The following is a list of goals I have posted here; I have checked the ones I have accomplished or more likely, made a good effort toward. many of them are not binary but are progressive.
Blog everyday ( )
Reading list (X) 3 of 10, acquired 5 of 10
Letter discipline ( )
Read Bible (X)
Make personal cult of self (X)
Make kayaking a priority (X)
Learn to make cider ( ) pickles ( ) jam ( )
Make kids room habitable (X)
Be outside more (X)
Find job that's been searching for me ( )
Better than I expected from myself, especially when I consider new & unpublished goals that have been met. However, I feel a little disappointed in myself for some of the more egregious errors.
17 August 2009
11 July 2009
“He will never worship well the image on the altar who knew it when it was a trunk of wood”
I am at work now, 'biding time. I will leave here, make a too quick stop at the bookstore, load the truck and set out through traffic to the north coast and into the woods. There is a peace I am expecting from those woods. It will not greet me as I arrive late this evening, nor tomorrow, but I have faith it will come; it will come as I rise early giving time no abide or inhabiting a book, look up to be suprised at company, or listening to the children roaming freely - bug bitten, half naked dirty and happy. It might come in our pitched black cabin, letting the peace seep into our life together. God knows we need it. It might come around a fire communing with the flame and naked bodies there.
It will probably come as I walk a path in the dark under the narrow strip of sky the trees allow, or as I, solitary, attend to my daily tasks.
My pleasure comes from those I love, my peace comes from myself.
I am signing off for two weeks. Any logging will be done with ink and paper.
I have not yet began the bible as I had planned. I am taking Milton with me though.
My promised when I return:
begin bible
make kayaking a priority
learn to make and make cider, pickles and jam
make children's room a habitable place
find that jab I've been waiting for
be outside more
It will probably come as I walk a path in the dark under the narrow strip of sky the trees allow, or as I, solitary, attend to my daily tasks.
My pleasure comes from those I love, my peace comes from myself.
I am signing off for two weeks. Any logging will be done with ink and paper.
I have not yet began the bible as I had planned. I am taking Milton with me though.
My promised when I return:
begin bible
make kayaking a priority
learn to make and make cider, pickles and jam
make children's room a habitable place
find that jab I've been waiting for
be outside more
04 July 2009
the riddle that answers itself...
It's here as much as it ever really gets here.
We are heading off to Nevada for a shared celebration, to the middle of Nevada, past the "town" of Middlegate and on to the hot springs. Last time we were there, Tifany took close ups of the moon.
There is something notable about our destination.
Our point of departure will be my mother's house of course. What is funny about my family is that I have had a strange sense of foreboding and have been reluctant to contact them recently. Meanwhile, my first brother has packed up his business and is leaving to rural Idaho two days before I roll in to town. My second brother has returned from what appears to have been the lackluster trip to Mexico with our Dad that I had to opt out of. He is so far tight mouthed about it. In fact, only my mother has been in touch.
My youngest brother will be there. I hope our interaction is positive. I feel somehow some sort of remorse toward the other two and a fear of resentment.
The last time I saw my youngest brother was when he came through on the way home for summer break from college. On a lark we took a natural pscychadelic together (and of course the house joined in save 'M'. Who babysat and eventually got cozy with my brother. That experience, or rather my experience is the source of the title of this blog. A phrase I used along with others similar to describe how I felt and what I thought I was realizing. I would like to go into further detail at a later time, as I have yet to feel different about it. Life is the riddle that answers itself.
Next week...family camp. I hope I return before then. I have a lot I'd like to write about that I've been putting off.
We are heading off to Nevada for a shared celebration, to the middle of Nevada, past the "town" of Middlegate and on to the hot springs. Last time we were there, Tifany took close ups of the moon.
There is something notable about our destination.
Our point of departure will be my mother's house of course. What is funny about my family is that I have had a strange sense of foreboding and have been reluctant to contact them recently. Meanwhile, my first brother has packed up his business and is leaving to rural Idaho two days before I roll in to town. My second brother has returned from what appears to have been the lackluster trip to Mexico with our Dad that I had to opt out of. He is so far tight mouthed about it. In fact, only my mother has been in touch.
My youngest brother will be there. I hope our interaction is positive. I feel somehow some sort of remorse toward the other two and a fear of resentment.
The last time I saw my youngest brother was when he came through on the way home for summer break from college. On a lark we took a natural pscychadelic together (and of course the house joined in save 'M'. Who babysat and eventually got cozy with my brother. That experience, or rather my experience is the source of the title of this blog. A phrase I used along with others similar to describe how I felt and what I thought I was realizing. I would like to go into further detail at a later time, as I have yet to feel different about it. Life is the riddle that answers itself.
Next week...family camp. I hope I return before then. I have a lot I'd like to write about that I've been putting off.
10 June 2009
old blogs migrating here
Tuesday, February 03, 2009
Fear of Death pt II: contemplating whist reading Dune
Thinking about the apparent, but I believe opaque dichotomy of death and life, I came on an analogy. Of course the nature of things is that everything is analogous.
Consider breathing
inhale
exhale
Intake life sustaining oxygen
Outtake (seemingly) static Carbon dioxide
Both are separate activities as we delineate them, but as far as the body is concerned the difference is perhaps not so clear. More importantly, in and of themselves, neither one is the act of breathing. To breath we must inhale and exhale.
I am reminded of the different applications of the words death and life. "Death" is active, while "life" is passive. Inhale and exhale are active, while breathing is a broad passive. Life is a thing that contains death as the degenerative aspect of itself, just as exhalation is the degenerative aspect of breathing. What word is there for the regenerative aspect of life - the inhale?
Life is at least twice as large as the part we call life, it is also death and who knows what else.
I don't know why Dune had me in this state of mind, perhaps the characters' solipsizing led me to do the same. Here is some lint from my navel gazing, anyway. And before you raise a stink, which people often due on the internet, let me tell you that in addition to usually being true, all analogy is eventually false. Consider that, then comment.
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Fear of death part III: Science!
After determing that it is just an elaborate ad machine for the labels, I have tried not to read Rolling Stone Magazine. However, I gotta take something into the john, and at work, it's all I've got. This month's issue contains a feature on Inventor Ray Kurzweil, the prophet of the singularity theory. The theory goes that technology will soon surpass human capacity for intelligence and at that point (of singularity) the two must merge, redefining life as we know it.
I don't even feel the need to refute his particulaly tech-heavy messianical vision. Even a lightweight like me can identify the logical, philosophical, technical and biological gaps in his staid prediction. What intrigues me is his purpose for arriving at this prediction, where the idea sits in our period of time and its place in our pre-agreed realities - an exagerated spike in a massive wave of our cultures paradigms.
His motivation seems to be a fear of death driven by the loss of his father 20 years ago. His belief in science is almost admiriably singular. There is no problem so great, he believes, that it cannot be overcome through application of creative human thought.
Some excerpts, mostly Kurzweil's own words:
"Death represents the loss of knowledge and information. A person is a mind file. A person is a software program - a very profound one, and we have no back-up. So when our hardware dies, our software dies with it....I've made an issue of overcoming death, and the strongest experience I've had with death is a tragedy.'"
Wow! This is today's paradigm for the mind - its a big computer. Is this true? I would venture not.
"'By scanning the contents of your brain, nanobots will be able to transfer everything you know, everything you have evr experienced, into a robot or a virtual reality program. If something happens to your physical body, no problem. Your mind will live on - forever....After 2045, Kurzweil predicts nanobots will replicate and spread throughout the tiniest recesses of matter, transforming the host - say, a tree or a stone - into a computational device. He calls this intelligent infested matter 'computronium, which is matter and energy organized at optimum level for computation. Using nanotechnology, we're going to organize matter into a computer.' As the nanobots spread computer intelligence beyond our planet, the universe itself will awaken as if a giant switch is finally being turned on. 'The universe is not conscious - yet, but it will be'"
What.The Fuck! This is a good thing?!?! But is artificial intelligence the same as sentience?
"'Most have a conventional concept of a lifespan...if they move more aggresively, they can actually be quite healthy In another 15 years, we get to a tipping point.' By then, he says, we'll have the means to reverse-engineer 'the information processes underlying biology' - giving us the power to ensure our immortality."
I recall reading a similar article in Wired a little while back.
Aside from the obvious, that Kurzweil has never read the science fiction implications of his irrationally rigid predictions, or seen Terminator, and that he needs some serious grief counseling over the death of his father (over 20 years ago), I am struck by the paradox of his quest. He truly believes there is no problem that cannot be overcome through creative human thought. This might be true. It has at least been the impetus to many of humanity's amazing acheivements. Perhaps, but his quest operates under the assumption that mortality is a problem.
RESPONSE FROM A FRIEND:
when i was in junior high i would sometimes lie awake at night scared of what would happen to my consciousness after death, mostly that it would continue on. immortality scares me. the desire for such seems to be a result of fear of death, of the unknown, but i would say i can't think of anything worse than my consciousness continuing on forever and ever and ever...i don't think anyone can honestly comprehend eternity, making it kinda silly for someone to desire. although i suppose we do desire things we don't entirely understand all the time.
as for artificial intelligence being the same as sentience, man, i love (in a very selfish entertainment driven way) that this is still up for debate. still a part of the moral discourse that has entered into every aspect of society, including our lovely pop culture that you speak of. central to the recent battlestar gallactica themes, might i add, which goes to my selfish entertainment.
well basically i'm adding nothing to your post that you didn't already write, and write more eloquently, might i add. purely self-indulgent. i'll leave on a cliche note. mortality makes us human. though human nature is theorized and analyzed to the point of no return (which i am in no way complaining about as it is an interest of mine), i do hope we won't have to change that aspect of the definition.
Posted by little on Wednesday, June 03, 2009 - 7:22 PM
MY REPLY:
The greeks knew that mortality made us human, and the immortal gods envied that and the passion it propagated.
As for immortality of whatever it might be, it could not be an eternity, because at least it has a start. An eternity would extend to infinity, which has neither beginning nor end. I would suspect that if there was en eternal consciousness, it would be dealt in stages with only a dim concept of what came before and would come after. Perhaps we are already at a great length along that continuum, having birthed out of a different past into the present and dying into an entirely different future.
I prefer the concept that most fits with the nature of matter as composed of energy, being reorganized constantly constantly by Life, but always seeking entropy. A human being, and consciousness and even spirit, would be the energy we are composed of. It is unlikely that energy would maintain any level of unified organization after death, but would be given off in heat and consumed by organisms. These organisms do not inherit our being as we do not inherit the being of the organisms we consume, so our being must be diffused to no longer exist.
However, what of those moments before full diffusion. I would like to believe that dying is like a deep sleep that deepens to be un-plumbable and un-returnable. I would like to believe that those lat moments are in dream state and I know that dream state is neither limited by space no time. To our consciousness, Death is a dream that extends time beyond the maybe seconds a death takes, a surreal wrap up of our lives that is like a vortex (a swirling has always been a symbol of traversing levels of consciousness either way) down into what he have carried in our lives. Have you died with fears? This last dream might be filled with fear and rather hellish. Have you found some equilibrium in life? This last dream might be rather pleasant or at least a carrying on of the things you have loved. The dream as a St Peter projecting the state of your soul. And that dream fades away imperceptibly, as all deep dreams do without fear of end or what is beyond - which is nothing.
Posted by Nick on Thursday, June 04, 2009 - 9:53 PM
Fear of Death pt II: contemplating whist reading Dune
Thinking about the apparent, but I believe opaque dichotomy of death and life, I came on an analogy. Of course the nature of things is that everything is analogous.
Consider breathing
inhale
exhale
Intake life sustaining oxygen
Outtake (seemingly) static Carbon dioxide
Both are separate activities as we delineate them, but as far as the body is concerned the difference is perhaps not so clear. More importantly, in and of themselves, neither one is the act of breathing. To breath we must inhale and exhale.
I am reminded of the different applications of the words death and life. "Death" is active, while "life" is passive. Inhale and exhale are active, while breathing is a broad passive. Life is a thing that contains death as the degenerative aspect of itself, just as exhalation is the degenerative aspect of breathing. What word is there for the regenerative aspect of life - the inhale?
Life is at least twice as large as the part we call life, it is also death and who knows what else.
I don't know why Dune had me in this state of mind, perhaps the characters' solipsizing led me to do the same. Here is some lint from my navel gazing, anyway. And before you raise a stink, which people often due on the internet, let me tell you that in addition to usually being true, all analogy is eventually false. Consider that, then comment.
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Fear of death part III: Science!
After determing that it is just an elaborate ad machine for the labels, I have tried not to read Rolling Stone Magazine. However, I gotta take something into the john, and at work, it's all I've got. This month's issue contains a feature on Inventor Ray Kurzweil, the prophet of the singularity theory. The theory goes that technology will soon surpass human capacity for intelligence and at that point (of singularity) the two must merge, redefining life as we know it.
I don't even feel the need to refute his particulaly tech-heavy messianical vision. Even a lightweight like me can identify the logical, philosophical, technical and biological gaps in his staid prediction. What intrigues me is his purpose for arriving at this prediction, where the idea sits in our period of time and its place in our pre-agreed realities - an exagerated spike in a massive wave of our cultures paradigms.
His motivation seems to be a fear of death driven by the loss of his father 20 years ago. His belief in science is almost admiriably singular. There is no problem so great, he believes, that it cannot be overcome through application of creative human thought.
Some excerpts, mostly Kurzweil's own words:
"Death represents the loss of knowledge and information. A person is a mind file. A person is a software program - a very profound one, and we have no back-up. So when our hardware dies, our software dies with it....I've made an issue of overcoming death, and the strongest experience I've had with death is a tragedy.'"
Wow! This is today's paradigm for the mind - its a big computer. Is this true? I would venture not.
"'By scanning the contents of your brain, nanobots will be able to transfer everything you know, everything you have evr experienced, into a robot or a virtual reality program. If something happens to your physical body, no problem. Your mind will live on - forever....After 2045, Kurzweil predicts nanobots will replicate and spread throughout the tiniest recesses of matter, transforming the host - say, a tree or a stone - into a computational device. He calls this intelligent infested matter 'computronium, which is matter and energy organized at optimum level for computation. Using nanotechnology, we're going to organize matter into a computer.' As the nanobots spread computer intelligence beyond our planet, the universe itself will awaken as if a giant switch is finally being turned on. 'The universe is not conscious - yet, but it will be'"
What.The Fuck! This is a good thing?!?! But is artificial intelligence the same as sentience?
"'Most have a conventional concept of a lifespan...if they move more aggresively, they can actually be quite healthy In another 15 years, we get to a tipping point.' By then, he says, we'll have the means to reverse-engineer 'the information processes underlying biology' - giving us the power to ensure our immortality."
I recall reading a similar article in Wired a little while back.
Aside from the obvious, that Kurzweil has never read the science fiction implications of his irrationally rigid predictions, or seen Terminator, and that he needs some serious grief counseling over the death of his father (over 20 years ago), I am struck by the paradox of his quest. He truly believes there is no problem that cannot be overcome through creative human thought. This might be true. It has at least been the impetus to many of humanity's amazing acheivements. Perhaps, but his quest operates under the assumption that mortality is a problem.
RESPONSE FROM A FRIEND:
when i was in junior high i would sometimes lie awake at night scared of what would happen to my consciousness after death, mostly that it would continue on. immortality scares me. the desire for such seems to be a result of fear of death, of the unknown, but i would say i can't think of anything worse than my consciousness continuing on forever and ever and ever...i don't think anyone can honestly comprehend eternity, making it kinda silly for someone to desire. although i suppose we do desire things we don't entirely understand all the time.
as for artificial intelligence being the same as sentience, man, i love (in a very selfish entertainment driven way) that this is still up for debate. still a part of the moral discourse that has entered into every aspect of society, including our lovely pop culture that you speak of. central to the recent battlestar gallactica themes, might i add, which goes to my selfish entertainment.
well basically i'm adding nothing to your post that you didn't already write, and write more eloquently, might i add. purely self-indulgent. i'll leave on a cliche note. mortality makes us human. though human nature is theorized and analyzed to the point of no return (which i am in no way complaining about as it is an interest of mine), i do hope we won't have to change that aspect of the definition.
Posted by little on Wednesday, June 03, 2009 - 7:22 PM
MY REPLY:
The greeks knew that mortality made us human, and the immortal gods envied that and the passion it propagated.
As for immortality of whatever it might be, it could not be an eternity, because at least it has a start. An eternity would extend to infinity, which has neither beginning nor end. I would suspect that if there was en eternal consciousness, it would be dealt in stages with only a dim concept of what came before and would come after. Perhaps we are already at a great length along that continuum, having birthed out of a different past into the present and dying into an entirely different future.
I prefer the concept that most fits with the nature of matter as composed of energy, being reorganized constantly constantly by Life, but always seeking entropy. A human being, and consciousness and even spirit, would be the energy we are composed of. It is unlikely that energy would maintain any level of unified organization after death, but would be given off in heat and consumed by organisms. These organisms do not inherit our being as we do not inherit the being of the organisms we consume, so our being must be diffused to no longer exist.
However, what of those moments before full diffusion. I would like to believe that dying is like a deep sleep that deepens to be un-plumbable and un-returnable. I would like to believe that those lat moments are in dream state and I know that dream state is neither limited by space no time. To our consciousness, Death is a dream that extends time beyond the maybe seconds a death takes, a surreal wrap up of our lives that is like a vortex (a swirling has always been a symbol of traversing levels of consciousness either way) down into what he have carried in our lives. Have you died with fears? This last dream might be filled with fear and rather hellish. Have you found some equilibrium in life? This last dream might be rather pleasant or at least a carrying on of the things you have loved. The dream as a St Peter projecting the state of your soul. And that dream fades away imperceptibly, as all deep dreams do without fear of end or what is beyond - which is nothing.
Posted by Nick on Thursday, June 04, 2009 - 9:53 PM
29 May 2009
What's a synonym for slow?
Some much called for solipsism:
(called for by my therapist)
I am recognizing my pace. I am not fast, abrupt, quick or witty. I am deliberate ponderous, leisurely...
I am to make a religion of this.
I am to be my own mythos.
Each day is one thing. Each thing is significant to me. My mind is like a garden growing or a stew, slow to simmer. I am the crust of the earth is slow upheaval and erosion. I am tectonic plates of imperceptible shutterings. I am magma concealed.
I am a slow burn.
I am to stop letting myself be distracted by modernity to the cult of speed.
I am going to find a paying position that is benefited by this gift.
I am going to gird my time and my space and let people feast on me at leisure.
This world will not catch me in its whirlwinds. I am a stone with its own life force, holding warmth and coolness.
Enjoy Enjoin Engine in idle.
(called for by my therapist)
I am recognizing my pace. I am not fast, abrupt, quick or witty. I am deliberate ponderous, leisurely...
I am to make a religion of this.
I am to be my own mythos.
Each day is one thing. Each thing is significant to me. My mind is like a garden growing or a stew, slow to simmer. I am the crust of the earth is slow upheaval and erosion. I am tectonic plates of imperceptible shutterings. I am magma concealed.
I am a slow burn.
I am to stop letting myself be distracted by modernity to the cult of speed.
I am going to find a paying position that is benefited by this gift.
I am going to gird my time and my space and let people feast on me at leisure.
This world will not catch me in its whirlwinds. I am a stone with its own life force, holding warmth and coolness.
Enjoy Enjoin Engine in idle.
01 May 2009
On the Edge of Arcadia
It has been a turbulent week here in my Arcadia...
Thinking of my many postponed trips and plans laid - I wonder at the intent, the why. What is this desire to adventure,these impulses come from what? Teenage Hemingway obsessions? Overindulgence in epic tales? Esquire Magazine and Men's Journal, to Hemingway as porn is to sex- exaggerated shells of form.
I have somehow wrapped my mind around the concept of adventure as a test, a gauntlet throw down between a man and mortality. I have lusted after the clarity that comes from a call to adventure, a clarity that is a hope for adventures that are illusions. There has always lurked the notion that Combat is pure, that there are ultimate measures of a persons fibre and integrity. Spectres of Chivalry, false notions I entertain. I confess to delusional romanticism.
Obviously I doubt the veracity of these ligamental beliefs, but they retain their tensions within me. I attempt to examine my mythologies and their origins. I wonder at the universality I seek in things.
I find myself framing my life with the legends that have raised me, from the Illiad to Star Wars. But those types of Adventures have not found me yet - no such hero's call for me. Joseph Campbell made his life work as a mythologist the distillation of the hero's journey, but is it merely a thread in our literature or an application toward ourselves individually? Maybe culturally.
I wonder what his Hero's Journey was and what called him to it. He abandoned his doctorate, He traveled Europe, He went into his cabin for year long stretches. Were any of those it. It seems very passive to me as interesting as his life was.
Of course this is the easy slope of Being literal. The hero's journey would be an internal development, an introspective journey...but with External Cause. Right? What are those, then, for me? Wives, children, loves, literature...
Thinking of my many postponed trips and plans laid - I wonder at the intent, the why. What is this desire to adventure,these impulses come from what? Teenage Hemingway obsessions? Overindulgence in epic tales? Esquire Magazine and Men's Journal, to Hemingway as porn is to sex- exaggerated shells of form.
I have somehow wrapped my mind around the concept of adventure as a test, a gauntlet throw down between a man and mortality. I have lusted after the clarity that comes from a call to adventure, a clarity that is a hope for adventures that are illusions. There has always lurked the notion that Combat is pure, that there are ultimate measures of a persons fibre and integrity. Spectres of Chivalry, false notions I entertain. I confess to delusional romanticism.
Obviously I doubt the veracity of these ligamental beliefs, but they retain their tensions within me. I attempt to examine my mythologies and their origins. I wonder at the universality I seek in things.
I find myself framing my life with the legends that have raised me, from the Illiad to Star Wars. But those types of Adventures have not found me yet - no such hero's call for me. Joseph Campbell made his life work as a mythologist the distillation of the hero's journey, but is it merely a thread in our literature or an application toward ourselves individually? Maybe culturally.
I wonder what his Hero's Journey was and what called him to it. He abandoned his doctorate, He traveled Europe, He went into his cabin for year long stretches. Were any of those it. It seems very passive to me as interesting as his life was.
Of course this is the easy slope of Being literal. The hero's journey would be an internal development, an introspective journey...but with External Cause. Right? What are those, then, for me? Wives, children, loves, literature...
27 April 2009
Me and work, work and I
I have been a 40 hour a week worker since I was 17 years old. I had a union position at an industrial scale grocery store. For the most part, due to lifestyle necessity or ill perceived feelings of responsibility, I have maintained that work input for most of the last 13 years. I make less per hour now than I did at 18. This is the preamble to what has been a developing perspective on what I think I should be sussing out of life. An idea that stems from the known fact that TIME is the only un-replenishable asset.
My current position found me because I assumed the need to work a real job but was weary of selling my time so that someone (or something else) could make more money while viewing me as a liability. I wanted a position that provided the tainted lucre of subsistence to me while I provided an actual service of value to the community. I work with homeless youth, a position both fulfilling in its role and outcome as it is challenging and exhausting in its application. It does not really require special skill as it does special perspectives. I accepted the almost demeaning pay in exchange for a tacit flexibility of time. Our problem is perverse. As we have become more successful in mission, we have drawn more notice from "management", which means more investment in our mission. We are now the facilitators of many millions of dollars of donated funds - assets. We are now liabilities. Individuals who excel at their jobs are unsurpassed in their knowledge, are written off because their seniority demands higher pay. Newer individuals, who succeed unsupervised and under adversity - the unrewarded cogs and wheels, are nicked and gouged for minutes over and under. All this with a hearty expectation that each and every individual exemplify the Protestant work ethic wherein time off, paid or not, contractual or not, is cause for remonstration. Where the most inane underperformer is exalted and rewarded for a four year degree and punctuality.
I am ranting but there is a point. There is something wrong with this culture of work; something wrong with management school and human resource departments. Something wrong with viewing employees as liabilities and the first to be cut.
I am a lazy person but I love work. Where is the demarcation between good work and soul crushing labor? I love a task and a challenge. At my job, there is a special place for the more challenging clients, cannot decipher their own fear and helplessness and who hurl chairs through plate glass. I love someone saying fix this problem. Solve that riddle. I have been valued in every position I have had, and then something snaps. Why can I only take two weeks off(and even that!?!). You don't need to pay me for more. What does it matter that I am five minutes late or early if no one is inconvenienced?
In the army, we loved a challenge. I would rally around seven day workweeks and twenty hour days...when the task demanded it. But I would bristle at mindless downtime "productivity".
All I ask for is a reason to sell my time and a value for it. A financial value sure, but to have it valued is more.
My current position found me because I assumed the need to work a real job but was weary of selling my time so that someone (or something else) could make more money while viewing me as a liability. I wanted a position that provided the tainted lucre of subsistence to me while I provided an actual service of value to the community. I work with homeless youth, a position both fulfilling in its role and outcome as it is challenging and exhausting in its application. It does not really require special skill as it does special perspectives. I accepted the almost demeaning pay in exchange for a tacit flexibility of time. Our problem is perverse. As we have become more successful in mission, we have drawn more notice from "management", which means more investment in our mission. We are now the facilitators of many millions of dollars of donated funds - assets. We are now liabilities. Individuals who excel at their jobs are unsurpassed in their knowledge, are written off because their seniority demands higher pay. Newer individuals, who succeed unsupervised and under adversity - the unrewarded cogs and wheels, are nicked and gouged for minutes over and under. All this with a hearty expectation that each and every individual exemplify the Protestant work ethic wherein time off, paid or not, contractual or not, is cause for remonstration. Where the most inane underperformer is exalted and rewarded for a four year degree and punctuality.
I am ranting but there is a point. There is something wrong with this culture of work; something wrong with management school and human resource departments. Something wrong with viewing employees as liabilities and the first to be cut.
I am a lazy person but I love work. Where is the demarcation between good work and soul crushing labor? I love a task and a challenge. At my job, there is a special place for the more challenging clients, cannot decipher their own fear and helplessness and who hurl chairs through plate glass. I love someone saying fix this problem. Solve that riddle. I have been valued in every position I have had, and then something snaps. Why can I only take two weeks off(and even that!?!). You don't need to pay me for more. What does it matter that I am five minutes late or early if no one is inconvenienced?
In the army, we loved a challenge. I would rally around seven day workweeks and twenty hour days...when the task demanded it. But I would bristle at mindless downtime "productivity".
All I ask for is a reason to sell my time and a value for it. A financial value sure, but to have it valued is more.
26 April 2009
Some Manifesto work.
The Freedom Manifesto
BAKE BREAD
MUCK ABOUT
QUIT MOANING
STOP CONSUMING
START PRODUCING
BACK TO THE LAND
SMASH USURY
EMBRACE BEAUTY
IGNORE THE STATE
REFORM IS FUTILE
HAIL THE SPADE
HAIL THE QUILL
LOVE THY NEIGHBOUR
BE CREATIVE
DIG THE EARTH
MAKE COMPOST
DOWN WITH HEALTH
DOWN WITH SAFETY
DOWN WITH WORK
DOWN WITH PENSIONS
BE ALIVE
BE MERRY
Be Free!
Me builiding chicken coop
wife photographing garden in our yard
THE MANIFESTO OF THE IDLE PARENT
We reject the idea that parenting requires hard work
We pledge to leave our children alone
We reject the rampant consumerism that invades children from the moment they are born
We read them poetry and fantastic stories without morals
We drink alcohol without guilt
We reject the inner Puritan
We don’t waste money on family days out and holidays
An idle parent is a thrifty parent
An idle parent is a creative parent
We lie in bed for as long as possible
We try not to interfere
We play in the fields and forests
We push them into the garden and shut the door so we can clean the house
We both work as little as possible, particularly when the kids are small
Time is more important than money
Happy mess is better than miserable tidiness
Down with school
We fill the house with music and merriment
We reject health and safety guidelines
We embrace responsibility
There are many paths
More play, less work
children enjoying their own time
the idler
BAKE BREAD
MUCK ABOUT
QUIT MOANING
STOP CONSUMING
START PRODUCING
BACK TO THE LAND
SMASH USURY
EMBRACE BEAUTY
IGNORE THE STATE
REFORM IS FUTILE
HAIL THE SPADE
HAIL THE QUILL
LOVE THY NEIGHBOUR
BE CREATIVE
DIG THE EARTH
MAKE COMPOST
DOWN WITH HEALTH
DOWN WITH SAFETY
DOWN WITH WORK
DOWN WITH PENSIONS
BE ALIVE
BE MERRY
Be Free!
Me builiding chicken coop
wife photographing garden in our yard
THE MANIFESTO OF THE IDLE PARENT
We reject the idea that parenting requires hard work
We pledge to leave our children alone
We reject the rampant consumerism that invades children from the moment they are born
We read them poetry and fantastic stories without morals
We drink alcohol without guilt
We reject the inner Puritan
We don’t waste money on family days out and holidays
An idle parent is a thrifty parent
An idle parent is a creative parent
We lie in bed for as long as possible
We try not to interfere
We play in the fields and forests
We push them into the garden and shut the door so we can clean the house
We both work as little as possible, particularly when the kids are small
Time is more important than money
Happy mess is better than miserable tidiness
Down with school
We fill the house with music and merriment
We reject health and safety guidelines
We embrace responsibility
There are many paths
More play, less work
children enjoying their own time
the idler
16 April 2009
The sun did not shine. It was too wet to play. So I sat in the house all that cold cold wet day.
Though the weather had turned warm today and the wind relented, my day was cool and gloomy. My wife & housemates impetuously went to Six Flags Marine World. It was a spur of the moment adventure I could get into. I did not go - I went to bed sick and woke up sicker. They spent the day together in amusement; I spent the day dreaming fitfully and trying to watch some movies. I was aloof and grumpy. It is not so much a lost opportunity as an extension of a feeling of alienation from my roommates, which is further compounded by their perceptions of that feeling and their responses.It seems like their primary response is to avoid conflict with me by addressing my wife as my proxy. Grocery requests (I am house shopper), shared financial obligation, etc. She does not appreciate this. Neither do I.
The most recent incident occurred on the cusp of my illness and this jaunt, but seems to be a holdover from our last house meeting - how I loath house meetings! I have been planning, coercing, cajoling and negotiating my firstborn's birthday party for next Saturday. It is a sleepover so it must be on a Saturday. I am sure this was mentioned at the meeting. It was also mentioned at the meeting that my roommate wants to host a keg party fundraiser, to my vehement approval. No date was mentioned, but apparently it will be on the same evening and he is upset by the conflict. This is the problem for me. It is an end all problem for logistical reasons - you cannot host an 8 years old's sleepover and a keg party at the same time - and it is a problem for communication reasons. He has yet to tell me that he has a problem, but has gone through my wife twice.
Well that was a digression into the specifics of my day. I am ill and that has made me grumpy. I missed out on fun and that has made me disaffected. I have received this passive aggressive message and that has made me angry.
I did not want to talk to my wife. I did not want to talk to my best friend. I did not want to watch "Happy Go Lucky".
What is interesting to me in all this is the overall effect my mood had on my outlook. I have not shown yet where I went with it.
I was a scowling young misanthrope leaning into the street on my way to work. I was avoided by panhandlers and soliciters. I reflected on the entirety of my life and was not pleased. I cursed my past self for my choices. I considered the cross roads I had passed and wondered what routes led to those perpendiculars and how abrupt they might be. I hoped they were damagingly abrupt.
I am not exceptionally violent or destructive but I felt it then. I wanted things to burn behind me.
All this out of a grumpy illness and a roommate miscommunication
Someone has suggested recently that I might be manic-depressive or bipolar - whatever DSM II is calling it now. I don't have a convincing argument against that, other that it would not matter. A diagnosis would lead me nowhere, as I am not willing top be led my that.
What I think I was experiencing was a fallacy of interconnectedness.
The most recent incident occurred on the cusp of my illness and this jaunt, but seems to be a holdover from our last house meeting - how I loath house meetings! I have been planning, coercing, cajoling and negotiating my firstborn's birthday party for next Saturday. It is a sleepover so it must be on a Saturday. I am sure this was mentioned at the meeting. It was also mentioned at the meeting that my roommate wants to host a keg party fundraiser, to my vehement approval. No date was mentioned, but apparently it will be on the same evening and he is upset by the conflict. This is the problem for me. It is an end all problem for logistical reasons - you cannot host an 8 years old's sleepover and a keg party at the same time - and it is a problem for communication reasons. He has yet to tell me that he has a problem, but has gone through my wife twice.
Well that was a digression into the specifics of my day. I am ill and that has made me grumpy. I missed out on fun and that has made me disaffected. I have received this passive aggressive message and that has made me angry.
I did not want to talk to my wife. I did not want to talk to my best friend. I did not want to watch "Happy Go Lucky".
What is interesting to me in all this is the overall effect my mood had on my outlook. I have not shown yet where I went with it.
I was a scowling young misanthrope leaning into the street on my way to work. I was avoided by panhandlers and soliciters. I reflected on the entirety of my life and was not pleased. I cursed my past self for my choices. I considered the cross roads I had passed and wondered what routes led to those perpendiculars and how abrupt they might be. I hoped they were damagingly abrupt.
I am not exceptionally violent or destructive but I felt it then. I wanted things to burn behind me.
All this out of a grumpy illness and a roommate miscommunication
Someone has suggested recently that I might be manic-depressive or bipolar - whatever DSM II is calling it now. I don't have a convincing argument against that, other that it would not matter. A diagnosis would lead me nowhere, as I am not willing top be led my that.
What I think I was experiencing was a fallacy of interconnectedness.
14 April 2009
Well, here's what I was getting at last time -
I won't be going to Mexico, that messianic desert on a sea, like Galilee, at least to me. Oh I don't know. It wasn't fleshing out to what I hoped it would be. But now that's out. There must be somepace else to go. My dad suggested Tahoe, Pyramid Lake, and then Sacramento. We'll see.
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