louder than anyone in the room.

Whiteness, power, privilege all operate on the belief that their voice and thoughts are the most important in any discourse and that the voices of those lacking whiteness, power, and privilege are tertiary at best. This is especially true around discussions centering on hate and oppression. Societally, we have all been either forced to begrudgingly accept this or taught that our skin color, and the power and privilege that comes with it, give someone the dominant stance and viewpoint regarding hate and oppression in any conversation. It does not. Adhering to and perpetuating dated patriarchal, white supremacist, hateful societal norms does not validate your voice and thoughts. They make you a toxic and dangerous person. And harmful people do not deserve a platform.

Speak truth to power. Let your voice be heard, even when dealing with those who prefer your silence and oppression over being told their thoughts and views are invalid in a society aiming to be better than those who came before them. Let the strength of your voice turn down the volume on theirs.

Ain't like they're sharing anything worth listenin' to anyway.

Monday's Opening Thought: December 13, 2021

This week’s opening thought: “I’m set in my ways” is the worst excuse ever for why you’ve decided to maintain being sexist, racist, homophobic, transphobic, xenophobic, or ableist. “I grew up in a different time” is a close second. Neither statement absolves you of doing and saying hateful and harmful things at work, at home, or in the community. And don’t go blaming the way you grew up, the people you grew up with, or the era you grew up in for your beliefs and behaviors. You don’t get a pass for being older and unwilling to learn and unlearn. Hell, you don’t get a pass for being younger or middle-aged and being reluctant to learn and unlearn either. You have the autonomy to evolve and be a better version of who you are. You’re just choosing not to act on that autonomy.

Monday's Opening Thought: December 6, 2021

This week’s opening thought, for employers and recruiters: Put the salary and all of the job duties in the job posting. Seriously. How are we still talking about this, especially when we’re in the midst of the “great resignation” (*cough* people leaving harmful work environments because they know they deserve better treatment than what they’ve received at work, including but not limited to ambush workloads and low salaries *cough*)?

There’s no excuse for not having the salary and clearly defined work duties present in your job postings. None. Are you afraid that the salary and workload of the role don’t align and that the truth will turn off candidates? Well, sounds like it’s time to re-evaluate your job descriptions, which you should be doing annually anyway, to ensure some level of equity in pay and job duties.

Don’t waste a candidate’s time with salaries that are way below your local salary analysis averages for the role you’re trying to fill.

Don’t waste a candidate’s time with a list of job duties that leave out the messy bits of the position you’re trying to fill. Quit ambushing people with “other duties as needed/assigned” after they accept the role you lied to them about.

Why would you want to start your relationship with someone with lies and disrespect?