Category: life

Still Alive…

What things in your own life have you found yourself taking the easy route by collecting stuff instead of time and energy? For me it’s been writing and illustration. I’ve collected piles of stuff that should be used to better my craft but have still yet to put the effort into it.

What happened?!  My last post was months ago and since then the world has become a different place entirely.   New President, new Economy, new Job,  new Year.  Let’s take those in order:  I’m hopeful, but not too much.  I’m grateful I have a job and thinking about what positive experiences I can have in a down economy.  I’m excited about it and looking forward to working hard.  New year’s are much like the ones before them, except I’m older.

I’m back at the Capitol working in the Speaker’s Office as a legislative consultant for the Democratic Caucus.  I’m also been appointed to a city commission here in Davis.  The Historical Resources Commission reviews the historical assets of the city and reviews petitions to change and alter them before they go to the city council.  This is the first time I’ve actively pursued civic duty and it’ll be interesting to see how the city’s commissions work and interact with the city council and community.

As I have the time I’ll be making some changes to the site, updating the various sections in an attempt to give the site a more centralized theme and purpose.  Since my interests are so eclectic, you can still expect to see peculiar posts here at times.  Don’t get your expectations up, this is going to happen slowly.  I’m pretty busy with work and living my life.  Anyway on to the actual reason for this post:  Dilettantism!

I’ve commented multiple times over on Gamestooge about music rhythm games, Wii Music, Guitar Hero, and Rock Band, and how they don’t help people learn how to play or appreciate music more.  If anything introducing these games to children and young adults will distract them from learning the skills necessary to play music and/or turn them off to the difficulty inherent in the task as the games will difficult are easy enough to master and memorize while learning piano, guitar, drums, any instrument really is a difficult endeavor.  I’ve been having trouble putting these thoughts into words but I’ve found a great article by Rob Horning about the very same topic that is worth the read.  The problem as he sees it and the one that I completely missed is that in our consumerist world is that we’ve largely replaced mastering of a topic or area with collecting stuff regarding it!  We’ve replaced personal accomplishment with personal collections.  Instead of learning the ins and outs of music, we just collect music.  Instead of absorbing and mastering philosophy, or history, or calligraphy, or anything, we buy things that are about them and then point to these collections of stuff as a sign of our mastery/expertise without ever having to invest the time and energy that is necessary to actually master them.

Just a thought.  What do you think?  Are these just games?  Or indicators of a decline in our culture’s ability to commit?  What things in your own life have you found yourself taking the easy route by collecting stuff instead of time and energy?  For me it’s been writing and illustration.  I’ve collected piles of stuff that should be used to better my craft but have still yet to put the effort into it.

Long Time No Post, Election Thoughts

I’m  still alive, it just so happened that I was very busy running the campaign of Mark Johannessen, who was running for mayor of West Sacramento, we lost.  When I took the job I really had no idea what all was involved with running a ground campaign.  Working on one as a volunteer does little to prepare you for all the stuff that goes on in one of these things.  I’d have been even more overwhelmed if the campaign hadn’t of had the services of a very good consulting firm (from what I hear, what do I know about political consulting?).

So, that explains my long absence, While I was busy trying to get my candidate elected the rest of the nation got Barack Hussien Obama elected!  I’m optimistic that perhaps some positive changes will occur in the United States, though expectations for our President-Elect are through the roof, and the crises he’ll be facing on day one are enough to bury the greatest of Presidents.  If I had a wish list of the things I’d like to see happen in the next four years it’d look like this:

  1. End the War on Terror, roll back all the laws passed because of it that have infringed on civil liberties
  2. End the War of Drugs and the militarization of our peace keeping forces (the police/firefighters/EMTs)
  3. Insure the Internet remains free and unregulated
  4. Re-examine the Fairness Doctrine and the consolidation of media, or free the airwaves!
  5. Stop growing the military-industrial complex
  6. Start providing policy that helps the majority of Americans as opposed to the privileged few
  7. Look into re-regulating of banks and credit markets,  a balance between the complete unregulation of the early ’20s and contemporary times and the over regulation of the late ’70’s

The only one of these I see happening soon is a scale back of the War on Terror, as to an end of it… Doubtful.  So, as a Democratic Progressive where do I go from here and what do I put my time and money into?  I’m thinking about applying for the grand jury here in Yolo County and trying to use it as it was originally intended:  protecting citizens from the government and trying to take it away from prosecuters and judges who see it merely as a rubber stamp for their actions… Speaking of activism, the greatest disappoint for me was the passing of Proposition 8 (and similiar bills in other states) and the loss of civil libertiess to homosexuals.  This bill is bigotry, dress it up however you like, and homosexuals and progressives are going to sit down as rights are denied to them.  I’m sick of hearing about tradition as well.  “Tradition” generally means backwards, patriarchal, and based on nothing more than silly old stories.  As a nation we’ve overcome traditional ownership (slavery), traditional suffrage (male property owners), traditional government (monarchy, oligarchy), and I look forward to overcoming traditional marraige.

It’ll be interesting to see where we go from here, as to moving away if things don’t work out just how I’d like, where would I (or you) go?  I’m an American, this is where I live, this is where my forefathers lived, It’s my duty to them and my progeny to make here a better place.

Next post won’t be so heavy, promise!

Getting back to Thinking – Part 1 – Time

Help you find some time

Remember when you were a child? Well skip a few years ahead, I can’t remember much of my childhood at all. Remember when you were a teenager? Remember all the thoughts you had?  All the thoughts you thought, all the moral, ethical, philosophical quandaries you deliberated with yourself in your head? All of the things you solved. You solved a lot and you shared it with your friends, and together you solved a great deal more!  When you took your thoughts to another adult though, one older than you, they were disregarded. Superficially investigated and then thrown away… why?  When I was a teenager I didn’t know why and it seemed awfully unfair… then I graduated from high school, got into college, began working and guess what? I stopped having those thoughts, I stopped being torn by ethical dilemmas and philosophical debates with myself and I stopped sharing with my peers.

I think I know why and how that happened, I think I know why “grown-ups” and adults don’t listen to teens.  It isn’t because we know any better, or have valuable life lessons, or whatever bullshit you were given or are now giving out. No, its because I don’t, and most other adults don’t, think anymore!  We simply don’t have the time… we’re too busy working, or pursuing our careers, or work on ourselves, or trying to relax, you can insert whatever it is you do, or see your peers doing.  When was the last time you didn’t have to worry about anything and could just think…

Been quite awhile hasn’t it?

So how do you find these thoughts?  It comes down to time. As a youth, as a teenager you had a lot of time… Time to think thoughts, follow chains of them, reject hypothesis after hypothesis and then synthesize your results from dozens, hundreds, or thousands of little conversations in your head into a cogent (mostly) theory.  All that takes time though, and once you’ve left school, and left home, time becomes a commodity more valuable than gold. So valuable is it now that careerists – those stuck on the corporate or free-lance treadmill are trying to find a way to convert their money back into time! My guess though is that you have a lot of time, you just don’t realize how much of it gets wasted.

First you need to find time then. Where?

Like I said, you probably have mcuh more time than you think you do, you just don’t know how or where you’ve spent it. Here is where something I like to call a time budget comes in.  Just like a normal bugdet, which takes expenses, cash flow, debots and credits a time budget tracks where and how you spend your time.  Keep a time journal for a week, noting how long you spend doing any item, or nothing, after keeping meticulous track of how you spend your time analyze it.  Where are you spending more time than you’d like to?  Where are you wasting time?  How better can you manage it? Once you’ve found areas of improvement, act!  Stop spending so much time in front of a screen (TV, PC, or other).

Once you’ve found the time (and you will!) it’s time to start thinking about what helps you think most!  Which is what the next post on this topic will be about.

Helpful links for finding time:

Finding Time – Stepcase Lifehack

Reclaim your Time – Zen Habits

Finding Time – In Context

A Small Plug

Hey I pimp myself!

for my work, the creative kind.  I have a page at DeviantArt where I’ve posted some photography, short stories, and poetry.  It’s mostly poetry at this point, but hey give it a look and live a comment.

DeviantArt page

I’m sure I’ll be updating here soon…

%d bloggers like this: