A Three-year Record

It's only January, and I've already posted more times in 2013 than I did in either 2011 or 2012.

WHAT COULD THIS MEAN?

I always want things to mean something, I want the surface to point to a hidden substratum or -strata.

And you know, usually that pays off. What I think it means is that about the time I stopped blogging regularly I got a job working in the mental health field that took all my psychic energy.

There was no time to try to be mildly humorous on the Internet. I spent every work day not merely trying to provide compassionate assistance to Delaware County residents with moderate mental illness, but also learning how to get all my billable hours in, which as social workers will tell you, is one of the real bitches of their jobs.

Then I moved to a job working for a board game company, AEG. (which yes, is a thing, board games are a business that makes hundreds of millions of dollars annually, I'll have to tell you more about that some time.) And it was great. Except it masticated all my free time until it deposited me on the street recently, because like all entertainment jobs, you must either be lucky or badger-level tenacious to stay steadily employed.

So it could be that I'm coming off a 2.5-year work bender and have space to be reflective again.

But the thing about hidden layers is that they're hidden. Mr. Rumsfeld's infamous "unknown unknowns" always lurk beneath your enterprises. So maybe there are other reasons?

Because I imagine an underworld of black swans that I have failed to uncover, I make promises gingerly for my future. But with a lovely vase of provisos in hand, I'm glad to be back. I hope it means good things for every one of us.

Pursue Your Pipe Dream With Vigor

I don't know what unfinished business draws me to collect these inspirational quotes. A friend of mine once said, "Jeff, you are in no danger of becoming an office drone." But still, I fear it. 

Maybe it's the kind of fear I should just embrace and be transformed. Or maybe it's the kind of fear I should continue to resist because I can only overcome by struggling to the very end?

I'm afraid I don't know. 

It could be that there's no one correct answer and life is not easily reducible into binary choices.

Anyway, here's another quote I read today and wanted to put somewhere safe:
"It is FAR better to pursue your pipe dream with vigor than to halfass something you took as a compromise."

--Kate Beaton

Internet complaint box

I've been reading (okay, skimming) a lot of news articles about the fiscal cliff in the last month, and they are frequently followed by a comments section full of poorly informed vitriol. During the 2012 election it was worse.

One of the favorite metacomments from Facebook (via my wife) was how annoying everyone's friends were with their poorly informed vitriol. Barack Obama and/or Mitt Romney were individually the worst thing to happen to this country since Tippecanoe and Tyler Too drubbed that dandy, "Little Van" out of the White House.

There's a lot of hand-wringing among public service types about civic disengagement. People apparently don't vote. But they do complain on the Internet! Can we use that?

Listen up, all you vitriol-spewers! Instead of typing your mauvais mots to each other on the Internet (where they have no chance of influencing anyone other than your children to shy away from you), send them to your congressperson. 

The same typing! The very same words! Just send them to your elected representative. Vent your unfocused rage toward some FOCUS. There, you might have a chance of doing some good. At very least you'll stop bothering my wife.

Find out the names and email addresses of your congresspersons. If you're not sure what to say, there's a big link in Spanish at the top of the page to remind you about your poorly-informed vitriol concerning illegal immigration! Start there!

Wes Anderson does Star Wars?

Oh, trick titles. You do so much good work.

An interview with perennial QT favorite, Wes Anderson. The money is the toss-off about a Han Solo backstory. I wold pay feature price to see that short in a theater.

DEADLINE: Star Wars was among the films that influenced you early on. What would the world get if Wes Anderson signed on to direct one of these new Star Wars films Disney will make? 

ANDERSON: Well I have a feeling I would probably ultimately get replaced on the film because I don’t know if I have all the right action chops. But at least I know the characters from the old films. 

DEADLINE: You are not doing a good job of selling yourself as a maker of blockbusters. 

ANDERSON: I think you are reading it exactly right. I don’t think I would do a terrible job at a Han Solo backstory. I could do that pretty well. But maybe that would be better as a short.

Also, since we're in the neighborhood, here's Conan O'Brien's take on Wes Anderson's take on Star Wars:

Regret is easy.

I easily fall for those Deathbed Epiphany trains of thought.

• No one wishes they had spent more time at the office.

• You regret the things you didn't do more than the ones you did.

• If only you'd known that consequences for being true to yourself were so minor.

Here's a link to a nurse revealing the top 5 deathbed regrets.

I am deeply interested -- vested -- in doing it right the first time, because there is only a first time. And by "it" I mean life. And by "life" I don't know what I mean.

Today it occurred to me that no matter what you do or don't do in life, you can have regrets. It's not hard.

That's the problem. Regrets are so easy, so common, that they're meaningless. They're the dust bunnies of convalescence.

Life is big, and if you're careful and fortunate, long. At the end, you are likely to have a major regret. Maybe two. I tried guessing what my major regret would be when writing this post, but how the hell do I know? If I die today, I could name you one. But when I'm 80? That's a half-life away from here. I'll be an entirely different human by then. On a cellular level.

Make your peace with the fact that you will grimly fail at something important in life. Do it as early as possible. Then accept the forgiveness you will need. Accept it ahead of time, and go do the thing you want to do.

in re: New Year's Resolutions

My pastor said something a couple years ago that stuck with me:

"Jesus is not particularly interested in your self-improvement schemes."