Hell, yes!
From my first-hand experience, I know that change is hard. I could resist some changes and still make them. Does that sound weird? This is human nature.
For example, in my professional life, there are always changes. As a pro writer, I discovered some new areas and topics my employers sent me. Since 2021, I have mostly written in English. The topics are also very diverse, from online gambling and sports betting to cryptocurrency and blockchain to IT. These are topics in which a worldwide audience is interested.
By the way, the IT part of my work is challenging. I am not an IT person, but now I must write, update, or rewrite articles about various software issues, glitches, and their fixes. I don’t understand this because I simply don’t like it. Yet, I do it and develop new skills.
When you’re doing it, forget about your comfort zone. You will be kicked out of it if you want to expand your skills. I use AI to help me write article drafts. I didn’t have that skill before. Otherwise, I’d simply have no time to meet my deadlines. But there is a trick: special software measures the AI’s involvement and has certain limits, such as a maximum of 15 % of AI. When you use AI to write an article, you must anyway rewrite it to decrease it.
For example, what do you think of ‘Why is my Chrome browser not saving passwords?’
There are numerous fixes and issues, and I must update the existing article, keeping the text the same but unique. No task is too big, no pup is too small!
But yeah, I love changes. It only sometimes is pretty hard to make them!
Am I OK with change?
Last week, I spent a couple of paragraphs talking about my younger self; I suppose I should have talked some more. In American slang, I’m an Army Brat. That means I was born on a US Army Base (in France) and grew up moving every two years.
Most folks can talk about their home town. In fact, there is a bedroom they can say is “my room”, I never had that. Ask me where I’m from and I’ll either answer where I was born or the country I grew-up in. I don’t really have a place I think of as home. I don’t regret it for one second, I have seen many places and I know a little about the human condition.
In some ways that sounds arrogant and I suppose it is. All of us can be bamboozled and it has happened to people much smarter than me. I’m just as gullible as the next guy. The difference is, I have seen it several times and can recognize the smell.
You may not like this at all: Donald J. Trump has that smell. Look, I really don’t care what the guy’s policy positions are. I do not care! I cannot ever bring myself to support someone with that odor.
MEGA’s will tell you that it’s not serious, Trump is just joking when he says he wants to prosecute his political enemies. Don’t you know a joke when you hear it? Yeah, I do and that’s the problem. “I am your retribution” is not funny.
So, does this mean I can’t deal with change? Change is good! But only when it’s good; change can also be bad. In fact, change can kill. Climate Change is bad if you live on an island; maybe not so bad if you live in Siberia.
If you’re an American and it’s August, 2024, I am going to argue that change is very bad. It can kill… No, it is absolutely going to kill. If Trump loses, he will try to have people killed. He will attempt to overthrow the Republic and install himself as head of a new nation. They must continue to call it the US for political reasons but it will no longer be so. “I am your retribution.” See, I do know a good joke when I hear it. Ha ha!
Am I OK with change?
I reckon us humans are hardwired to resist change. We often interpret change as a threat, and even if that change has shedloads of benefits, we usually end up resisting it.
Before my eventual retirement, I cannot recall how many times I suggested changes to work practices, only to be told…”Change??? But we’ve always done it this way!!!” That sentence remains my pet hate.
Recently, back in good ol’ Blighty, most Brits were completely fed up with 14 years of the most corrupt, hateful, useless Conservative party that ever governed. But in this case, change was welcome, even though the alternative was probably equally incompetent.
During the Covid crisis, we had to change the way we did most things. It was that or die, so those enforced changes were much more easily accepted.
In my personal life, I relished several huge changes. In my mid-forties, I completely switched careers; what was my job, a musician, became my hobby, and my hobby of broadcasting became my job. Great decision.
I must admit to having felt uncomfortable when my immediate boss resigned or moved on. I go back to my opening paragraph; it meant proving myself to somebody new, so it felt threatening. I got over it, several times.
When we retired, Mrs B and I changed our place of residence. In fact, we moved some 3,000km away from what had been our comfortable home for over three decades. We decided we needed a cheaper and simpler way of living, with guaranteed sunshine. That sudden change has given us the best 12 years of our lives so far, with hopefully many more to come.
I believe that despite being conditioned to resist change, I really am very OK with it.