Lately I've been realizing how slow my mental maturation has really been.
Mainly through stuff I'm responsible for, which intimidates the crap out of me.
I only started taking care of housework without hesitation a few years ago.
My parents tried to get the "if you don't do it, it won't get done" mentality into my head from an early age, but it wasn't until I was actually on my own (including out of the dorms) that I started just taking care of housework because it needed to be done.
Car maintenance stuff still intimidates me, and I couldn't tell you why to save my life.
I'll do six laps around a mechanic's place before deciding to go have lunch instead of getting my oil changed (and this when the dipstick is almost DRY).
Money issues feel waaaay beyond my ken (yay archaic saying of the day), especially around tax time.
If it took till age 22 to take care of housework without problems, how long before I can take care of our household finances without feeling like I'm jumping in the deep end without a floaty?
40s? 50s? Will we have grandchildren running around before I can just HANDLE shit?
Even as I read books about how my generation is taking longer to reach levels of maturation our parents and grandparents hit earlier and earlier in life, it still feels like everyone else has their shit together and I'm just treading water on my best day.
Especially as I get ready to graduate with my B.A. after spending nearly a decade (god I'm old) floundering around three campuses.
Suddenly all the good-student responsibilities, which I picked up within seconds of starting kindergarten (and nearly lost before taking a year off from college), aren't going to matter anymore.
What good is knowing the precise studying and preparation rituals to succeed in test-taking when you're looking for/working at a job?
What good is knowing MLA/APA/whatever-the-fuck citation format when you'll likely NEVER write another essay as long as you live?
I'm also torn between two modes of thought when it comes to career-hunting (given that I, unlike what seems like everyone else, didn't choose my career by age 12).
1) I find a job that takes full advantage of my writing abilities.
Advantage: Uses the skills I expounded upon and developed in college.
Disadvantage: Could make me hate myself by turning the art into work.
2) I find a job that in NO WAY uses my abilities.
Advantage: I don't have to worry about #1's disadvantage, and could practice my art for art's sake in my spare time.
Disadvantage: Because of that advantage, I end up hating life because all my attention and desire is focused on evenings and especially weekends, when I CAN practice my art.
All this while most people are saying that the first job out of college is usually #2, mainly because you have to pay bills before you can do anything else.
Saturday, March 3, 2012
Friday, February 10, 2012
Men, Women, and God
Ours is not to reason why, our is but to do what our moms/girlfriends/wives tell us.
God calls whom He will to the roles He will, then He qualifies them to fit the roles to which He has called them.
End of story.
This happens on an INDIVIDUAL level, not a socio-economic, nor an age, nor a racial, nor a gender level.
To apply archaic sexism to life here and now is the exact same mistake the Pharisees made when trying to apply the nitpicky details of Mosaic law to Christ (aka "straining at gnats").
God has not changed since He first revealed Himself, but humanity has, and with our maturation as a species has come a more mature understanding of God.
Thus we who say "God is love" are not hampered by the tales of atrocities committed in God's name in the Old Testament, nor the sexual repression common (and in some cases government-enforced) in the first century A.D.
God is love, He qualifies whom He has called, and any attempt to enforce rules written two thousand years earlier in humanity's spiritual maturation process just gets in His way and turns people away from Him.
Thus...
I do not lead our household. My wife does not lead our household.
We are walking through life at the same pace, trying every day to stay focused and keep each other focused on God.
In astronomical terms, God is the Sun, and my wife and I are Pluto and Charon, orbiting about each other as we stay in orbit around God, always making every effort to orbit closer and closer to Him.
God calls whom He will to the roles He will, then He qualifies them to fit the roles to which He has called them.
End of story.
This happens on an INDIVIDUAL level, not a socio-economic, nor an age, nor a racial, nor a gender level.
To apply archaic sexism to life here and now is the exact same mistake the Pharisees made when trying to apply the nitpicky details of Mosaic law to Christ (aka "straining at gnats").
God has not changed since He first revealed Himself, but humanity has, and with our maturation as a species has come a more mature understanding of God.
Thus we who say "God is love" are not hampered by the tales of atrocities committed in God's name in the Old Testament, nor the sexual repression common (and in some cases government-enforced) in the first century A.D.
God is love, He qualifies whom He has called, and any attempt to enforce rules written two thousand years earlier in humanity's spiritual maturation process just gets in His way and turns people away from Him.
Thus...
I do not lead our household. My wife does not lead our household.
We are walking through life at the same pace, trying every day to stay focused and keep each other focused on God.
In astronomical terms, God is the Sun, and my wife and I are Pluto and Charon, orbiting about each other as we stay in orbit around God, always making every effort to orbit closer and closer to Him.
Saturday, November 26, 2011
"The business of America is business."
"If a businessman does what he thinks will keep his business making money, it is good for his employees and by extension his society."
-TV news personality
For small businesses, the statement is easily self-evident.
We applaud small business owners who help their communities by providing goods/services and employment.
For corporations, it's a whole 'nuther ballgame.
Corporations seem to help communities by building factories or offices and hiring locals en masse.
Of course, as we saw with General Motors, the corporate jobs become a part of the booming community's foundation, so when the inevitable layoffs come (once again en masse), the community founders in a sea of unemployment.
A businessman who "does what he thinks will keep his business making money" by cutting employees' wages to ludicrous levels, denying health insurance or other benefits, or simply laying off huge numbers of people, all the while making record profits for himself, does a huge injury to the community, and to society.
Especially when all of the corporate businessmen get together and realize they can enrich themselves dramatically by universally adopting the above policies.
Which is what has happened.
Thus the economy sinks, unemployment skyrockets, and even those who HAVE jobs can't get by without federal aid or incurring debt.
All while those corporate businessmen rake in huge profits year after year and just keep getting fatter.
-TV news personality
For small businesses, the statement is easily self-evident.
We applaud small business owners who help their communities by providing goods/services and employment.
For corporations, it's a whole 'nuther ballgame.
Corporations seem to help communities by building factories or offices and hiring locals en masse.
Of course, as we saw with General Motors, the corporate jobs become a part of the booming community's foundation, so when the inevitable layoffs come (once again en masse), the community founders in a sea of unemployment.
A businessman who "does what he thinks will keep his business making money" by cutting employees' wages to ludicrous levels, denying health insurance or other benefits, or simply laying off huge numbers of people, all the while making record profits for himself, does a huge injury to the community, and to society.
Especially when all of the corporate businessmen get together and realize they can enrich themselves dramatically by universally adopting the above policies.
Which is what has happened.
Thus the economy sinks, unemployment skyrockets, and even those who HAVE jobs can't get by without federal aid or incurring debt.
All while those corporate businessmen rake in huge profits year after year and just keep getting fatter.
Friday, November 4, 2011
Occupy the Faculty Lounge
Seems the Occupy Wall Street crowd is also going after colleges.
It seems like what's being demanded is simply a return on the investment.
We've created a culture in which college is treated as the only possible path to a happy, fulfilling adult life.
I've been told on several occasions that "it doesn't matter what your degree is in, just GET ONE."
Especially by my parents.
My mother graduated in 1978 with a BA in Music Education.
Her first post-graduation job was as a secretary for a branch office of Coca Cola.
She had never been a secretary, never worked for Coca Cola, and didn't know anyone at the branch.
But she had a degree.
Her competition was a lady who had several years of secretary experience, worked for Coca Cola at another branch office, and had several friends at the office my mom was shooting for.
But she had no college degree.
My mom got the job.
Now to me, that sounds like a horrible business practice, hiring due to an arbitrary education which (on the outside) has little or no connection to the actual job rather than due to experience and promoting within the company.
But that story and many others have been dangled in the faces of my generation since we were kids, that the time and [massive amounts of] money required to get a degree will pay for themselves eventually.
I don't think the government should be responsible for arbitrarily handing out high-paying jobs to Gender Studies majors, but more of the federal budget should definitely be funneled into Pell Grants.
College tuition has risen drastically in the last twenty years, while Pell funds stayed stagnant.
More incentives to wait to start college would help as well, especially for kids who aren't mature enough to handle living on their own right out of high school.
Internships, work-study jobs that expose students to the real world while helping them earn general education credits, and on-the-job training from actual companies would all help that process.
Waiting longer and being pickier in choosing school and degree would help lower the number of college dropouts.
Or, God forbid, the kid learns from these programs that he/she doesn't actually need to go to college.
Also, colleges should be required to make public their graduation rates, not just enrollments.
Too many schools have turned into freshmen factories, trying to get as many people in the door without any kind of support for them once they're in.
I wouldn't mind some counseling prior to enrollment as well, if only to ask the prospective college student "Why are you here?"
Some need to be reminded that they are adults, and should make decisions based on their own thoughts and feelings rather than peer or parental pressure.
It seems like what's being demanded is simply a return on the investment.
We've created a culture in which college is treated as the only possible path to a happy, fulfilling adult life.
I've been told on several occasions that "it doesn't matter what your degree is in, just GET ONE."
Especially by my parents.
My mother graduated in 1978 with a BA in Music Education.
Her first post-graduation job was as a secretary for a branch office of Coca Cola.
She had never been a secretary, never worked for Coca Cola, and didn't know anyone at the branch.
But she had a degree.
Her competition was a lady who had several years of secretary experience, worked for Coca Cola at another branch office, and had several friends at the office my mom was shooting for.
But she had no college degree.
My mom got the job.
Now to me, that sounds like a horrible business practice, hiring due to an arbitrary education which (on the outside) has little or no connection to the actual job rather than due to experience and promoting within the company.
But that story and many others have been dangled in the faces of my generation since we were kids, that the time and [massive amounts of] money required to get a degree will pay for themselves eventually.
I don't think the government should be responsible for arbitrarily handing out high-paying jobs to Gender Studies majors, but more of the federal budget should definitely be funneled into Pell Grants.
College tuition has risen drastically in the last twenty years, while Pell funds stayed stagnant.
More incentives to wait to start college would help as well, especially for kids who aren't mature enough to handle living on their own right out of high school.
Internships, work-study jobs that expose students to the real world while helping them earn general education credits, and on-the-job training from actual companies would all help that process.
Waiting longer and being pickier in choosing school and degree would help lower the number of college dropouts.
Or, God forbid, the kid learns from these programs that he/she doesn't actually need to go to college.
Also, colleges should be required to make public their graduation rates, not just enrollments.
Too many schools have turned into freshmen factories, trying to get as many people in the door without any kind of support for them once they're in.
I wouldn't mind some counseling prior to enrollment as well, if only to ask the prospective college student "Why are you here?"
Some need to be reminded that they are adults, and should make decisions based on their own thoughts and feelings rather than peer or parental pressure.
Friday, October 28, 2011
SSSSSMOKIN'!
I spent three years watching my girlfriend's mom gradually succumb to cancer because she smoked cigarettes for 37 years.
She had two tumors on each lung, and was pronounced "in the clear" after three surgeries and months of radiation and chemo.
A month later she started having headaches, and a tumor was discovered inside her brain, having metastasized from her lungs.
She had seven brain surgeries, another year of chemo and "cyberknife" (aka hyper-intense radiation) treatments, and in the end she died in her living room as her mother (my then-girlfriend's grandmother) tried to help her take pain pills anally because her throat no longer functioned.
She also had lupus and rheumatoid arthritis BEFORE being diagnosed with cancer.
I married her daughter three months after her death.
The thing which blows my mind is that several of this lady's relatives, who ALL saw what she went through and KNEW why she was forced to experience it, have since STARTED SMOKING.
I understand that if you've had the habit for years/decades it can be a struggle to quit.
What I don't understand is the people every year who, with all of the above type information available to them, START smoking.
There's just no excuse for that kind of stupidity nowadays.
We don't have TV/radio/Internet commercials for cigarettes, especially ones like they had in the 50's which encouraged "good" smoking, or the little pamphlets which detailed the health benefits of smoking cigarettes.
I should probably specify that I'm mainly going after CIGARETTE smokers.
Usually, pipe and cigar smokers are at home or outside when they smoke, and because more work went into producing what they are smoking, they tend to consume less (and produce less second-hand smoke).
Cigarette smokers, on the other hand, are MASS consumers, plowing through quickie after quickie, day after day, and polluting the air the rest of us were using before they showed up.
I've never heard of a two-pack-a-day CIGAR smoker.
Now, how should this play out on the legal end?
Keep cigarettes legal, legalize marijuana, and charge users of both out the wazoo in special sales taxes, production taxes, etc.
Do so, knowing that no marijuana user worth his/her/its salt is going to go farther away for it than their own backyard.
She had two tumors on each lung, and was pronounced "in the clear" after three surgeries and months of radiation and chemo.
A month later she started having headaches, and a tumor was discovered inside her brain, having metastasized from her lungs.
She had seven brain surgeries, another year of chemo and "cyberknife" (aka hyper-intense radiation) treatments, and in the end she died in her living room as her mother (my then-girlfriend's grandmother) tried to help her take pain pills anally because her throat no longer functioned.
She also had lupus and rheumatoid arthritis BEFORE being diagnosed with cancer.
I married her daughter three months after her death.
The thing which blows my mind is that several of this lady's relatives, who ALL saw what she went through and KNEW why she was forced to experience it, have since STARTED SMOKING.
I understand that if you've had the habit for years/decades it can be a struggle to quit.
What I don't understand is the people every year who, with all of the above type information available to them, START smoking.
There's just no excuse for that kind of stupidity nowadays.
We don't have TV/radio/Internet commercials for cigarettes, especially ones like they had in the 50's which encouraged "good" smoking, or the little pamphlets which detailed the health benefits of smoking cigarettes.
I should probably specify that I'm mainly going after CIGARETTE smokers.
Usually, pipe and cigar smokers are at home or outside when they smoke, and because more work went into producing what they are smoking, they tend to consume less (and produce less second-hand smoke).
Cigarette smokers, on the other hand, are MASS consumers, plowing through quickie after quickie, day after day, and polluting the air the rest of us were using before they showed up.
I've never heard of a two-pack-a-day CIGAR smoker.
Now, how should this play out on the legal end?
Keep cigarettes legal, legalize marijuana, and charge users of both out the wazoo in special sales taxes, production taxes, etc.
Do so, knowing that no marijuana user worth his/her/its salt is going to go farther away for it than their own backyard.
Wednesday, October 12, 2011
Kids Leaving Church
Recently read an article describing several big reasons why my and younger generations are leaving "the church" in droves.
Inflexibility, hypocrisy, irrationally repressed sexuality, refusal to explain the reasoning behind doctrines and church traditions, and lack of authentic experience were among them.
A few years ago I made it a point to become friends with at least four people of different faiths.
Ended up with two Atheists, an agnostic, and a Pagan.
All four were raised in church (this is the Bible Belt after all), and by adulthood had summarily ditched the whole thing.
They grew up being spoon-fed doctrine and dogma, all the while becoming increasingly aware that the "church people" around them weren't demonstrating any behavior different from the people "outside" whom the churchy people would vocally demonize every week.
All "Christianity" had to offer my friends was a bribe ("Heaven") combined with a threat ("Hell"), with no real life-changing effects in the interim.
For all but the Pagan, the rationale became:
"None of these 'religions' have anything but their own bleatings to offer anyone! Why waste my time?"
The Pagan, a girl with great spiritual sensitivity, unable to break away completely from all things spiritual, instead sought a more open group of people with whom to commune with higher existence.
The rise of technology has demonstrated the value of scientific thought and research, so for "Christians" to come down against it is hypocritical.
Nothing like hearing a sermon bashing scientific research on evolution while reading one's Bible on an iPhone or Kindle.
With the advent of the Internet, children, teens, and young adults from ALL backgrounds and ALL walks of life have access to more information than ever before.
As a result, the days of "God said it, I believe it, and that settles it" are now prehistoric in perception.
The idea of taking what ANYONE says as automatically true is farcical at best, dangerously ludicrous at worst.
There is always a WHY behind every statement the church or the mosque or the synagogue or the witch's circle makes.
Young people today have made the WHY their target, and refuse to accept the WHAT or the WHO or the WHEN or the HOW without it.
As for sexuality...
In my lifetime alone, the church has attempted to clamp down on sexual expression time and time again.
The only results have been sexual repression in adults, and sexual proclivity in kids.
Parents and church leaders and "church people" need to get out of their little fortresses of solitude and recognize that kids are asking about sex earlier and earlier than they ever have before.
If you want to influence your child's decisions regarding sex, you have to VOLUNTEER THE INFORMATION.
My high school alma mater in Texas, a school of about 1200 kids, once held the #2 spot in the STATE for highest percentage of drop outs due to pregnancy.
(can't speak for the present, since I haven't checked in awhile)
The sexual atmosphere has been so repressed for so long, by old churchy people who treat the whole thing as "icky", that the MOMENT most of the teens raised in poverty start feeling the urge, they GO FOR IT.
...and having had zero education on the subject, from teachers and church people alike, they crank out another generation statistically doomed to repeat the process.
Personal experience time.
I had sex before I was married. I gave up my virginity at age 17.
I'd been addicted to porn for almost four years prior, and had never had a girlfriend until about a year before I first had sex.
I was given ZERO information by my parents, I was given PLATITUDES by my church family.
The only reason it didn't result in a pregnancy is because HER parents and HER church family had educated her from day one of puberty on how to have an enjoyable, intimate, pregnancy-free sex life.
We broke up after dating for three years.
My wife and I also had sex before we were married.
I'd gone without sex for almost two years (another thing I was never informed of was that sex is like an amazing, natural drug: gotta have more after that first taste), and she, though never having been in even a short-term relationship before, had decided (after a long, calm, informative month of research) she was ready to lose her virginity.
What started as a fling, God turned into a lifetime of intimacy and selfless sacrifice.
My generation, and those which follow after, will continue to be forced to discover sexuality for ourselves, whether online or in the back seat of a car, because the church has spent the last centuries demonizing the naked human form.
Sexual sins have been treated as Satan's "favorites," i.e. those most offensive to God, for generations.
Thus a natural progression to "better avoid sex entirely so you don't do one of Satan's favorite sins!" has occurred.
The church needs to quit talking about sex with kid gloves on, get out of the fortress of chastity it has built for itself, and give younger generations something MORE than just the same old bleating platitudes.
And I'm not even broaching the subject of homosexuality in young (or old) people.
Inflexibility, hypocrisy, irrationally repressed sexuality, refusal to explain the reasoning behind doctrines and church traditions, and lack of authentic experience were among them.
A few years ago I made it a point to become friends with at least four people of different faiths.
Ended up with two Atheists, an agnostic, and a Pagan.
All four were raised in church (this is the Bible Belt after all), and by adulthood had summarily ditched the whole thing.
They grew up being spoon-fed doctrine and dogma, all the while becoming increasingly aware that the "church people" around them weren't demonstrating any behavior different from the people "outside" whom the churchy people would vocally demonize every week.
All "Christianity" had to offer my friends was a bribe ("Heaven") combined with a threat ("Hell"), with no real life-changing effects in the interim.
For all but the Pagan, the rationale became:
"None of these 'religions' have anything but their own bleatings to offer anyone! Why waste my time?"
The Pagan, a girl with great spiritual sensitivity, unable to break away completely from all things spiritual, instead sought a more open group of people with whom to commune with higher existence.
The rise of technology has demonstrated the value of scientific thought and research, so for "Christians" to come down against it is hypocritical.
Nothing like hearing a sermon bashing scientific research on evolution while reading one's Bible on an iPhone or Kindle.
With the advent of the Internet, children, teens, and young adults from ALL backgrounds and ALL walks of life have access to more information than ever before.
As a result, the days of "God said it, I believe it, and that settles it" are now prehistoric in perception.
The idea of taking what ANYONE says as automatically true is farcical at best, dangerously ludicrous at worst.
There is always a WHY behind every statement the church or the mosque or the synagogue or the witch's circle makes.
Young people today have made the WHY their target, and refuse to accept the WHAT or the WHO or the WHEN or the HOW without it.
As for sexuality...
In my lifetime alone, the church has attempted to clamp down on sexual expression time and time again.
The only results have been sexual repression in adults, and sexual proclivity in kids.
Parents and church leaders and "church people" need to get out of their little fortresses of solitude and recognize that kids are asking about sex earlier and earlier than they ever have before.
If you want to influence your child's decisions regarding sex, you have to VOLUNTEER THE INFORMATION.
My high school alma mater in Texas, a school of about 1200 kids, once held the #2 spot in the STATE for highest percentage of drop outs due to pregnancy.
(can't speak for the present, since I haven't checked in awhile)
The sexual atmosphere has been so repressed for so long, by old churchy people who treat the whole thing as "icky", that the MOMENT most of the teens raised in poverty start feeling the urge, they GO FOR IT.
...and having had zero education on the subject, from teachers and church people alike, they crank out another generation statistically doomed to repeat the process.
Personal experience time.
I had sex before I was married. I gave up my virginity at age 17.
I'd been addicted to porn for almost four years prior, and had never had a girlfriend until about a year before I first had sex.
I was given ZERO information by my parents, I was given PLATITUDES by my church family.
The only reason it didn't result in a pregnancy is because HER parents and HER church family had educated her from day one of puberty on how to have an enjoyable, intimate, pregnancy-free sex life.
We broke up after dating for three years.
My wife and I also had sex before we were married.
I'd gone without sex for almost two years (another thing I was never informed of was that sex is like an amazing, natural drug: gotta have more after that first taste), and she, though never having been in even a short-term relationship before, had decided (after a long, calm, informative month of research) she was ready to lose her virginity.
What started as a fling, God turned into a lifetime of intimacy and selfless sacrifice.
My generation, and those which follow after, will continue to be forced to discover sexuality for ourselves, whether online or in the back seat of a car, because the church has spent the last centuries demonizing the naked human form.
Sexual sins have been treated as Satan's "favorites," i.e. those most offensive to God, for generations.
Thus a natural progression to "better avoid sex entirely so you don't do one of Satan's favorite sins!" has occurred.
The church needs to quit talking about sex with kid gloves on, get out of the fortress of chastity it has built for itself, and give younger generations something MORE than just the same old bleating platitudes.
And I'm not even broaching the subject of homosexuality in young (or old) people.
Wednesday, September 28, 2011
Children and Technology
Technology hasn't made children any more or less intelligent.
It's just made them older, regardless of their number of years.
My 11 year-old nephew knows more about the world than I did at 15.
Information is as close as a few clicks to children, and as a result of more available information, more is now required earlier and earlier.
Technological innovation has shifted the type of intelligence desired by employers, which is and has always been the determining factor in education.
The whole education system is not designed to build creative, critical thinkers who are constantly taking in new information and sifting through it using finely tuned analytical skills.
The system is designed to create worker bees who might have a hobby or two outside the hive.
Thus we have older adults going through midlife crises when their status as worker bee finally becomes obvious, younger adults refusing to become worker bees and thus being accused of letting the country go down the toilet, teens dropping like flies under the pressure to have their entire lives planned out by age 16 (at the extreme latest), and children already hating school because they know what's coming.
All of this is simply the result of a flawed system finally being exposed for what it is, and (thanks to technology) that exposure being put on display to millions who don't want to end up like their parents.
It's just made them older, regardless of their number of years.
My 11 year-old nephew knows more about the world than I did at 15.
Information is as close as a few clicks to children, and as a result of more available information, more is now required earlier and earlier.
Technological innovation has shifted the type of intelligence desired by employers, which is and has always been the determining factor in education.
The whole education system is not designed to build creative, critical thinkers who are constantly taking in new information and sifting through it using finely tuned analytical skills.
The system is designed to create worker bees who might have a hobby or two outside the hive.
Thus we have older adults going through midlife crises when their status as worker bee finally becomes obvious, younger adults refusing to become worker bees and thus being accused of letting the country go down the toilet, teens dropping like flies under the pressure to have their entire lives planned out by age 16 (at the extreme latest), and children already hating school because they know what's coming.
All of this is simply the result of a flawed system finally being exposed for what it is, and (thanks to technology) that exposure being put on display to millions who don't want to end up like their parents.
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