{"id":1200,"date":"2018-12-10T09:00:07","date_gmt":"2018-12-10T14:00:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/madstone.net\/?p=1200"},"modified":"2018-12-09T08:03:09","modified_gmt":"2018-12-09T13:03:09","slug":"how-do-you-come-to-terms-with-the-fact-that-youre-just-ordinary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/?p=1200","title":{"rendered":"How do you come to terms with the fact that you&#8217;re just ordinary?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>I was asked &#8220;How do you come to terms with the fact that you&#8217;re just ordinary?&#8221;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>My answer is:&nbsp;<strong>Help others<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Very few people actually do this. That means that you&#8217;ll no longer be ordinary. In fact, you may appear to be extraordinary in the eyes of those you help. You can help build houses, give blood, raise money, visit isolated folks in nursing homes, staff phone banks. The need is literally endless.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Another possible side effect of helping others is that you&#8217;ll stop worrying so much about whether or not you&#8217;re &#8216;just ordinary,&#8217; or how you appear to others. Knowing that you are contributing to the world can help you worry less about how others see you.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Do a web search on &#8216;<a href=\"https:\/\/duckduckgo.com\/?q=volunteer+opportunities+near+me\">volunteer opportunities near me<\/a>.&#8217; you&#8217;re almost certain to find something that appeals to you.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I was asked &#8220;How do you come to terms with the fact that you&#8217;re just ordinary?&#8221;&nbsp; My answer is:&nbsp;Help others. Very few people actually do this. That means that you&#8217;ll no longer be ordinary. In fact, you may appear to be extraordinary in the eyes of those you help. You can help build houses, give &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/madstone.net\/?p=1200\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;How do you come to terms with the fact that you&#8217;re just ordinary?&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[59,46],"tags":[124],"class_list":["post-1200","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-philosophizing","category-social-commentary","tag-volunteerism"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pgY3e-jm","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1454,"url":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/?p=1454","url_meta":{"origin":1200,"position":0},"title":"Our Overlords Are Not Our Friends","author":"Jorah","date":"February 13, 2021","format":false,"excerpt":"I've lately been pondering how many of the ills that beset the ordinary poor, working class, and middle-class person in the world can be linked directly to the power that the ultra-rich have & will do anything to protect. If you scratch the surface of organized religion, politics, poverty, law\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Social commentary&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Social commentary","link":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/?cat=46"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1026,"url":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/?p=1026","url_meta":{"origin":1200,"position":1},"title":"Out of the gloaming","author":"Jorah","date":"May 30, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"I am still moving along on my \"11 mittens in 2011\" project,\u00a0albeit\u00a0slowly. My most recent FO is a pair I'm calling \"Gloaming,*\" and made from a very, very popular mitten pattern called Bella's Mittens. \u00a0I'm planning to send these off to the Great Frozen North of central New Hampshire. This\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Knitting&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Knitting","link":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/?cat=85"},"img":{"alt_text":"Bella's Mittens","src":"https:\/\/jorahlavin.files.wordpress.com\/2011\/05\/bellas-mittens-1.jpg?w=350&h=200&crop=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":22,"url":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/?p=22","url_meta":{"origin":1200,"position":2},"title":"Scotsman.com News &#8211; Lazy Guide to Net Culture: Dotcom Boom II","author":"Jorah","date":"April 13, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"Stewart Kirkpatrick skirkpatrick at scotsman dot com By the time you read this I will be a very very rich man. Don't let envy lead you to begrudge me my good fortune. (Indeed, as a committed eco-socialist I will be donating a large part of my fortune to organic Cuban\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Post&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Post","link":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/?cat=30"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":194,"url":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/?p=194","url_meta":{"origin":1200,"position":3},"title":"The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity","author":"Jorah","date":"October 1, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"THE BASIC LAWS OF HUMAN STUPIDITY by Carlo M. Cipolla illustrations by James Donnelly The first basic law of human stupidity asserts without ambiguity that: Always and inevitably everyone underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation. At first, the statement sounds trivial, vague and horribly ungenerous. Closer scrutiny will\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Post&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Post","link":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/?cat=30"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":11,"url":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/?p=11","url_meta":{"origin":1200,"position":4},"title":"Integrated Web Design: Social Networking &#8211; The Relationship between Humans and Computers is Coming of Age","author":"Jorah","date":"April 4, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"by Molly Holzschlag The interaction between community, computers, and society is now being referred to as \"social networking,\" and it's making a lot of heads turn. But what is social networking, really, and what does it mean to web technologists? In this compelling article by Molly Holzschlag, you'll learn what\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Post&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Post","link":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/?cat=30"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":128,"url":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/?p=128","url_meta":{"origin":1200,"position":5},"title":"Yahoo! Mail &#8211; jorah@yahoo.com","author":"Jorah","date":"February 26, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"QUICK EXCEL TIP Quickly Toggle Formulas On And Off \"If you need to take a quick look at your worksheet formulas you can display them by pressing CTRL+~(tilde). The tilde key is to the left of the 1 key. Do not press CTRL+SHIFT+~, just CTRL+~. Each time you press this\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Post&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Post","link":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/?cat=30"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1200","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1200"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1200\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1203,"href":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1200\/revisions\/1203"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1200"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1200"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1200"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}