Jim's Cafe - Sunday, October 6, 2024 "achievement"

[AmberMarie]

Thank you for opening @Angie
Thank you for the tag @Lane

Besides my obvious proudest achievements being my 3 children-now adults... i would have to say my puppetry. It has always been extremely easy for me to create believable movements and skills because it's very logical to me. i won many national and 1 international award for my puppetry skills. my goal was to become a professional puppeteer... however, till things are settled n my separation is complete, i can not be involved that world. i am finding i miss it terribly!

 

[Auri]

@Auri your painting talent might be an achievement.

my achievement would be my daughter. From a kid who had no ambition and at 18 could not do grocery shopping on her own to a young woman who is a mother and she is eyeing a job at the corporate world as a director. She decided in community college to get her bachelor’s degree on her own and since then has flown in life like a successful bird. I was worried about her most of her young years.

You're too kind, thank you.

Also, that sounds wonderful! It really shows that we should always support our children (well, I don't have any ) even if they seem to always fail, because they actually might find adulting and the work environment much better for them than the academic one.

 

[Auri]

Thank you for opening @Angie
Thank you for the tag @Lane

Besides my obvious proudest achievements being my 3 children-now adults... i would have to say my puppetry. It has always been extremely easy for me to create believable movements and skills because it's very logical to me. i won many national and 1 international award for my puppetry skills. my goal was to become a professional puppeteer... however, till things are settled n my separation is complete, i can not be involved that world. i am finding i miss it terribly!

Wow, that is such an unusual and wonderful interest! I hope you get back to it soon, because you seem to love it and I'd hate for that passion to "go to waste". It would make you so much happier, too.

 

[LumberJack]

My proudest achievement in the traditional sense was getting 720 on the GMAT. The gmat is the standard entry test for graduate business school. At the time, 720 was 95th percentile and the GMAT was correlated with standard IQ testing to qualify me for Mensa membership. Mensa is a club for people with 98th percentile and up IQ. They were accepting GMAT scores at the 95th percentile because the people applying to graduate school would be a smarter group overall than the whole population. So the test itself was not the achievement, nor was Mensa a big deal for me. Instead, it was that I had an objective measure of my intelligence that did so much to explain why I had such a hard time fitting in with my peers.

In terms of my personal life satisfaction, my greatest accomplishment is to choose a positive direction in my life when there was so much influence pushing me in the opposite direction. I have had multiple pdocs tell me that my past was not easy to survive, and doing that and becoming somewhat successful in the world is way above where the statistics say I should be.

 

[Livelife]

Delivering babies has to be at the top as a midwife in hospitals and homes. And becoming certified in hospice and cardiac critical care. And being curious and spontaneous all my life has taken me down many roads.

 

[Ash600]

Personal achievement was confounding the odds as well as the expectations of others by getting myself educated to degree standard and then using that to forge an okayish career. Not so sure if "proud moment" is an appropriate term to use, but playing a part in helping to save saving someone's life ranks up there.

 

[Kandi12]

@Kandi12 One of your achievements must be to be a proud mummy (or daddy?) of two pups!

I actually have 2 dogs
1 very old Himalayan cat
Some fish
4 kids
A sorta husband.
Then there is me, a mess in the middle of it all 😢😢😢

 

[Lisa the Ferrociraptor]

Hey @Angie, i love today's question. It's a great idea to get people talking about impressive things they've done in their lives and why that makes them proud. Thank you so much for opening the cafe, and @Lane for tagging me.

What is your proudest achievement?

I've achieved a number of cool things in my life. Some good qualifications, a bunch of personal victories, and i even gave flowers to the queen once, which is always a fun thing to be able to say i did, whether or not everyone agrees that's an achievement (if it helps, i got to do that because the best 2 students at my school got to attend her visit). But i'd have to say the one i'm proudest of is how many remarks i've gotten about being a positive, supporting influence in people's lives. Particularly from my best friend, A.

He's a really good guy, and a straight-up genius imho. There are some subjects he's absolutely clueless on, but even then it's because they're things he's wisely realised he just doesn't need to bother with, and he's actually better off not knowing about. And yet it seems like he got very little respect and encouragement from people in his life. Friends, family, peers, everyone seemed to just put him down or respond with apathy. But i know, because he's told me on a few occasions, that what he gets from me is different.

I love him like my own brother, and he loves me like his own sister. That's not just my read on it, we've said as much to each other, numerous times. I build him up, i tell him what a special person i see in him, and i give him the reactions to things he wishes others would give. It makes me the first person who truly, consistently treated him that way, and in part thanks to that, he now has a great relationship with an awesome woman, and a job where after just a few years, he already has senior staff members asking him what to do.
I'm so incredibly proud of him, and resultantly proud that he attributes who he's become in part to my support and acceptance. I feel blessed to be able to say i earned my place by his side as he absolutely dominates in life, like some incredible force of nature and sheer willpower.

 

[Winslow]

Proudest achievement? Well, actually I would not use the word "pride" because there is a saying "Pride causes one's Downfall." In other words, pride can lead to arrogance. Also people get hurt because of their pride. So a humble person would not be hurt. This is what I learned from Stoicism and Buddhism.
So instead of pride, I would say that it's mostly gratitude for what I accomplished. Gratitude that I can keep my emotions under control. Gratitude on that day when I got that sudden flash of insight that produced an instant solution to my problem. Rare but it happened several times. The ability to think outside-the-box. I was crazy because I was institutionalized 3 times, but it was actually those bouts of insanity that solved my problem. Because from insanity comes the ability to think outside-the-box. For example, look at Vincent Van Gogh--he sliced off his own ear but he was a genius.There is a fine line between insanity and genius.

Insanity is Hell. And it almost killed me because of a suicide attempt. But I survived. Hellish though it was, I can actually say I am thankful because I honestly believe the insanity gifted me with the ability to think outside-the-box. A curse can be a gift.

 

[PrincessPure]

I guess i will go with studying medicine and living independently abroad.

 

[Dante]

Hi @Angie

I suppose you're the official proprietor of the Cafe now huh?

I love to boast and brag, the more inane and silly the more I will brag about it. Likewise, the more serious and worthwhile it is, the less inclined I am to turn it into an ego trip. :P

 

[Livelife]

.

 

[KM76710]

I actually have 2 dogs
1 very old Himalayan cat
Some fish
4 kids
A sorta husband.
Then there is me, a mess in the middle of it all 😢😢😢

Any person who loves and takes care of their pet family is not a mess, they are a person with good values. I wish that were not as tough on you with your life.

 

[JMG]

Thank you for opening the cafe today Angie, and for the tag @MisterBGone I appreciate it very much!

My proudest achievement? Hmm, that’s quite a hard one for me to answer because I’ve never been much of an “achievement oriented” kind of person. But I guess somehow managing to work full time for over 7 years when I kinda hated and resented doing that most of the time could be considered one of my “prouder” achievements. I was suicidal at some point for pretty much every year I worked there, so I think that gives some idea of just how much I hated and resented it.

Also, considering I very easily coulda become a “high school dropout”, the fact that I graduated high school is something I feel proud of as well. I never really cared much about school (kinda hated it tbh) and was a terrible student. There was various kinds of stress at home with not much “structure” so I think that had a lot to do with why it was such a struggle for me. Pretty much no true “support” or caring was really shown to me about school either.

Anyway, it did not “improve” once I got to high school, quite the opposite. By grade 11 I definitely felt quite “done” with all of it, but somehow managed to get through that year, and then finish grade 12. Still don’t really know “how” I did that tbh, and I sometimes still have nightmares that I’m still in grade 12 and feeling stressed about “whether I’ll graduate or not” so ya, to say school was a huge challenge for me would be a huge understatement. I had no motivation then, and I still don’t today.

Anyway whatever, glad I at least did those things, there’s many who don’t graduate high school and who never work at all for their whole lives. I did not become someone who didn’t do those things.

 

[KM76710]

Back in the late 80s I did aid a DPS officer, Texas state police, that was in danger from three criminals. He and I lived. The officer and his wife went on to have a son and daughter who had children and now there is a passel of grandkids. Their daughter was named after me and is the prettiest Kenneth I have ever seen. Actually Dee is a common middle name in my family so the daughter now has my name also. That family will tell that I am a Band of Brothers blood brother like in St. Crispin's Day speech: "Whoever sheds his blood with me is my brother.".

 

[Innocent Forever]

Maybe setting boundaries

 

[Innocent Forever]

 

[Windhover]

hello cafe 🧡❤️🩷

Thank tou @Angie for opening a cafe for us☕️. I hope school is going okay. 🪴📚

hugs @Lane for mentioning me. 🤗

I have to say there are more than 2 things/people which make up my proudest moments.
One is my daughter, who has overcome some extremely bad occurences to thrive, work, & own a home.
Two is my son who is an extra bright person, graduated uni early, presidential scholar, & working doing math and bio-engineering research.
Three is an A+ grade and letter of recomendation from Wayne Thiebaud, who used to teach painting and printmaking at UCD.

 

[Angie]

Hi @Angie

I suppose you're the official proprietor of the Cafe now huh?

I love to boast and brag, the more inane and silly the more I will brag about it. Likewise, the more serious and worthwhile it is, the less inclined I am to turn it into an ego trip. :P

Hey @Dante nah, no official anything, I just saw a need and every 2 or 3 days try to do something. Anyone can start a Cafe, I would be glad to have others start them, it would give the Cafe diversity.

 

[Witty_Sarcasm]

Not sure to be honest. Probably still keeping on even though I've wanted to give up for decades.