Sea Anemone
Thursday, July 20, 2006
Friday, July 07, 2006
Mexico Story
An American businessman stood at the pier of a small coastal village in
Mexico, when a small boat carrying a lone Mexican fisherman docked.
Inside the small boat were several large yellowfin tuna. The American
complimented the Mexican on the quality of his fish and asked how long
it took to catch them. The fisherman replied, Only a little while.
The American then asked, If it took only a little while to catch these
fine fish, why didn't you stay out longer and catch more fish? The
fisherman explained that this catch was enough to support his family's
immediate needs.
The American then asked, But what do you do with the rest of your time?
The fisherman replied, I sleep late, fish a little, play with my
children, take a siesta with my wife, and stroll into the village each
evening, where I sip wine and play guitar with my amigos. I have a full
and busy life, señor.
The American scoffed, I am a Harvard MBA and could help you. You should
spend more time fishing and with the proceeds buy a bigger boat. With
the proceeds from the bigger boat you could buy several boats.
Eventually, you would have a fleet of fishing boats. Instead of selling
your catch to a middleman you would sell directly to the processor,
eventually opening your own cannery. You would control the product,
processing, and distribution. You would need to leave this small
coastal fishing village and move to Mexico City, then L.A., and
eventually New York City, where you would run your expanding enterprise.
The fisherman asked, But señor, how long will this all take?
The American replied, Fifteen to twenty years.
But what then, señor? inquired the Mexican. The American laughed and
said, That's the best part. When the time is right, you would announce
an IPO and sell your company stock to the public and become very rich.
You would make millions.
Millions, señor? Then what? asked the Mexican.
The American said, Why, then you would retire, of coursemove to a small
coastal fishing village where you could sleep late, fish a little, play
with your kids, take a siesta with your wife, and stroll into the
village in the evenings, where you could sip wine and play your guitar
with your amigos.
Mexico, when a small boat carrying a lone Mexican fisherman docked.
Inside the small boat were several large yellowfin tuna. The American
complimented the Mexican on the quality of his fish and asked how long
it took to catch them. The fisherman replied, Only a little while.
The American then asked, If it took only a little while to catch these
fine fish, why didn't you stay out longer and catch more fish? The
fisherman explained that this catch was enough to support his family's
immediate needs.
The American then asked, But what do you do with the rest of your time?
The fisherman replied, I sleep late, fish a little, play with my
children, take a siesta with my wife, and stroll into the village each
evening, where I sip wine and play guitar with my amigos. I have a full
and busy life, señor.
The American scoffed, I am a Harvard MBA and could help you. You should
spend more time fishing and with the proceeds buy a bigger boat. With
the proceeds from the bigger boat you could buy several boats.
Eventually, you would have a fleet of fishing boats. Instead of selling
your catch to a middleman you would sell directly to the processor,
eventually opening your own cannery. You would control the product,
processing, and distribution. You would need to leave this small
coastal fishing village and move to Mexico City, then L.A., and
eventually New York City, where you would run your expanding enterprise.
The fisherman asked, But señor, how long will this all take?
The American replied, Fifteen to twenty years.
But what then, señor? inquired the Mexican. The American laughed and
said, That's the best part. When the time is right, you would announce
an IPO and sell your company stock to the public and become very rich.
You would make millions.
Millions, señor? Then what? asked the Mexican.
The American said, Why, then you would retire, of coursemove to a small
coastal fishing village where you could sleep late, fish a little, play
with your kids, take a siesta with your wife, and stroll into the
village in the evenings, where you could sip wine and play your guitar
with your amigos.
Friday, June 30, 2006
My Ever-Changing Perspective
I wish I knew who said it, but I once heard that a thinking person's perspective is constantly evolving. If I can be so bold as to consider myself a thinking person (which is questionable), I have to agree.
I'm currently taking a class at University of Missouri in Modern Literature. As always I am humbled by my English professor and how much he has read and seen and understands about the world. In only two weeks he has managed to turn my worldview on its heels (again) and get me thinking about new sides of old arguments that I had never considered. My professor is probably in his seventies and he understands every allusion and reference to every other work of literature or era of history in such detail that I am constantly awed. He reflects my naive youthfulness and debunks my grasp on reality without breaking stride in his lectures. It's wonderfully liberating to again realize that I don't know shit about shit. I'm a baby--a prepubesant rube.
I haven't written much lately about what I'm up to or where I'm headed. I hit a bit of a plateau over the last few months and felt my wheels spinning over things that I ultimately have no control over. Sorry for expressing those frustrations here, but it does help me to hear what others are thinking about. Now I'm back in school. The plan--if all works out well--is to get my GPA up and apply to PhD programs for English Literature/ Creative Writing (yes, you can get a PhD in Creative Writing believe it or not). Allison is also applying to PhD programs for Counseling Psychology. Ideally we could both get into the same school, but realistically we may have to deal with that once we find out which one of us gets accepted where (if at all). The plan on my end is to continue writing and putting myself in the position to teach on a college level so as not to rely on my writing for sustenance. I've realized over the last year in dealing with my first round of rejections that the publishing world is as cut-throat as any other industry in America. While writing fiction sounds like a pretty idealistic way to spend one's time (and I personally think it is since I love it so much), all that comes with getting a work published seems, so far, like a bit of a racket. But, a racket I'm going to have to deal with. So, I'm going to a writer's conference in Seattle in a couple of weeks (which I'm really looking forward to), and I hope I can gain some perspective on what the less romantic side of writing is all about. I'll keep ya posted.
I see a light somewhere down this tunnel. Sorry for all the dismal posts lately. I was feeling a little lost and disgruntled. Things are looking up though and I feel like I have some new challenges to work towards. I hope everyone out there in cyber- land is doing well and I wish everyone the very best in all their endevours!
Much love,
Jefe'
I'm currently taking a class at University of Missouri in Modern Literature. As always I am humbled by my English professor and how much he has read and seen and understands about the world. In only two weeks he has managed to turn my worldview on its heels (again) and get me thinking about new sides of old arguments that I had never considered. My professor is probably in his seventies and he understands every allusion and reference to every other work of literature or era of history in such detail that I am constantly awed. He reflects my naive youthfulness and debunks my grasp on reality without breaking stride in his lectures. It's wonderfully liberating to again realize that I don't know shit about shit. I'm a baby--a prepubesant rube.
I haven't written much lately about what I'm up to or where I'm headed. I hit a bit of a plateau over the last few months and felt my wheels spinning over things that I ultimately have no control over. Sorry for expressing those frustrations here, but it does help me to hear what others are thinking about. Now I'm back in school. The plan--if all works out well--is to get my GPA up and apply to PhD programs for English Literature/ Creative Writing (yes, you can get a PhD in Creative Writing believe it or not). Allison is also applying to PhD programs for Counseling Psychology. Ideally we could both get into the same school, but realistically we may have to deal with that once we find out which one of us gets accepted where (if at all). The plan on my end is to continue writing and putting myself in the position to teach on a college level so as not to rely on my writing for sustenance. I've realized over the last year in dealing with my first round of rejections that the publishing world is as cut-throat as any other industry in America. While writing fiction sounds like a pretty idealistic way to spend one's time (and I personally think it is since I love it so much), all that comes with getting a work published seems, so far, like a bit of a racket. But, a racket I'm going to have to deal with. So, I'm going to a writer's conference in Seattle in a couple of weeks (which I'm really looking forward to), and I hope I can gain some perspective on what the less romantic side of writing is all about. I'll keep ya posted.
I see a light somewhere down this tunnel. Sorry for all the dismal posts lately. I was feeling a little lost and disgruntled. Things are looking up though and I feel like I have some new challenges to work towards. I hope everyone out there in cyber- land is doing well and I wish everyone the very best in all their endevours!
Much love,
Jefe'
Tuesday, June 27, 2006
Monday, June 12, 2006
A New Movement
I’m ready for something new. I don’t mean that I’m looking for a new personal area of interest (although this is never a bad thing), or that I’m making some vague political statement about the Bush administration (although it’s pretty clear he’s all washed up)--I’m talking about art in its most general and sprawling definition. It seems to me that no matter how hard we try, we can’t seem to get rid of the sixties—with all its washed out, shallow metaphors and drug-induced attempts at enlightenment. The “drifter” was a cool guy to be in the fifties; Jack Kerouac, Alan Ginsberg, these were guys worth having a conversation with--carving their stream-of-consciousness, counter-culture, live for the moment, leave your possessions, life is jazz mentality into the minds of the upcoming children of peace and love. But that’s where it should have stopped and been turned into something concrete. The Beatniks had something to say. They were the closest thing that this country has ever had to a mainstream intellectual/ artistic movement, where writers and poets and bright minds were taken seriously enough to be celebrities in the American mainstream. They lived their words: train-hopping, ground camping, money scrounging their way to the next town, looking desperately for some depth and meaning to set them free from the mundane, suburbanite bullshit that was eroding the minds of everyone around them. These were great men. They had courage to be something different and to say, “I’m intelligent, self-sufficient, and more alive than you are. I have no money, I have no home, and I am still an American, and what’s more, I have influence. I don’t need corporate sponsorship, I don’t need government protection--I don’t need anything but my pen. I live by my words and I’m willing to die by them." Each was a soldier in his own rite.
Then came the hippies. The hippies said, “That’s all fine and well, but we’re not so interested in the whole discipline thing." So, the Beatnik’s intellectual counter-culture turned into a thing of the heart. Hippies were, by and large, good-intentioned, big-hearted, talent-less vagabonds who turned, “scrounging for money to find Truth and create something lasting” into “scrounging for money to get to the next music festival and buy more acid." The musicians had some talent, but not a lot of discipline. The movement lost steam because it became more about having fun than about finding meaning. It stopped asking the big questions and started giving the easy answers—-simple answers, like love each other and make peace, not war, answers that were broad and spiritual and, ultimately, as we've seen, easier to say and sing about than to actually live out in reality. The now moody, reality-blurred movement dissipated into an age of bad music, confusion, and brainless disco dancing with only the Grateful Dead to keep the hippy dream alive. The Beatniks surely would have been disappointed to see that the hippies let drugs and sex and spinning around until they saw God come between them and their movement.
This is not to say that some good and lasting things didn’t come out of the sixties: Civil Rights, Feminism, conscientious objection to violence, these ideas were specific and useful towards a greater good. They were tangible ideas that Americans could understand and buy into. Many other worthwhile ideas were swept away with the Bohemian Mafia, content with cultureless dissent and structure-less, tacky, anything-goes art and music. In its place came the eighties' synthesized music with nothing to say and even harder drugs to do. With the voice of the intellectuals all but absent—-only Kurt Vonnegut to cynically mock the ridiculousness of the Regan years—-the voice of the Beatniks cowered even further from the mainstream into an elitist group sitting in campus coffee shops scratching their chins. The mainstream voice still trying to speak out for Truth and real Freedom (when it comes to big decisions), became angry in the nineties with grunge music (a fair attempt, but still ultimately undisciplined and lacking motivation), and has now turned to cynicism and sarcasm among anyone still tuning out and clinging to reality in a culture of people looking for anything that will catapult them into stardom: a gimmick, an image, a façade that will entertain the American people like dangling car keys in front of a newborn child. Today's "artists" have nothing to say, it's all about them. If an artist can stick to a inner voice and express something meaningful and people buy into it enough to make this artist wealthy--fine. But today's artists simply cater to what the people want and it has turned all of our fine arts into watered-down, mono-cultured, commercial bullshit. Every book on the bestseller list is the same book, every song on the radio is the same song, every voice in America is the same voice, and it's saying, "I care more about money than saying what I really think about life."
So, I’m ready for something new. I’m ready for this country to get fed up with the bullshit and start enduring some boring mindfulness for the sake of something beautiful and lasting, something with depth and meaning, something that might possibly echo the sentiment of the Beatniks who were willing to sleep in a barn rather than compromise with a culture that spends their time talking about what color couch will match their curtains. Anytime you’re ready artists and musicians. Anytime you’re ready intellectuals. Anytime you’re ready American mainstream—-to calm down and do something that involves talent and thought, something creative that is about enriching your culture and not about making you rich-—I’m ready to see it.
Then came the hippies. The hippies said, “That’s all fine and well, but we’re not so interested in the whole discipline thing." So, the Beatnik’s intellectual counter-culture turned into a thing of the heart. Hippies were, by and large, good-intentioned, big-hearted, talent-less vagabonds who turned, “scrounging for money to find Truth and create something lasting” into “scrounging for money to get to the next music festival and buy more acid." The musicians had some talent, but not a lot of discipline. The movement lost steam because it became more about having fun than about finding meaning. It stopped asking the big questions and started giving the easy answers—-simple answers, like love each other and make peace, not war, answers that were broad and spiritual and, ultimately, as we've seen, easier to say and sing about than to actually live out in reality. The now moody, reality-blurred movement dissipated into an age of bad music, confusion, and brainless disco dancing with only the Grateful Dead to keep the hippy dream alive. The Beatniks surely would have been disappointed to see that the hippies let drugs and sex and spinning around until they saw God come between them and their movement.
This is not to say that some good and lasting things didn’t come out of the sixties: Civil Rights, Feminism, conscientious objection to violence, these ideas were specific and useful towards a greater good. They were tangible ideas that Americans could understand and buy into. Many other worthwhile ideas were swept away with the Bohemian Mafia, content with cultureless dissent and structure-less, tacky, anything-goes art and music. In its place came the eighties' synthesized music with nothing to say and even harder drugs to do. With the voice of the intellectuals all but absent—-only Kurt Vonnegut to cynically mock the ridiculousness of the Regan years—-the voice of the Beatniks cowered even further from the mainstream into an elitist group sitting in campus coffee shops scratching their chins. The mainstream voice still trying to speak out for Truth and real Freedom (when it comes to big decisions), became angry in the nineties with grunge music (a fair attempt, but still ultimately undisciplined and lacking motivation), and has now turned to cynicism and sarcasm among anyone still tuning out and clinging to reality in a culture of people looking for anything that will catapult them into stardom: a gimmick, an image, a façade that will entertain the American people like dangling car keys in front of a newborn child. Today's "artists" have nothing to say, it's all about them. If an artist can stick to a inner voice and express something meaningful and people buy into it enough to make this artist wealthy--fine. But today's artists simply cater to what the people want and it has turned all of our fine arts into watered-down, mono-cultured, commercial bullshit. Every book on the bestseller list is the same book, every song on the radio is the same song, every voice in America is the same voice, and it's saying, "I care more about money than saying what I really think about life."
So, I’m ready for something new. I’m ready for this country to get fed up with the bullshit and start enduring some boring mindfulness for the sake of something beautiful and lasting, something with depth and meaning, something that might possibly echo the sentiment of the Beatniks who were willing to sleep in a barn rather than compromise with a culture that spends their time talking about what color couch will match their curtains. Anytime you’re ready artists and musicians. Anytime you’re ready intellectuals. Anytime you’re ready American mainstream—-to calm down and do something that involves talent and thought, something creative that is about enriching your culture and not about making you rich-—I’m ready to see it.
Monday, June 05, 2006
Tuesday, May 23, 2006
Organic Living
I don't know what to say really, but it's 1:30 in the morning and I've been watching Jon Stewart clips on YouTube for over an hour now (because I am too cheap for cable) and thought, I should make some sort of personal update on my blog. Lately, for those of you who come by for a read--and I thank you kindly for doing so--I've been a bit distraught. Angry is what most people might call it, and bitching and complaining about pretty much anything that pops into my head when I sit down to write. This happens from time to time and if you check in with me on a regular basis, you're likely to hear me say some pretty petty and ridiculous stuff. But who doesn't have their pet peaves. Some people complain about their own life, some people complain about the people in their life--I prefer to bitch about broad mostly unchangable ideas and customs that frustrate me.
Here's the thing. I think most of the civilized world is pretty silly. I realize that this is not something that a lot of people can relate to, but I have spent literally hundreds of days (adding up to close to a full year) of my life in the backcountry of the United States. This means no phones, no TV, no news, no institutions of any kind (save whatever park service runs the land I'm on); just me and trees and rocks. This is how it goes. On the first week you're out it's a little uncomfortable; there's rain, there's bugs, your body hurts at night when you fall asleep on the ground, but then a change happens. You start to realize that you are biologically created to survive in this environment. Soon your nerves are calm, your mind is relaxed, you feel very comfortable and organic--the truest you one might ever experience. No more appointments, no more phone calls, no emailing, no sensory overload from blinking lights and abbrasive advertisements, no alchohol or coffee to help you deal with the stress, no religion to escape life with thoughts of things to come--nothing--just pure life (Pura Vida!).
So in this blissful state one can begin to look down from a high peak at the city lights and say, "What a friggin' racket". As humans we've created this entire world that is completely seperate from what our bodies and minds are engineered to survive in and then we wonder why we're all so stressed out and unhappy all the time. So if I seem bitter or disillusioned in my blogs, it's because I lived a pretty spoiled life for over two years. I was getting paid to backpack and I gave it up for something more. The thing is, although I think civilization is mostly ridiculous with all of its stereotypes and institutions and holier-than-thou individuals that couldn't wipe their own asses in God's actual creation (if you believe in that sort of thing) for a week, I'm still a big fan of the cultural elements that the woods can't provide. I love music, I love art, I love literature, but when I tell people this I sound like a snob. I've been called a hippy, a bum, a liberal, and any other term Americans can conjure up for a person who doesn't care much for getting rich and wasting his life away on things that don't amount to a small pile of crap when it's all said and done.
That being said, I'm trying to make it here in the "real" world now, and those organic feelings are all but forgotten. I'm anxious all day long and over-stimulated. My mind races, and if I let my guard down for half a second some advertiser plays on my human weakness and I feel the urge to spend money I don't have. I have stereotypes placed on me as a man and as a husband and people expect that you are doing what everyone else in the world is doing. If you aren't, they can barely hear what you are telling them. It simply doesn't register that someone in 21st century America might spend his or her days in the woods. I assure you when you step outside it all for a couple of weeks, it seems like a gigantic cosmic joke. Sometimes I feel like the only "real" life that is happening is out in the woods and I'm walking around in some kind of ridiculous circus.
Anyway, this is my one and only explaination for my comments and cynicism about "civilized" life. I will now recommence my satirical badgering and other such outlashings. In the meantime if you care to go for a couple weeks in the mountains with me, for the sake of enlightenment, drop me a line.
Here's the thing. I think most of the civilized world is pretty silly. I realize that this is not something that a lot of people can relate to, but I have spent literally hundreds of days (adding up to close to a full year) of my life in the backcountry of the United States. This means no phones, no TV, no news, no institutions of any kind (save whatever park service runs the land I'm on); just me and trees and rocks. This is how it goes. On the first week you're out it's a little uncomfortable; there's rain, there's bugs, your body hurts at night when you fall asleep on the ground, but then a change happens. You start to realize that you are biologically created to survive in this environment. Soon your nerves are calm, your mind is relaxed, you feel very comfortable and organic--the truest you one might ever experience. No more appointments, no more phone calls, no emailing, no sensory overload from blinking lights and abbrasive advertisements, no alchohol or coffee to help you deal with the stress, no religion to escape life with thoughts of things to come--nothing--just pure life (Pura Vida!).
So in this blissful state one can begin to look down from a high peak at the city lights and say, "What a friggin' racket". As humans we've created this entire world that is completely seperate from what our bodies and minds are engineered to survive in and then we wonder why we're all so stressed out and unhappy all the time. So if I seem bitter or disillusioned in my blogs, it's because I lived a pretty spoiled life for over two years. I was getting paid to backpack and I gave it up for something more. The thing is, although I think civilization is mostly ridiculous with all of its stereotypes and institutions and holier-than-thou individuals that couldn't wipe their own asses in God's actual creation (if you believe in that sort of thing) for a week, I'm still a big fan of the cultural elements that the woods can't provide. I love music, I love art, I love literature, but when I tell people this I sound like a snob. I've been called a hippy, a bum, a liberal, and any other term Americans can conjure up for a person who doesn't care much for getting rich and wasting his life away on things that don't amount to a small pile of crap when it's all said and done.
That being said, I'm trying to make it here in the "real" world now, and those organic feelings are all but forgotten. I'm anxious all day long and over-stimulated. My mind races, and if I let my guard down for half a second some advertiser plays on my human weakness and I feel the urge to spend money I don't have. I have stereotypes placed on me as a man and as a husband and people expect that you are doing what everyone else in the world is doing. If you aren't, they can barely hear what you are telling them. It simply doesn't register that someone in 21st century America might spend his or her days in the woods. I assure you when you step outside it all for a couple of weeks, it seems like a gigantic cosmic joke. Sometimes I feel like the only "real" life that is happening is out in the woods and I'm walking around in some kind of ridiculous circus.
Anyway, this is my one and only explaination for my comments and cynicism about "civilized" life. I will now recommence my satirical badgering and other such outlashings. In the meantime if you care to go for a couple weeks in the mountains with me, for the sake of enlightenment, drop me a line.
Thursday, May 18, 2006
The Four Letter Word
I heard a sound-bite the other day from Hillary Clinton saying that, "Kids today don't know what work is. They think work is a four letter word. They think they should go right to the top making fifty or seventy thousand dollars a year and they have TVs and I-pods and computers...I hope we get back to the old way of doing things. I hope we all start thinking some very old fashioned thoughts in the future."
So upon hearing this my first reaction was, yeah, she's right. I've thought this very thing before and even alluded to it in a previous blog. Then I let it roll around for awhile and thought, what older person hasn't thought this about the upcoming generation? Of course we have a better life, supposedly because that's what our parents were working for. And of course our higher level of comfort is going to bring about a more liberal attitude toward work (among other things). But I'd like to give us more credit than just being a generation of Trustifarians (spoiled kids). Despite some of the things I've said before, I think that my generation is starting to wake up a little bit. I think we're looking at our parents--two-thirds of whom are divorced, many of whom are on anti-anxiety and depression meds, most of whom hate the jobs they're working but keep doing it for the sake of money--and we're saying, what's the point? So we work some mediocre job and we live in some cookie-cutter neighborhood and we try to be good people (whatever that means anymore) and when the dissonance gets to be too much we look around at all our nice things and say, "Well, I can't complain too much." Why would we want to repeat this? More importantly, why would we want to one-up this?
I think my generation is finally saying enough is enough. We're saying it quietly-- it's definitely not the grand cosmic turn-around that people predicted of the Gen- Xers, but if you look at the big picture, a change is happening. People my age don't want forty-hour a week jobs. Some of us still work them, but we're looking for something with some flexibility. We want to have control over our lives Senator Clinton. We're tired of being miserable just because our parents were. We're not down with the Puritan work ethic. Let's face it America, we're not Puritans. I can't even check my email without seeing some twenty-year-old in a bikini trying to sell me car insurance. Why? Because sex sells and we just don't care anymore about whether it's right or wrong. Those are questions the Puritans would have asked, not Americans. Not in a country that wants to believe that what we're doing is okay so desperately that we create our own news station (Fox News) that agrees with the government and will tell us everything's going great despite a huge anti-American sentiment throughout the entire world. But I digress.
On the topic of work, my feeling is that it just doesn't matter all that much. So some of us would rather be hanging out and working part time jobs or jobs with flexible schedules, or getting higher degrees in something we enjoy. Would it be so horrible to have a more educated America? Maybe some of us just want to enjoy life a little bit before we bite it. Or maybe I'm just out of touch with my own generation. I can't be too far off if it's coming up in politics. So if you're a Gen-Xer, don't fret. I say we move to the thirty-hour work week right now. Let's all build more moderate houses and drive little hydrogen powered cars. Let's throw away our anti-depressants and give a big middle finger to this arrogant, bigger is better attitude our seniors have passed on to us. Let's start using our heads a little bit. We have to start thinking about social responsibility in this country or we're going to be passing on a time bomb to the next generation. Slow down. Breath. Go for a walk. A long walk. Or a bike ride. Just chill out because you're driving me crazy. And if chilling out means I'm not a good Puritan-American, well, I think I'll sleep okay tonight (without the aid of sleeping pills).
So upon hearing this my first reaction was, yeah, she's right. I've thought this very thing before and even alluded to it in a previous blog. Then I let it roll around for awhile and thought, what older person hasn't thought this about the upcoming generation? Of course we have a better life, supposedly because that's what our parents were working for. And of course our higher level of comfort is going to bring about a more liberal attitude toward work (among other things). But I'd like to give us more credit than just being a generation of Trustifarians (spoiled kids). Despite some of the things I've said before, I think that my generation is starting to wake up a little bit. I think we're looking at our parents--two-thirds of whom are divorced, many of whom are on anti-anxiety and depression meds, most of whom hate the jobs they're working but keep doing it for the sake of money--and we're saying, what's the point? So we work some mediocre job and we live in some cookie-cutter neighborhood and we try to be good people (whatever that means anymore) and when the dissonance gets to be too much we look around at all our nice things and say, "Well, I can't complain too much." Why would we want to repeat this? More importantly, why would we want to one-up this?
I think my generation is finally saying enough is enough. We're saying it quietly-- it's definitely not the grand cosmic turn-around that people predicted of the Gen- Xers, but if you look at the big picture, a change is happening. People my age don't want forty-hour a week jobs. Some of us still work them, but we're looking for something with some flexibility. We want to have control over our lives Senator Clinton. We're tired of being miserable just because our parents were. We're not down with the Puritan work ethic. Let's face it America, we're not Puritans. I can't even check my email without seeing some twenty-year-old in a bikini trying to sell me car insurance. Why? Because sex sells and we just don't care anymore about whether it's right or wrong. Those are questions the Puritans would have asked, not Americans. Not in a country that wants to believe that what we're doing is okay so desperately that we create our own news station (Fox News) that agrees with the government and will tell us everything's going great despite a huge anti-American sentiment throughout the entire world. But I digress.
On the topic of work, my feeling is that it just doesn't matter all that much. So some of us would rather be hanging out and working part time jobs or jobs with flexible schedules, or getting higher degrees in something we enjoy. Would it be so horrible to have a more educated America? Maybe some of us just want to enjoy life a little bit before we bite it. Or maybe I'm just out of touch with my own generation. I can't be too far off if it's coming up in politics. So if you're a Gen-Xer, don't fret. I say we move to the thirty-hour work week right now. Let's all build more moderate houses and drive little hydrogen powered cars. Let's throw away our anti-depressants and give a big middle finger to this arrogant, bigger is better attitude our seniors have passed on to us. Let's start using our heads a little bit. We have to start thinking about social responsibility in this country or we're going to be passing on a time bomb to the next generation. Slow down. Breath. Go for a walk. A long walk. Or a bike ride. Just chill out because you're driving me crazy. And if chilling out means I'm not a good Puritan-American, well, I think I'll sleep okay tonight (without the aid of sleeping pills).
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