Jeffrey's Thoughts is a blog about Jeffrey Sham's hobbies, interests, and career.
What positive emotion do you feel most often?
I feel fine.
Hahaha, but in all seriousness, my emotions tend to be more on the stable side. I think if there’s a scale of 1 to 10 where 1 is the most negative emotion felt and 10 is the most positive emotion felt, I usually hover between 3 and 7. Not that emotional, but I randomly cry at times without knowing why I’m crying. I smile at times, but I usually know why I’m smiling.
What brings you peace?
One of the things that brings me peace is reading. I don’t read books that often, but when I read manga, I feel like I am able to get a break from reality and enjoy a nice story about anything.
What profession do you admire most and why?
I admire teachers. Teachers have taught me a lot throughout my life and I’m grateful that I’ve had a number of good ones. Knowing all the course material, creating assignments, grading assignments and tests, dealing with lots of students, creating lesson plans, and more. I’m not sure what type of person it takes to be a good teacher, but I hope that more of those types of people exist in the world and I hope that society values teachers more.
If you were going to open up a shop, what would you sell?
I would want to sell something in software, something that people can eat, or something that is useful like a tool to accomplish a task.
I haven’t figured out what I want to sell yet, but I saw on social media that one loving husband started a bubble tea shop because his wife liked bubble tea. I don’t know if I’ll open a bubble tea shop, but the idea is sweet.
I’ve thought about starting a business a few times related to software or helping the community, but haven’t done anything with those ideas. Some of the ideas have been jokes among friends, but some other ones may actually be good. One of these days 🤷♂️
Write about a random act of kindness you’ve done for someone.
I’m not sure if any of the stuff I’ve done for people has been random. Like holding doors open, saying “Bless you” when someone sneezes, picking up trash, returning shopping carts to the designated locations, warning people about dog poop on the ground or the like, or helping someone with directions – these aren’t really random. Like I did them intentionally.
Maybe something random that I’ve done is encouraging a stranger when I thought something they did was good. Like I’ve complimented how a guy smelled on the elevator and I’ve clapped for a person climbing a rope. I still don’t think this was that random, but certainly something I didn’t need to do or was planning on doing until I did it.
I think I have the capacity of doing more acts of kindness, random or not.
What change, big or small, would you like your blog to make in the world?
If my blog brings a smile to someone’s face, then I think it has accomplished my goal – some of these thoughts will resonate with others, and some of these thoughts will not.
Describe one habit that brings you joy.
I have a few habits that I try to do with my partner every day. One is brushing our teeth together. Another is welcoming each other back home. These are small habits, but I like them.
Some other habits that I’m trying to build are putting on moisturizer and lip balm and exercise regularly.
Some habits that I want to develop in the future are reading, volunteering, going outside, spending time with friends, sleeping more, meditation, and expressing gratitude. I think that it may take a lot of time in my day to do these habits, so maybe I’ll try to slowly add these into my routine.
Some habits that I’ve been playing around with are improving my head posture, using frozen cucumber to freshen my face, doing foot exercises to help my foot and leg alignment, doing facial exercises to make my face and jawline sharper, and doing some random workouts I see on Facebook and Instagram. I don’t think I’ll maintain these long term, but it has been a little interesting to try them.
I went on vacation with my partner to Colorado and it was pretty good. On the plane, I watched The Accountant 2, and it was entertaining. I liked the first one, so I was happy to see the second one. A bunch of action along with investigating some criminals. The pilot was funny, he gave us trivia questions before the flight began and then handed out some prizes to anyone who wanted one. The options were a United lanyard and a stats card of the plane. I got the card
After we arrived, there was lots of driving – we drove from Denver Airport to Aspen. Along the way, we went to Leadville to eat lunch and passed through the Independence Pass. When we got to the summit of Independence Pass, it started to hail, so we had to drive down to Aspen before it got worse.
The trip was pretty good. We hiked Maroon Bells, went up a gondola, did some whitewater rafting, ate some tasty food. I didn’t realize it before, but the cost of living is really high for Aspen. One of the whitewater rafting guides mentioned that the billionaires pushed out the millionaires from Aspen to Basalt.
The inn we stayed at was on the main street and was convenient to walk to all the shops. It was easy to get a bike share, easy to buy stuff from the grocery store, get ice cream, souvenirs, etc. Lots of people in cowboy hats and boots.
We also happened to be in town for their annual ducky derby. They raced rubber ducks down a river and the top ducks got prize money. There is even a chance to win $1 million. We entered 2 ducks in the race, but we did not end up winning.
I recently asked my coworker this question and he said he would pay $60-70 thousand for a jetpack. I was surprised and asked him why. He mentioned that the jetpack would essentially replace his car. Of course, I caveated the question with stuff like jetpacks are safe, they are easy to use, there aren’t a ton of people with jetpacks, etc. I also started this line of questioning when we were stuck in traffic and gave an idea of a police escort as a service company. He said he would only pay like $5 for that type of service. I said I wouldn’t pay and concluded that this type of service would probably just be for people with private jets and chauffeurs and stuff like that – rich people who want to save time.
How much would I pay for a jetpack? Not much. I think I would want to try it out first, like a bikeshare or rideshare before making the purchase. I also don’t think it could replace a car for me because it’s not like you can fly these for that far and you can’t really take any passengers or luggage with you. Right now, I’m thinking less than $5 thousand, but we’ll see if this technology takes off.
Growing up, I dried my hair with a towel. I thought that it got the job done pretty well and I didn’t seem to have any hair issues. As I’ve grown older, my hair has gotten more dandruff. I tried various techniques to keep it under control, but I didn’t find any that worked in the long term. At the start of the year, I started using a hair dryer to dry my hair and it was a bit tough to adjust. But now, it has become a habit. I’m not sure if it has helped my scalp health or the dandruff, but it is certainly drier than it was from just towel drying and it is a lot gentler than the towel. Overall, it is likely a habit I’ll continue to do moving forward.
Jeffrey's Thoughts