immature choices

I don't know why I'm suddenly interested in romantic notions again at this moment, but it's true I've been thinking it might be time to go out there again.  I'm not exactly very smart with my own choices for love interests.

I've also been extremely lucky.  I've been married, and I've been asked to marry many times.  Luck of the draw.  I also think not really being motivated toward couplehood is in itself an attraction.  An aloofness that seemed to always work for me.

Except when it didn't.

Generally, I did not pursue couplehood.  The less-than-handful of times where I personally decided I cared for someone and was active in my pursuit of that end, I chose aloof men that couldn't tell me how they felt about me.  It was a disaster each (both) times.  Falling for a man that can't tell you how he feels about you when you yourself can't tell him isn't a recipe for romantic bliss.  Being the fearful one only works when you're with someone who can be brave.

So.  There were two men I was madly in love with, that couldn't communicate mutual feelings to me.  I think they felt the same way.  But there's no way to be sure.  The one I wasted the most time and emotion on (the one that started me blogging in the first place), did give me a couple of sentences at the time that conveyed his feelings were just as strong.  But that was it.  Neither could really profess.  I tried.  I think.  The other was pre-blogging days.  I believe I wrote about him in a journal mostly, and what good is that if I am the only one who reads it?  The point being, I don't know that I was much better at being in love with them as they were with me.  I think there were immature fuckups enough to go around with both in-love instances.

I bring this up now because it's on my mind lately.  I tend to think along romantic, or at least sexual, lines when I've been getting a lot of exercise and when I'm feeling good about myself.

I'm not an aggressor.  And the two times I was in love and being somewhat aggressive about it, I chose men that couldn't even tell me they loved me.  So I think I've learned that this isn't a role I'm comfortable in.

I'm not sure when I'll start seeing people romantically again.  But I do know I'm not interested in buried feelings, or buried expressions of feelings.  And as always, being romantically involved is not a goal of mine, nor is it necessary for my happiness.

But I am feeling the urge for closeness again.  I am definitely wishing there were more kisses in my life.  It usually starts with a wish to kiss - starts when I begin scouring my various tv sources for romantic movies or shows that have really good kissing scenes.  Once I am beyond satisfaction from third-person romance, I'll put myself out there.  Not sure how I'm going to do that, either.  These days there are a million new options.  But it's nice to know that I'm not over these desires.  Nice to know my fuzzy romantic heart is still beating.

who's going to change the world?

Hilariously, but not really, someone has already invented the thing I wanted to invent.  I actually half expected this from the beginning.

In 2009, I watched an excellent lecture from Lawrence Krauss on YouTube that really awakened me to things I hadn't kept track of.  Scientific advancement - somehow I had forgotten that science doesn't stop, and my knowledge of latest achievements never was updated past high school or college.

It gives me comfort to know that out of my notice, the world goes on.

In 2009 I started the year working for a credit union at $10/hour, but ended the year at the magazine where I still work.  2009 changed many things for me.  In 2008 I had decided that I wasn't thrilled with the freelance life or certainly the bartender life.  The older I became, the more I found I didn't like not having a routine.  I didn't like late hours, I didn't like having no healthcare, and I really didn't like the lack of a steady paycheck.  But not having a routine really sticks out.  I longed for a set of necessary actions structuring my days.

In a lot of ways I feel as if I've never grown up.  That I am still very much a kid inside, still naive to many things, still staring wide-eyed at what all the adults around me are doing.  But I found this desire for a routine to be extremely mature.  It was like taking a step toward adulthood in a good way.  And hey, I was 39.  Probably a good time to grow up a little.

I'm slow to get there on a lot of things.  And with the climate problems we are facing, of COURSE someone was already in the midst of inventing something that I eureka'ed on in my own head.  I was late to the eureka.

Another thing that changed for me with time is my desire to leave something behind better than when I found it.  Since obtaining the steady job, regular paycheck, and healthcare, I've become more charitable.  I don't make a lot of money, but I found I could spare a little for charities I thought were extremely necessary and useful.  Now, I want to do more.

It's becoming as insistent a desire as wanting a steady routine.  I am sure our current political situation has something to do with it, but always having a keen interest in science and our species, I think this is what's been coming anyway.

What shape that takes is something I don't know at this point.  But there are too many things going on both inside my own life and without that are making this change imminent.

I long to write about what is going on with me personally.  I don't feel I can do that at this point - detail the drama and bullshit I have been forced into this year, and I'm not talking about our hijacked election or buffoon of a president.  My personal life has come to mirror the political crisis the whole country is in.  There's a huge amount of fodder for a writer here.  There's also a looming legal shadow, where if I want to remain in the right binds me to silence for the time being.

As the itch to do more strengthens, the drama and bullshit only nudge me further.

The Dust Won't Settle

The world is no longer normal.  Maybe it's been building toward this for a long time.  Maybe we can blame Fox News for winning the right to lie to the public and call it news all those years ago.  Maybe we can blame isolationism, these echo chambers and bias bubbles we can and do now put ourselves in.  Maybe we can blame our education system, which republicans in each state has damaged for decades by systematically stripping away funding and by promoting a religious (fictitious) agenda (in which a good education is a real enemy).  

The real truth is probably as messy as this outcome.  One thing I have learned, is to distrust extreme answers - if an answer to a complex problem is extremely simple, that answer is most likely harmful to someone or something.  So the answer to this dilemma is as complicated as the dilemma itself.

Are we rolling into a fascist regime?  Not if those opposed to fascism can stop it.  Are protests and petitions enough?  Over time, absolutely, however here we have another problem:  we do not have that much time.  From an environmental standpoint, we are falling further and further behind on a problem that will become harder and harder to correct.  We are daily dooming our species and quite a few others - we are digging ourselves further and further down.


The global, horrified reaction to Trump is encouraging.  While the math at home is both astounding and (somewhat) heartening.  When you go by the numbers, currently the number of eligible voters is 231,556,622.  40% of eligible voters did not vote.  92,671,979 people were too disgusted or bored or disinterested to get to the polls.  Of those that did, we know that 62,979,879 voted for Trump.  That is a bit more than one third of the eligible voting public.  The rest of the public either voted for someone else (beside the 3 million more votes Hillary received than Trump, an additional 7,804,213 also did not vote for Trump), or they did not vote at all.

When I participate in the protests - which I will continue to do - I can't help but wonder how many people I see couldn't get to the polls in 2016.  I know, it's not something to dwell on, but it sucks that this truth keeps proving itself over and over:  most people are only motivated to action when things get very, very bad.

I have allowed the daily bombardment upon our constitution by the new regime in the White House to distract me. I've let trivial outside distractions divert me.  I've allowed myself to be swallowed by this monster that just keeps rolling out.  But no more.  After all, I don't think the roll is anywhere near it's finished and I can still get to work while it rolls.

I want to do more than march.  I want to do something real that is useful to our species.  I don't know what's going to happen next with the government in my country.  And I am committed to resisting any and all things fascist happening.  But I also want to finish what I've only just begun and keep moving with the online MIT courses.  So I go back to the books.  And I keep my eyes open and I read the New York Times every morning, and I don't consume questionable news.

The New Year Has Begun

We are six days into 2017.  There will apparently be a tRump presidency (though he has trouble spelling words like that himself), and the conservatives in charge are busy trying to kill women.  Because that's basically what those who oppose abortion want:  they want women to give birth or die trying.

They're trying to remove healthcare from millions.  They're trying to codify their version of chrisitanity.  They're trying to rake in more oil money, at the expense of the health of every living person in the future.

It's not easy watching all this happen.  There's something new to enrage a person on a daily basis.

I'm putting together my plan for this year.  I haven't solidified anything yet, and more than anything I need to get back into the habit of writing.  There needs to be as many sane voices as possible out there telling the world what happened before the world ended.

First "Class", First Book

First, I am taking Biophysics.  The first class here is "Biometric Principles and Design", and the first textbook is one I can afford on my own.

I am taking part in a national boycott of all Drumpf products, including those of his family (#GrabYourWallet).  Unfortunately, Amazon carries Drumpf products.  I have no problem switching to Nook from Kindle, but I am hoping we can persuade Amazon to dump Drumpf products before my Prime membership is up for renewal.  In the meantime, I will use Amazon Smile, which donates to the charity of your choice when you make a purchase, and I am limiting my Amazon shopping.  I'm using Target as a great alternative for clothing and household items, and Chewy for pet supplies.

But because I've already paid for a year of Prime and used the benefits, because I now limit my Amazon purchases, and donate to anti-conservative-extremist causes with any purchases, and lastly because the CEO of Amazon has been critical of Trump as well as owning a newspaper that has been highly critical of Drumpf, I'm going to hold off cancelling my account just yet.  I've written and complained, as have thousands of others, and I believe we may get them to dump Drumpf products in the future.  If not, it's goodbye Amazon.

Anyway, tomorrow I'll buy the book.  I may even start reading it this weekend if I can fit it into my plans.  What is certain is that I will be using a lot of my time off this month to get this first class underway.  I'm both excited and determined.

MIT Online: What I'm Really Going To Be Up To

Ok.  I think the title of the blog lets you know I'm a bit of a cynic, but sometimes I'm not.  In that I'm not defeated, and I'm not a give-up kind of person in the face of bullshit.

So.  What I want to do is take action.  Why I have a blog is to chronicle that action because I'm hoping all this activity will be self-driving.  Self-feeding.  For me.  Here's the idea:

I'm going to take biology via the MIT free online courseware.  And then I will take engineering via the same.  I have a goal in mind, something we need to crack - and it's hilarious to me that this is more microphysics than macro.  Or astro, to be more accurate.  I am having a reverse Lawrence Krauss effect.

I was fortunate enough to have drinks with Dr. Krauss a few years ago. He told me about how his studies in particle physics led him to be more interested in astrophysics. My whole life I've been very interested in astrophysics and always thought space was where it's at.  But now, considering our species, I'm more interested in inventing something that will ensure we can later venture further into space.  If we're all dead, we're not going anywhere.  Of course, with the higgs boson discover, Dr. Krauss is again interested in particle physics, but in how it relates to astro, or more specifically, dark matter.  But I digress.

I want to study photosynthesis intensely and I want to see what I can do to create something that will, in a plant-like way, consume pollutants out of the air and simultaneously produce energy and maybe even oxygen. I've gone from outer space to inner space.

I think keeping track of what I do and how far I get here will help me to keep going.  That's why I'm here.  I want to record my progress.  I want to describe the online free school experience.  I hope to get support in the form of readers.  I don't want to give up on our species simply because there seems to be a lot of idiots out there that can't wrap their minds around the seriousness of the situation.  Or willfully deny it.

That's why I'm here, blogging again after what seems like a million years.  If these are the last days of humanity, I'd rather go out trying to do something about it.

As If the World Were Not Enough

The self-destruction to me is a bit puzzling.  And I know all about addiction, I know all about what I'm doing to myself, and still I keep smoking.

I can't seem to string together more than three days without a cigarette.  After that something in my mind just decides not to be determined anymore and thats when I go and get more cigarettes.  It's stupid, incredibly stupid.  I'm not young and the collective damage through the years must be severe.

There's a great book that helped me quit but it didn't help me stay quit.  There's drugs that I've tried but stopped because of the nightmares they produced.  Now I'm relying on my anger, but even that fades and I wind up smoking again.

My sister is going to have cancer surgery in ten days.  Which makes me feel like a much bigger asshole.

I want to save the world but I can't save myself.

It's a new day. I'm not giving up on quitting.