vibinc

Over the past several weeks I’ve been finding myself thinking a lot about stuff. There’s a lot of stuff going on, actually more stuff than I can either mention or even want to mention, but it’s out there…somewhere.

When thinking about stuff, I often find myself wondering what other people think about the same stuff. These don’t have to be people involved in said stuff, but most of the time they are.

In wondering about other people and stuff, I find that I also wonder if the other people are even wondering about the stuff, or have considered it in any way. This is a pretty dark place to be really. I mean, the whole notion that people, involved in stuff that you’re involved in, not being interested enough in said stuff to even wonder about it is the kind of situation that leads to disaster.

I just got finished reading about Socrates in my Philosophy class and that’s got me to thinking about a lot of things. Socrates, as you may or may not know, was a persistent questioner. So persistent in fact that they made him drink the Hemlock because he asked too many inconvenient questions of too many people in too many high up places.

But I find myself wondering if I’m asking enough questions, and if they are the right ones, or if I’m taking too many things for granted and just moving along with these incorrect assumptions.

I ask a lot of questions, though not always in the company of others. I ask myself a lot of questions about everything I’m doing, and I wonder if I’m missing something or if I’m just supposed to be asking questions of myself about if I’m asking myself, or anyone else for that matter, the right questions.

It’s probably intellectual masturbation, but I do it.

Like right now, I’m wondering why the fuck I’m even writing this when I’m tired and just about over all of it. But then I come back to one of the things that has been with me since I was young, and that’s the idea that I may not always hit what I’m aiming at, but if I just keep shooting, aiming at that target, I will eventually.

I don’t know, I’m torn between multiple levels of excitement and hopelessness, and that’s a very fucked up place to deal with on an emotional level.

Maybe I’m just not dealing with things very well right now, maybe I’m overwhelmed, or maybe I’m questioning things to the point that they no longer have any real meaning, just an intellectual exercise that, like a cat and mouse, can be discarded once it’s been played with to death.

In any case, it’s been bothering me, a lot. I feel like I’m running out of knowing what to do. I feel adrift, and that feeling is growing on a day-to-day basis. I’ve tried “grabbing the bull by the horns” and I keep getting thrown. Am I not holding on hard enough, or should I just let the bull be, and deal with the consequences?

Either way, I’m likely to get gored.

At least if I try to “grab the bull by the horns” again and I get gored it’ll be on my terms rather than the alternative. That doesn’t instill much comfort, but at least you’re expecting it.

I guess that’s what I NEED to do, even though I’m tired of dusting myself off. Okay, here goes…

/end Doogie Howser music…

It’s been a long time y’all. I would say I’m not going to make any excuses, but that’s a bold faced lie. Truth of the matter is, there’s a lot going on in my world. So, now that the sun actually comes up before me, and I have some time to talk about what I’ve been up to, I guess I’ll take that opportunity.

First of all, as many loyal readers know, I’m in my second month of college. I’m really enjoying much more than I did the first time around some 18 years ago. That said, it’s a huge time commitment. I knew that it would be, but honestly, right now I can’t imagine taking more hours than I’m taking now and working the schedule I’m working. I just don’t know how some people do it, and I’m in awe of the ones that try, successful or not.

Things are going well, as far as I can tell. I got my first paper back in Philosophy and did better than I expected. I have some tests coming up, which is heightening my anxiety level a bit, but that’s mostly “first time” jitters, I think.

Spring Break is just around the corner, and instead of heading down to Daytona or Padre Island, I’ll be working my ass off here in Memphis trying to keep my finances from going further into the shitter. It seems that even though I’m a non-traditional student, I made too much money last year to qualify for anything but student loans, which I’m not too keen about taking out. I have a feeling that in the coming months, my objections to this will fade as my financial outlook gets more challenging.

Secondly, if you haven’t heard already, I have undertaken a new project with some friends. I’m really proud of it. Take a look around over there and if you like it, follow us on the Twitter, or the Facebook, or just subscribe to our feed.

I’m not abandoning this little enterprise, though it may seem like I am. I will still write some hyper local and technical stuff here, as well as some personal stuff as time permits and issues warrant.

Finally, I want to take this opportunity to mark a milestone. Six months ago, at Jackson Day in Nashville I ran into someone that I had met before on a few occasions. Since then, she and I have been spending a lot of time together and I couldn’t be happier.

I love you Ellyn, here’s to the past six months, and many more months and years together in the future.

Over the course of the past several months I’ve been reading and thinking and reading and listening and thinking some more about stuff. I haven’t written much because, quite frankly, I haven’t had much to say and I’m growing more and more frustrated at not only the way things are but the manner in which people try to effect outcomes to change things.

Maybe it’s my personal transition from a solidly middle-class income to poor college student. Maybe it’s the culmination of many things, but I’ve come to a conclusion…a truism if you will, that goes something like this:

Nothing you want to happen to you happens overnight.

Now let’s think about this for a moment. What events happen suddenly, or seem to happen suddenly? Car wrecks, deaths in the family, job losses, terrorist attacks…the list goes on. Short of winning the lottery, there is nothing I can think of that happens suddenly that you would wish upon yourself.

The truth is, even most things that seem to happen suddenly don’t necessarily REALLY happen that suddenly. It’s a perception thing. So if neither the majority of good or bad things that happen to people, or groups of people, or situations, happen suddenly, then what the hell am I talking about?

Imagine this. You roll a marble on a hardwood floor. That marble will likely travel in one general direction until something affects its travel. If the floor is slightly unlevel, it will drift if one direction or the other gradually, gaining speed as momentum takes it left or right. If there is an obstruction, it will stop suddenly or bounce off the obstruction, and likely turn left or right, depending on the conditions of the momentum that was carrying it forward. Sometimes, due to momentum, obstruction or conditions of the hardwood floor, it will just stop.

If you take the example of the marble traveling across the floor as a metaphor for anything: your life, your causes, etc., etc., then you want to make sure that your roll your marble on the flattest, least obstructed hardwood floor you can find to ensure that; 1. You get where you want to go. And 2. You get there in the shortest time/distance possible. That, at the very least, would be the smart thing to do.

But people often aren’t always very smart, and instead of looking at the lay of the land and rolling their marble in a direction or towards a goal using the least obstructed path, most people just hurl the marble out there, in the same way they always have, relying on the hope, or emotionally driven belief that because the desired destination of their marble is right and pure and true, that their marble will defy the odds and get where they want it to go.

Rarely does this ever happen.

By the same token, rarely is the floor a wide-open, unobstructed, flat hardwood floor. More often than not, for the more complicated things in life, it’s a bumpy ever-changing maze filled with all kinds of obstructions and conflicts and things that you never imagined. And more often than not, full well knowing this condition exists; we roll our marbles out there emotionally, instead of rationally, expecting some guiding hand, or the supernatural force of our righteousness or the righteousness of our cause to carry us to our destination. And more often than not, we fail.

Think about it in terms of something just about everyone has tried to do at one point or another…weight loss. You can do a crash diet, you can do the fad diet of the week, you can buy an exercise video or ridiculous device off of an infomercial, and all sorts of other things to lose weight, but in the end, most of us don’t keep that weight off because we emotionally took some kind of short cut to our destination and never REALLY arrived at the place we were really trying to get to, just a place that looked an awful lot like it. Then, a month, or six months later, we’re right back where we were, in the first place, and we feel bad about ourselves or whatever, and we give up, or lash out at circumstance, or any other number of emotionally driven reactions that really don’t get us one damn inch closer to our goal.

So what’s the problem? The real problem is two-fold: First, we’ve taken an abbreviated path to our “goal”, whatever that goal is. Second, the goal we’ve chosen is a shortsighted, temporary goal that ignores the reality that we should be working toward a maintaining a healthy lifestyle, rather than some ridiculous and largely meaningless “weight target”.

The truth of the matter is that whether we’re talking about marbles or whatever, we have to recognize and focus ourselves on REAL goals rather than the shortcuts, and there is a process involved in getting to our REAL goal. That process, even though it’s tried and true, is more often than not, rejected by people because it’s too hard or inconvenient or whatever it is to them. Every time we reject that process we put ourselves further and further, deeper and deeper on an island of delusion that we have created for ourselves, grounded in the belief that if we just believe hard enough, the hard work it takes to actually get shit done will fade away and we’ll get what we want.

So when I look at people, regardless of education, ideology, or any other of the human conditions that we live in, who are doing things to get things done by doing them in the way THEY want to, as if to enforce their will on the rest of us, rather than respecting the process, a tried and true process, of getting shit done, and they’re frustrated, or emotional or whatever they are because if people would just listen to them the whole world would be a better place, I find myself wondering just what the fuck they expected?

The process exists for a reason, and that reason is to protect and respect all of us from the small few of us who would, if we could, unilaterally enforce our will upon the whole of us, because “ if people would just listen to them the whole world would be a better place”, which, I think, is a pretty good definition of fascism, because we all know that as long as it’s OUR will, it’s fine, but if it’s SOMEONE ELSE’S will, it’s not necessarily fine, and that process is not immediate, but a long and winding and a huge pain in the ass, because if it wasn’t, it would actually suck worse for all of us because it would seem like an immediate change, and as I said at the beginning of this screed;

Nothing you want to happen to you happens overnight.

Got it?

See, you can keep doing what you’ve been doing and keep getting what you’ve always got. You can bitch and moan to friends and colleagues, and get nowhere. If you’re a little more industrious, you can go to your favorite locally owned craft store, and build a sandwich board, and bitch and moan publicly on a street corner and get labeled one of those “bitchers and moaners”. If you’re really creative and not a total dick, you can organize yourself into a group of like-minded people forming a “bitch and moan” club that takes comfort in the familiarity of its favorite brand of bitchiness and moaniness, but ultimately gets nothing done. Or, if you KNOW WHAT YOU REALLY WANT, you can educate yourself about the issues and the process, insert yourself into that process, focus your attention on the path most likely to get you where you want to be, and slowly, and patiently build consensus around this idea until it gradually and deliberately becomes the change you wanted in the first place.

This means you don’t just hurl your marble forward and pray you don’t run into any obstacles, but you deliberately direct your marble through the maze of the process an inch at a time, knowing that the path will take you both forward and backwards, left and right, all the while grounding yourself in that ultimate goal. By doing this, keeping your perspective, and most of all, exercising patience, you WILL get to that goal eventually, despite the setbacks, obstacles, trials and tribulations that come with anything in this world that is worth a damn.

You’ve got to stay focused, and that’s hard. You’ve got to be patient, and that’s hard. But most of all, you’ve got to control your marble, and that’s, by far, the hardest part of all of it. If you do, you’ll get the thing you wanted, and if you’re really good, you’ll want something more, because the perspective you gain from the journey will make you better, and in the end, that’s ultimately what it’s all about.

In an article in the Chattanooga Times Free Press, Governor Phil Bredesen is quoted about the current healthcare debate in Congress and President Obama’s reported decision to shift priorities to job creation:

“I think it had gotten a little off track, with the public being very, very concerned about the economy and jobs and the prospect of losing jobs, and the Congress off designing health reform to take place in the latter part of the next decade,”

This is relatively unsurprising considering the Governor’s past as a health insurance executive and his previous statements regarding the bills currently before Congress.

What is surprising is that the Governor, a Democrat, would find something positive in the Senate’s recent loss of a Democratic super-majority. I don’t care how “liberal” a Republican Scott Brown claims to be, it’s not a “good thing” for the party or the millions of people who are both currently without healthcare, or those who are in danger of losing their healthcare.

What I don’t get is why Governor Bredesen doesn’t see the imapct that Healthcare has on the job market or the economy at large. GM’s bankruptcy was due, in large part, to the weight of decisions about providing healthcare for it’s employees that were made decades ago, when insurance was a much smaller part of the economy.

In 2006, heathcare consumed 16% of the nation’s economic output. That’s a huge segment of the economy, and the costs effect the availability of jobs negatively. Even though employers have been shifting much of the burden on employees, most can ill afford the rising costs that are outpacing inflation at an alarming rate.

By focusing on healthcare, the Congress and President Obama WERE focusing on the economy and jobs. In fact, they were focusing on one of the most out of control parts of the economy.

Think about it like this. Few would argue that we live in a global economy. Most industrialized nations have some sort of national healthcare strategy. If we are to COMPETE on a global scale, we cannot expect our businesses to carry the load of out of control healthcare costs.

Both the House and Senate bills have a means to control costs, though in very different ways.

To be honest, I don’t give a DAMN which one gets passed, but it is critical that something get passed to slow down the rising cost of healthcare now. Not only for the health and welfare of our people, but also for the health and welfare of our economy.

That Phil Bredesen doesn’t see this just baffles me.

As Rep. Jeanne Richardson (D-89, Memphis) noted:

“I think the Democrats need to do whatever they need to get health care reform passed. Period. The end,” she said.

Rep. Richardson said having the U.S. House pass the U.S. Senate bill is “the right thing to do. I mean, look, this state is cutting quadriplegics out of TennCare.”

Maybe it’s not so baffling. Any administration that can propose to cut quadriplegics off TennCare, and any legislative body that thinks that’s ok, obviously has some kind of serious problem.

I guess they just don’t get it. From the looks of it, they never will.

It’s been almost two weeks since my last post, and even though no one asked, I thought I’d take a little time to talk about what I’ve been up to since the 14th.

Regular readers know that I’m in the midst of a pretty big life change right now. I am no longer traveling like I used to, which has it’s plusses and minuses, and on the 14th I started my first day of school since December 3rd, 1992.

Needless to say, this has been a bit of a shock to my system. For months I’ve been able to wake and sleep and eat and do pretty much whatever the hell I’ve wanted to whenever I’ve wanted to.

Ahhh, the benefits of self-underemployment…

This began to change on January 4th, when I started my “college job”. Sure it’s only 5 to 7 hours a day, but it’s structure that I’m not accustomed to. Add to that, my first day of school on the 14th, and the book buying, class getting to responsibility that I haven’t had in 17 years, and it’s been an interesting ride.

I’m not complaining. I know this is what I signed up for when I made the decision to go back, and I have no regrets. That said, the adjustment thus far has been pretty wild for me. The most jarring reality that I’ve faced thus far is time management. I’ve never been particularly good at it in the first place, and while I like to read and write and do all the things that my classes require, I haven’t been put in a situation recently where I have a deadline, other than self-imposed, for much of anything.

Then there are my personal priorities. I put a lot on myself, and much of that is slipping through the cracks. I don’t have the time to research, or write, or do many of the things that I’ve been able to do for the past several years due to my new schedule, and that’s been a source of frustration for me.

In my mind, I know that there is no way that I can keep up with school, adjust to my new schedule, and do all the things I did before without a pretty substantial adjustment period. Getting the rest of me to recognize this has been, and will likely be, more of a chore.

So, I guess the point of this is that I may be out of the loop for a little bit while I get it together. I’ll be back though, I promise. If this follows the pattern of most other declarations of this sort, I’ll end up posting a whole lot in a short time and make myself look like an idiot.

But now that I’ve said that, I probably won’t…

But now that I’ve said that… you get the picture.

Cheers!