Growin' Up Gregory

I have done a lot of observing over the past few years of my life.  Experience is a great teacher, but I believe that if I can learn from the experiences of others that I may be able to avoid some of the 'hard' lessons of life.  The lessons I've learned from watching others have certainly helped me grow and shaped some of my thoughts and beliefs.  A few of those have changed how I believed I could change the world and those thoughts are below. 1.  I used to believe that in order for me to change the world, I would need a fancy title or high ranking position.  I thought that I would have to become an executive officer, start a successful business, or make lots of money before I would have enough clout to influence those around me.  Guess what, the people I thought I needed that status to influence are often so set in their ways that nothing's going to change them.  Remember the saying, "It's hard to teach an old dog new tricks." Through my current m...

I haven't typically followed Supreme Court nominations very closely.  It's not that I don't appreciate what they do, the power they possess, and the decisions they make, I just hope that I never have a personal matter escalate that far...plus I don't have a lot of influence in that level (or any) of politics.  But since the media continues to push this story and people are asking questions, I want to look at it from three different perspectives. First, what would I do if I was the father of the accuser - how would I respond if Dr. Ford was my daughter?  I would cry.  I would feel sadness, pain, anger, and likely some hostility.  I would want to bring justice to whoever had caused my daughter this type of pain and agony that she had suffered with in silence for so many years.  I would talk with her, I would pray with her and for her.  I would seek counseling and help and do whatever I could to help her move past this terrible experience.  But eve...

Most of my close friends and family, especially my wife, are well aware that one of the words I'm not very good at saying to others is "No."  I have a tendency to make every effort possible to be everywhere and do everything that is asked of me.  Sadly, that is often at their expense because of the stress and pressure I put on myself to perform to an extremely high standard.  I don't know why that is, but I am working on it.  And oddly enough, today was one of those days that I officially unofficially said "No" to something that I had wanted for the past 18 months by allowing the deadline to pass by. In Fall 2016, as the presidential race heated up and politics in general took center stage, I began to pay a lot more attention to politics and our elected officials.  I began to read up on who they are, listened to what they were saying, and watched how they interacted with others.  I began studying up on politics in general to learn what impact certain posi...

One of the hot political topics right now is tax reform.  And, spoiler alert, there are people on both sides that are for and against the new bill.  The biggest issues I've heard from it so far are: 1.  Tax cuts for low to middle income families. 2.  Tax cuts for the wealthy. 3.  Tax cuts for corporations. so let's look at those. I believe that all politicians want to at least say they will, and hopefully do, make tax cuts for what I consider normal working class people like my family, my friends, and myself who work a regular job with enough money to live off of but not so much that we have no financial stresses in our life.  We all want a break on taxes which means more money in our pocket.  Money that we can use to be charitable, give to our loved ones, save, pay off debt, or even sparingly treat ourselves.  This is also money that we still spend in stores, restaurants, and other businesses which guess what...makes more people money....