If Money Were No Object

Jim Tigwell, over at Concept Crucible published a blog about what he would do if money were no object. He talks about why that was hard for him to consider, and why it's relevant at all. He mentions that, once you have done away with all of the things that you do because you have to do them to live, the things that you would choose to do are your big and outrageous dreams. If you don't ever think about the crazy things you would do with all the spare time and money in the world, you don't have any sense of what it is you really want to be doing. Once you have answered that question, you can then work towards it in a more everyday way than winning the lottery or becoming immediately independently wealthy.

This of course got me thinking about what I would do, and I, like Jim, found it a very hard question to answer, though probably for a different reason. The reason that I found it hard to answer is because I would want to do ALL THE THINGS. Everything. Systematically.

I agree with what Jim said on creating things; I am also a creator, so I would write despite incompetence, I would make bad art and  play great music poorly, I would make inane videos and sing constantly, and I would get better at all of those things. But rest assured, before I was done getting any good at any one of them, I would decide that now is the time to learn French. Before I was halfway fluent I would decide it's the time to go on a walkabout and spend a month walking a trail alone. (Since that one is hard to bail on in the middle, I would probably finish that one.) After that I would become obsessed with yoga for a while and then realize that I had forgotten all about my passion for knitting, and start doing that again. Then maybe I would start working my way through my veritable library of a to-read pile. Or I might learn to joust. After that: Who knows? Maybe I would take hang gliding lessons. Or visit Mozambique or Bangladesh or Ireland or Antarctica. Maybe then I would enroll in a dozen University classes just because they sounded neat.

Anyway, the point I am getting at is that there is a big part of me that just wants to absorb every experience imaginable and learn any skill that I can get someone to teach me. I just never feel like I have the time or the resources. So maybe I should just find a way to do all of these things, one at a time, at a more reasonable rate than I would if I had all the money and time in the world. A part of me also wonders what it says about me as a person that I would flit from one thing to another indefinitely, if given the opportunity, but that is a bit of pensivity for another day.

I'll end my little babble here on the same note that Jim ended his: Think about it. What would you do? ...Well, maybe you should work on that.

Review: New Moon

New Moon by Stephenie Meyer

My rating: 1 of 5 stars



I read this book (and Twilight) out of sheer stubbornness. I wanted to understand the cultural phenomenon that it has become, though I didn't really have any interest in it. the frothing fan base really turned me off of the whole series. To be honest, I was disappointed that I didn't hate the first book. It was okay. Just okay; it wasn't good. I would probably have really liked it when I was 14, which is a good thing, since it is a young adult novel. I moved on to New Moon with tenacity, but I was absolutely bored to tears by it. While the first book was largely a long deliberation on how pretty Edward is, this one was a long lamentation on the fact that he wasn't there any more, and (to me, at least) there was absolutely nothing there that sparked any interest. I will probably read the rest of the series out of pure stubbornness, but I would tell anyone else who wants to understand the crazy cultural phenomenon that no, they don't.



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At A Loss

I want to write. It's not even that; I want to create something. I find myself constantly in a state of creative frustration where all I want is to put pen to paper and write something. It's not as specific as that, however; I would be as happy to write a song, or a poem or to paint or draw or sculpt, I just don't know where to begin. My muse (a concept that I am not entirely supportive of, but that is an aside for another day) has been disconcertingly silent for a long time now. Not only that, but I find myself often frustrated when I do set something to paper (or the applicable media) with the fact that I am not good enough at whatever it is I am doing to create the vision that I started with.

This creative frustration has been a sticking point for me for several months now. Is this something that other people come across? Do other people get accosted by the desire to create, but lack any idea as to what they should actually set out to do?

I have tried to start a bunch of projects, but none have yet turned out the way I envisioned them, and I am left feeling distinctly unsatisfied. I am supposed to be creating the artwork for a hypothetical children's book; maybe that will satiate my creative drive.

For now I have settled myself into a rut of reading often. I know that reading a lot does not make you a good writer, but I can at least direct my energy into absorbing a story and maybe learning something. If nothing else it keeps me from wasting my entire days on the mindless void of arguments and cat pictures that is the internet.

The Merits of Talking to Myself

I have been thinking about this blog lately. About what it is and what it could be and what I want it to be. My problem is that I don't really have any idea of the answer to any of those questions. It isn't really anything now; it is not a place to share information or new ideas, and it is not a place where I try to entertain people. It's not useful or fun, and if it's not either of those, then what is it?

Seems to me that it is more or less a completely self-indulgent collection of my thoughts that I post in when I want to feel like someone wants to know what I think.

I tried having a blog where the goal was to be entertaining, but I ran out of inspiration after about a month. Even then, it was a mishmash of whatever happened to come to my head. It had no cohesive theme or plan. It was just me talking about whatever I happened to want to talk about at any given time. I just tried a little harder for it to be funny. (Which I'm still not sure that it was.)

This blog was always sort of a substitute diary. I feel that, in general, the internet is really better off without those. An individual's thoughts and babblings about their day to day lives (be it me or anyone else) generally speaking, do not interest anyone. No one on the internet really wants to hear how I feel about my day at work, or my armchair psychiatric analyses of why people are the way they are.

Further to that, no one really cares about the deliberation behind what my blog should be about or how it should be presented.

From here, the question becomes whether or not I should continue writing it, knowing that no one wants to hear what I have to say. Why do I try to keep a blog? For the benefit of other people, or myself? We've already covered the fact that it's not for other people, so what benefit does it have for me?

It keeps me literate, there is that. I don't do a lot of writing nowadays, unless it is in chat or email, so some practice is a good thing. That is something that I could do in a personal journal, though. I wonder if that might be a better place for it.

Some part of me still resists the idea of curling into my shell and ceasing my broadcast of inanity altogether. Maybe I just need to feel listened to.

My Little Children's Show

After all the hype that has been happening about this stupid show, I decided to give it an honest try. I watched three whole episodes, thinking that there must be something to this show that is drawing all of these people in. Turns out that no, it is just a children’s show that has drawn an inexplicably large following of adult men from the internet.

And I like to draw while I watch television. There you have it.