Talking and Texting Drivers in Peak Hour small research.

Went on the bus.. and counted the cars.. and noticed the drivers. There bus root was 450 Hurstville to Burwood. Out of first 100 vehicles.. only one driver was not using the mobile phone while driving in peak hour traffic.. The next 100 ..five did not use their mobile while driving. The next was back to 1 not on their mobile phone and that included a police car. The next 100 cars .. average was 10 people not using the mobile phone.. and then the next 100 was back to one not using their mobile phone.. then there was an interesting detail.. 100 drivers.. only eight were not on the mobile phone but out of those two women were putting their makeup on... seems it is rare to get those not usinging the mobile than using their mobiles... Tech.. is what people in cars are.. police even use mobile phones while driving. more common than you realise .. interesting little research from a bus.. just passing the time and actually watching traffic. 27/07/2015 Sydney Australia..

Imagination

 I was informed that I have an imagination.
That what I wanted was unrealistic un reachable.
What makes this so different to others imagination?

Nothing is impossible and if you think it is then you have placed up the barrier to making it real.
Every single thing is possible..
Cave men made fire.. Then there was the wheel.. Imagination, why not instead of can't.
Power, imagination... the possibilities were there, mistakes were made which lead to other things being developed.
There are really no mistakes but options and learning.

When someone deliberately wants to harm and then said..ooops.. Did not mean that.. What is your reaction?
When a person wants to assist then makes a mistake..Why do you not forgive them?
I do, and I know I can move forward, I do have a bad habit in thinking way too much as I took their mistake on into my life..then again it was never my mistake, I actually learn and find it interesting on why, when, where.. Now I know that it was a mistake and I forgive them without second though now days. Don't want to be stuck. I am now learning to let it go, as my life is worth more than to dwell on such things... Want to live and love, inspire, create rather than do any more dwelling on past happenings.. They are now just stories to share.. They are not living in me but are memories..

I played strings.. Many never realised it... Those people did not want to know what I did; their lives were so wrapped up in themselves and what people did/do to them that they just were not interested in my life at all..funny thing even my ex-husband, Steve never knew that I played the chelas, violin, piano, guitar... he thought ...I don't know what he thought about that part..
You know I went into his life and shared his life not mine as he never once asked me..  Imagination .. Interesting. Steven and his family never once was interested in that... 29 years.. interesting don't you think..

The next person who came into my life wanted me to be in business but he had control of the assets which at that I gave him, asI was recovering from a marriage breakup loss of child, loss of family, loss of everything that was there at that time.. He came along and I had no one to hold on too.. I clang on to him and trusted him completely.Since those situations happened I now share with others and be there for them as that experiace in my life, I dont want another to experiance.. or not allow them to be alone, as I understood more of those feelings..needs, wants.. Time can never errace those things but you can over come such things

You Life, Your Choices

People can let you down in many ways. Life places challenges in your life. There are thousand of choices which you make in a day. The question is are you ready to believe in yourself and acknowledge that it is your life to live and take responsibility for your life, your choices, to pick your challenges and your friends which you choose to be around? (Written by Sonia F Stevens)

Depression

The two predominant emotions surging through the public response to the suicide of Robin Williams were love and sadness. He had a sweetness and vulnerability that touched many hearts, he had a love that poured out into the world—evidently he could not feel it for himself. His light radiated to others but, as with many depressed people, it could not dissipate the shadows within.
What creates this terrible isolation of the depressed? The American author Anne Lamott grew up near Robin Williams. In a much-circulated Facebook communication she wrote that, as children, “we were in the same boat–scared, shy, with terrible self-esteem and grandiosity. If you have a genetic predisposition towards mental problems and addiction, as

I did, life here feels like you were just left off here one day, with no instruction manual, and know idea of… how to fit in… how to stay one step ahead of the abyss.”
Lamott touches on only part of the truth here. While there may genetic predispositions towards depression and addiction, a predisposition is not the same as a predetermination. A predisposition increases the risk of something occurring but it cannot by itself cause it to happen. The key factor is the environment. Genes are activated or turned off by the environment, including in cases of suicide, as brilliant Canadian studies have shown.
Nobody is born doomed to depression, and nobody is born with low self-esteem. If Robin Williams became a depressive and was driven to seek validation in the laughter and applause of others, what he called the “please love me syndrome,” it was not due to his genes.
His warmth and vulnerability and his stupendous creative genius as a comic all rested on his extraordinary sensitivity. A sensitive person, by definition, feels more than others. A mildly noxious stimulus that may cause slight discomfort to a more stolid personality can inflict agonizing pain to one with a hypersensitive temperament. Temperament is significantly conditioned by genes. How it unfolds depends upon formative life events.
Williams had a troubled childhood. “My only companions, my only friends as a child were my imagination,” he once said. He originally honed his extraordinary capacity to generate strange and hilarious imaginary characters as a way of breaking his isolation. He found some freedom in them, as these characters “could say and do things I was afraid to do myself.”
His found his father “frightening” and, as many children who feel intimated at home, he was bullied in school. He was emotionally alone. His comic skills first had the function of gaining some closeness with his mother. “You get this weird desire to connect with her through comedy and entertainment,” he told an interviewer.
Williams’ addiction to alcohol and cocaine were, as all addictions, a form of self-medication. Cocaine, he implied, gave him respite from his hyperkinetic energy, just like a hyperactive child may be given Ritalin to calm him. He had the addict’s lifelong discomfort with the self, the need to flee from his consciousness of himself: “sleepwalking with activity,” he called it. The prospect of having more time for himself “may be the last thing I want,” he once said, with an ineffably sad expression on his face.
The night before he killed himself, Williams attended a party, being his effervescent, people-loving persona. Underneath that persona was utter despair—he had learned early in life to cover up his feelings, as a child does when he is emotionally alone and there is no one with whom to share.
Is there a lesson? Let us please take depression very seriously, in ourselves and in others. If in ourselves, let us speak our pain openly, let us not be limited by childhood conditioning into hiding our anguish, into being shamed into silence. And if in others, let us find the patience and compassion to hear that pain, to invite it to exist without judgment, without easy answers, without blame. Let us share. And let us understand that the prevention of mental illness begins in the crib, in how we hold and attend to our children.

2015

May Robyn Williams find peace within his grace.

Internet Addiction

The first country to recognize Internet addiction as a clinical disorder was China in 2008, where it is now considered the number one public health threat for youth. Roughly 14 per cent of China’s youth are said to be addicted to the Internet, and, to date, more than 250 Internet detox camps have opened in China to try confront what’s being called an epidemic.

 Last month, a 19-year-old Chinese boy known only as “Little Wang” went so far as to chop off his left hand to “cure” his Internet addition. And, tragically, people have been found, on more than one occasion, dead in their chairs at Chinese Internet cafés after long stints of gaming. In the case of 23-year-old gamer Chen Rong-yu, who is thought to have died of cardiac arrest brought on by blood clots, his death went unnoticed by other gamers for up to nine hours. But science still knows very little about the condition causing these harmful behaviors. According to Dr. Jerald Block, a psychiatrist who advocated for the inclusion of Internet addiction in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) manual – the standard used by mental health professionals in the US – the proposed disorder exhibits four key addiction characteristics: Excessive use, which may be accompanied by impaired sense of the passage of time and/or neglecting basic needs such as hunger and sleep; Withdrawal (when prevented from going online), which may manifest as anger, tension or depression; Tolerance, which in the case of Internet addiction may be indicated by longer and longer use, or a perceived need for upgrades or new software; And negative repercussions to the behavior, which may include arguments, fatigue, problems at school or work, lying, lack of achievement and social isolation. Ultimately, in 2013, Internet addiction was added to the appendix of the DSM to stimulate more research on the subject. In order to understand Internet addiction, however, one must first understand addiction itself.

According to Dr. Gabor Maté, a Vancouver addictions specialist and author of the book In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction, any behavior that a person craves and finds pleasure or temporary relief in, but which has long-term negative consequences and can’t be given up, is an addiction. “So according to that definition,” he says, “anything can become an addictive target.” Maté says there are three reasons why Internet addiction seems to be affecting so many people across so many demographics: First, it is widely and generally available. “If you made heroin available,” says Maté flippantly, “a lot more people would probably use heroin.” Second, people are inherently lonely. “People have very empty lives,” he explains. “They feel a void inside themselves and they try to fill it from the outside. You go on your cell phone, you go on YouTube; you distract yourself from the sheer discomfort of being with yourself.” Third, family attachments are being eroded, and artificial substitutes are taking their place. “The most powerful drive in human life is connection. Without that, we don’t survive,” he explains. “All our lives we spend much of our energy trying to connect with people – to be loved, to reproduce, to have community. But we live in a society that is increasingly depriving people of that community and connection.” In Maté’s opinion, parents are spending less time with their kids, couples are spending less time with each other, and extended families – cousins, grandparents – aren’t being valued to the same degree anymore, and filling their place are shallow peer-to-peer attachments in the digital realm.

 The results can be devastating. “Emotionally, it takes the place of real contact and self-reflection. So you don’t get to know yourself. Physiologically, it has negative effects on the brain. And I’m not even talking about the negative, meaningless content, which does further harm to people’s psychological functioning,” he concludes. But Maté is quick to caution against blaming the medium. “You can relate to digital media non-addictively, and obviously it’s a fantastically-developed and powerful way of seeking information. The media itself is neutral – it’s a question of how it’s being used and by whom.

In his 2012 book The Big Disconnect: The Story of Technology and Loneliness, Slade establishes a scientific link between our reliance on machines and the isolating consequences.
“When we sit down with each other and have a meal together or listen to music together or touch each other or even sing to each other, there’s a hormone that’s released called Oxytocin. And that builds trust and relationships,” he explains in a phone interview. “You get that maybe from a telephone message, but you don’t get that from text messaging, you don’t get that from emails, you don’t get that from machines.” To reverse the effects, Slade’s advice is simple. Share things, join groups, go outside.

“It’s strange for us to talk about this in Vancouver, which is such a lovely natural setting, but get yourself into nature. Get yourself into nature with friends. We don’t trust it as much as we used to because we’re much less familiar with it than we used to be, but nature is there to restore you.” Other experts, meanwhile, believe it is our fear of human connections that created this dependence. According to a 2012 TED Talk by Sherry Turkle, a psychologist who has studied the social aspects of science and technology for more than two decades, by appearing to be an emotionally safer way of connecting, digital media is actually making us less connected, less proficient with real-life social interactions and also less inclined to engage in crucial self-reflection. “These days, those phones in our pockets are changing our minds and hearts because they offer us three gratifying fantasies,” she explains. “One, that we can put our attention wherever we want it to be; two, that we will always be heard; and three, that we will never have to be alone. “And that third idea, that we will never have to be alone, is central to changing our psyches. Because the moment that people are alone, even for a few seconds, they become anxious, they panic, they fidget, they reach for a device.”  

Missing You

Imagine if I was given one moment,
just a single slice of my past.
I  could hold it close forever,
and that moment would always last.

Do you know that I've always, always loved you?
What's it like? Are you  proud of me?

I was always proud that I belonged to you

I feel a warmth around me
like your presence is so near,
When I close my  eyes to visualize
your face when you were here.

I endure the times we  spent together
and they are locked inside my heart,
For as long as I  have those memories
we will never be apart.

Even though we cannot speak  anymore
my voice is always there,
Because every night before I sleep
I have you in my prayer.

I feel a warmth around me
like your presence is so near,
And I close my eyes to visualize
your face when you were here.

I search for the signs everywhere
Although I can't seem to see them clearly.

There's been so many things I've said to you
And I need to  know that you hear me.

Are you all right? Do you like it there?
Do  you know that I've always, always loved you?

I want to see you in my dreams,
and feel you all around me.
I love you and always will,
you were my best friend.

I will meet you in heaven one day
and you better greet me,
'cause I miss you so dearly

I endure the times we spent together
and they are locked inside my heart,
For as long as I have those memories
we will never be apart,
Even though we cannot speak anymore
my voice is always there.

Although every night before I sleep
I have you in my prayer.
I'd  put the moment in a safe,
within my hearts abode.
I could open it when I  wanted,
and only I would know the code.

I could choose a time of laughing,
a time of happiness and fun.
I could choose a time that tried  me,
through everything I've done.

I sat and thought about what  moment,
would always make me smile.
One that would always push me,
to walk that extra mile.

If I'm feeling sad and low,
if I'm  struggling with what to do.
I can go and open my little safe,
and watch  my moment through.

There are moments I can think of,
that would lift my spirits every time.
The moments when you picked me up,
when the road was hard to climb.

For me to only pick one moment,
to cherish, save and keep,
Is proving really difficult,
as I've gathered up a  heap!

I've dug deep inside my heart,
found the safe and looked  inside,
there was room for lots of moments,
in fact hundreds if I  tried.

I'm building my own little book of memories,
embedded in my heart,
for all the moments spent with you,
before you had to part.

I can  open it up whenever I like,
pick a moment and watch it through,
My  little book of memories, acts as a promise,
I'll never ever forget you

I want to see you in my dreams,
and feel you all around me.
Imagine if I was given one moment,
just a single slice of my past.
I could hold it close forever,
and that moment would always last.

I'd put the moment in a safe,
within my hearts abode.
I could open it when I wanted,
and only I would know the code.

I could choose a time of laughing,
a time of happiness and fun.
I could choose a time that tried me,
through everything I've done.

I sat and thought about what moment,
would always make me smile.
One that would always push me,
to walk that extra mile.

If I'm feeling sad and low,
if I'm struggling with what to do.
I can go and open my little safe,
and watch my moment through.

There are moments I can think of,
that would lift my spirits every time.
The moments when you picked me up,
when the road was hard to climb.

For me to only pick one moment,
to cherish, save and keep,
Is proving really difficult,
as I've gathered up a heap!

I've dug deep inside my heart,
found the safe and looked inside,
there was room for lots of moments,
in fact hundreds, if I tried.

I'm building my own little book of memories,
embedded in my heart,
for all the moments spent with you,
before you had to part.

I can open it up whenever I like,
pick a moment and watch it through,
My little book of memories acts as a promise,
I'll never ever forget you.

I love you and always will,
you were my best friend.
As I miss you so dearly.

Your in my little book of memories,
Bubbling up inside where my heart resides.

Thank you for being part of me.
Thank you for being in my heart.
We will never be apart.

by Sonia F Stevens
copyrighted 1988
Dedicated to My Parents. Gloria Frances McGovern and Steve Stevens. Also Dedicated to my niece Marina Kuban who was murdered.