Resolutions are for Jerks
Mr James Brown Jr got me thinking earlier today with his "post super bowl resolutions" he posted. Normally I'm not big on New Year's resolutions, I like more random resolutions- I feel like they stick better, so here are a few:
#1) Try to be a nicer dude. It seems to me I lose my patience a lot more easily than I used to these days. We all have our bad moments and February weather certainly doesn't help even if you're not the type to get seasonal affective disorder, but if I've been a jerk to or around you in the past- I'm sorry and I'm going to try and do better.
#2) Dial back some cynicism. Conan's final words on his Tonight show got me thinking about this, and while I consider myself a realist I'm going to try and see things as they are but try and lose some of the edge I tend to have. Something that really bothers me about the social networking sharing craze is it does highlight just how negative a lot of people let themselves be, and I'd rather try to be positive.
#3) Get better at staying focused. It seems like I used to be able to keep focused on even the silliest tasks. I used to get a kick out of being really fast at restocking the shelves when I worked at hollywood video, and I don't seem to have the ability to hunker down quite like I once did. I let myself get distracted too easily, and I need to improve on that whether it's at work or in my mini training or in practicing music or knocking the rust off of my blog or whatever.
Anyhow, this is not fishing for compliments or anything I'm looking for a big response on, just something I wanted to share that called for something longer than a twitter post or facebook status. If I'm doing something against the spirit or the letter of the above feel free to call me on it, I'm just some jerk trying to make it in this world.
(P.S. watch Chuck, it's an entertaining throw away show and however cheesy it may seem watching it makes me want to be a nicer person almost every episode, it contributed to #1, ha.)
Tick, tock.
Four years later and I can't sleep after this result either.
I am an unabashed politics junkie- I don't really go out of my way to discuss politics, but over the past 10 years or so I've turned into somebody that follows every excruciating bit of minutiae of our great experiment. But, I'm no sycophant. I tend to agree with Democrats more overall, but the Democratic party is not my party.
I remember that night in 2004 after an election I cynically participated in, voting for a candidate I had talked myself into but didn't really believe in. Four years after an election I participated in but was still learning what it meant to be the news hound I have become, and four years after an election that took place in what seems like a different world and in many respects did. That night in November 2004 I felt sick. Rove's lasting Republican majority was a reality, and another slim majority passed another mandate for an administration I disagreed with on every major policy point. I couldn't sleep.
Tick, tock.
The political pendulum swings in this country, and will continue to do so. However, this is not a pendulum that swings in two dimensions. I can see vividly in my mind the Foucault's pendulum at the Indiana state museum that stuck in my mind more than anything else on the many trips I took there on a child. It swings in three dimensions to demonstrate the Earth's rotation- and this time it may not be swinging right at my individual peg, but it is swinging my way.
Barack Obama, a man I had never heard of until the keynote speech of the DNC four years ago, has been elected president of the United States, and it is still sinking in. I remember watching him that night and thinking 'that guy has a bright future' and wondering how he would prove disappointing over the years until maybe he ran for president in 2012 or 2016.
When he announced his candidacy this time, I supported him skeptically, but with a sliver of optimism. I never truly believed he'd have a shot. But something about his message and campaign hooked me still. I've never been happier to have been wrong.
This election has been a perfect storm, but one that has resulted in a clear message being sent- not a drawn out dogfight marred by recounts and allegations of fraud and caging. It is a mandate, and one I believe President Obama will not overreach and squander, but use wisely.
There's a reason I believe in the man, and it's not his campaign policy platform. It's because he's always been pragmatic and realistic in almost every chance I've had to see past the campaign to the man. Even when he's taken stances I disagree with even strongly, I can see his reasoning and respect it.
He will anger some of his base with some decisions he makes. He will not treat White House appointments solely as rewards to dole out to the true believers. He will make many decisions I like, and if he strays from that I will criticize him. But, I do not fear for understanding during an Obama administration.
I take no joy in being correct about my gloomy temperament in forecasting the future four years ago. I think George W Bush has mishandled quite a few things in his second term, but some things were forces of nature. He has achieved some positive things as well, especially since '06, even if some steps were taken much later than necessary.
But, the president is like the quarterback- they get all the credit, and they get all the blame. The economy was headed for the reckoning at some point as a result of the American lifestyle and our collective economical irrational exuberance from the poorest citizen up the wealthiest. It might have been slowed or accelerated but it was coming eventually. The water has withdrawn, and we now face a tsunami of unknown size approaching that will test the mettle of this nation. I have faith in our collective ability to fight on and endure, and return stronger even. The president does not fight on, the nation fights on led by the president.
The deep wound caused by our nation's original sin got its largest bandage yet tonight, but it the wound itself will linger on for at least another generation. There is a rift politically between a lot of people tonight, but a bridge can be built even as our ideological differences remain. One man can not do it himself, but he can do his best to point us in the right direction.
Above all other things we now have our great chorus of voices led by one that remembers that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself. We will stand up and fight the very real dangers of this world head on. We will assess frankly the depth of the great challenges we face on energy, the economy, and the environment. We may stumble, and we may be wounded, but at last we have someone to remind us that we are a great nation of great people, and that we are not afraid.
I have always had faith in this country and its ideals. That faith has been tested in the past, and going forward it will almost certainly be tested again- maybe even very soon. The pendulum will eventually swing in another direction. But, just like in one of Einstein's dreams about time- this moment has a decent chance to last longer than others.
While I breathe, I hope.
2 Legit 2 Quit
Well here I am with my fancy new website, with my own hosted blog powered by WordPress, with syndication feeds powered by FeedBurner. Hooray! I feel like I'm now officially a king nerd, what with a main website that has actual content on it. I'm planning on always having the blog up front, but toying with a couple of side projects in Python and / or Ruby on the side with the same domain.
I have several ideas for new posts coming up, but like the infamous (at least to me and possibly two or three other people) grape Mr. Misty review, I'll have to sit down and write them soon or they'll vanish forever. Since I don't want to cannibalize the content of said posts here, I'll leave you with an idea I've been working on recently:
A line of designer purses, priced more modestly than Coach, named Dauber.
Passion of the Craig
Last weekend I was involved in one of those late night philosophical conversations that pop up occasionally, this one involved the subject of having a passion in life and what exactly that means. As a result of this conversation I realized that I don't really have a capital P level 'Passion' as most people define it, and I also realized I'm perfectly fine with that.
Part of the discussion revolved around how my friend and bandmate's one driving focus is music- it's all he wants to do with his life and monopolizes most of what he's thinking about, and my drive in no single area is anywhere near as strong as that. There was some discussion of 'passion envy,' and while I do admire that sort of singular drive, and recognize that it's responsible for the great art that I love so very much, I don't necessarily wish I had it.
I love to play music, and I'd like to get much better at both playing and writing and learning new instruments, but barring a life crisis or some huge shift of luck it will probably remain a hobby I spend an unusual amount of time and money on. In a way, I'm patterned after Sponge from Salute Your Shorts. I love to read and absorb as much information as possible on every possible subject- music, current events, politics, science, technology, literature, stupid trivia, everything. Like Depeche Mode, I just can't get enough.
If anything I don't have a 'Passion' because my passion is spread too thin across too many pursuits, but I like it that way. I love to write even though most of my writing is on this blog that probably gets just a few readers. I love to try and get back into shape even though the past couple years have shown that I'm not very successful at it. I will keep slogging my increasingly bad knees to the gym at irregular intervals. I do have the ability to focus intently on a pursuit, but I'm not as astute at honing that focus on more than one thing at a time. But, I think part of that reason is that my brain is always seeking that next new thing to whet its appetite, and I think for me that'll do just fine. I'm happy enough being a jack of all trades, close to a master of a few.
The other, intertwined subject of this conversation was how we as individuals are going to be remembered. Without a driving passion to create something truly great, how am I going to leave a legacy? I think every philosophy has something to lend to the idea of leaving something behind for those still on this mortal coil after someone is shuffled off of it, and I put a lot of credence in the idea of making a mark and being remembered. However, my thinking on this in the past few years seems to be influenced by two quotes, the first of which is from a speech by Carl Sagan in regards to the picture at the top of this post:
We succeeded in taking that picture [from deep space], and, if you look at it, you see a dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever lived, lived out their lives. The aggregate of all our joys and sufferings, thousands of confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilizations, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every hopeful child, every mother and father, every inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every superstar, every supreme leader, every saint and sinner in the history of our species, lived there on a mote of dust, suspended in a sunbeam.
The second quote is one that one of my oldest friends likes to use that is actually old Honest Abe quoting an ancient eastern society, although Wikipedia says the origin is attributed in a few different places:
It is said an eastern monarch once charged his wise men to invent a sentence, to be ever in view, and which should be true and appropriate in all times and situations. They presented him with the words, 'And this, too, shall pass away.' How much it expresses! How chastening in the hour of pride! How consoling in the depths of affliction!
Both of these statements have shaped my personal belief that eventually the greatest accomplishments in this lifetime will be swept away, but if anything that drives me to try and accumulate the knowledge and create whatever creative works I can and share them with people I care about while I've got my shot.
I know many people will draw many different conclusions from that sort of an idea and I'm also aware it's nothing revolutionary in a theological or philosophical sense, but it gives me a bit of direction. I am extraordinarily thankful for the creative geniuses, a couple of whom I've written about in previous entries, who often destroy themselves under the weight of their own passion for their art or their science- without them there would be much less love to spread around.
In the end I realized my goal is to end up as a less literal, somewhat higher-brow version of Earl Hickey. I've got a quite a ways to go, but I suppose that can be my 'Passion.' Given how things have been going recently for me, I need to be a bit more proactive, but personally I think it's good to take stock of that personal philosophy occasionally and get re-centered.
Chasing the Rennaissance
My entire life I've had two great loves outside of my interpersonal relationships, science / technology and the arts. Both have encompassed a lot of different areas that expand in some areas and wane in others, but both remain constant on a base level.
Since I have chosen to make a career out of a specific aspect of technology (software development), I have been neglecting the arts a bit. Not completely, of course. I wrote the occasional myspace blog, I go through the occasional reading binge, I play and listen to an awful lot of music, etc. But, the goal of this blog is to step outside of the walled gardens of social networking and write about things that I find interesting just for fun, mostly falling under the umbrella of the technology and / or the arts.
I've always wanted to be a renaissance man before I knew what the term meant or before I had any idea who Danny DeVito was. This new blog is an attempt to brighten up my slightly tarnished writing skills indirectly, as well as maybe providing something interesting to somebody somewhere, but I'm aware of the odds of that. I'm hoping to level out my personal see-saw a bit even if not a single person subscribes to my feed.
Anyhow, I'll probably be writing about my occasional tech projects, my band, books I'm reading, movies, television, a little bit of sports, the occasional excitement and intrigue associated with the glamorous life of a software engineer, an odd bit of amateur punditry, and who knows what else. I'll try to keep the echo chamber crap to a minimum, but I'm mostly a doofus so who knows.