Destiny

In the twenty-odd years I've been a working man - I mean working person - I mean - never mind. What I am trying to say is that I have only had a regularly scheduled job with a regular paycheck for three years. That's it. From delivering fliers whenever there were fliers to deliver, to the Odd Job Squad in High School, to my casual job as a sitter at the hospital whenever someone needed someone to watch over them, to background work and whatever random job I could muster to survive the slow times (though even the word "muster" seems too pretty for the wretched employment I scavenged) I seem doomed to the irregular schedule. Even as I hone in on new work (with a successful interview and testing under my belt) I realize I have been in denial of its sporadic nature. Serious denial; the job is labelled as "Casual." I know what that means.
But what does it mean? Does some part of me crave the unpredictable and stochastic? Did some molecule get tweaked by gamma radiation whilst I nestled in the womb, sending my income-earning potential onto a wibberly-wobberly trajectory? Is life trying to teach me to provide my own structure to this life, that like a futon from Ikea I must arrange all the pieces myself? How can I know?
A regularly scheduled job with a regularly scheduled paycheck. I had to harness a stormcloud just to type those words. Chance, Fate and Will; like peanutbutter, chocolate and my mouth. As the countdown timer marks how many minutes of time I have left on this computer, forcing a conclusion, forcing clarity of expression, of thought, damn two and a half minutes and I still haven't figured out my Destiny. Or maybe I've figured it out and now I have to figure out of it.
So it goes.

Last Word on Words

The latest "Epoch Times" (http://en.epochtimes.com/news/7-3-21/53152.html) had an article stating that moves were being made to replace "fight" and "fighter" with more neutral words such "spar" in Martial Arts handbooks in order to preserve the "Arts" aspect of the sport. The reasoning was that these contests were tests of skill, not fights in the colloquial sense, and this change would help preserve that tradition. "One cannot just promote non-violence in sport," [Chairman(sic) of the World Martial Arts Games Committee] Marchtaler said. "One must also choose words that support it."
So, an article highlighting the power of words and the ideas behind them without the bugaboo of gender to fuzzy things up. And how did I respond?
Philosopically, I agree. I think in most competitions, respect for the other contender(s) has been lost. People forget that the better one's opponent is, the better one's own skills must be. The sparring partner is a spur to personal betterment.
That said, I'm still tired. For every "fight to spar" transition, there's a dozen "unemployment to employment insurance," changes which smack less of progressiveness and more of bureacratic shuffling. Purely cosmetic or again, putting the horse (mare?) before the cart.
Let's call for a compromise. Let's hope that each change in language at least allows some leverage for some kind of social change, or parallels it. That said, let's choose our fights - oops, I mean "spars," carefully. If policing (monitoring? modifying?) my speech in some small way engenders social equity, well more power to us.