I was reminded of my hate for clutter as we were reorganizing and eliminating items from our basement. It’s incredible what a space can morph into when decluttered. Much of this session was focused on baby clothes, toys and related items. The odd aspect of this situation was that we did not buy 99% of what we were eliminating from our home. On one hand, we feel completely blessed that family and friends feel the need to shower our kids with clothing and toys, but on the other hand, we are learning that once an item has run its course (and doesn’t fit or is not being played with), then it’s time to promptly rid our living area of it. Other families and charities could certain utilize what we’ve cleared our space with. That certainly makes us feel good. :)

The aspect of excessive toys is something I was mindful of well before having our first child. We don’t want to raise spoiled children who grow up to be spoiled adults and have unrealistic and unhealthy attachment to material objects; We see these people everyday and they don’t even know how pitiful they are.  I’m not going to lie about the emotional component (in the back of my mind…) of decluttering particular spaces. It’s as if you almost feel you are slapping the family and friends in the face by eliminating their gifts, but it’s good to keep in mind that the thought/action of gift-giving is the most important thing and not the timeframe in which a baby/toddler uses the respective items. They’re kids, right? They grow….fast!

In the end, the space was clean, organized and will remain that way until the next episode…..that we hope to avoid. :)

The title of this post is not meant to shock anyone because the reality of not being able to swim is 100X more shocking than any string of words I could ever put together.

Fortunately, I had parents who cared enough to ensure I knew how to swim through several swim classes and numerous trips to the local high school for open swim; frequent trips to Puerto Rico as a child, solidified my aquatic skill set. My wife and I have two kids and we’ve already discussed the importance of swimming for them.

I bring up this topic because of an incredible post by Mario Vittone [the original article disappeared because I think the reaction crashed his hosting/blog platform account; it’s been reposted HERE] that really struck a chord with me because I have an intense set of opinions of the general public in that too many people lack true self-awareness and have this false belief that certain things (like drowning or someone close to them drowning) “won’t happen to them” and that is really unfortunate because accidents happen everyday and people (including children) die horrible deaths under water everyday.

As a parent, I cannot imagine being anywhere near water and being unable to swim. What happens if my toddler falls into a pool or happens to get pushed into the water by a strong wave at the beach? Do I rely on someone else to save my child? Do I stand there crying like a spoiled child because I did not have the forethought to take a swim class and ensure I knew what to do to save the life of the child I brought into this world?

Self-sufficiency can lend itself nicely to a multitude of areas in one’s life and the topic of swimming is one I ask you to consider if you don’t know how to swim. We all have certain challenges (some may even consider these FEARS) in our lives to overcome, but there is no time like the present. I’m being completely serious here. Please learn to swim. If you are a parent, think of your child. Teach your kids to swim as well. The younger they are, the better that skill set can be solidified and improved upon. These are literally life and death issues.

Saving a drowning person is a whole other skill set in addition to proper swimming technique and one that would DEFINITELY require a formal series of training sessions to complete. I’m additionally reminded of this by a story in today’s Detroit Free Press regarding a man who saved his 15year old son and his son’s 15year old friend. It’s an incredibly sad story and one that caused me to ask many questions about the entire incident as well as reminding me of how I feel regarding the importance of every person knowing how to swim. A 15year old may not seem like a strong individual, but as a person is drowning and fighting for their life and the adrenaline is flying through their veins, the amount of panic can cause a significant amount of complications when trying to save someone’s life.

To conclude, if you care about your own life, the life of your (or anyone else’s) child or any other human being (young or old) who may need you in the water as they struggle to find a breath, I would ask you to please find the nearest swim lesson facility and learn. It really is that important.

Why would I say that? Of course, the title of this post is not an indictment on each and every athlete/celeb on the planet, but there are hundreds of examples that support the title. You know this! :) On to my thoughts….I was reminded of this very true slice of reality by an earlier episode that occurred from the Twitter account of a very prominent professional athlete (that doesn’t need to be named to get my point).

This particular athlete is not active on Twitter. That’s fine. There are no rules for social media usage. Self-proclaimed “guru’s” will have you believe that you MUST do things a certain way, but the rules are customizable and this entire space of social media is well within its infancy and still gaining a foothold on modern society across the world. Don’t believe the hype! The “rules” are still being written……Back to the matter at hand though…..So, this athlete’s account sends out a tweet about a product giveaway. You guessed it….the product is not important to this point either. Well, the tweet made mention that 3 prominent companies were involved in this “giveaway contest” and the fastest 20 responders would be eligible for the product giveaway in this contest. I *never* bite on these spam magnet ideas. I was curious this time though since this particular athlete had more than a month in between his last tweet and I considered this to be some sort of unique partnership for the product giveaway……maybe.

Well, I clicked on the link and put in a fake email address to see what would happen next. Sure enough, it went to another screen to ask for home address information and was even giving false information of the particular product and its color choices when I absolutely know that black is the ONLY color this particular product is available in. It was a bait for SPAM!!

One of three things happened with this pro athlete’s twitter account. #1- It was hacked and someone (a spammer) found an audience of well over 100K followers to capitalize on, #2- Someone in the athlete’s camp (who actually tweet’s for him; STUPID idea, btw) thought it was a good idea to use his name to work some spam scam for their own benefit and #3- The athlete knew 100% what he was doing and is a heartless jerk who is using his own name to fool people into giving their information under false pretenses.

I’m not sure what happened, but I do know the offending tweets were deleted minutes after they were sent out and with enough time to have mined several hundred addresses/names from silly people who really believed they were entering a legitimate contest because “athlete X” said it was a partnership with him and 3 major companies.

This bothers me in many ways, but the following are the two main ways: #1- “Reverse Robin Hood”. In other words, the celeb (synonymous w/pro athlete in this context) will steal from the poor to make themselves or some affiliate of theirs rich or even more rich. They will consistently throw crumbs at the disadvantaged and persuade them that they are on their side to then slap them in the face by convincing them to buy into their scam (of spam in this context) with the prospect of winning something for nothing…..It’s a true shame! This happens frequently because as a whole (there are certainly exceptions), the socio-economics of the poor lend themselves to more predatory practices by scam artists. You mix in the bells and whistles of technology and you have another aspect of the carrot on the stick. #2- Top tier athlete’s are corporations in and of themselves. They are not just individuals who happen to have signed multi-year contracts worth millions. They are people who have endorsement deals, family (immediate and extended) they are providing for and many times have unqualified “managers” in their camp that misguide them from Day 1, but their loyalties run so deep that they are clouded by the idea of having a person “on the outside” concern themselves with their affairs since they believe others are out to get them when the damage is being done from the inside out. We’ve all heard of “athlete X” filing for bankruptcy when they made several million dollars in a short period of time. I don’t believe each one of these people just burned through all of this money…..they had “help” spending it and when the money was gone, so was the entourage.

So, to conclude this episode, I think pro athletes/celebs should do their fan base a major favor and navigate their own social media profiles to some degree of responsibility OR entrust a qualified vendor to do this because it will avoid any affiliation to scam/spam artists and leave out any possibility of taking advantage of the poor or non-tech savvy person who happens to enjoy how this person does what they do.