September 27, 2009

Getting back to work has hooks and eyes

Dear Bloggers,

At the moment my challenge is to find a new job, which I can fill in with my needs so they fit better with my illness.


I've also applied for a job as a bus driver.
Most likely there is for the employer financially support possible for me to integrate within the company.
A part-time job is better than no job at all, and after all my efforts that I made to return to work and to get in such a condition again that working would be in the possibilities.


Research has shown that most people on benefits want to work.
But there are many obstacles, so face the unemployed and disabled.
The majority of people on benefits want to work.
This became clear from the published report. “Wel of niet aan het werk” of the Social and Cultural Planning Office and the Council for Work and Income.


Unemployed, disabled and workers were interviewed for the study of the report. The report shows that the willingness to work among beneficiaries is high. Of the people who are partially incapacitated, 57 percent wants a paid job. Even the wholly disabled says one in five that they want to work. The study also shows that many part-timers have the desire to expand their job. Of the respondents who have been unemployed and currently work, says 40 percent to work longer hours.



It is not always about the money that beneficiaries want a job, the study shows. The disabled have the need of other social contacts and a meaningful time use to be the main motives.
People in jobs who want to work more hours, give more money as a key reason.


The report shows that disabled mainly because of health problems not find suitable work. In addition, they run around with the idea: “ I do not find a job” for a disabled or unemployed this is the main obstacle. The part-time favorite is the respondents: half would prefer between 12 and 35 hours per week.



There is much criticism of assistance to return to the workplace. More than half of the respondents experienced insufficient support in re-integrating. The Social Services, benefits agency UWV and re-integratoin companies scoring a thick below average. They get a 5.5 average on the scale of 10. With institutions like this it is often a lack of personal support. The return to work after long illness represents a serious problem for many. Half said they had been able to return to work faster if there would have been better measures taken, including a re-assignment or a different employer.
The reaction is far too slow in these passive, lingering organizations.
The report is a support in the back of the cabinet, more Dutch people will have to work. This is necessary to cover the costs of aging better able to absorb, but also to prevent people despite economic growth and labor shortages at the standard model. Beginning this year, said Minister Wouter Bos (financial minister) There is more work in the labor market. The most important issue in the Netherlands. Enough labor is offered - 700,000 work-wishers, was calculated in 2002 but remains unexploited.

Despite extra efforts to help them get started, decreased the percentage of disabled people since 2002 with a job. Only four in ten have work.
There should just more projects being launched which not only long-term unemployed but also can be used for the disabled. The coalition government has already appointed a commission headed by TNT CEO Peter Bakker. That should make proposals for employment to increase over the current 70 percent to 80 percent of the workforce in 2016. This Taskforce Plus Part-time, that was installed on April 8, should also seek opportunities for part-timers, especially women, to encourage more working hours. The number of employed persons rose by 2.2 percent last year to over 7.7 million, but a relatively large number working in small jobs of less than twelve hours per week.

The Old Sailor,

September 20, 2009

How to keep the faith?

"Remain confident in the survival of all positive and negative life experiences."


Dear Bloggers,

It's not that I am deeply religious but I've planned to read the Bible once in my life and I planned to get a better understanding of fellow believers.
If you have the feeling that you have lost everything and it is getting hard to stay positive, you will start looking for getting out of this misery.
If your life slides down towards the valley; you will try to slow it down. But if your mind starts slipping too it is going to be a bit of a different story. I am luckely a realistic kind of person and I can quite quickly adapt to these kind of crisis situations.
Anyway no matter what happens it will give some kind of stress. The biggest challenge is to look for another job as I simply cannot sit back and relax.



The Old Sailor appears no longer to feel safe on the spot where he always was safe. A very familiar feeling when something bad happens to you: literally and figuratively as the ground beneath your feet is sinking away and you from one moment to the other lost all grip. For me such a feeling is recognizable.



And the Bible poet writes: In you oh Lord, I have taken refuge; let me never be put to shame; deliver me in your righteousness, turn your ear to me, save me! The poet cries out as the most important thing that should be right in this situation. That there is someone who does justice to you and at least listens to you. You need an ear, which turns to you and will look at you now and what is involved here. A line below the poet asks: Be to me a protective rock? This man feels in a valley, which can be hardly any deeper, a dip where he never will come out. It suddenly calls on me, that this can be seen as my situation.


Only a long way later in the psalm it is the poet that realizes how bad it actually was with him or her. That is why we read, "I am become as broken crockery. A striking image: yourself being the pottery a pitcher, as a part of an expensive dinner set. So worth the trouble of respect: very, cool, healthy. And now suddenly broken, there are cracks in it. Always have felt yourself healthy, suddenly you where not quite sure. For example to live with it always the threat that the humiliating pain comes again as in the beginning. Not sure more of the job, the relationship where you were happy. Your partner to let go, or worse, losing him or her to death.


Broken pottery? never fully and enjoy carefree. Another long way away in the Psalm says the poet? But I trust in You, O Lord, I say: Thou art my God. My times are in your hand? Times, it says there. Time in the plural! Time as a whole firm, solid as a rock. But times, as a succession from one time to a different time, which also wrote Ecclesiastes. A time of joy, a time of sorrow. A time to weep, a time to laugh. Times of ups, downs of times. And all those times together in the hand of the Eternal. Also”My” times. The time of once my health and now became suddenly the time to care about.


The poet of Psalm knows all about this. The poet does not say in this psalm: it happens to me from God. The poet says: there is a hand, which held all the time, held it together, namely: the hand of the Eternal. That contradicts a blind faith in a kind of fatal, crippling fate. Confidence in the Hand that holds you all times of your life around, can create space for it anyway to keep.


We people carry our biography with us. The question is: Do I want to learn something from my life experiences? And dare I ask to be like: where am I?, Am I maybe too much?, Do I enjoy enough?, And where do I go? And last but not least, I dare my time, so my life. My times of ups and my times of downs. My times as a succession from one time to a different time. Can I through the lives of all my positive and negative life experiences remain confident in the Hand? Who holds me and keeps all these times of my life going?


For even as the poet at the end of Psalm 31 wrote to others to say: ”Be strong, all ye that hope in the Eternal” May it be so. I had never imagined such things were in the Bible. Do not think that I'm suddenly converted, but I understand better now that people can draw strength from their faith if the story is explained in the right way.

The Old Sailor,

September 14, 2009

Joy and enjoy

Dear Bloggers,
Yesterday was not the best day to stay positive, I was back on board to talk things over with my boss. As the job that I was doing is not getting easier the company has decided to give me notice.
You can probably imagine that my mind has been running in circles when I was back home as my little bubble fully bursted. Although I was negative for a couple of hours and did not sleep that good last night. I started of this morning with getting my kids to school and doing my Qi-gong session. After this I made some coffee, shot an e-mail to the Union to help me out. The world is still turning so time to write my story for this week.
















You see life as a growth in your ability to enjoy life and to experience joy and happiness is most important in this life.
It is also nothing to laugh about, mental relaxation, quality perception, and are in harmony with existence, and on inner integrity, inner freedom, and experiencing the meaning of your existence.

Living in a positive quality of life implies a certain orientation, open to experience the joy of life and enjoy your life. Living to learn more to enjoy, because only a really intense and you can totally enjoy the meaning of your life experience. . . . . .
And, if there is no growth in your life you enjoy, it's because you always in the trap of fixed subtle negativity, or an obsessive state dissatisfaction, mental stress and negative life quality creates.

Preprogrammed is the collective awareness of the ego?
It is selfish paranoid with a survival mentality that underlies it.
It is also important to realize that you enjoy the intensity of nothing and that has to do with what you enjoy, but the quality of the person who is enjoying.

















How uninhibited, free and more positive your life situation is, the purer and more intense, the quality of enjoying will be.
And that which you enjoy is only one reason. . . . . . . However, more negative, more egocentric, dissatisfied, angry, aggressive, etc. your life situation, the less your ability to enjoy.
Your ability to enjoy so you can also see it as a meter for your mental state. . . (!)

And not every day that you enjoyed your life in this beautiful wonderful world of mystery is actually a lost day of your precious life. . . . . . . It is time to have a great laugh and have fun in your life, because it can help to make you aware of mental relaxation.

Just fun "making" has a certain top, more fun than fun is not possible.

This, by the presence of those who enjoy "making" the ego.
We have such fun, because we are on a party, and it is someones birthday.
Cheerfulness is now expected of us, and who is not happy falls out of place.
So everybody "is doing its best" as much as possible to be happy or funny.
For real fun, no party is required.

Fun "making" is something entirely different than the spontaneous fun that you can live together in a genuine sense of shared humor and authentic joy.
This spontaneous pleasure only from a genuine mental state of relaxation.
For many people it is clear to experience, that laughter can give the same relaxation as the mental state of inner kindness, provided however, that laughter truly unconditional and total. You laugh in almost all situations, you may laugh inwardly.
For example, on streets, public transport etc.
Learn the art of laughing at nothing, laughing at the pure laughter, the joy of laughter.

Illogical, but very valuable and important for the development of a truly relaxing positive mental quality of life.
This laughter can find joy in life (like happiness) it needs no reason.
Therefore, it can be comfortable illogical.
For some, this might be a difficult barrier to take, because initially it just seems weird.

However, if you really realize that joy is your natural potential, and no reason is needed, you are taking off all the brakes.
You'll also be much easier in the state of mental relaxation, inner kind of effortless government. How fuller you're "smile power" how bigger your ability to enjoy even more in total.

From your ability to enjoy, you can discover and develop a process by choosing, to make fundamental changes and finally to live in a relaxed state of mind.
That is positive quality of life.

As noted above it is required, to discover and learn to let go of your obsessive state, of any real negativity, aggressiveness, survivalparanoya, making yourself important, arrogance,
discontent, obsessive behavior, greed, desire and mental stress.
Total and intense to really enjoy it is also important to allow yourself to be completely unbiased, without any prejudice or condition, and it should be unlimited.
Also important is to allow yourself to cry with intense experiences.

Crying is primordial and there is nothing obviously wrong with it, no matter whether you're male or female.
The "never-crying man" is just a primitive cultural lying macho ego-conditioning not to appear weak.
Learn to accept your crying in inner honesty and integrity, it is an intense experience of emotions what ever they are caused by.
Also allow yourself to laugh while you enjoy, it creates mental relaxation.
Especially since it seems a bit weird (small insignificant ego) you can have a lot of fun as you experience to enjoy, then you can "enjoy your enjoyment" so you enjoy even more and it is still unrestrained Exuberant joy has a certain excitement and tension, which then migrate to the energy quality of such a free and highly mentally relaxed enjoyment.

This lets you enjoy a relaxed mental inner joy without excitement, which can grow and trans-formation of indescribable love and ecstasy and far beyond it. . . . . . . All this does not mean that there can be no benefit in exuberant joy.

And, if there is your ultimate enjoyment, then there is nothing wrong with that, there is still something to discover an immense enrichment of your life.
Maximum benefit is something you can only happen when you least expect.

So do not want or expect anything, but only open in inner humility, unpretentious nature, be a non-government person, making yourself unimportant and get into a relaxed positive state in your purest inner integrity.
Eventually you will find that you experience on power will give a "richer, and stronger you" and the quality of the experience will be "more refined, purer and it will be more intense.” for you.
The Old Sailor,

September 5, 2009

At the bottom of our existence

Dear Bloggers,

It takes a while before you realize how formative the landscape may be where you are born and raised.
You see this perhaps the best in nostalgia, with people who languish because they - for whatever reason - have left their homes.
It is sometimes astonishing to see where they desire to return.

I have a really beautiful place to live but I do not feel at home here.
We have not done badly and now live in a semi-attached house in Lippenhuizen.
I look out on the forward at a few houses and a field with a pond, a playground is located just 2 streets away, a primary school and a village shop within walking distance - some people would kill for that kind of environment.
Although this is not the thing for me, I think
















But this man longs for his homeland and the emotion took me along and my mind was already there.
We see one and another in our mind, a tiny village on a lake.
This is where I grew up and where life still radiates purity.
Already dreaming I suddenly woke up and felt tired and displaced.
Could this be part of all my complaints and problems, because I have never really been happy here. I'm homesick for my homeland.















It does not apply to everyone equally: but the ground where we were born, represents us.
You have landpeople, city people, village people, waterrats, desert riders, mountain goats and so on.
I am a real waterat and now I live in the dry woodland. The area is beautiful, but in my view it is oppressive.

In the Dutch “Van Dale” dictionary, I find the word ground and here I do not find what I seek, then I look at the word bodem and here I find the definitions:
bodem de; m -s; -pje 1 (van tonnen, manden, kisten, glazen) vlak dat op de grond rust: iems verwachtingen de ~ inslaan ze vernietigen; iets tot op de ~ uitzoeken zeer grondig; een dubbele ~ een tweede, niet direct merkbare betekenis 2 schip: oorlogsbodem 3 bedding, vaste ondergrond: de ~ vd zee 4 aardkorst, aardoppervlakte 5 grondgebied: op Hollandse ~
Yes it is here and what can I do with them, I can try to dissect my homesickness in simple language and words.

The researcher became awake again.
And my language is again somehow more inventive.
Because of expectations you have can be running ground.
You can dig something out to the bottom.
And we can lose ground in our excistence, you can go to the bottom of your forces, and many of us keep things in the bottom of our hearts.






















To explain the last phrase of Dale writes:? In the deepest of our hearts where the deepest, most secret desires are and hidden affections.
There it is... In the depths of our soul, our personal land there sits the homesickness, now I'm convinced.

Nostalgia for landscapes, nostalgia for a certain time - usually to what it once was.
If it was not sounding so poetic; Dramatically sounded, I would say: This is the soil for the landscapes of our soul.

And the neatest is that landscapes look different for everyone.


The Old Sailor,

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