The World is a Strange, Ugly, Horrible, Beautiful, Scary Place

I'm not sure what I can do now. There are so many things happening around me right now, so many horrible things going down and so many misconceptions right next to me that I'm lost. I have an opportunity to share the things I've learned with people who need to know them, but I'm suddenly afraid.

The conversations I have online and with my friends come from a place of mutual understanding. We take it as a given that all people are born with rights, with dignity and the possibility to succeed, but they are born into circumstances that might stop them before they start. The circumstances might stop them before they are even born. I know that I'm where I am because of the privilege of my skin and my place of birth, not just because I'm smart and work hard. I was allowed to be smart, and people noticed my work, and now they reward it. There are many more people like me that aren't where I am now.

I see the future and it looks like the past, but which past? I'm afraid of re-living dark days, afraid of shanty towns in my own country, people suffering needlessly. I'm within the top 10% of earners in this country, but I can barely imagine living on less at this point. How do the rest of us do it?

All my hopes are pinned on 2014 right now - Republicans are so far past the light that they think they can read in the dark. I've got money to shield me now, but it is little solace. I can't pretend the world is alright just because I am. I was raised a hell of a lot better than that.

Success Outside the Cult

I think it is depression that is preventing me from seeing any reason to do anything. But I also see a lot of inefficiencies in what people do. I understand that religion is a myth, that there is a limit to the stuff one can buy, that renting isn't a worse financial investment than buying a house, that processed foods aren't worth the stuff they're packaged in, that lower taxes on wealthy individuals and corporations hurt society, and that the only way to make a living in a society like this is to drink the kool-aid.

It's frustrating and depressing. What good is knowing all this stuff if I end up unemployed, with no access to health care?

Soaring

I felt this incredible sensation when I came home from my vacation in August, like our society is on a great precipice. We could go crashing down, or take off, and soar. There are so many people out there, creating amazing art, and doing wonderful things. So many more people are seeing through the lies, through the bullsh*t than ever before.

There is a lot of talk about the generations, and it seems as if we have been preparing for the boomers to retire for a long time now. Only a few of them are retiring, right now, since it was their idiotic economic policies that drove the stock market up, then left it in the ditch. They also seem content on dismantling the social safety net that their parents toiled for, but only for part of their generation, and those that came afterwards.

This generation, my generation, once dubbed Generation Y, and now lumped in with millenials, grew up after all the generational fervor that the boomers went though. We noticed how they spit on their parents' traditions, and how their parents blamed them for everything wrong in their world, then sent them off to war.

We heard about how the greatest minds of their generation were destroyed by madness, only to be held down, ourselves, by the minds that were left over. We endured the same criticisms about our music that they endured about theirs, yet we didn't turn around and spurn the Rolling Stones or Motown. In fact, many of us own more vinyl now than they maybe ever did.

The boomers taught us, provided for us, gave us everything they never had, and when we grew up, we actually were grateful. Sad, however, that so few of them are noticing. The people my age seem to be respectful of their elders, and excited to hear all of the stories. I may roll my eyes when a man in his 60's speaks wistfully of the old Haight-Ashbury days, but that is only because I've heard it all before. The 20-somethings listening to him are indeed interested, and really do want to know more.

The Class of 2000 have families now, and I see them when I go for walks. They are outside, at the playground, with their kids. They are walking through the grocery store, picking out vegetables for dinner. But I also see them in other places, struggling in low-paying jobs, and using drugs to escape their turmoil. They are shying away from jobs with large organizations, because they don't want to give up their freedoms, and don't like the idea of stifling their creativity.

They may take a low-level job for the health insurance, but they will only do the minimum, because their heart isn't in it. Meanwhile, the person that wants that job is stuck in another job, for that same health insurance. Give them health insurance that isn't related to a job - ensure their guaranteed health care, no matter what they do - and the qualified but uninterested will quit, making way for the questionably qualified, but eager people, who are actually interested in doing that job. Then watch as the newly freed people fill up those abandoned storefronts. Imagine a downtown district that gets cleaned every day, creative shops, bustling eateries, and friendly neighbors.

We are on a great precipice this year. We can either go down the deep end, spurring anger, and riots, or we can stop this fighting, stop resisting reality, talk to our neighbors, jump off this cliff, and soar.

Unhinged, October 12

I want to post something this week, before the Sunday Football post, but I have been a bit overwhelmed with work. Which leads me to the point of this post. The United States is going crazy right now, you may have noticed. A bunch of astrologers are saying "Mercury is in retrograde", which is less significant than the fact that 20+ years of conservative/reactionary propaganda have wrapped up a generation of people - mostly white men - in a frothing rage. At the same time, decades of acceptance, racial tolerance, and women acting like human beings, instead of brooding mares, have created a generation of people who can see the other group for who they are - who they always have been.

In short, the latter generation is on the move, having a good time, and being productive (when they're not trying to drown out the former generation with substance [ab]use). The former generation is getting older, smaller, and angrier. They're frothing at the mouth now, maybe they always have been. The problem is that the latter generation is getting wiser and wiser to them, and getting more and more clout with the mainstream, and is increasingly able to stand up to the former.

My perspective, of course, will always be skewed by the enormous amount of information that my brain holds, and can recall quickly. Having overcome my addiction, and survived a resetting brain injury, and all of the ramifications of the behavioral consequences, I can see the world in striking clarity - from 40,000 feet in the sky, to the bottom of the ocean, and all points in between. It creeps me out, but it also puts me at ease. Things catch me off guard, but few things truly surprise me. For instance, there was a person in my life that I considered a friend, but he turned on me, and now, he is trying to stoke my paranoia. Instead of succumb to this, dwell in my own rage, and even quit, I decided to use the tools provided, and am rising like a phoenix.

I hope the same can be true of my generation, raised on equality, honesty, and acceptance. We need to keep pushing forward, and maybe, that generation steeped in resentment, anger, and entitlement will wise up. Sadly, I think most of them will just die out, clinging fiercely onto their anger. A sad legacy for those born after such a joyous victory.

Counter Commute

Last week, Amanda had a post on commuting, happiness, and how it relates to our current American political climate. The comment thread got too long for me to be able to read, because I have my own story that basically proves the point of the article.

• I commute 45 minutes to work one way, driving.
  
• I used to have a 3 mile, 10 minute commute before I moved here.
• I am much happier now than I was before I moved.

But wait, you say, that's the counter point? Oh, silly me, here is what makes me different.

• I often find driving at freeway speeds to be therapeutic, giving me time to sort out thoughts and practice explaining myself and my ideas.
• I live in a urban/semi-urban residential area, 3.5 blocks from a BART station. I routinely leave my car unused for entire weekends and spend the weekends with friends, shopping along Telegraph, seeing movies, planning events, and having engaging, intelligent, and fun conversations. My apartment here is not in some estate, it is one of 7 units in a building with character. I enjoy spending time by myself at home, and like making the place look good.
  
• The traffic congestion in the Bay Area is always in the opposite direction of the direction I am going [with the exception of random accidents -- 3 in 8 months].
• I work in a suburban area with strip malls, manicured lawns, and multi-million dollar homes. When I lived there, I could not walk anywhere that I wanted to be. I sometimes spent my weekends in Berkeley or San Francisco, but it required a lot of preparation and I was far from home. Other weekends were spent inside my apartment, completely alone and bored just because I didn't want to drive anywhere, even at freeway speeds. And my apartment was a stifling place, with beige carpets, oversized rooms, and no character. In short, I hated the place, and I had no desire to keep it looking nice, ever.

Not only do I not sit in traffic while I commute, I live in a real community area, validating Amanda's point about the factors that do influence happiness.

Why I Use Natural Products

One time, after a shower in my flat in Cape Town, I noticed that I had not rinsed a bit of soap off of my leg after I got out of the shower. It was a small amount and I dried it off. A day or two later, I noted that I had acne in that area. Lesson learned, I paid even more attention to rinsing myself off in the shower.

Six years later, I was reading an Alternet article about something or other and saw a comment about natural soap products, specifically natural hair care products. The commenter mentioned that normal products contained petro chemicals that made your hair feel clean for a short while, but actually made it dirtier. With Whole Foods right across the street from work, I decided I would try out these products and find out for myself if my hair was any cleaner. This was how I learned about the value of "lather, rinse, repeat", and noticed that after a day without washing, my hair did seem a little bit cleaner. It wasn't until my three day trip to Houston when I used hotel [conventional] shampoo every day, yet couldn't wait to get home to finally wash my hair [with natural] that I really observed the difference.

So I stopped using conventional shampoo, but still used conventional products for everything else. About a month ago, I ran out of my deodorant. I used Secret Platinum, which had 19% of the active ingredient. Secret Clinical Strength, which was half as much for twice the price, was 20% of the active ingredient. It didn't matter which one I used though, I still had big rings of sweat on the pits of my clothes most days. It was usually small enough that I could conceal them by not raising my arms too high, but of course, that just made the sweat patch get bigger. I was out of deodorant, but only wanted to go to one store - Whole Foods or Target that night, and I needed dinner. Whole Foods had fresh food, Target didn't, so I tried out one of the natural deodorants at Whole Foods. The first day I tried it, no sweat. The second day I wore it, no sweat, and so on, for about a week. The main problem was that it didn't cover up my BO as well, but no one except me noticed - even when I asked people. Then I was chatting with a guy I know in the deli at Whole Foods and he suggested Crystal Stick deodorant, so I bought that. That takes away the smell and still, no sweat.

So my hair is clean, I smell good, and I'm not sweating like crazy anymore. Back when I was in Cape Town, I had brought with me my first ever bottle of Neutrogena's body wash. I remember seeing the commercial. It had nice, clean looking white teenagers standing on a white sound stage, confessing that people get breakouts on places besides their face. Being able to relate to that, I noted the product and bought a bottle when buying my toiletries for Africa. To be honest, however, I can't say that Neutrogena's body wash worked any better than any other soap for reducing acne on other parts of my body. It did help when I rinsed all the soap off, of course. Earlier this year, I started using natural soaps for my body more often, and now I use them exclusively. This weekend, I realized that I no longer had any body acne. In fact, I haven't noticed any breakouts or even single zits for a few months. I'd have to go back to conventional soaps - maybe I could use up all my Bath & Body Works things - to fully experiment on my body, or maybe I could just keep using this soap and see if I get acne anyway.

In my life, a number of things have caused me shame. For the last 12 or 13 years, one had been random breakouts, and in the past two years, another had been excessive sweating. They seem to be gone now, without making medication changes, without going to so-called "stronger" products. In fact, because my hair stays cleaner longer, I have less incentive to shower than normal. Though, now I will shower and not wash my hair more often because my hair is getting obscenely long.

Who Doesn't Love Waterworld?

I see one, two... oh, everyone hates it, that's probably a good thing. Have I spoken of my irrational love for the Kevin Costner bomb before? It is simply a bad movie - the acting is bad, the plot is full of holes, and they are smoking filtered cigarettes after any such means to make such things were long gone. Who knows, maybe there was a Phillip Morris ship around when the world flooded. I also wasn't aware that oil tankers came equipped with refineries.

But I’m a Mystery Science Theater fan and liked Kevin Costner when I was a kid. It wasn’t a crush, I was too young to be sexually attracted to anyone, much less some actor in his 30’s, but I enjoyed Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, Field of Dreams, Dances with Wolves, and some of his other not-as-bad movies. I also really liked the premise of the movie, and the things that stuck with me were some of the metaphors that I identified. The biggest one was the presence of motorsports on the Exxon Valdeez. The smokers were the obvious metaphor for all the polluters and their love of motorsports just highlighted how stupid they were – using the one thing that kept them going for something completely unnecessary. It is the kind of metaphor that hits you like a brick and then keeps smacking you around.

That is why news like this, despite the layoffs, really makes me smile. Just one more sign that our cowboys in spaceship mentality is finally being smacked down a little bit. Could it be that civilization is leaving adolescence? Don’t get your hopes up too soon, you haven’t yet heard my Best Buy story.

Third Quarter Goal: Cut Some Weight Results

During the Second Quarter this year, I did "The Second Quarter Shape-Up", but I didn't lose much weight. I did gain a lot of muscle, however. In mid-June, along with my "New Urs" goals, I began my new quarterly fitness goal, which is named in the title. Along with nutrition and regular work-outs, I put a focus on cardio and trying new things. I don't know if the Fourth Quarter will have a fancy name yet, but the goal there is simply maintenance, with more climbing and running, and maybe some yoga.

I'm down at least one size and 25 pounds from December, 2007. My legs are very strong and I can do 28 sit-ups in one minute. At my assessment in April, I did 17 sit-ups in one minute. I do walking lunges routinely, whereas when I began, I could barely do them. I've also been to at least one yoga class, a climbing gym, done a lot of weight training, and learned some other cardio techniques. I am also starting to run. Stopping drinking in August probably had the biggest impact, with me losing about 5-10 pounds in the month that followed that decision. I'm slowly reclaiming the body I had in 2004, and with any luck, I can get down to the body I had for a month or so in 2005, then stay that way.

Beyond Freud

There was a special on NPR on Thursday about schizophrenia. I think I understand this condition. Mentally, you hear voices and/or paranoia gets the best of you. Social anxiety is a mild, more innocuous form of paranoia creeping up and thwarting one's best laid plans. Schizophrenia comes up fast, possibly because the paranoid, negative thoughts become loud and frightening. A woman told a story about her father's recovery that was aided with proper nutrition.

My outlook had a full turnaround in March with the introduction of proper nutrition, starting with balancing my macronutrients. It continues to improve as I add more pieces to the nutrition puzzle. It is time we stop thinking that just talking through problems will solve them. As valuable as psychotherapy can be, it ignores the very physical factors that impact mental illness. In other words, it is time we stop pretending that they way we act, think, and feel is anything more than a [more complex than we can currently understand] physical process.

Wisconsin Dialect

For far too long, I've been using the far more popular contraction "y'all" to refer to the second person plural. This is a vague representation of my mother's heritage in the Middle South [or the northern edge of "The South"]. But I don't really think they say "y'all" in Cincinnati. No, I think I used that contraction because I was lazy and it was easy. I also never noticed that my own dialect had a similar contraction, probably due to its underrepresentation in the general American dialect. But now, instead of "y'all", I will proudly be saying "you's" to refer to the second person plural.

Seventeen Years

Seventeen years ago, April, 1991, I was in the 4th grade. One Friday night, instead of riding the bus home from school, I walked with a friend to her house. We played, it was a good time, then my mom came and got me and took me home. In the garage, as I heard the opening of Full House, I got out of the passenger front seat of my mom's car, slammed the door and screamed.

I couldn't talk, I couldn't say "hey, I slammed my right index finger in the car door, please someone help me," all I could do was scream.

Someone came and opened the door, I hadn't broken my finger, but it was bruised. We bandaged the finger, and for a while, I wore a single cloth glove in school to ensure the bandage stayed on, yes, like Michael Jackson. My fingernail was slowly coming off as a new one grew underneath. The old one was still connected by some scar tissue at the end. One of my female classmates wanted the dead fingernail after it came off, I don't remember if I said she could have it or not. When it did come off, I think it came off in the bath, because I never found it. Afterwards, the scar tissue at the tip of my fingernail caused it to split just at the point where the fingernail came detached from the finger.

Before this incident, I had started to notice that I couldn't remember right from left. I had started to simulate writing to determine which side was which. Even before my finger stopped hurting, I realized what a great benefit I had gained. My normal fingernail was the left side, the weird one my right. Even now, at 26, you might notice me check my index fingernail when someone mentions going right or left (except when driving, I can tell right and left when driving, for some reason [and thank goodness]).

Of course, that was until yesterday, when I noticed that the split was gone. It was gone! GONE!
GONE!!

Sorry about my dry skin. As you will notice, aside from the odd colorings on the white part at the base of my nail, this is a completely NORMAL fingernail. I'm trying to remain calm.

After 17 years, that one little abnormality caused by a trauma so bad that I could scarcely remember the feeling a year later, my right index fingernail was back to normal. I've only known my family longer than I've known that weird fingernail. Its been a comfort, always letting me know, without fail, which side was right and which was left. But now, its gone. I don't even have a picture of what it used to look like.