Back to the grind

It took me a long time to figure out what I detest work so much. It’s not the obvious bullshit that goes on, the randomness of it, the steady, inexorable devaluing of labor, it’s the fact that it’s set up to perpetuate itself. A status-conscious consumerist society coupled with a high tax burden and a fairly steep cost of living, plus the irrevocably conditioned overriding need people have to reproduce no matter what conditions they live in; this is a recipe for economic slavery. It has been extremely difficult for me to even use my earnings to further my training and education, employers really seem to have problems providing an actual career ladder. Either that, or I seem to have problems climbing onto it. Basically, I don’t have anything to show for my work thus far except mere survival. I haven’t been able to peel off a bit for the future, and that has got to be about impossible for anyone earning less than me. I think I would feel better about it if I had managed to use the wages to build something, even a significant savings account or my real estate business or even another house. The job I had before I came up here, I couldn’t even hang on to my car, it wouldn’t even pay for me to get to it. The scary thing is that there seems to be a lot of those Mcjobs, those shitty little menial positions where you have to live with your parents to be able to work them. Some politicos claim that immigrants take these jobs because Americans turn up their noses at them, its not snobbery; its that it would take two of them (without health insurance) to afford to live on them.  I don’t expect them to pay the same as a CEO, but it needs to at least pay for itself. Even when I do make decent money, the taxman gobbles up a third of it, which is counterproductive, because if I used it on school or training, I would go into an even higher tax bracket. If I used to build my business, I would create payroll tax and employees that could be taxed on the income I pay them and they would pay into social security as well. The solution: tax exemption for business seed money. The solution: find a way to keep some of my income to build something. The solution: buy a lot, lot less. The solution:  Don’t have children you can’t support.  The more radical solution: with a paid-for house, public transportation and interest income, it may be possible to reduce income below a taxable level, radically reduce consumption and pull energy out of the system, which if done in significant amounts will force a re-engineering that is long overdue. It would help the planet too. I am going to do my part to unplug the matrix.

Investing energy

If I were to invest energy into my writing and resume that work, that might be good because I control it. In the past, when I have invested energy into things I have a high degree of control over, that has worked. School, running, teaching piano, martial arts, I have achieved a degree of success in those things because I had a high factor of control over them. They seem to be very solitary activities, and when I put time and energy into them, I seemed to improve at a fairly rapid pace. The writing is an intensely private thing, I only share the passages that I think are exceptional or funny or transcendant, my instincts seem to be right about them. I think I took a hiatus from writing because it was starting to get difficult and was getting close to the hump, the point of no return. If I make it about gentle exploration, a process of discovery, then it has something in common with my latest singing work. I can discover what I need to say and exactly how I need to say it.  I think that is the only thing that will get me through the hard work ahead. It may turn out to be work I like, the nature of it may play to my strengths. Maybe this might be the thing, something that I can succeed at.   

More tabula rasa

I have learned from the “Secret” that it is important to have some idea of what you want from your life, some idea of what you want, what you are manifesting with the energy of your life. All I have right now is the blank slate. Nothing. Nada. Zilch. The dangerous aspect of reflecting back void into the universe is that it may interpret that as a wish to die, but I hope I can be clearer. I think what is happening is that I am withholding energy, keeping it, not committing to any one thing or path as far as where I am putting my energy. My experience has taught me that when I commit and invest energy, void or loss or failure is what I get in return. So, as risky as it seems, I am okay for now to manifest void. I am so utterly far away from most anything I planned, worked for, or expected that I am completely and totally lost. I have a lot of anger about that and I have to clarify it, I have to work through it and appreciate what did work out. I think the direction to go in is to invest in what I have so far, what has worked out and put energy into what is already there: 1) I live in New York. 2) I have a great marriage 3) I have my health. I am very thankful for these things, so , I will focus my energy on those. I also have a decent temp assignment, so I can invest in that as well. The rest gets very little or no energy until I decide what to do in addition to the above 3.  

Yahoo most literate cities-

The survey focused on 69 U.S. cities with populations of 250,000 or above. Jack Miller of Central Connecticut State University chose six key indicators to rank literacy. These included newspaper circulation, number of bookstores, library resources, periodical publishing resources, educational attainment and Internet resources.

Overall, the top 10 most literate (and wired) cities included:

1—Minneapolis, Minn.
2—Seattle, Wash.
3—St. Paul, Minn.
4—Denver, Colo.
5—Washington, D.C.
6—St. Louis, Mo.
7—San Francisco, Calif.
8—Atlanta, Ga.
9—Pittsburgh, Pa.
10—Boston, Mass.

There may not be a career

There used to be a certain security in labeling myself as something. I never got truly to the point as a CPS where I thought of myself as someone who did that work, the rest being details. There was a certain security in labeling myself as a singer,  I was part of a certain cadre of people who did a certain unusual thing, something transcendant. There is about zero security in labeling your self as a human being, because in theory a human being can do anything. In my late thirties, I have come to realize that this is not so for me, I used to think of myself as someone who can do almost anything, but in my adulthood I have come to realize that there are plenty of things I do not do well (playing guitar, drawing) . Also, there is a group of things I do well that I can make a dollar with (administrative, clerical, accounting, technical support) , and the other group of things I do for fun (writing, piano, skiing, fighting). There is another group of things that I really can’t do at all, at least two things I’ll admit to that I do not ‘get’ at all, namely Chemistry, Economics. There is another group of things I have only a fingernails grasp on, like Physics, Mathematics.  The question of aging becomes, what do I put time into- what to invest in that seems to be working out decently? Namely, what is showing signs of progressing to something competitive or lucrative? There are some times when I will be doing  something and suddenly get a flash of insight, or my skill at it takes a huge jump forward (singing, (something private), running long distance) .  I think that I will have to return to the original plan of work being whatever and my main focus going into what I do outside of work. This is good, because the choices narrow. It’s like Stravinsky where he says that art begins when you make choices that constrain the work: OK, this is a string quartet in g minor, in sonata allegro form that will be variations on a hymn-tune, etc. The soul of that piece of art is inextricably bound with what happens within the limits of those choices. So it can be with my career and my work outside. I can say the same:  OK- work is either temporary, or permanent with ACS. It is administrative, clerical, I have weekends off and I get out at 5:00 or at the latest 5:30, I make in the low thirties and its not high-stress. I take a full hour for lunch.  Outside of work, I choose two projects to work on and schedule that time appropriately. I include free time and marriage time in that framework. That seems to be a better way to think about how I invest my time and it avoids drama.

Man I cannot skip lunch

My blood sugar drops through the floor and my whole world just shuts down completely. As easy as it would be to despair and go straight to a blank slate, I don’t think it will help much. There are moments I have on the subway, where I just kind of let go of everything and just say f**k it. Then I get something to eat and start to feel better, things come back into place. Yet, I have a new perspective on my goals, a little distance creeps in and I can sort of handle it easier. I guess it is worth the moments of crushing despair to realize that things only have the meaning I invest them with. There are absolutes, but I choose which ones will affect my decisions.