Things are wrapping up at Sun and I’m getting ready to head back to Nashville for my next semester at Vandy.

I have the slight problem of having no home anymore in Nashville. Wayne, who served as stellar housemate and chauffeur for my first year has now relocated to New Haven, and the reclusiveness that came from having my ass handed to me by my first year left me with relatively few new friends.

So, I’ve been on Craigslist hunting for a place to live.

Honestly, I like having a roommate and don’t particularly want to live alone. It’s something of a feat though to convince folks via the internet that I’m an entertaining enough person to want to see every day. There’s always that “female only” ads for various reasons, but I’ve also seen a couple ads that say they’re looking for early 20-somethings. I’ve never been too old before, if only I had half a chance, I’m sure I could convince them that I’m not terribly mature despite my advanced age. ☺

I’m usually so occupied with living my life that I don’t really look on it as a whole. It’s an interesting process, so I figured I’d record it here so I can look back in my 50’s and remember the person I thought I was.

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I’ve been continuing with my reading of Walden. Thoreau spends about ten pages complaining about fashion and how people waste time and energy chasing the latest trends.

On the issue I think he overlooks is the social function that clothing serves. It is simple to dismiss clothing as mere materialistic waste unless one considers the necessary information it conveys about the wearer. That isn’t what I want to get into here, however. What interests me is how he closes:

[A]s far as I have heard or observed, the principal object is, not that mankind may be well and honestly clad, but, unquestionably, that corporations may be enriched. In the long run men hit only what they aim at. Therefore, though they should fail immediately, they had better aim at something high.

Thinking this area, I wandered around for a while asking people:

Imagine that you somehow come to have $500 million. What would you do with it?

The problem is I kept getting answers like, “buy real estate” and “invest it.” Answers that essentially were about taking a bunch of money and making it into even more money. So I started telling an old joke about a guy who walks into a bar with an ostrich.

I’ll not take the space to tell the whole joke, but one of the pieces of setup is every time he reaches into his pocket to get the money to pay for something, the exact amount he needs is there. Be it a piece of gum or a new car, he can buy whatever he wants whenever he wants it.

This idea fascinates me. I wrote a while back about being King of the CVS and the idea that letting go of scarcity puts a person in a fundamentally different frame of mind. The form of the question I like now is:

Imagine that every time you reach into your pocket there is the exact amount of money to pay for whatever you want. You can have whatever you want, what do you do?

Would you go to your job tomorrow? Would you just go sit on a beach somewhere? Would you give bunches of stuff away? What would you do with your freedom?

I went to see Batman tonight and really liked it. I want to talk about it for a bit, so if you’ve not seen it and want to be surprised, you best stop reading now.

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