Cut your losses

Hello, Welcome. I’m Renée Valentina, and this is Musing Interruptus, a podcast for stories, rants, and sometimes downright nonsense. For my students, listen for idiomatic phrases, try to guess their meanings from context, and then look them up to see if you are right. For everyone, you can read along; just click on continue reading in the description to open a Google Doc with the transcription of this episode. If you like it, subscribe, follow, show your support with the coffee thing, share, but more importantly, continue the conversation. Drop a comment with your answers to today’s questions! I love hearing from you! Today, it is all about cutting your lossesWhere we are going, there are flimsy hanging bridges to cross ravines, made from untreated wood, snakes that slither, and lush vegetation as you’ve never imagined. We are going because we have no option. We were born into this, and the only way out is across or through. Maybe around. If you have a helicopter, this is a moot point. In any case, we have to move; staying stagnant is not only not an option, but our biology also seems to provide a reminder that oxidation is more than rust on that old gate; it is happening within us at a cellular level, and no amount of blueberries and green tea can keep up with it. You were brought into this life, and now you have to get through it. It is no use looking at someone else's circumstances and getting angry about not having the same equipment or starting point. Feeling sorry for yourself will make no difference in getting where you want to go. You just have to move. It will be up to you and the initial conditions you have to make a go of it. If you were born with privilege or not, if you had the opportunity to move from your humble beginnings or you had to scrape your way out. It will come down to you finding the opportunities and being clear on why you are the best candidate for them. You’ll have to develop abilities- social abilities, to read the room, position yourself, train yourself, prepare, and execute and dare I say it? Hope luck is on your side. What you read, what you understand, what you can do with it, and where you see all of this going, your abilities to plan, execute, be a doer, not a moaner, and follow through. All of that counts.Imagine, design, build, make, plant, create, expand, trade up. (industrial sounds)There are parts of the world, workplaces, and people who expect nothing less. Daunting for some, exciting for others. The ever-important question of appropriateness comes to mind. Who and what are we doing all of this for? We know we have to do it, for someone or for ourselves. That is the law, again, unless you have a helicopter. Even if you don’t want to, and decide to take the easy way out (bank robber), you still have to make a plan and execute it. This is a matter of choosing your hard and following through. Then again, there is an instance in which you have to cut your losses. On top of everything, we have to be smart enough to make this evaluation, sometimes, on the fly,. Meaning you have to make a split-second decision… that’s fast. In others, you get time to sit with the variables and muddle over what is best, maybe even having enough time to punk out to the Clash’s "should I stay or should I go?"Click to continue reading https://docs.google.com/document/d/1dLJ--cSyj3lxwnJ0uWZYSn4BUsCrMBxEWFRX-e5-wh4/edit?usp=sharing