Between the Covers: Stories from My Bookcase

Tuesday, May 24, 2016

You are doing a Freaking Great Job



For Christmas 2015, I received this small gem of a book from my colleague Amor. You are doing a Freaking Great Job and other reminders of your AWESOMENESS.





I love this book. It's a compilation of lines and quotes to remind you that all will be well. Each page is done beautifully, sometimes I feel like tearing it off and giving it away as a card or putting it up on display at my desk. The only thing that keeps from doing that is my selfish desire to keep them all in one place so I can look upon them again some other time. 

Here's a sample page: 



Every day at our Operations Team Huddle, we end our session with a quote off this book. I just flip through until everyone says STOP and read on. This is what we got today. Make Yourself Proud - Peter W. Smith

I truly truly appreciate this book. It helps me remind my team why we do what we do, and to keep on going. And in case you need a reminder - YOU ARE DOING A FREAKING GREAT JOB!



Buy it from Amazon, or from the National BookStore

Monday, May 2, 2016

Amy, My Daughter by Mitch Winehouse

Amy Winehouse was a singer-songwriter from the UK. She was multi-awarded and very talented. She also died young. 



I'm not really her fan - I hardly knew her music. I've listened to a few and liked what I've heard, but at the height of her career I didn't really know a lot about her or her music. When she died though, I knew it made headlines. I remember seeing her photos on TV and that she had been called alcoholic and a drug addict. 

This book was written by her father, Mitch Winehouse, and has been pretty straight forward. It's a narrative of a father who watched his only daughter zoom to the top, and also spiral down because of one addiction after another. 

It seems that the family, her management, and even her record label, were all very supportive of her and were consistently around to help her quit her bad habits. They consulted specialists, they brought her to hospitals, but what puzzles me is why didn't they get her psychiatric help? If not for medication (she took replacement drugs for her coke habit), they should have sought therapy for her. 

Based on what I've read, she had a lot of issues do deal with. She seeks attention. She harms herself. Her husband seems to love her but is so deep in drugs that he can's do right by her. She wanted to get better, but she just wasn't strong enough to do it on her own. 

Her family setup the Amy Winehouse Foundation to help addicts and their families deal with this very complex problem. I hope that the Foundation is able to help others like Amy, so their story need not end so abruptly. 

This was an easy read because the author's voice was quite easy to follow. But it was also quite sad too see such talent go to waste.