Jay Morrissey

I frequently frustrate my friends and family over discussions of “security“. Throughout my life, I have been the recipient of advice that includes:

What if your business doesn’t work out? You won’t be able to re-enter the working market that easily.

House prices are going up everyday. If you miss out, you won’t be able to afford a place to live in the future.

Rent prices are crazy. People are auctioning to get into rented apartments and homes. Without a regular full-time salary, there is no way you will be considered for tenancy.

How are you going to support your kids?

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Love is a wonderful thing. Without downplaying the importance of love and relationships, I do want to point out that “single” people among us are often discriminated.

Of course, the severity of this discrimination is minute compared to that of race, gender and sexuality. However, single people are made to (and often make themselves) feel like something is missing. There isn’t.

As “dating” and “getting married” are such common goals in our society, I wanted to address those who have decided not to adhere to these goals. You may be single, but you’re not alone.

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We all get that sick feeling in our stomach from time to time. Challenges and changes in our lives are supposed to be exciting, and yet these situations are often accompanied with anxiety.

Learning to handle anxiety is an important skill, one that can take an entire life to master. Throughout your existence, life will throw you a series of challenges, the more unique the challenge, the more anxiety will accompany it. The nature, and source of the challenge is unimportant. The critical factor is in your ability to take on the challenge in a relaxed and thoughtful manner.

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An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind, but I’d rather be blind than see a coward in the mirror. In our evolutionary history, intimidation was a direct result of physical size. One human being would be intimidated by a larger creature, and even a larger human being. This formula is still in play, you need look only to night-club bouncers, celebrity security guards and biker gangs. As the tolerance for physical violence in our community diminishes, verbal intimidation has found itself a new home in our lives.

Often, the blows from a verbal intimidator can be just as punishing as those from a fist fight. With all matters of survival, if you don’t learn to fight, you will lose. Never instigate intimidation, but learn to fight back when somebody tries to intimidate you.

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The purpose of this article is to motivate those who are currently thinking about leaving their desk jobs for something else, but are clinging to one or more reasons why they should stay.

There are many perks to working in an office. You’re comfortable, there’s no need for labor intensive work and you have access to a kitchen. Perhaps you should consider all of the things you’ve given up for that comfy office job. This is a broad topic however, so this article will focus on the kind of feedback I have received from others when bringing up the subject of “why don’t you give up your office job, and do something else”.

Here are a few common responses I have encountered:

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The western world has been hit with a recent burst of fitness frenzy. Gymnasiums are now more profitable than ever, with people lining up to use treadmills and resistance equipment. Personally, I used to train for 45 minutes a day at the gym every other day. I have since moved my training outdoors and have not looked back. However, how much time should we be spending at the gym?

I believe exercise is like anything else, and requires both efficiency and moderation. If you are spending hours on exercise every day, then you need to ask yourself: “why?”. The purpose of exercise is to make you feel healthy, to have more energy and to look better. Unless you are training for a movie role, or need to lose weight quickly due to blood pressure, you may well be wasting a large portion of your day at the gym. Please don’t misunderstand me, I think going to the gym for 2 hours is better than not going at all, but if your workouts are taking longer than an hour, perhaps you are not using that time efficiently.

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Coffee is an amazing substance. It smells good, it tastes even better, and it gives you a sense of undeniable clarity. Before proceeding, I should mention that I am no longer a coffee drinker due to my inability to sleep well. I have since switched to decaffeinated coffee. This is a shame however, as having a nice cup twice a day was one of my daily pleasures. I was quite literally hooked on coffee. This article is not about giving up coffee however, it is about the many things that make coffee an amazing experience.

I believe that it is wrong to label something “good” or “bad”, we should accept some of the strong points of coffee and understand why it adds to the human quality of life.

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