The Boxed-In Life

You wake up in the morning.

You see you have been sleeping on a box (bed).

You woke up in a box (bedroom).

You move from this box into another (bathroom), and take care of those morning body functions. You look at your image on a shiny, reflective box.

You take your personal hygiene supplies out of a box and manipulate the reflected image.

You open your box, pull out clothes, and put them on. You check your image again.

You move to another box.

This one may have a box with moving images, or food inside.

You turn on said box, you open said box.

When you finally leave this box, which is nothing but boxes, within boxes (apartments or houses), you go past other boxes.

You maneuver your box on wheels (vehicle) down roads, battling with other boxes.

Eventually, you get to your next box.  You may call it a job.

Depending on your job description (a box made of words and responsibilities), you deal with a whole new series of boxes.

You may even be fortunate enough to have a whole box (office) inside the bigger box, instead of one of those boxes with three walls (CUBE-icle).

You stare at a box that you can manipulate by the use of little tiny boxes (computer).

At the end of the work day, you leave your box, leave the bigger box, get into your box and head back to your original box. 

You open the door, turn on the box, use the box in your hand to communicate with other people using a similar boxed technology and go about moving yourself, and other objects, from box to box until you retire to your box so you can sleep.

Day to day, it may change a little, but this is your boxed in life.

I understand why it is called a Boxing Ring. It was built to contain the fighters.

I understand why everything is built in boxes. It is to contain Your Fight.

When Wednesday Rolls Around

“You never change things by fighting the existing reality.  To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” - Richard Buckminster Fuller.

It is yet another Wednesday and, again, I find myself with extra time.  When I did my first semester at Arizona State University, tuition and books for a 15 credit hour class load cost about $1,000.  Today, I just bought the one book I need for the one class I'm taking at my local community college.  Between those two expenditures, I've dropped $500.  This price difference has taken place over the span of 11 years. 

Part of my motivation for some of my side projects is based on the deteriorating nature of our dollar.  As the printing presses roll on endlessly, what they print becomes more and more useless.  If you don't have a clue what I'm talking about spend some time researching the fiat debt based monetary system we are almost completely bound to.  After that, look into Weimer Germany.  This is where we are headed.

The dollar will fall by the wayside, a new means of currency will arise, and I hope it is a non-tangible one.  Currency is typically coin and paper backed by precious metals.  Those currencies can also be subject to inflation.  Alternatives like BitCoin have shown up, as have some other e-currencies.  However, when electricity itself becomes too expensive, e-currencies will go by the wayside with them. 

My idea is being nice to one another.  Crazy, I know.  The internet allows each of us to find virtually any thing, any where, at any time.  But you can't find the guy two doors down from you who happens to have what you are looking for.  We have isolated ourselves from one another.  Our families, our neighbors, and our friends.  Some more than others.  When the dollar is burnt to start a fire to keep the house warm, we will have to look to our local communities to get by.  We will have to turn towards co-operative living. 

Co-operative living is nothing more than trading work, skills, time, ideas and the bartering of goods with others.  These will not be the currency themselves, rather, they will be the denominations of that currency.  The currency itself is Trust.  It is also one of the only currencies that can become infinitely stronger.  As Trust builds upon Trust, Trust becomes stronger.  The exchanges between individuals is done knowing any unevenness will eventually be taken care of, no matter how roundabout of a manner it may happen.

There will come a point when the currency of Trust becomes a whole new currency, Love.  People will have created a community in which people help one another, not because they will get something out of it, but because it is right.  It may be some hippy bullshit, but it is possible.  It is practical.  And it is inevitable. 

We will have to transition to this system while dollars are replaced by whatever government approved monetary trinket, which will also fall by the wayside.  Rather than allowing ourselves to be pushed and pulled by the whims of 'money', we can take the upcoming transition to create something much better for ourselves.

The Golden Rule is Wrong

The Golden Rule is, more or less, "Do unto others as you would have others do unto you" or treat people the way you want to be treated.  But doesn't this explain WHY the world is the way it is?

A while back I was reading 'Random Acts of Revolution' by Daisy Luther at www.theorganicprepper.ca . I emailed her my random act, which took place the weekend before I read the article.  To sum up, my email was about how I hugged some random person because they were sad.  I didn't leave a comment because the comment section devolved into typical internet nonsense.  The seed was planted though and the question remains, how do we make the world better? 

Here is my answer:

Treat people better than they treat you.

Why A Straight Guy Can't Eat Lesbian Cake

Tomorrow, my friends return from their two week hiatus and I get to go home.  It is strangely a neutral event.  Today is cleaning today.  It is also the day I get to assess my life, or 'Pull a Ted Mosby'.  I have seen way too many episodes of How I Met Your Mother this week.  It helped with the loneliness of that house.  I just finished watching, 'Jeff, Who Lives at Home', which, even by itself, can only lead to genuine introspection.

Some of the general details of my life will help with understanding how I'm 'Pulling a Ted Mosby'.  I'm single, 33, living at home with my mom (it is much worse than it sounds), and difficult to understand.  Most of my friends aren't my friends, but that is because they are all married.  I have two single friends who are brother and sister, but they are both in their early 20's and doing early 20's things.

Here I am, in someone else's house, in someone else's life, wondering where all of this is leading.  I know how I got here.  I know why I wound up here as well.  The Next Step is being taken, I just really need it to take me from where I am to where I want to be, happy.  Happiness is as much of a location as it is an emotion. 

My lack of reason for getting up in the morning was thwarted today.  I was granted the privilege of picking up a cake at a bakery 20 miles away from the house I'm watching.  At the early hour of 10 a.m., I jumped in the car and made that trip.  I don't really care about having done it.  What bothers me is that I don't get any cake (no, my name is not Milton).  The cake is for my mother's all-women motorcycle group's 4 year anniversary.  Yes, almost all of the women are lesbians and I bet the title makes sense now.

When Wednesday Rolls Around

I don't have a reason to get up in the morning.  That used to be a great way to live.  Now it's just sad.  It will be another 3 weeks before any of my energy will be put to proper use.  I'm taking an American Sign Language class at my local community college, while looking for, well, any work.  The goal is to be an ASL Translator in about one year's time.  I've been chained to a few desks in my life.  Chained being the correct word.  So many of us think slavery has ended, but they fail to see work desks and bills for the shackles that they are.

I do not have it within me to continue living in such a manner.  Waking at dawn, dragging myself to work, wasting the day, and dragging myself back home, making just enough money to be broke, while making someone else rich.  But that's me.  I look at the world and see it for what it is, wrong.  It's all backwards.  I'm not the only one though.  The following quote is from Michael Ellner:

“Just look at us. Everything is backwards, everything is upside down. Doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, psychiatrists destroy minds, scientists destroy truth, major media destroys information, religions destroy spirituality and governments destroy freedom.”

Being an ASL Translator may not make me rich, but I will be in much greater control of my own life.  I will not be bound by the decisions of the people above me, because there will be no one above me.

Todays Words of Not-Wisdom

This is my second blog on this website.  The first one went by the wayside when I couldn't remember the nonsense info I originally signed up with.  Maybe this time around, I'll care enough to write such information down for future use.

So.  I'm unemployed and my last day was 2 weeks ago.  Here's what I've learned about the unemployed life so far.  The initial filing for unemployment was easy.  Since then, it's been a bunch of b.s.  I answered questions online, only to receive stupid paperwork asking me to answer the same questions.

I'm on my second house watching "job".  I'm not getting paid, I'm doing it for my friends.  This time around, it's 15 days.  2 dogs, 2 cats, and a whole lot of horrible smells.  It's difficult getting up in the morning.  I don't have any reason to.  My back actually hurts from sleeping too much.  How messed up is that?

Netflix and Hulu are great, initially.  But once those reserves are tapped, there is nothing to watch.  Or at least, I am not going to spend an hour trying to find something to watch that's only 30 minutes longer than the time I spent searching for it.  I'm actually a big reader.  But I've gotten the most out of my local library and have to wait for books to be mailed from other libraries to the one I frequent.

At this point, I'm out of work, out of crap to watch, out of books to read, and, basically, out of money.

However, the initial stage of my post-employment life has taken place.  I am going back to school.  I did actually graduate back in 2006 with a B.A. in English Lit.  So I'm not going "back" in terms of finishing.  I'm going back in terms of finding something else to do with my life.  Something that keeps me from wasting another minute behind a desk, spending my life working to make someone else rich.

I think one of the more important lessons I've learned is that any type of work that makes a person a decent amount of money only serves to make the world a worse place.  What I am trying to learn is how to make a living in world I completely disagree with. 

Until next time, may you do better than myself.