Why I am not voting

There are several reasons why I do not vote anymore, the main reason is the outcome of the last presidential election. The second reason is that I feel the names will change, but the faces will stay the same. We do not exert any control over our government by voting, that has been a complete sham for decades if not longer. It’s all about the Benjamins. We need to exert control over the corporations first, then the government will follow. It is the corporations that we must bring to heel. Everyone upper middle-class and lower are wage-slaves if they work. Everyone wealthier is heavily invested in the corporations in some way shape or form through their portfolios. Admittedly they are less vulnerable if they are diversified, but there is still a degree of dependency. The corporations and the government are not evil by nature, but they are not under the control of the citizenry save in one respect: consumer spending. Consumer spending is how we exert control. We have to break our own dependency on them by withdrawing economic energy from them. The first thing that makes us dependent on the corporations is our lifestyle. The second thing is the labor glut. There is an oversupply of labor for the demand. The third thing is the car-based economic cycle. There needs to be a mass counter-migration, driven by people smart enough to figure out that the money and time spent on commuting is better spent on rent to live closer to work.  Washingtonians- how many hours this week did you spend sitting on the beltway or on Route 50, or on 66? How much is gas up to now? Car insurance, payment, repairs? Do the math- most of you could probably live in Georgetown for less when you factor in the mortgage you pay already. The fourth thing is the school system, or as I have come to know it, the employee training centers. I don’t exempt colleges and Universities from this problem either, as a speciallized employee is still an employee, just higher paid. We need to think about things in a completely different way. The American dream is turning into a nightmare and reeks of slavery. The first things that has to change is the way we think about our work and careers. We think of work as a means to finance a lifestyle, and this paradigm is the recipe for slavery. The way to think about income and money is as a means to get to your number, where investments and passive income pay the cost of survival. If we have a finite number of years in the workforce, and that money earned is financing an exit from the workforce, that creates turnover that will eventually catch up with downsizing. On the other side if we are not buying these designed to fail, polluting, badly built products coming from sweatshop labor countries, that keeps our landfills from filling up so fast. People exiting from the workforce have more time to try to recover some kind of political clout, to organize, to speed the process from the regulation side and get clear about what is going to build a sustainable future. If we have clarity about the final result, then the way becomes clearer farther out in time.  

There is no spoon

I spend an inordinate amount of time contemplating some ideas found in a small autobiographical comic book called “Things are Meaningless” by Al Burian (Currently of the band Milemarker, I think). As a back-burner project, I want to write and draw an answer to it and have actually started. Until, that is, I started to get a little more insight into what the man was trying to say. At one point in the book, he argues that a lot of things people choose to invest with meaning are artificial constructs, and as you start to contemplate this too deeply, you ride the ragged edge of existential panic and potential madness. Admittedly this is true if, according to society’s enculturation, you have spent any time going: “This is important/valuable/this is not, this is what counts, this doesn’t,” according to your own opinions, talent, desires, influences, etc. There used to be some popular t-shirts that read like: “Life is Golf, the rest is Details.” There is also the immortal “Life is a Beach” meme, recently resurrected as the “Life is Good” t-shirt motif. I realized recently that even the need for defined meaning is a construct. These constructs (whatever they are) are hard to just discard if you have invested time and energy into them. They also tie into our sense of identity- “I am what I do, my profession, my hobby, etc..”. The truest, deepest ‘meaning’ may be to transcend the need for meaning, as a label or peg to hang the hat of your existence on and to use as a filter for experience and information.  Burian says that if you lose your constructs you can panic or go crazy, but I think its possible not to. I think its possible to let go and just be. I have this vision of just focusing attention on my immediate experience, the here and now, without some obligation to sort, to filter and say “This has meaning/this doesn’t.” In  that sense, where I place the locus of subjective meaning is in my awareness or attention, my most basic essence. It may be very healthy, very sane to say hey, I am going to come straight at my experience without anything extraneous whatsoever, no mental chatter, no constructs, no preoccupations or framework or conditions, just right here and now is all.  

No plan B again

I was so convinced that my last effort would work out that I put no effort into thinking about any other options if it didn’t, as usual. Plan B once again became whatever. Admittedly I am in a much better position than when I left RBC, but I still have to find something very quickly. I think I can take advantage of lessons learned, and it looks like (crossfingers)  I may have caught a break. The lesson learned is that if the new thing works out, I have to really take steps to give myself reserves and options. I have to clear what debt I have and really think about what I need to get me where I am going. I am willing to work daily to get things together as quickly as possible and prevent history from repeating itself. Or, if it does, my numbers are vastly different than they were the last time and something else is already under way.  I remember when I was in the Quest program, I handled this correctly because I kept my private students while I was training, which turned out to be brilliant for once. When the powers that be were giving me developmental feedback, I was able to give them some in return and let them know that they needed to handle their end of things better before worrying so much about what I was doing. That was the best meeting I have ever had because I could handle any consequences of speaking plainly. In that case there were no consequences except whatever I decided to do. However, this was mistimed in a later iteration with a different employer because speaking plainly caused the other party to deliver a killing stroke about a week before I was about to deliver it, plan B to my chagrin was not quite in place yet. However, in the next case of another firm, plan B was secured, so I had the luxury of speaking bluntly. I felt so good about being able to do that, I still remained impeccably professional, I didn’t need to be blunt. Best email I ever sent. I kept a hardcopy. Also, all of this approach is not news to me, I have needed to operate this way for a long time. These days have been the only time I have been able to reasonably attempt it. Currently, I have three flavors of plan A and a plan A(2) as a fourth of a similar flavor, an intact bridge of sorts. Plan B is to sock away money as quickly as possible to invest & create passive income. Plan C is starting to show signs of life, but it is very dependent on plan B as it cannot rely on fools, which I do not suffer to any extent anymore. However, the joy of it has returned and that is good for my benefit regardless of whatever cashflow results, its worth putting some time in. Updates to follow.