Distracted from distraction by distraction

"We spend so much time with what we think matters that we don't really think about what really matters."

This thought has been with me for a long time. It has constantly resurfaced as I study philosophy. It can be seen in Heidegger, Tocqueville, Aristotle, and even Nietzsche. However, I am not going to write an enormous post showing how each one of those philosophers led me to this belief, but rather I want clarify what I mean by it.

So often we subject ourselves to long work days, mundane chores, and rather insignificant tasks. We are so busy distracting ourselves with distraction, that we don't know what to do with ourselves when we don't have a quest. We look for ways to be more efficient for efficiency's sake. We don't use microwaves so we can spend our leisure time philosophizing. We use them so we can spend more of our leisure time working to make more microwaves. In truth, thinking technologically, we have no leisure time.

The soul is empty without a root in the metaphysical, or even in the local world around us. Breathing in the air, smelling the roses, watching the clouds, or the mere act of walking helps root us in a reality made real by a hierarchical metaphysical foundation. Everything denotes there is a God. Regardless of how advanced your temporal conjectures are, they will always be lacking. So if we only focus on the newest, best, and fastest, we distract ourselves from the reality that we always fall short of the mark. There must be something better. Something needs to fill the void of our failure. We cannot find satisfaction in being infinitely dissatisfied. I cannot compete with the Joneses. I have to look up before I look sideways.

I don't say stop going to school, stop climbing the corporate ladder, stop fixing car engines and plumbing fixtures, but put it on pause. Know why you do it. Enjoy your relationships with friends, family, and God. Spend time thinking about the world in a particular way. Don't try to surmise the whole and make sense of it all with general ideas and theorems. Just try to understand what's important. What you can understand in your frame of reference.

Thinking about retirement

I took a test yesterday that measures your calender age versus your "actual age." It calculates how fast you are aging based on your eating habits, exercise habits, hereditary diseases, etc. And, guess what? I'm 8 years younger than the calender says! And, if that's the case, I just got my license to drive a car. But, on another note, that means it'll take me eight more years than the rest of you to hit middle age. Here's a link to the test.

Even though I now know how young I still am, I still can't keep myself from thinking about retirement. And, quite frankly I don't really want to retire. All the men on both sides of my family have pretty much worked up until their dying day. It'd almost be nice to be able to mark it on a Calender so I know when work will officially be over (at least in mortality). But, I can think of certain work impoverished situations that I certainly would not mind.

I would love to live in a cozy cottage overlooking the central California coast. I would have a computer, some pens, paper, surfboards, a garden, and a great kitchen. I could wake up and catch some waves, veg out on the beach a little bit with my special someone, then come back home and write while looking out on the water. Then I could split time with my garden and pull up a bunch of summer squashes, cherry tomatoes, and cucumbers and head back to my awesome kitchen and whip something delicious up. That, to me, would be ideal. I would feel accomplishment in writing, and yet still be relaxed and flexible enough to enjoy my twilight years. However, what it would have to imply is that I am good at writing, and that could be easily debated. But, jumping back to this dream scenario, I don't think it would have to be the central California coast. It could be Cape Cod, or the South Shore area of Massachusetts. It could even be Nova Scotia. Who knows? I think you get the point.

Trying to be as pragmatic as possible, what is your retirement scenario? Talk amongst yourselves.

My relationship with homework

Homework, you are so abusive. You drain my time, my precious moments of life. You seem to want me to hate you. Well I'm not giving in. In fact, I love you. And, I love you even more when I'm done with you. Just a couple hard long hours putting up with you, trying to please you and then I'm done with you. It's a daily affair. A bridge that I continually cross. On the one side is you, forcing me to monogamy, and on the other side is my life without you and your oppressive demands.

You entice me saying that spending time with you is healthy. You tempt me saying that you will increase my reservoir of knowledge and passion. I know better. It is I who do you. It is I who puts in the time. You are not responsible for anything. You are my responsibility. You're clingy, demanding, and I put up with you out of my own good will. Homework, you are my b*tch.

Homework. Soon we will part with one another. Your cousin work is so much better-looking and attractive than you. And, on top of that, she pays me.

Fear of Public Speaking

(Above image taken from this site)

I know some of you have heard of a top list of what people most dislike. Many of them go something like this:

1. Traffic

2. Work

3. Public Speaking

4. Death

It is an interesting list. People dislike public speaking more than death. A bit extreme? Perhaps. I however, am a very staunch outlier. I love public speaking. Public speaking is my superficial domain. When I stand up in front of a group I can be bigger than myself, gather attention with my inflection and pauses, and be lauded for my eloquence.  In common conversation with friends and family I cannot have the same dramatic effect. So I relish in it when I can get it.

On another note, I wanted to post the Schmidt Sting Pain Index of painful insect bites, that I'm sure most people would prefer to public speaking:

1.0 Sweat bee: Light, ephemeral, almost fruity. A tiny spark has singed a single hair on your arm.

1.2 Fire any: Sharp, sudden, mildly alarming. Like walking across a shag carpet and reaching for the light switch.

1.8 Bullhorn acacia ant: A rare, piercing, elevated sort of pain. Someone has fired a staple into your cheek.

2.0 Yellowjacket: Hot and smoky, almost irreverent. Imagine W. C. Fields extinguishing a cigar on your tongue.

2.x Honey bee and European hornet: Like a matchhead that flips off and burns on your skin.

3.0 Red harvester ant: Bold and unrelenting. Somebody is using a drill to excavate your ingrown toenail.

3.0 Paper wasp: Caustic and burning. Distinctly bitter aftertaste. Like spilling a beaker of hydrochloric acid on a paper cut.

4.0 Tarantula hawk: Blinding, fierce, shockingly electric. A running hair drier has been dropped into your bubble bath.

4.0+ Bullet ant: Pure, intense, brilliant pain.  Like fire-walking over flaming charcoal with a 3-inch rusty nail in your heal

Tarantula hawk image taken from this blog 

Brasil in lieu of a car

A couple of days ago I had a decision to make. It wasn't really all that pressing, but it was important that I make it. I had decided a few months ago that I would save some money to buy a car, then hopefully have enough to cover a trip to Brasil and save a bit in the bank. Well, recently I thought about how stupid buying a car right now would be. The only way I could make the original plan work would be to buy a POS car, which isn't really my cup of tea.


So the new dilemma was between purchasing a car or going to Brasil. On the one hand, a car would be nice to have because I could then go farther distances in a shorter amount of time. However, at the same time, gas is costing on average $4 a gallon and to be honest, I'd rather not have to pay another insurance bill and maintenance on an old clunker. And then I thought, "Wait a minute, I have a bike." Now, the bike is a BMX bike, not the all so popular mountain bike, but if I got it some new tubes, a new chain, cleaned the rust off and got a new comfy seat, it'd be fine for local travel. So that's exactly what I did. So all of a sudden, there was really no reason to get a car. I still have a little bit of school left, so I don't have a high-paying career yet, so the more I can put away the better.


This brings me to Brasil. The cost of my trip to Brasil would be only half that of buying a car, and I could pocket the rest. Not only that, but I've been telling my Brasilian friends for years now (3 as of yesterday) that I would come back down and visit them. So I thought it was about time to unravel the tapestry of excuses, hop on a plane for the first two weeks of August, and say hello. So the game plan is to work out in Provo until the 30th of July, get on a plane to DC (because if I leave from DC it costs me half as much in airfare), then on the 1st of August get on a plane bound for Sao Paulo, switch planes there and head to Maceio for the next two weeks. When I get back, my brother will just be getting back from Haiti, and we can either drive or fly up to Boston for a friend's wedding on the 23rd. Good plan? I think so. But certainly a busy one.

I want a dog.

I've thought about this for years now. It has been pent up inside of me for longer than I can remember (and it's not an admission about being anything other than straight). I want a dog. All my life I have been able to have pets. I've had lizards, fish, birds, crustaceans, anemones, turtles, frogs, toads, and insects. I've had them all. I used to catch them in the creek by my house in Virginia, or buy them and make elaborate zoo-like enclosures with all of my allowance and landscaping money. But you know what initially caused me to have all of these exotic pets? It was because my mom was allergic to dogs. Somehow however, she allowed us to have a cat even though she's allergic to them, but her claim was that a cat doesn't need as much socialization as a dog. Which, in part, is true. However, it was tough. I mean you just don't get the same thrill and fun time playing with a 4 1/2 foot Savannah Monitor lizard or a Russian tortoise. A dog is man's best friend and no reptile or fish will be able to replace him.

All that being said, I've been thinking more about the prospect of owning a dog now that I am getting close to graduating from college and moving out on my own. However, I am sort of on my own, 2,000 miles away from the family, so I've been thinking, "Why not now?" Well, it just so happens that my rental agreement doesn't permit me to have pets, and if that weren't enough, my room mate Kevin claims that he "hates dogs." How can you 'hate' dogs? How can you hate anything? To hate, you have to have loved or cared for that which you hate in some way, and felt betrayed. Somehow I think it's more shallow than that for my room mate. I think he just wants to hate dogs to piss me off. And guess what? It's working. But, on a more positive note, the agreement I signed with my landlord expired and I haven't signed a new one. I still have a rental agreement, but it does not have anything on it that says I can't have a pet. And, what's more, we've been baby-sitting a neighbor's beta for a while now. Beta's are so close to dogs.



I'm really considering it. I've always wanted a bulldog.




It would serve as a good foot rest, door mat and a calm companion inside the house. But then I also like the idea of an active dog that can catch frisbees, outrun me from time to time and that I can wrestle with. Bulldogs don't strike me as that kind of dog. So I think maybe I should get two dogs. The bulldog for my down time and work around the house (of course he can play outside too), and maybe an australian shepherd or blue heeler for my more intense outtings.



I don't know. Maybe two dogs is too much. Maybe I should stick with one. I just don't know. I've never had a dog, so the whole dog world is new to me. I do know that having two would give them more companionship when I have to travel, or go to work, but still, I just don't know. Thoughts?

Time to Vent

I have to spill it. I will not cite names or the specific issues, but I am pretty peeved. And that is putting it lightly. Now, you may think I'm just a push-over given my previous posts, but I am anything but. I pride myself in hard work, good work and lots of it. I believe that to such a degree that I have been working three jobs, working graveyard shifts, and been driving many miles to get from place to place.

Whether you think I'm a punk, or a cocky, self-absorbed jerk or not is not my concern. If you think that way you don't know me. I love my God, my family and my country in that order. However, as of late I have spent more time attempting to give myself a "leg up" professionally. I am happy with 2 of my 3 jobs. The other, I recently was told I would not receive any further work. It was a relief to me because I disagreed about how the business was being run, and how I was being compensated. However, having stated my reasons of disagreement, I received a diatribe email this morning from my employer telling of past wrongs of when I worked for him a year ago. I had felt that those had been resolved, but they resurfaced so he could attempt to create a pattern of non-compliance and ineptitude. Of course he spun the truth to his side, neglected the amount of good work I had done for him and failed to drudge up any of the late payments, bad communication and mistakes on his side.

But such is life. I still respect him as a person, but as a businessman I question him. Of course I could only expect an unreasonable tirade from him, being a lawyer, but I most certainly refuse to hire him as counsel in the future nor will I be able to recommend his services to my friends and family. I have come to several important realizations as a result of this recent dispute. I should have already thought about this, but having friends as employers/employees can be risky business. Often times it can become hard to reconcile after a falling out. I will say no more.