Those who restrain desire, do so because theirs is weak enough to be restrained;
and the restrainer or reason usurps its place & governs the unwilling.
And being restrain’d it by degrees becomes passive till it is only the shadow of desire.
The crux of my problem is I can’t stop believing real systemic change is possible. Our political and economic systems are clearly not working well. Who even understands what sort of developmental effects the Internet is going to have on children who grow up with all the information in the world at their fingertips.
A change is going to happen. What I am trying to figure out is what I can do to help. Charging off and trying to do everything myself was a good plot for a book, but it isn’t how the world actually works.
I’ve been cleaning up the mess that I’ve made of my websites trying to figure out how to market a business. I registered a half dozen domain names in the last year including a couple goodones I’m letting lapse. One of the ones I’m keeping is anarchistgrill.org.
It’s for a combination grocery store / communal kitchen / restaurant idea that I have. You get your reservation in the morning and then you collaborate with other people in your timeslot, table, dish to share and way to get it prepared — either by contracting a chef or, if someone in your party is cleared to work in the kitchen, cooking it yourself.
Another part of the idea is that kitchen staff can either buy supplies for meals from the grocery store attached to the kitchen (making them cheap) or if there is a partial item in the kitchen’s food stores they can buy part of an item prorated from another chef (wasting less food).
I like the idea because it would significantly increase the probability I could get some well cooked thiebou diene for cheap if I open the restaurant on H Street in DC which is in serious need of a good grocery store and cheap nutritious food.
Anyhow, as I was deleting the old blog, I discovered I made only a single entry in it exactly one year ago today: 7 October 2008. I can see even in this post the beginnings of slowly screwing up my courage to try to throw my life into a new track.
I’ve been thinking about repurposing this site somewhat. I haven’t been in the mood to write about my personal life for a bit because I feel pretty isolated from the world. I used to really enjoy delving into myself and trying to find some personal truth to express, but increasingly I can’t seem to do that knowing that anyone else will read it without feeling my awareness of their perception slowly shifting my words to something to be consumed.
I’m going to write for 15 minutes and post this. I keep starting over and over trying to write and something about sitting down in front of the keyboard just drains the words out of me. I open my mouth to scream and not so much as a whisper makes it out.
I think part of the problem is I’m afraid to tell the truth. Afraid to admit that I’ve set out to do something and failed.
In the interim, I've picked back up The Impossible Will Take A Little While. I'm trying to find the balance to stay entertained while designing (which I love) and coding (which I don't love so much).
I’ve been spending the day catching up on my TV. I’ve been surprised on what gets by the censors these days. Apparently comedy can be as adult as it wants so long as it is hard to catch.
On 30 Rock, Tracy Jordan is training for his moon mission, when he says, “Computer, when do I get some tang? Also, I’m thirsty. Ha! Wordplay.”
Honestly, if they hadn’t had him point it out as wordplay, I would have missed it.
American Dad went a different route and just said something with lots of slang very quickly. As Steve’s plan to ruin a Bar Mitzvah goes awry, Roger says, “And what Steve won’t know is that I have my own plan. While everyone’s focused on Snot, I’ll be headed to the bathroom to share a doobie with the bus boy in return for an angry handy-j.”
Jenni and I are back home again in Baltimore, and I’m starting my new job of fixing the economy.
Honestly, I’ve been thinking about assassination. I’m setting out to become a peacemaker and peacemakers don’t live for very long. Gandhi managed to make it to 78, but he wasn’t messing with radical Christianity or Islam.
A guy walked into a children’s play in a Unitarian Church in Knoxville and opened fire with a shotgun. There’s just to much crazy in the world for me to ever really mitigate the possibility that someone is going to decide I’m the Antichrist and want to save the world by taking me out.
There’s only one simple answer: to be true. How to do that though? How can I be true when truth is something that has to be both given and received? It’s nice when the truth can be packaged up into something pretty and nice for everyone, but what about when the truth is simply that mistakes have been made and there are likely no easy solutions?
I want for the world to be a fair place, but it’s not and I don’t know what to do when the truth as I understand it is that chance has conspired to make someone’s life unpleasant. Is it right for me to point that out if I have no interest in doing anything about it?
Sometimes I just feel mildly irritated about something and I just ramble for a bit to try to figure out what’s going on. This is a ramble.
I’ve been doing a bad job at maintaining anything resembling balance in my life as of late.
I blame my job. Realistically, I suppose I should blame myself since I’m the one in charge of balancing my life.
It really doesn’t feel like my brain is backing me 100% though. I’ll have it all worked out in my head that I’m supposed to go do my job and it just makes me feel tired, irritable and distracted.
I don’t think my natural disposition is to work more than 30 hours a week or so. I like to read and exercise and eat and play on the internet and watch movies and lots of other stuff.
I think I’m still hitting up on that existential sort of question: “when have I done enough?”
I am constantly brimming with ideas on how to change the world, but I can’t seem to escape from it.
God’s honest truth, I developed a bit of a messianic complex during high school.
