Yet another failure & its lessons

I can save some time immediately by ruling out any behavior involving self-hatred because it is a cop-out, it lacks dignity, it wastes time, its a bit self-indulgent, dramatic and it resembles the behavior exhibited by clients. Plus, I am going to die anyway so any issue up until then is (at its most basic nature) about time management.  The thing to do is start with the baseline and that would work as follows:

1) What do I encompass? Well, I’ve been pretty good as an administrator, and good as tech support/helpdesk. I sing well enough to get paid scale. I am a good husband and a good cat owner. I write fiction well, but haven’t gotten to the point of marketability yet. I write non-fiction a little better than fiction.  I  am kind, well-educated, polite most of the time and I like kids.  I am interested in gradschool, but I’m kind of lazy and I procrastinate at a professional level. I can fight effectively in a self-defense kind of way. I don’t seem to have that much trouble surviving, but excellence and real success, as well as achieving any big goals are proving stubbornly elusive.  

2) What do I want- I need to get some clarity here.  I want to be able to invest and gain my independence, but mostly in terms of being able to live on interest income. I don’t really have Champagne tastes, I just want control over my time. I have a pretty specific idea of the number I need to get to and how to get there, but it will take some time. Am I willing to sacrifice all to get there? Am I willing to run myself into the ground to make it? No. But on the other hand, I don’t need it to be easy.  In essence, I am sure there is middle ground here.   

3) What next- it seems to be the middle ground. I am not looking for CPS, but on the other hand I need to do slightly better than temping. I think there might be something in between, maybe not as tough as CPS, but a little more challenging than temping. I guess anything permanent administrative , with holidays, no significant overtime or travel, paying around 35 is great. If I can relate it to something I am into, it might just work. If it’s out there, I’ll find it and apply. My resume is a bit f***ed up though, I’m going to have to go functional with it. Putting it pragmatically, if anyone takes it, it’ll likely be the right fit….In retrospect, I should’ve taken Sotheby’s offer, but there’s no going backwards now. I have some ideas. If it doesn’t work out either, that’s fine too, I’ll deal.  

Thoughts on the MSW & Social Research

I’ve been thinking about graduate work and how it might be worthwhile to look at the aspects of the system that perpetuate the system the way it is. As I spend my days dealing with the issues that Caseworkers come to grips with, it has come to my attention that I need to look at what the root causes of these things are. Obviously, there is a correlation between lack of education and crime, obviously problem families create more problem families, plus a nearly complete failure of the system itself to fix any of its problems on a permanent basis. If I can apply the triple hammers of history, scholarship and creativity to the system, plus come up to speed on the current thought, I may just be able to create some serious change. Also obviously, we don’t want to throw out the parts of the system that do work, at the risk of backsliding further. Also, we want to let go of the mythology that there was a point in the past that was better, or purer, I know enough now to not even pursue that route. The Industrial Revolution, the Information Revolution and everything that happened from WWII forward cannot be undone, and there were some gains as far as Civil Rights are concerned, gains as far as technology goes, some advancement in political, ecological and spiritual thought, (the New Age) so there is a structure to build on. What needs to be found is a philosophical and cultural tipping point, something Gladwellian that turns the majority culture on its ear a bit, but something more permanent and long lasting than previous efforts in this direction. I am looking at Intentional Community, but on a model that would spread virally throughout the Americas, Europe and Asia. It has to be something that anyone can do, an easily duplicable approach, a simple set of principles and actions that can (let me go on record yet again) UNPLUG the war machine, big oil, and unfortunately but necessarily Wall Street to a certain extent. I am thinking of something like the part of Atlas Shrugged where all the movers and shakers strike against the parasitic Communistic system and create their own community. This would be a major withdrawal of energy from that which is destroying the culture, the planet and the economy. It would most likely be a new, synergistic combination of existing movements. I have written about this before, but need to work out the details needed to implement it. I found a like-minded soul that has made more progress in this direction. I think if I combine the work he has done so far with some additional research and some money, we could move into creating a prototype community. Then the second part of the plan would be to publicize it as widely as possible.

Wisdom Literature

It seems that most mystery schools (even Discordianism) seem to have a thing in common: namely the stage where the ego is transcended or annihilated, or maybe just outgrown. I have a vision that it is like losing some vestigial organ or shedding skin, or just surrendering to the universe in general. There seem to be distinct stages involved. First when I failed at singing, I had to change the concept of what my self was. I then discovered how little what people thought actually mattered, and at the same time had a few other insights. It seemed inauthentic and highly dishonest to allow any idea of ’what should be’ control my life.  The long and the short of it winds up being that I am the decisions I make with regard to how I use and respond to energy.  I perceive that I am the energy of perception within a discrete point of awareness. Arica seems to picture this as a dot in a square, I see the dot as an eye, but it could just be perception in general with the square as that which is perceivable in the universe by human form.  If everything is just detail on top of that basic framework, then that changes the nature of the things I am concerned about. It creates a reflexive rejection of that which is ephemeral and worthless because I then become jealous of the energy consumed by the act of perceiving it, in terms of my attention. Then, the matter of philosophy and how to approach the act of consciousness becomes axiological in terms of energy- of all the information and energy coming at us on a daily basis, it becomes incumbent on us to develop a highly effective and customized filter.  So our value system basically determines what we will devote attention and time to as far as energy goes.  If the ego is reduced, eliminated, that frees up energy within my system that was preoccupied with foolishness and being too concerned with what other people think. Rather than going too extreme in an antisocial direction,  things ended up swinging the other way. Without expectations and the idea of a separate self to define and protect, I become free to respond in any way shape or form to whatever is going on around me. I become present and less serious, less worried, very much in the moment. It is working and I feel like I am even farther along than I was just last week.  I see the basic nature of my blog entries kind of repeating themselves, that is good in this instance as I think I am staying on course and nothing needs to be tweaked. It’s all good.

Hikkikomori

One of the things I’ve been letting go of- I used to have this idea that when I reached my financial goals, I would just sort of shut myself away in a detached house that had a little garden and a pool, maybe sitting on like 3 or 4 acres behind a high wood fence. I would have everything I needed in there, a little gym, TV, internet, videogames. I would have a garage and a basement workshop, a recording studio, nice kitchen, plenty of cats and a personal chef. Fresh direct and Amazon would deliver. I would never leave it, except maybe to go skiing. I am not sure why I had this vision. I am not sure why I thought it was ideal. I must’ve been angry, mad, disappointed about my singing, pissed at the shitty little clerical jobs I have had. I have a different vision now. Of course, it would be nice to be able to do the above if I ever felt like that again, but it seems…tiny. Very limited in scope and imagination.  I don’t know why I thought it would be so great. I had an idea that it would be like John Galt going on strike like in Rand’s book Atlas Shrugged. It really wouldn’t be in the final analysis. I have a different idea of success, a different idea of how to use my energy and resources for something larger than to just amuse myself and pass time. It is a higher vision to engage. I think its part of the human will to power, part of our evolutionary drive to engage the world, to interact with our fellow man, to try to make something happen and leave evidence that we existed, that we loved and laughed and sang. That we taught and cried, sweated and bled,  and left some record of ourselves, some change for the better. I don’t need to hide, I don’t need to protect myself, or not participate. I don’t need to go on strike. It is only through engaging that I grow. There is some pain in growing, it is not always cool while I do it, but it is worth it.  

Letting Go

As a result of exploring service as a path- I seem to be letting go of a lot of things, on an even deeper level than I have before. I feel as if I am becoming a walking blank, or as if I am in some kind of Limbo waiting to be born. It feels strange, but right. There is a Buddhist meditation that is supposed to cultivate detachment, I feel as if I have taken it to an extreme. I think its the right direction, but now I am going by instinct, not by any other guidelines. My guess is that it feels good because without being preoccupied by anything, it is freeing up a lot of my conscious energy. Although this seems to be a repeat of a previous post, it isn’t more of the same. It’s even deeper and further in the same direction, it’s working. I have let go of almost everything.