The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2014 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Sydney Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 9,800 times in 2014. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 4 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

Earlier this morning I was in a parking lot and able to watch an employee of a fast food chain as he swept the drive through.  Actually as far as I could tell he wasn’t doing much sweeping.  He had a broom and dustpan in one hand – but it was the iPhone in his other hand that was getting all of the attention.  In the admittedly short time I observed him no actual sweeping of the drive-through occurred.

Be-Witched by Technology?

Maybe he was receiving a message from his sister who had just given birth to his nephew.

Or he was receiving the scores from his recent bar exam.

Or a thousand other possibilities…. the most likely of was probably that he was so focused on his digital device that he wasn’t focused on the task right in front of him.

It is not my intention to be the broom police or  to sweep this guy under the bus.  Because sometimes I am that guy.   My hand tech, my inbox, my news feed is often an allowed and invited distraction from the task or the person before me.  Has it happened or is it happening to you?

This cannot continue how can we possibly be the father, mother, spouse, partner, friend or professional we need to be and become with one hand tied behind our back?  Especially if it is our dominant hand.

I like what MLK said….

“If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as a Michael Angelo painted, or Beethoven composed music or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, ‘Here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.”

Let’s live more like an Artist and Less like the Distracted Tech Addict so that it may be said of us… that we worked, lived and loved well.

Kirk Out

Ok, so I decided to try this hot sauce. It is called Melinda’s Naga Jolokia (Fiery HOt Pepper Sauce) The Naga Jolokia is confirmed by the Guinness Book of Records to be one of the hottest peppers in the world and only the Trinidad Scorpion is hotter. The hottest lingers for a while and dried my lips out. I needed some Carmex