There are many items I work to promote, Christianity, my business, and barefooting. For work especially, I need to be a salesman, promoting my services to businesses and individuals. However, as I read on one business site, nobody is born a salesman. This is especially true of me.
In the past, I have done phone calls and door to door visits trying to sell my services to potential clients. Unfortunately, none were successful, and my business growth has only come due to God's grace through word of mouth and businesses I already work with. Since work has been slow, again, lately, I've been reworking my personal web site.
This site promotes all the above and more, but I'm currently working on a small expansion of the barefooting section. I would love to see more parents around me let their children, and possibly themselves, go barefoot more often. Places where I see their kids, like church, are great places for kids to go barefoot. Sadly, as my fellow barefooters would agree, this is an extreme rarity.
I would love to contact these parents through Facebook, email, or face to face conversations about the benefits of letting their kids go barefoot. Unfortunately, living in a small town, I'm too nervous to do so. Will they I'm a pedophile, or have some strange foot fetish or something? I do love to see kids' bare feet, but because I know the life long benefits of it. With summer coming, it's a great time to get into barefooting with no school or cold weather to worry about.
Maybe I'll get up the courage to talk to some parents, but it will take a leap of faith to do so. I should start by practicing work promotions first, but we'll see.
Have a great upcoming week my non-existent readers, and, go barefoot while contacting me for work.
Sunday, April 22, 2012
Thursday, April 12, 2012
Respect
This week has been a lesson of respect, or lack of, from those around me or that I do business with. A few days ago, I was woken up by my main night nurse talking to the oncoming day assistant. It's rare I get a full night's sleep, but if I do sleep, it's usually best in the morning. Therefore, I have a written rule that morning shift change conversations be done in another room, but within ear shot of me. This night nurse has read and signed to abide by this, and other, house rules.
I therefore reminded her of this rule so that they could continue talking elsewhere and hopefully not have it happen again. The nurse responded in a very annoyed tone of voice, but stopped talking at least. This assistant is old enough to be my mother, but in the years she has been working for me, she has always shown little to no respect of those younger than her. After a number of other problems, I'm afraid she won't be lasting much longer as one of my assistants.
Several months ago, one of my longer term web clients purchased another business, web site and all. A few weeks ago, they approached me about some needs they have on the other company's site and wanted an estimate on the work. I was scheduled to meet with the parent company's, my client, representative today, but she canceled at the last minute yesterday and rescheduled. Through a series of emails with the representative, she said they were considering a few web development agencies for the work. Along with this information, she made it sound like they had never planned to have me do the work and were surprised I had more clients than them. After several hours of prep work and lining up a meeting room, this was an unexpected and annoying find.
The more I interact with the outside world, I see more and more how little respect someone like me receives. No, I can't control anything below my head, stand to look at a person face to face, or shake their hand. Those are parts of it, but the general population has the notion that if you're in a wheelchair, your mind doesn't work and you aren't worth spending time on. I had thought that at least with long-time clients this would not be the case, but unfortunately, I was wrong.
Tomorrow will be my third school I have gone to this year. Kids are much easier to work with than adults, at least second through fourth graders. They haven't built up the automatic response to disabilities that adults have and they are genuinely curious about how I go about everyday life. The last school I was at, this past Tuesday, one student guessed my occupation exactly. In the eight years I've been talking at schools, that was the first time it happened.
I often wonder if these children will remember any of my teaching when they are adults. Many adults could use some instruction as well, but they are not anywhere nearly as accepting to, in their minds, strange instruction. Hopefully as my classes reach college and beyond some norms will change, but they unfortunately have a long way to go.
I therefore reminded her of this rule so that they could continue talking elsewhere and hopefully not have it happen again. The nurse responded in a very annoyed tone of voice, but stopped talking at least. This assistant is old enough to be my mother, but in the years she has been working for me, she has always shown little to no respect of those younger than her. After a number of other problems, I'm afraid she won't be lasting much longer as one of my assistants.
Several months ago, one of my longer term web clients purchased another business, web site and all. A few weeks ago, they approached me about some needs they have on the other company's site and wanted an estimate on the work. I was scheduled to meet with the parent company's, my client, representative today, but she canceled at the last minute yesterday and rescheduled. Through a series of emails with the representative, she said they were considering a few web development agencies for the work. Along with this information, she made it sound like they had never planned to have me do the work and were surprised I had more clients than them. After several hours of prep work and lining up a meeting room, this was an unexpected and annoying find.
The more I interact with the outside world, I see more and more how little respect someone like me receives. No, I can't control anything below my head, stand to look at a person face to face, or shake their hand. Those are parts of it, but the general population has the notion that if you're in a wheelchair, your mind doesn't work and you aren't worth spending time on. I had thought that at least with long-time clients this would not be the case, but unfortunately, I was wrong.
Tomorrow will be my third school I have gone to this year. Kids are much easier to work with than adults, at least second through fourth graders. They haven't built up the automatic response to disabilities that adults have and they are genuinely curious about how I go about everyday life. The last school I was at, this past Tuesday, one student guessed my occupation exactly. In the eight years I've been talking at schools, that was the first time it happened.
I often wonder if these children will remember any of my teaching when they are adults. Many adults could use some instruction as well, but they are not anywhere nearly as accepting to, in their minds, strange instruction. Hopefully as my classes reach college and beyond some norms will change, but they unfortunately have a long way to go.
Wednesday, April 4, 2012
Trains
This year so far has been very warm compared to usual. It was a nice change, but I still didn't get out on my own very much. Fortunately, this past Saturday was decent weather, I had a nurse, and both parents had their own plans. Therefore, I was finally able to get out and go to the tracks for some rail fanning (watching trains).
I like going rail fanning with my father, but it's much more fun when it's just my assistant and I. Depending on where we go, I can get out of the van, get sun on my legs and feet, and enjoy being out. For the past several occasions, I have also gotten into putting trains on video and then post them to my YouTube channel. My camera is pretty basic, it's one I got for free for doing a multitude of online surveys. It won't be creating anything worthy of an award, but it does the job.
For some reason, it's a challenge to get my father to film trains. His preferred method of rail fanning is snoring in the van's front seat, so a video would require a conscience effort. I think it's mainly just a different style of preference, and age.
Last night was an unexpected pleasant evening and meeting at home. Two ladies from church came to discuss a project we're working on and I was up in my chair wearing a button shirt, khaki pants, and barefoot. To my amazement, my parents never said a word about my feet and I was allowed to keep them bare all night. It was a nice change, hopefully one that will stay at least until next winter.
I like going rail fanning with my father, but it's much more fun when it's just my assistant and I. Depending on where we go, I can get out of the van, get sun on my legs and feet, and enjoy being out. For the past several occasions, I have also gotten into putting trains on video and then post them to my YouTube channel. My camera is pretty basic, it's one I got for free for doing a multitude of online surveys. It won't be creating anything worthy of an award, but it does the job.
For some reason, it's a challenge to get my father to film trains. His preferred method of rail fanning is snoring in the van's front seat, so a video would require a conscience effort. I think it's mainly just a different style of preference, and age.
Last night was an unexpected pleasant evening and meeting at home. Two ladies from church came to discuss a project we're working on and I was up in my chair wearing a button shirt, khaki pants, and barefoot. To my amazement, my parents never said a word about my feet and I was allowed to keep them bare all night. It was a nice change, hopefully one that will stay at least until next winter.
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