The Other Blog – The Other Jeff Johnson

an unidentified person holding up their hand as if to indicate “stay away” or “stop”

Getting back to the main thing

The Barna Group, a Christian polling firm, recently reported that nearly half of Millenials believe sharing your faith, with the hope of convincing someone to convert to your faith, is wrong. Many Christians I know have responded with disbelief. Others have made excuses, saying those must be “big city” survey results, that don’t apply in …

two monkeys, one touching the other's shoulder as if displaying compassion

How, then, should we care for our own

by Jeff Johnson

A leader of a Christian ministry, someone I deeply respect, published a column today encouraging other ministries to prepare for a possible health emergency or other catastrophe that would remove one of their organization’s key players from the mix for an unknown period of time. It’s good advice and he offered many practical tips as …

Looking back on four years as a survivor

by Jeff Johnson

Getting cancer four years changed my life forever, in ways good and bad. I’m a much more patient and forgiving person (except with myself) than I was four years ago. Unfortunately, I have some serious side effects – from the treatment, not the cancer – that will be with me for life. But they’re manageable …

nespaper clipping, “Full stops can annoy Gen. Z, warn linguists”

You’ll pry that punctuation from my cold, dead, tired fingers

by Jeff Johnson

This sounds much like being Autistic and trying to communicate with many neurotypical people. For my entire life, I’ve said things to people like, “Do A, then B, then C.” They would indicate their understanding of the instructions and then execute the steps out of order, C. A, B or B, C, A. I would …

Only time will tell

by Jeff Johnson

“How do you wake up from the matrix when you don’t know you’re in the matrix.” I pulled the trigger last night and subscribed to Netflix so that I could watch The Social Dilemma. If you’re not familiar with it, the synopsis is this: The Artificial Intelligence (AI) that powers social media is getting so …

The top 10 things I wish everyone knew about having cancer

by Jeff Johnson

The poet Maya Angelou wrote, “Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.”

It’s difficult to know how to react to someone who has cancer. What should you say? How should you act around them? I’m sure each cancer survivor could make their own rendering of this list. My goal with my version is not to criticize anyone’s past actions, but to help us all know better, so we can do better.

My patient identification number is blah-blah-blah. And that’s what I felt like at the start of my cancer treatment; just a number. Going through treatment, these were the Top 10 things I wish everyone knew about having cancer^™ …

There’s nothing ‘just’ about it

by Jeff Johnson

I’ve seen a number of videos lately that either display or encourage violent or forceful responses to behavior that – while reprehensible – was not violent or threatening. Some have been “watch this guy get taught a lesson” videos. Others have been instances of gross overreactions to insults or “ego bruises.” When I see these …