July 14th, 2025: Boring work. I woke up at 6:00am and went on my phone until 6:30am because I was so bored. I got up and made myself cereal with milk and then coffee. I brushed my teeth and then browsed Xitter to find out that a popular Catholic apologist Voice Of Reason was caught sending sexual messages to minors between the ages of 14 to 16. I saw this one video of him on Pints with Aquinas while smoking cigars saying that he doesn’t feel called to either the priesthood after entering seminary or marriage and is a committed single person.
I walked to the bus stop, I got on and then got off at my stop. I walked into the building and was let in by Seth M. I got my stuff from his office and setup before brewing the coffee, Zarith C told me to put 2 scoops in and I did that before we got into the meeting room at 9:00am, it went well and here is the transcript of the CEO speaking along with his mentor:
"I brought somebody along that I've been talking with for. Geez, we've been trying to connect for a year and haven't come here. His name is [Mentor], and the best way to describe [Mentor], he's a cool cat. And the reason why I say that is that nothing ever phases [Mentor]. I mean, I worked with him for years, and we had, you know, we have difficult customers, and we have difficult people, difficult employees, sometimes, uhh difficult coworkers at a workplace, and nothing ever phase [Mentor]. I mean, it was like cool, and I think I would describe it as it's the epitome of emotional intelligence, you, your emotional state, and your effect on everybody else, and everybody else's emotional state and the effect on yourself. But [Mentor] would never let himself choose a negative side. He would just stick to what we were supposed to talk about. Yeah, something that was upset about something. You were for nothing that he had done, but it was in the area or close to his area. He would take responsibility for it. And I was like: ‘Whoa! why would you want to do that?’ I was young, and he would tell me. And he's even keeled. So basically order a common is to is that [Mentor] is the single most individual mentor I've had that taught me how to manage situations, expectations, manage people, girl people, have a lot of ideas and you would always say, ‘Woah Nelly!’ you know, there were a lot of things I was put into. And sometimes you need a real driver, but you need to temper that driver. And so our boss, our mutual boss, [Mutual boss], brought me in, and John took me from being a hammer to somebody that was helpful, instead of a hammer. So you know, I can drive things, but [Mentor] really, really knows how to do that. I'll let you explain your background. He's got a varied background and you're also military.”
“Yeah.” - Mentor
“So he's got quite a few disciplines under his belt and also is a big family man. We were just talking, we were late, sorry. We were talking about family. We had to catch up. His daughter, you said babysit my daughter, and that was a lot of fun. I think those two need to get together. Yes. Yeah. So now that my daughter is married and off doing her thing, and [Mentor’s daughter]'s got kids and doing her thing and oh, man, there's a lot of change going to use. But both [Mentor] and I have a lot of contacts. and as I’m establishing my role here, I'm trying to reawaken all my contacts to see if there's tertiary context with them that I could use to help notify the community of our needs. And our needs are to take care of clients. So we talked about our clients, and then we'll see, we were just before I said, oh, we better get into the room next when we started talking about, maybe the community can help out more, with all the funding and changes and whatnot. So if you do me a big favor, when you I also wanted them to see our Monday meeting, so I can't think of a better place for somebody who's got deep contact with me to begin to understand this organization, but they here are Monday morning meetings. They're very extremely useful to me. And I'm hoping that at times they become more useful every time we do it for you, but it really gives a personal view to the outside world, even though they don't know the context or the acronyms. Acronyms, [Mentor] and I are very used to acronyms, so we just need to know where they are. But to see, you can actually see your work that we're doing behind all that so. This is a great place for him to see how it works and how I'll talk to him afterwards…”
[I scribbled my name on the attendance sheet with a box and checkmark added]
Give him a little tour and let's do you a favor, just say your name and your title. That would be really useful. It gives me more context to talk about it. But before I turn it back over to Latinx lady, and her operational discussions. I wanted to talk about funding in general. Uhm. We're starting to get more resolution on funding. Some of the directors have heard some of the funding that's coming in. Uhm. We're not at a point where I can actually talk about what is the reactor reaction yet, because we still need to get more information from DC. But it's actually in my opinion, it's trending in a more positive direction. In other words, it's giving me more options, and the more options I have, the more ideas I can generate from my more take some of the ideas that I have, and then change them a little bit to adapt to what the conditions are. The other thing too, even and don't despair, even if we have reduction in funding, in certain areas, because now skip to the point where we're starting to look at what areas we're getting reduced. That's what's happening. That all that means to me is, oh, now I know exactly what they ask for from the community. And knowing what your problem is, is more than half the solution. If you know what the problem is. And so we're getting more and more resolution on that. So when Latinx lady and I go to Salt Lake City and then we go to DC, and then we do more [event] type things in the fall. We'll have a better idea of both she and I will have a better idea of how we're going to shape the resources that we're given to match what's going on here. My admonishment for all of you, though, is just like I said last week for any of the anxiety you have, remember, if you can, I'm not saying you shouldn't take a mental state, but if you if you do get anxiety and that's, like, worrisome thoughts about the future. Don't take a mental health day. Instead try coming in and working anyway, because I want to remind you what I said last week, and that is that when we actually show up, when a person shows up in spite of what's going on with them, you feel like nothing's good for you. Nothing's happening, positive for you. I have so many difficulties. People at work don't understand what I do. Persist and go forward because you are actually a blessing to other people. Our clients need you right where you're at in the state that you are in, because you have more than native, just think about some of you, think about where you came from. Focus on what you can do in front of you, because every little bit of goodness that we give somebody else is going to help them. And in doing so, that'll take some of that anxiety, that energy from that, and put it towards something more useful in your life. Uhm it may even actually do some physiological things. For me, it does. My blood pressure goes down. So I'm like a little lab rat right now with all the medical stuff monitoring that they’re doing, you know. So I know exactly when I have stress and what happens, so I'm learning more about myself. So I started thinking about that for you guys. It doesn't matter how old you are. Our bodies react to how we think. And so if you want to feel better physically, you know change those thoughts, or as something you can actually do in front of it here in control of it first. And then if you still have problems, make sure to talk to your supervisor, we might be able to help out, too. You know, like I might if I Latinx lady me she's worried about something, I might hear her more than that's possible. She says, I always give her more work. So, you know, I think that we have an opportunity here, because goodness is here at [Company]. I can't express how thrilled I am to hear last week that at a public meeting one of the state officials said, I think we should let [Company] take the lead on this. I mean, that is really cool. I mean when you hear that from the state. So, that's just one aspect of [Company]. We have quite a few other things going on here that are good. So it's real exciting to watch what we can do in spite of what's going on around us, and also remember the news is hype. It's more sensationalized than anything else. There's some truth to it, but there again, focus on what's in front of you and what you can do. If you want to find out more about what's going on when you see in the news, you can ask your supervisor, I might have some real reality from DC on it. You never know. But you'll also keep in mind, I probably know just as much as you did, it's very. It's very hard to do with the unknown. So and then one little tidbit for growth, I thought I would start doing this on Mondays. take one topic and then start teaching you what is the difference between the two. And so today I decided to, because I have a great leader next to me to my right, I looked at the word leadership, and I looked at the word management, leader, manager, what's the difference? A manager deals with the known. Manages the known. Deals with models that are already created, holds the line to what things are set. A leader will take everybody and march to and through the unknown, that's what the leader does. And then based on the unknown, you might start to see…”
[Yawn]
[POST SPLIT INTO MULTIPLE PARTS DUE TO CHARACTER LIMIT]
![[lee]](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7 "Lee Goldson [lee]")
