Carolyn: Gardening, girl! You forgot the gardening skills, a very valuable skill – especially with more and more folks wanting to grow their own veggies. Hmm, now there’s an idea for a blog.

Simone: Brilliant example. Something completely unexpected that turns into (what we hope will be) a celebrity-style career! I often wondered what it’d be like to date someone who’s good at it, since I suck horribly

The rest is history. (imagine me smirking right now)

Many of my UUS’ were crafted during my formative and school years, principally around the art of trying to look engaged while gazing into the middle distance out of any available window. I should clarify that I regard unexepectly useful attitudes (UUA) as equally relevant to my navigation through my wyrd perception of reality.

Shove over a sec, that’s better, need to squeeze my soap box in here. Cheers. The school system was designed and remains controlled by big business, ever since the Industrial Revolution. The concept is to brainwash people into getting good exam results and embed the expectation that the State and their employer will take care of them. The one thing they don’t want is big business being taken away from them; no vested interest in supporting small business competition. In other words, those who value security will feel happier working for others, which neatly fits the creationist labour force movement. Speaking as one who originated social enterprise, economic wellbeing and enterprise learning programmes for schools and for the last fifteen years has licenced them out for delivery across the UK, I can vouchsafe the mini-laboratory observation that those kids with dyslexia, bi-polar condition, dyspraxia, ADHD or who are just plain vanilla distruptive end up making the best owner-managers. They value independence, fiercely, more than security. They also come with some baggage which doesn’t necessarily make them the world’s best employers and so need to learn to work with those who think completely differently. The latter observations derived from my being a qualified business advisor and management consultant with over 8000 1:1 client sessions under his belt. Laboured point being that we first have to experience what we are not, in order to discover and express who we are. A process to be sure, hence the need for compassion and abstinence of judgement.

I venture people buy attitude more than skill. Certainly it’s a skill to mask a perceived deficiency and to gather others willingly to one’s cause accordingly. But UU atttitudes are the clincher for me.

For instance, I can only teach economic wellbeing by virtue of having miserably abdicated responsibility for my fiscal choices in the past, failing to educate myself about how money really works until the building society forceably reminded me who actually owned the property when they came to collect it. I was well on the way to making a career out of bitching about it but instead, opted for reclaiming my power. I’ve been rehabilitated for some time, though ‘teacher teach thyself’ always keeps one humble; as does teaching the lesson one has just learned. Moreover my pursuasive argument for social enterprise could only have been made, for me anyway, on the stength of being a former paid-up devout capitalist.

Could never figure out why I was a square peg in the proverbial round but as you eruditely surmised, no matter how vigilant or intellectually capable, seems we’re all falling into open manholes (personholes?) in order to find the gold in the crap at the bottom before climbing up and showing those who care to learn from the wisdom.

Thanks for leading by example Spike; been a frustrated author waiting to happen for too many years and only now just coming out to play. Appreciate the inspiration and apologies for the ramble.

I was a paramedic for the Los Angeles Fire Department for a while. The street sense I learned there comes in handy now and then – even while blogging. Dealing with such a diverse community also taught me the importance of tolerance and this allows me to write from a broader perspective than most of my American brethren.

Cheers!

George