Going through my analysis is kind of like watching paint dry, right? Of course, I am doing the best that I can but I do recognize that I am moving kind of slowly. I thought maybe we would savor one chapter a week or so.
Chapter three is another short chapter. It starts out with a dream that Winston has and finishes with another session with the telescreen. Instead of introducing new terms, this chapter starts to develop the idea of the effects of Big Brother.
Erasing Emotion- Strong themes are building that tie emotion to being human and how over time emotion is being stripped. Love and sexuality continue to dominate the list of emotions. There is the love of his mother and then the sudden appearance of a naked woman without context to the rest of his dream.
It is not the first time that we have heard that Winston pre-dates the transition to Big Brother. But he was young and therefore lives in a partial world of pre-governmental transition with some remnants of what we would consider family values. We are led to believe that his mother died as a result of loving her son, Winston. It is a thought crime after all.
Distinguishing emotion and function I would say differentiates humans from machines and possibly humans from other animals. So, by removing emotion it sort of homogenizes people as really an entity rather than an individual. Supervised activities such as periodic calisthenics further attempts to keep people’s minds from wandering but also unifies common experience; another standardization tactic.
Dreams and sexual repression continue to build in the next couple of chapters. Those will be covered when we get there. I just had a wild hare and searched the connection between Freud and Orwell right now as I was writing this. It would seem like I am not the only one to have seen a commonality. Here is an example.
That is just one example of the multiple opinions and connections that people have made. It does appear that people have put much more effort into this than I have, for instance I saw a Master’s Degree thesis in my search. I have personally never studied psychology so I am not really qualified to speak on the validity of the argument. However, I do recognize the components of Freudian psychology and the connections to the story line.
Wow, that just twisted my mind. Here I was thinking that this story was a brilliant forecasting of the future and it could be much more dimensional then that. Maybe the story accidently predicted the future or maybe the Freudian theory really is driving the behavior of humanity? I am going to leave it there for today as something to think about.
This is going to be a quick one. I am going to do my best to keep these two worlds at bay with each other. But, it is probably worth some commentary after my first couple of days.
It was a two days over twenty-two months since I clocked into a desk job. There are definitely some pros and cons. I have to say that in some ways there have been some struggles. I am a contractor to a contractor and it can be a real sink or swim experience in this remote/Covid/big company atmosphere.
Sitting in on a couple meetings, I have seen where I can probably hit the ground running. It feels like old hat listening to project representatives sort of muddle through their assignments and not sure of how to proceed. I wanted to jump in an participate, but I don’t think that is exactly my role and it definitely wasn’t my assignment. I was just invited as a courtesy, something to do.
The culture seems positive. So far, it seems like there are reasonable amounts of work and the deadlines don’t feel killer. Often, that is a double edged sword leaving lots of time places for mediocracy to hide. It is one of my pet peeves, we will see.
I think that I mentioned this earlier, but my schedule is Central Time. So, I start work at 6AM but the nice thing is that I am finished by mid-afternoon. Being out of practice, the time in between end of work and bedtime sure does fly. I will have to get in the habit of more rigorous scheduling of my off time activities if I ever want to get anything done.
So far, we have managed to suspend the home office location in favor of not being sure where the best location would be. I haven’t started anything yet other than I bought a door over the weekend and it is not like I have had any time to do anything anyway. The weekend was packed and yesterday I committed to helping my son with his car.
Like I said at the top, I intend to go back to writing about skills and literature and all the things I have been doing over the year. But, I thought a couple of first impressions would make a quick check on this task.
Chapter two of the first section builds on the first chapter. It peels back a little more of what life is like with a neighborly interaction and the struggles of rationing and substandard infrastructure. What’s more, a few concepts are further developed.
Propaganda- Once again, the slogans “War is Peace”, “Freedom is Slavery” and “Ignorance is Strength” are brought up. We learn that these slogans are ubiquitous are found on money, posters, tax stamps, etc. The use of propaganda is to unite the population on simple slogans. It might remind us of “Make America Great Again” or “Yes, We Can”.
Indoctrination- begins at a very young age. There are the Spies and the Youth League which seem to be these Cub Scout/Boy Scout analogs of kids organizations training into the system. The focus is on activities relating to eventual military or government service such as physical fitness and hard skills like bushcraft. There is reference to kids turning the parents into the “Thought Police” which is some organization for eradicating non-conformist thinking.
Scarcity- Another control mechanism to manipulate the population. From what I can gather throughout the book, the situation is real. By controlling diet, heat, living conditions and even pleasures Big Brother can exert some constant level of control. They can also use situational change to effect the citizens perception of reality. In essence, no one believes anything because everything is wrong making it difficult to know if something is really true.
This is a short chapter I feel to support that home life is as dire as work life was in chapter one. Minor character development paints similar interactions regardless of the circumstances or locations. Things don’t look to good for Winston as he is having wandering thoughts and treasonous writing.
It has been a long time since I talked about preparedness. We had a major storm roll through last Thursday and still feeling the effects on Tuesday. It really wasn’t too bad in my local area, we had probably 1/4″ of ice twice from freezing rain on Thursday night and Friday night. But the effects have been devastating around the region.
Of course, as an Amazon driver I was at the tip of the spear for trying to get life back to normal. On Sunday, I was sent to the hardest hit area of our delivery territory to try and deliver packages. I saw power poles broken off with lines across the road, many crushed cars, trees and limbs blocking state highways and cellular service was near zero.
First, I have to say that I have lived in my house for over sixteen years and have never seen a power outage more than a blip in that time. I can count the number of times we have have a blip on my hand. So, the electrical service is pretty reliable from that standpoint. We had an outage that lasted from 5AM-3PM Saturday. Other areas that I was delivering to yesterday were expecting to get service restored on Thursday, a full week after the event began. Those were the areas that were accessible.
People were generally cold and tired but in good spirits. There were neighbors helping clean up. People used their own resources to flag downed lines, danger areas and clear roads. Everywhere I heard chainsaws and generators. Brush, limbs and lines littered the roads and right of ways. Now that I have set the scene, I really wanted to talk about the lessons from the storm.
Leave refrigerators and freezers closed. A deep freeze can remain cold enough for several days with no power as long as the door is not opened. I would advise not to open it for any reason if you suspect that an outage will last more than several hours.
Keep your freezers full. The more mass that is inside the unit increases the time to thaw significantly. If your freezer is not full, fill old containers with water to add. You can always use the ice as block ice later as a secondary benefit.
If you don’t have the money to buy a generator, start with an inverter. One 800 watt inverter is enough to power one refrigerator or freezer and can be found for as low as $50. Then you can use your vehicle to power the inverter and in turn keep your investment safe. Freezers only need to powered for a few hours a day to stay frozen. One more thing, appliances draw more energy when they start so a refrigerator may only use 3 amps but may need up to 7 amps to start. For those of you non-science types Ohms law is Watts = Volts x Amps; 800 = 120 * 6.66
Don’t forget to have extension cords that can reach from your vehicle or generator to the device that you want to power. For power hungry appliances, thicker cords are better. There is a power drop over every cord so the inexpensive 16ga cords have a maximum wattage that they can power (something like 1000 watts).
If you are having an ice storm you can use the ice to put in a cooler and move the refrigerator contents if necessary. Ice is a much more efficient way of keeping those items cold that doesn’t require additional electricity. From an energy consumption standpoint, making ice is more efficient than trying to keep a refrigerator running, regardless of the method.
I live in an all electric house. I do have camping equipment and a kerosene heater for the shop. Do have a carbon monoxide detector that works on batteries. I brought in my detector to use in the house as we started a fire and cooked breakfast on the camp stove.
I never got to the point of starting the heater as the fireplace warmed the living area enough, but have fuel for heat and cooking. You need wood to burn, if you have wood burning appliances. You need propane or kerosene for heaters and stoves. That stuff can go fast. My 20000 btu heater will burn through 2.5 gallons of kerosene in about 40 hours. It heats up my 16×20 space nicely during that time but it’s only going to be effective in a room.
When the real work needs to get done, a gas powered chainsaw beats a battery powered saw hands down. Battery saws are great for day to day pruning, but underpowered compared to gas and when the power is out, you cannot charge your batteries (at least not without a generator, inverter or solar). That is not a great justification to own a tool that you rarely use but sharing or bartering with a neighbor might be in order. Don’t forget fuel for that either.
We never got to the point where we needed much lighting but have flashlights, lanterns and batteries. Headlamps are good for task lighting, lanterns are good for area light and handheld flashlights are good for carrying around. I also have lights that use my rechargeable tool batteries that mostly get used for job type work. But they are convenient, powerful and long lasting as well as share batteries with other tools. With LED, battery powered lights are some of the most efficient use of power conversion there is.
When the power is out, so are the Point of Sale (POS) and ATMs. Even though businesses may be running on generator power, it can often be a cash only proposition. Have cash on hand with change if possible to get those things that you really need.
Cell communications continue to be spotty. Carriers have different levels of service and towers are in different states of operation. The best service seems to be around major traffic corridors, which were also the clearest to drive. I cant speak to land lines however but our internet was down and by far and away it seemed like the biggest losers were the cable TV connections.
Stay home if you can. I am not one to be squeamish about much but I thought that it was kind of ridiculous trying to deliver packages when you cant drive on the roads or even use the software to deliver. I had to run over countless downed lines (that I didn’t see until it was too late) and maneuver around road hazards only to be turned around by a roadblock. Road updates were close to nil as data service was down everywhere. Unless you are part of the solution, you are part of the problem in the cleanup and restoration effort.
These are some of my thoughts and tips around my experience. Hopefully we will all be prepared better for a next time.
I missed the boat on learning linux/python/.php. I have enough programming experience to muddle around but I don’t have any of the fundamentals. My only real website building was writing straight HTML when I was in college but I don’t have a real understanding for the server structure, etc.
Back in my working days, I used to play around with Microsoft’s web hosting platform (IIS) and that was really difficult as well. There were so many nuances that the casual web user doesn’t really understand or have to deal with, such as browser caching. It seems so complicated and confusing enough that a reasonably technical guy doesn’t want to deal with it.
Today, I spent several hours trying to get this site back up. I violated the first rule of support which was to look at the simple things first. The site was working, but I had some SSL certificate errors which I tried to correct by removing the SSL. That spun me into all kinds of other problems when the real problem was simply to update a plugin for the site.
I suppose the beautiful thing about open source platforms is that there is so much knowledge just by searching on the internet. For a brief moment, I thought about trying to find a book like python/php for dummies. Now, that I have admitted to myself that it is harder than I thought, I would probably get some value by learning the fundamentals. Not today however, I learned what I needed to finish the job.
With so much information, we can’t know everything in a particular area. We can get bogged down in ‘toolbox fallacy’ and other paradigms rather than just learning the thing we need for the time and place. I suppose that if I am going to continue in this vein of content creation, it behooves me to learn some more. Right now, I have too much going on to warrant an investment of time right now.
I am starting a new job on Tuesday and still working on side work while finishing out Amazon. I have plans to build an office and that won’t be done for another month or so, at least. That is my outlook today.
I think that it was three days ago, I was listening to Glenn Beck while I was getting ready for work. Of all the people in talk radio, he is one of the people that I like. I think that he really does use his brain and is not afraid to change his opinion if the facts warrant a change. That being said, he does stand for principles and he is one of the few in that space that has a grasp on the what is happening, not just echoing talking points.
He started talking about the book 1984. I started listening more intently because I knew that I was going to start writing about the subject. There wasn’t much detail in the discussion but one of the things I heard was that sales have skyrocketed in the last year. I looked it up to see if it was true, and here is what I found.
I really haven’t been plugged into the latest news of the day, but I really didn’t realize the references to the 1984 have been so prevalent. I didn’t realize that so many people were making the same connection that I have. With that, let us get into it.
I am going to refer to the indexing as Section and Chapter. This post will be discussing Chapter 1 of Section 1. I think rather than summarize the entire book each day, I will highlight the concepts that I thought were applicable to us. There is a brief introduction into the world of Winston Smith, the main character. It describes the construct of the political system and the basic work life and home life routines.
The following are some of the important constructs of the book and a bit of my analysis.
Cultural Divide: There appears to be two sides in this world. One side is called ‘Big Brother’ and the other side is the ‘Proletariat’. It is portrayed as Big Brother is the side that is and agrees with the government and partakes in the benefits that come with that membership. The proletariat is a class that is more like the ‘untouchable’ caste in the Indian culture. These are people that are not involved with the government in any form and the two groups do not interact in any form – for risk of retribution from Big Brother.
I think in today’s lens, I would put the what we would call ‘Big Brother’ are all of the interests sympathetic to the government angle like all forms of media and related groups right or left. While not a perfect match, the ‘proletariat’ would be those that do not participate. They are the dirty and nasty which the party will not associate because they are not worthy.
Telescreen: This is a device that information is put out and has two way capability. They are also ubiquitous. They are in every home and workplace. As a party member, you are expected to listen and interact with this device at all times.
I think the telescreen is what today’s cell phone is becoming. As we all know, the phone knows our location, it can listen to what we are doing and saying. Based on the profile that our data builds, we start to get fed only information that fits our profile.
Newspeak: This is a particular language that is spoken as well as a system of communication. So the system part, this is a way of changing facts to fit the narrative. It can be goods produced or history. Everything bit of data is cross referenced so that an attempt to change the permanent record has to be made for all media items such as newspapers, books and television programs.
In our culture, I think both sides are using this tactic. For example, does everyone remember when wearing a mask did prevent the spread of Covid-19? Now, there seems to be many studies supporting the opposite conclusion, hmmm. It seems that most ‘science’ today is done in a way to provide proof of a political agenda and not to learn the truth.
Hate Week/Two Minutes Hate: The two minutes hate is a mandatory, daily rally to reinforce the agenda of Big Brother as well as communicate the Newspeak changes for the day. Because the facts are always changing, the party members are conditioned to accept whatever the story is presented at the moment as truth.
Hate Week is portrayed as a festival celebrating the propaganda. Said another way, a week of constant hate. The tactics of xenophobia (build a wall or Black Lives Matter) combined with constant warfare as our side is bringing liberty to a country that doesn’t know it is the perfect cover align the party members with Big Brother.
Already in Chapter 1, we can see these concepts have striking corollaries in today’s world. I want to point out that no matter what side of the left/right dichotomy you chose today, these tactics are in play. That being said, the only way to not be manipulated is to not play the game.
Hello world. This is a famous introduction in programming where the output of running a program displays text on the screen with the words ‘Hello World’. It is pretty universal, no matter the language and I the syntax on how you do it.
As you all can tell, I have been pretty busy. I am still delivering for Amazon and when I do, it is an all day affair. I leave the house at 9:30AM and I usually get home between 8:30 and 10:00PM. That doesn’t leave a lot of time for other things. I have also picked up another handyman client which leaves me working that around my days off.
In some ways, I have been holding back writing because I am resisting jumping into what is clearly a mess and it is counter to my mission here which is teaching skills with a little commentary. The heat is getting turned up from different sources on exposing the ‘Great Reset’. ‘Cancel Culture’ is becoming an often used and successful strategy to further divide our population. It feels like we have yet to see the big event because tension is building on both sides.
This song ‘We Didn’t Start the Fire’ by Billy Joel was released in 1989. It was the very end of the Cold War but I think that it was really relatable at the time to my generation (X) and I think that it was targeted to the Baby Boomers. It was an homage to this very scary era where we believed nuclear war was possible and we were inheriting a mess that we weren’t even sure that we wanted to participate.
The song was mostly a list of events in history that describe the Cold War. If I represent my generation, to me the song resonated because I had the ability to look at the facts without prejudice and form my own opinions of the validity of the current political beliefs. Obviously with hindsight, we can see what we thought to be true in 1985 and what we know to be true in 2021 were two different things.
If we take a look at the culture of today, we might get a pass to claim that we didn’t start the fire, but boy do we like to watch it burn. My father is one of the earliest Baby Boomers at seventy-four. If we look at leadership of business and politics, the who is leading the charge are the Baby Boomers followed by Generation X.
Traditionally, a generation would lead and enact policy to influence culture based on the events that shaped their experience. It seems a likely A to B connection that the people who fought in World War II would have strong, global military to prevent another repeat of the same circumstances. Even the Vietnam conflict, which was a misguided attempt to rebuke Communism is understandable under the World War II generation of leadership but the Baby Boomers who predominantly fought in the war seem to be just as hawkish today.
For some reason, we have lost the ability to be objective. No longer do we question our adherence to dogma. Once we are jumped into our gang, we become ‘lifers’ and there is no escaping no matter what our gang does.
Take for instance, former President Trump as a really good case study. I am pretty sure that most people (on both sides) never realized how masterful he was at manipulation. I do not believe for a minute that he ever intended to incite a mob storming of the capitol, resulting in at least two deaths. I also don’t believe that he was not stirring the pot of his supporters which indirectly lead to this happening. This incident went in a direction that nobody ever thought possible. Both sides are right and wrong at the same time.
Where does that leave us in the middle? You can’t or won’t as easily be manipulated if you don’t pick a side. Once you have figured out that the game is rigged and there is no way to win, you cannot play.
How do you get out of the gang? For me, it has been a slow evolution. I guess that it started with being repeatedly disappointed with my side of the electorate. Then, I got disgusted by my media of choice defending that group to the end, so much so that I turned it off. Then I started looking for choices that interested me which turned out to be more anti-establishment.
I am sure that most people are like me. There are issues that are important and those that are not. For instance, I still get suckered into the drama of defending the second amendment. I struggle because I see the writing on the wall for standard capacity magazines, semi-automatic firearms and such. I know that one party is better on those issues than the other but they are so bad at everything else including their platform issues. I cannot support the totality of loss of freedom despite my second amendment opinions.
But you see, I am being manipulated in that argument. My pull is to want to vote for the lessor of two evils because it will temporarily stave off what I now see as inevitable. So, I have to fight the urge to participate in a system that doesn’t care about me or represent me. It makes you feel used and disgusted. All of my programming through the years makes my stance feel wrong, but it is the way it has to be.
I think that if we boil it all down, we like the idea of Freedom more than we like the actual application. It is clearly evident in my routes delivering for Amazon. There are neighborhoods where freedom is embraced. I know that because I see the lifestyle choices. I see the houses that don’t have trash service, who own as many dogs/animals/cars/boats as they want. I see houses with Christmas trees still up and houses where Halloween decorations still up, believe or not.
I also see the neighborhoods where order is more important than freedom. Nearly every single one of those houses has a garage packed to the gills with stuff. That is a sign that they can’t or won’t ever be as free as their nature would permit.
With that, I will wrap it up. I will not make anyone submit to my way of thinking, that would be against my principles of supporting freedom. When I look at how much we have lost in my lifetime, I cannot help but worry for my kids experience and belief on what freedom means as they inherit the world in the next twenty years. Twenty years ago, I was throwing wood on the fire, but now I realize participating in that is a fools errand.
Finally, if you look at the American Revolution the timeline spanned much longer that our condensed look at history. The ‘Stamp Act’ was enacted in 1765, a full ten years before shots fired at Lexington and Concord. There was discord years before that occurred particularly relating to the end of the French and Indian Wars. Don’t be surprised if we are seeing the warning signs or an irreparable country.
Hello everybody. I am sorry about not getting a full week in to begin the year. What I am learning is that if I work a full day, I need to begin getting ready at 8:30AM and I get home around 10:00PM. That doesn’t leave a lot of extra time to get other things done.
Political muck is still heavily on our minds as the final election results are being sorted out (the Georgia Senate races). But, today I wanted to talk once again about mindset and freedom. You see something happened yesterday that completely illustrates our lack of the value of freedom and reinforces the fact that we don’t really value it as we say we do.
There is a fledgling business near my small town. I don’t really know much of the story other than to say my family has been doing business with it for about four months now. The owner has done a good job with guerilla style marketing, works like a dog, employs around ten people and has compassion in his business dealings. For instance, he doesn’t demand payment before goods rendered, he offers line of credit and he charitably donates probably more than he should. This business is ‘illegal’.
What you say? Don’t go all half-cocked before you hear the rest of the story. The facility and organization is not licensed to do business. Consequently, a ‘competitor’ found out about the operation and reported him to the state. Now, he is in limbo about the entire organization. From an inside source, there are plans to go legitimate in 2021. He has built a business plan that include five franchises beginning in the second quarter of this year.
So that is the quick story. Now, let’s take some time to analyze the situation.
Tyranny is propagated by those that participate in the system. The people that are vested in the rules and regulations have the most to gain by implementing and maintaining systems that exclude competition.
Licensure is a false prophet for the ideals of quality, safety and sanitation. Sure, periodic audits are helpful to implement better practices and establish a baseline of what should be done. They do very little to make sure that they are followed on a day to day basis.
Everybody loves a rags to riches story… or do they? Would you buy an unpermitted house or go to a non-licensed restaurant or buy products weighed on an non-certified scale? We say that we like these things, but our actions prove otherwise.
Sometimes the barrier for entry is too high, until you have means to get there. As someone that went through an IRS audit last year, every undocumented transaction is income unless it can be documented otherwise. Guilty until proven innocent.
The foundation of this country, based on bootstrap will and tolerance for entrepreneurship is dead. Did George Washington get a permit from the ATF to make whiskey or was Benjamin Franklin licensed to provide insurance? I think that they would have thought this a violation of there fundamental rights as do I.
We claim to be a society that roots for the underdog and values the little guy. Yet the proverbial ‘we’ has little tolerance for rule breaking to claim our stake and make our fortunes as our predecessors did. When people are more concerned about what everyone else is doing, they have lost their ability to be creative and compete on merit. That is the essence of freedom. I figured that this day would come, I was rooting for the guy.
Since I was a child, I always looked forward to that period between Christmas and New Years. The chaos died down tremendously and this was that brief period where rest seemed like the prescription before the new year cranked again.
When I was in my teens, it seemed popular to have the ‘best of’ countdowns on TV, radio, magazines and newspapers. It was the best 100 songs of the year or the top 10 news stories of the year. Since it was pre-internet, there wasn’t an instant access to video clips or music like there is today. There were those songs that you sort of forgot about as time moved on because they were on the charts eight months ago and no longer on the radio.
I was driving home from work last night and I was listening to the Sunday sermon on podcast. There was a statement that made a lot of sense and that was ‘You should live your life like you drive a car; mostly looking forward, but sometimes glancing back and side to side.’ And the point of that is that you can’t get to where you are going if you are only looking in the rearview mirror. But of course, this is the time to put an end to this year and everything that went along with it.
I have kind of batted around the idea what I wanted this to be. One thought I had was the top ten things of what happened in the world, but I think that would be too pedestrian. I thought about putting together some sort of song list or something that represented the year but that seemed boring. In the end, I settled on my year in review and the highlights of my year.
January- We rang in the New Year in Whittier, California. I picked five ripe oranges off a tree as we were heading back home January 4th. We had a tremendous week and a half family vacation which turned out to be tremendous luck that we took our trip when we did because travelling soon became impossible.
February- Right before our trip, we had a water leak that caused the ceiling to collapse in our pantry. Once the damage was repaired, I spent most of January and February building cabinets to replace the pantry and turn it into a more functional space. This was my most ambitious all wood woodworking project to date.
March- This was the month where our lives were impacted by the ‘Coronavirus’. School ended a full week before spring break, my wife’s office closed that same week. We cancelled our couple days of vacation that we were going to take and went into ‘lockdown’. Fortunately, we had some distinctly un-Oregon like spring weather and the weather turned mostly nice from here on out.
April- We said good-bye to our exchange student. Even though his Visa was good, he wanted to stay and both parents were OK with the decision the exchange program was not. After we signed a waiver for him to stay, they rescinded the support like insurance and such. All was quiet and melancholy at our house for a couple of weeks.
May- The weather changed for good toward summer this month. I went from working on the apartment four to five days a week to seven days a week. In the back of my mind, I already knew that I was behind and that there was so much to do that I really didn’t have time to waste, especially because we were still in quasi lockdown anyway.
June- This was the month that we started hosting small group at our house. It was really a rededication for me to get more serious about my commitment to God. I have gone through the waxing and waning of church attendance, devotional reading etc. Each time as I come back, it seems that my tuner gets a little clearer. It seems like I am hearing more.
July- This was all remodeling, all the time. I am trying to think of a highlight for this month but it is all kind of a blur. I guess if I were to pick one experience it would be roofing the new addition with my son. I don’t know if he learned anything but it was kind of fun teaching him. Side note: we got it right the first time, no leaks.
August- The apartment is complete. Tenants move in the first weekend. I wasn’t completely done until the second week. I still had, garbage to deal with, materials to donate, and a mess in the garage.
September- I don’t really remember this month. It was the month of wildfire, we had two weeks of smoke and maybe I was in a daze. I had to come to grips that I no longer employed a landscaper and started spending time in the yard mowing, pruning, etc. I now find myself watching the weather to find the dry days so I can attempt to keep up with all the things that need to get done.
October- This was a month of disappointment. I chose to do handyman work and job search over going hunting. I was really disappointed but my dad said that they saw zero deer during the whole week. You know, I always want a chance but the comradery is really fun too. I don’t know how many more chances I will have like that. I hope that wasn’t the last one.
November- I guess that this was a leap of faith. This was the month that I was looking to make a move for a more menial, labor type job since we were moving toward the holidays. The interview was easy, I think the test was just having the perseverance to try. I was hired without being asked a single question other than “can you do the job?”
December- I settled in for regularly driving for Amazon. I have really enjoyed my time. Part of it is that I know I am not going to do this forever. Truthfully, I haven’t worked as much as I hoped I would from a financial perspective. I have been averaging about thirty hour weeks and it takes the best part of the day: from about 9am to about 7pm on the days that I work. Now that peak season has ended, the number of drivers on the road has decreased by about a fifty percent and consequently it seems like that routes are getting longer. Yesterday I was ‘on-duty’ for nearly eleven hours, the max allowed for a day.
Conclusions for all of this… I guess if you routinely document your life, it is easy to remember. But seriously, the big one is that we are not leaving the year in the same fashion as we did last year. The pandemic stopped monthly trap shoots, it cancelled my kid’s summer camp and other extra-curricular activities. My daily EDC now includes a mask and unfortunately I have to wear it all day when I work. I fear that we have severely damaged our economy as well as raised false flags of hope that we are all doing our part to ‘flatten the curve’.
One more quick tangent. I had a nice Christmas. It was the first one ever that we did not leave the house after we got home from Christmas Eve service, including when we lived in South Carolina. It is strange when fourty plus years of tradition suddenly don’t exist. But on the plus side, it allowed us to take some time in the day and just relax rather than just feel rushed. We did spend significant time cooking, so we go a little taste of the rush.
I hope that you enjoyed my year in review. This will be the last post for 2020. My next post will be talking about goalsetting and plans for 2021 so I will save all of that for probably next Tuesday. With that, Happy New Year.
Before I get started and despite the negative tone of yesterday and today, I truly wish my readers a Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays of their faith and culture. This will be the last post before Christmas. I anticipate one more between Christmas and New Year’s day.
Today is the fictitious Festivus holiday of Seinfeld fame which has five distinctive components.
Decorations – A bare aluminum pole as a Christmas tree substitute
Dinner – Some sort of semi-formal, family style dinner with the invited Festivus guests
Airing of Grievances – Bring up issues that have happened all year long with the guests present. This will occur before dinner.
Feats of Strength – Two chosen participants will duke it out to determine the year’s winner
Miracles – Anything that would lighten it up out of the ordinary. It is just fun to say.
Today, I am going to write about concerns that I have from the year and moving forward. This is not intended to be a downer list but rather a stimulating and thought provoking post. I don’t know if I have said in the past on this blog or not, but I truly believe the situation is what you make of it. Without discussion or awareness, things only maintain status quo at best.
Working for an hourly wage may sound good on paper, but it doesn’t pay what you would think. In my case, the expectation was that I was going to work four, ten hour days in a week. The reality has been that it has been 3-4, six to eight hour days. My time stubs are averaging 30 hours a week. I don’t think that it is enough to justify the time output.
Creativity is dead in entertainment. The brilliance of Seinfeld as an example. It was funny, witty and edgy without being over the top. I feel like the last sitcom to hold the ‘best’ title recently, Big Bang Theory was none of those things and I have a chemistry degree. I get nerd humor. Streaming is now the best way to get close but even so I can’t keep up with the volumes of choices and seasonal release schedules.
The difference between the ‘free’ states and the quasi-totalitarian states has been exploited this year. The west coast has gone full jack boot on some industries like fitness gyms, movie theaters and restaurants. Who the hell is going to eat outside in Oregon winter? My position remains that vulnerable people need to take appropriate precautions, everyone else should live as they see fit.
Logic and Reason is completely absent from the majority of the population. We have the group that still thinks Trump will keep the office of President. We have the group that thinks quarantine and masks will ‘slow the curve’. We have the group that thinks rioting helps the image of Black Lives Matter. We have ‘camping bans’ as a policy for reduced homelessness. It feels like it is a school district ‘snow day’ when it snowed for fifteen minutes at three AM.
Media of almost any form is in the tank for one side or the other. It doesn’t matter which side. And by the way, the major social media platforms are the worst at censorship. They are imploring politically correct only messages. The fact that they have successfully polarized the population means that they win. Control has been surrendered. If you are accepting any argument where ‘the science has been settled’ or you are opposed to any argument because that is the argument, then you are being controlled as well.
Convenience over privacy rules the day and people just don’t care. If you have ever uttered or agreed with the phrase, ‘it is a good first step’ then it works on you too. Bills such as the Patriot Act have fueled the collection of data on you. Granted, most people don’t have much to hide (yet). But, I am sure that most people have things, do things that they would rather not share, myself included. I fear that it is too late at this point. We do not have enough technology for complete monitoring but the path is set. Let me put it this way, our laws limit surveillance to telephone wire tapping only, not e-mail, not text messaging, not private forum posts.
That is probably enough. Remember, we are probably more alike than we are different. I believe that God created us in his image, and that cannot be a mistake.
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