money and happiness

I can't tell how the day has gone as fast as it has. I spend no more than an hour on the computer with my word processor open waiting for words to come, and I got my hair cut. That shouldn't have taken all this time. I think that's the ultimate take away from living on my own schedule. Time is even more fleeting than we think. It's no secret that the days quickly turn into years, but that the seconds turn into year as well is a less accepted fact.

I think that highlights again how much more important time is than money. This has been a source of conflict in some of my relationships because it's easy to dismiss my lack of interest in money as a behavioural manifestation of some idealogical belief. That's not the case. I do hold some idealogical beliefs as do all people, but I have arguments for my desire to pursue free time and larger goals rather than pursuing money. Some of it is based on differences between me and other people, some of it is based on changes that have occured between my generation and those immediately preceding us, and some of it is simply based on an attempt to calculate potential quality of life without using money as the measure.

My personal attitudes are partly formed by being raised by teachers. My parents both taught in a poor rural school district. They were paid very little but kept it up because they loved teaching. We still traveled and lived interestingly. I spent a few years of my child hood in Japan, for instance. We had to be more creative about ho to pay for these things, such as finding jobs in Japan, and saving for a long time, but we were still able to do it, because it was a priority. IN this inatance doing something you love, and setting your priorities leads to a good life. That's part of why I don't think money is all that important.

I also find that I am more fulfiled by insular activities that cost little than I am by the external ones. I love to read and to write and to play music. These all cost little or no money. I am sustained by my music and writing, and I don't have to pay to do these things. Id be happy just playing music for the rest of my life.

I also think my my generation doesn't think of work, and money, the same way older (or at least recent older) generations had. We look more towards free time as the holy grail than to money. some of this is because of hte advent of credit, and some of it is simply from seeing our parents choose money over free time, and fullfilling employment and becoming miserable anyway. The further intricacies of intergenerational differences are fodder for other essays.

Despite these social reasons for my attitudes towards money, I think that my reasoning justifying my position is sound. I believe that satisfaction with one's life is more based on enjoyment of ones job and amount of freetime. This is supported by refutatuions of the measurment of quality of life by money. It's a conundrum of the west, this disconnection between amount of money and amount of happy. Why is America less happy than poorer places if money is the key to happiness? the answer is either that money isn't the key to happiness, or that our measurments are wrong. I'm leaning towards the idea that money isn't the key to happiness. This is largely due to coloquial evidence, but if someone can find me a study on happiness and amount of freetime (and I"m sure more than one such study exists) you will see that people with more freetime are happier, (this also applies to people who do work that they enjoy)

The point is that the money isn't important. It's the freetime, and the satisfaction. I think my generation is begining to realise that.

a proposition of a model of High seeking behaviour

One can presume that the phenomenon of creatures altering their state with drugs is primarily due to the way drugs capitilize on endogenous reward systems (like the opioid system) It is important also to note that the cange in state isn't all about feeling pleasure. Though certainly one's opioid system is manipulated when one takes heroin, there is also an equally important change in state and cognition. The feeling of being high, I'll argue, is equally as important as the change in cognition and perception.

Thinking creatures (of whatever degree) are fascinated with modifications in cognition and perception. Some times those changes in perception and cognition are beneficial, Such as the way someone can take shrooms as a way to look at a problem from another angle. Much like dreams, intoxicated experiences often re-imagine and re-frame current problems. When one is at a dead end sometimes dreams and high experiences will find a way out. The use of this is huge.

It is possible that creatures which sought "high" experiences survived more or were more productive sexually because of the removal of inhibitions and the a re-framing of a problem. If someone has an Idea while high about how to more efficiently hunt then his tribe will survive better and the next generation has more "High seekers".

This also leads to another interesting question. If High seeking behaviour is intellectually beneficial, do people with high IQs use drugs more? or use drugs for this purpose more. This could provide some support for the idea of whether high experiences do reframe problems, Though a supperior (and much harder to perform) experiment would be to give a representative sample a serious problem to solve which requires a reframing of the problem (there would have to be a way to still test people who had no difficulty with solving the problem.) and when they cannot solve the problem have them take some sort of drug (marijuana, shrooms) and instruct them to think about the problem, and talk about it while high, then see the percentage who find a solution to the problem.
(this clearly isn't a fully developed study, I have the idea now, I haven't really fleshed it out, I realise there are clear problems with it, but I feel like proposing the rough version of the study and seeing where people go with it.)

If this seems ridiculous then next time you're high (be it on drugs or alcohol, or nicotine) pay attention to how much of the enjoyment and importance of the experience was related to changing ones state of cognition, perception and therefore action

more simply put, Next time you're high ask yourself if you're doing this because it feels good, or because it gives you different ideas and solves problems, and makes you think in a way you normally wouldn't.

some thoughts

it's dreary outside and I just finished watching a fantastically depressing episode of Skins. The specifics aren't important. All that matters for the moment is that it reminded me of a time when I was going crazy, and the world seemed to fall apart around me. To feel that alone, and that tired, to see such horrid things transpire in your minds eye, it's painful, but in such a pervasive soul filling way.

While watching the episode I kept wanting to write a letter or an email appologising to my then girlfriend for going crazy. I wasn't fully stable by the end of our relationship, and I was entirely mad for good chunks of it. once again deatils aren't that important.

I don't think those feelings ever really leave you. The obsessive thoughts, the wild moods, the lengthy depressions, those go away when the meds are right, and the therapy is right, and the time is right, but that feeling in the pit of your chest that reminds you of how terrible the world really is; that stays. Pesimism was never one of my inate qualities. Somehow it's snuck in under the door.

Of course joy still raises it's head. I still find great beauty in this world that's slowly killing us all, but I can't shake the fear of death, and the realisation that so many people have worse lives than mine, and that means that the whole world is fucked.

I don't do things in sixes anymore. I don't think about crashing my car into the median or the oncoming traffic everytime I drive (I do still have that thought sometimes) and I think I'm past those deep depressions in which I melded with my mattress and pictured my hands bloodied and broken by harsh impact with the walls that held me inside. Now I just have periodic frightful realisations of my imminent death, and the creeping suspicion lying in the back of my head that even the music and writing that seem to make this life worth it may not be enough.

I'm not currently depressed, I feel pretty happy as of late, but still that little fire burns deep within me reminding me that things are finite, and that the chance that the rest of my life is good is on equal footing with the possibility that it turns out terribly.

I'm sorry that this is how I think, and would change it if I could, but I've already done so much changing, and put so much work into getting rid of the OCD and the Mania and the Depression. I wish I could change things.

Honestly I need a research lab. There are too many good questions, with reasonably testable hypothesis that come into my mind. it could be the question of whether there is a tendency for mentally ill people (or severely mentally ill people ) to be night owls or any of the many other testable hypotheses I think of. Every couple of days I have a research Idea that I truly want to test. Sadly I haven't the means to test these hypothesis. I am rather tired of undergraduate education, I'm tired of regurgitating information. Analysing, and coming up with new ways to test an idea, or synthesising old ideas to come up with some cogent model of how something works; that's the sort of stuff that excites me. That I haven't the resources to pursue these ideas sort of infuriates me. Of course It's all a mater of time, and once I'm off to grad school I'm sure the frustration that comes from not being able to start on research immediately will leave me. Of course the realities of research may also give me pause. I just feel that I am in a unique position to find out new things. Not all of my ideas are good, but until I am given the opportunity to really test them, how do I know. I feel that research will be the best way to fulfil this curiosity that so heavily defines my actions. Creation and curiosity.

Given this post is all musing and little content, tomorrows post will fix that. I simply feel that I'm up against a wall. Right now I am read to find out things no one knows, but I don't have the means. It's an unpleasant place to be.

a few things.

First I'd like to direct you to a nice visual study guide on Cognitive Biases.
according to the guide itself "Cognitive biases are psychological tendencies
that cause the human brain to draw incorrect
conclusions." So read away.


Secondly I'd like to talk about two ideas that have been bouncing around in my head for quite some time.

My eventual research goals involve the way that we relate to stories, and the way our brain processes them. I think that there are elements of story which are universal but can't be explained just as a recounting of memory, or as something similar to a lie. I think there are non temporal (not related to the time line of events in the story) things about all stories. The best example I've been able to come up with thus far is foreshadowing. It is something that occurs only in stories. Foreshadowing requires knowledge of the end of the story. I also think that foreshadowing happens unconsciously. I do need to figure out how universal or common foreshadowing is though.

the last think I want to talk about is the usage of cigarettes as indicators of passing time. Be it the picture of a cigarette that has burned itself to the butt, where the cigarette looks whole except for where the tobacco was there is now ash. It's a pretty poingiant way of showing time transition, and the sorts of people who smoke tend to have stories. There's also the suggestion of progression towards death.

Anywho

those are my musings for the day.

One problem (of many) in modern mental health.

Im sort of tired of people, but that's not the topic for tonight's rumination, just an observation that seems particularly salient. Today I want to talk about a particular problem in modern psychology. If you have some sort of anxiety disorder your insurance will cover medications, likely standard anti anxiety drugs like attivan and klonopin, and if you have some particular subsets of anxiety disorder, or depression along with your anxiety (which nearly everyone who is anxious all the time does, obviously) also some sort of anti depressant, usually an ssri. What your insurance won't pay for, or won't pay for as much of, is a particular kind of therapy, called cognitive behavioural therapy.

CBT is one of the most effective methods of dealing with anxiety disorders like OCD genralised anxiety and panic disorder, as well as one of the most effective for depression. When done in concert with antidepressants the rates go even higher. However, if you want this sort of therapy and you don't have money (likely because you can't work because you're spending all your time being anxious) no therapy for you.

This hits at the root of a serious problem with modern psychology. Though the tools are there, the systems to provide services aren't. With budget cuts and the general problems associated with the current financial climate most county mental health systems don't have psychologists on staff. They have psychiatrists, as they must, so drugs can be prescribed, but psychologists period (much less those from the subset of CBT specialists) are not paid for.

Some of this is due to the view of therapy as pointless (spurred on by the low effectiveness of nearly every other sort of therapy) and some of this is simply due to lack of money, but the ultimate result is alonger course of illness and greater rates of disability and hospitilisation for people with anxiety disorders and depression. There are many great CBT specialists who work privately, but if a patient doesn't have money, (and even if you have insurance the co pay is likely to be rather large) the they're shit out of luck.

This is a general problem in mondern mental health care. It's something I probably see more of because the facility in which I work has many clients who are on medi- cal or who don't have any insurance. People lucky enough to have money don't usually come through our facility, and usually can afford to pay for therapy. That's not to say that the problem isn't still valid.

I could explain further, cite sources, and give a personal speil on parts of it, as my OCD is currently in remision because of CBT along with SSRI's (though other problems did arise after this period) but right now I don't feel like putting the time in. Look for the numbers yourself, or if you're interested leave a comment and I'll make an essay with citations and evidence that's a bit more objective.

alone time.

sometimes I feel like I am losing myself. I need a certain amount of time alone in order to really seek out who I am and to remind myself of that. I haven't been having that time. That's not to say that I don't love being with my girlfriend all the time, It's only to say that Sometimes I just need a bit of a break from people. People are tiring, and draining, and no matter how much you love them, over exposure is going to lead to some sort of resentment over time no mater what. I want to avoid that resentment.

It's hard to explain the need for alone time to extroverts. I just get different things from people than extroverts do. I love people and quite enjoy some of the wonderful interactions I have with them, and the conversations I have, but I can only take so much of them. It's nothing personal, it's just something in me that needs time to rest.

The lack of time on my own has also sapped some of my creativity. I have been writing less, and playing music less, and creating less in general. There are fits and starts, but the longer bits of the process don't really seem to come through.

I need more of my own time. getting that without offending someone or creating another problem is going to be hard. I hadn't insisted on alone time in the past, and I'm guessing that's a problem now. It's such a necessity though, that I may go ahead and confront the situation anyway.

state of things.

I've just stopped exporting my notes to facebook. I don't suppose I mind the raising of awareness linking it there gives, but I don't feel like receiving positive comments everytime I write something that sounds depressed, or friends asking me why I didn't tell them. frankly I'd much rather deal with some of this stuff alone. I haven't been writing nearly enough, and decided to start the blog up again as a way to force myself into it. It's not that I don't want to write fiction or essays, it's just that the structured sort of writing I'd most like to do requires a different sort of life than mine. that's not to say I can't start writing for real soon, it's just to say that twenty hours a week of work and 15 units of classes doesn't really lend itself to putting time into writing.

I don't really think my meds are working for the depression. I'll just bring that up to the forefront, it's the reason I'm writing after all. I've started taking 100 more mg of seroquel in the morning in order to help with the depression, and I guess it has helped. I did significantly beter this quarter than the last (well perhaps not significantly, actually I may not have done better at all, all of this is up for debate) and I've been better about sleeping less. I don't cry as often. I guess it has helped some, but I still feel so tired, and so sad, and I don't really know what to do about it. I counsel clients to write, so I'm writing. I give advice about this stuff, and I'm relatively good at that because I understand where the clients are coming from, but the help I'm providing at work is partly support, and the availability of someone who understands what's going on. I can't get that from self advice. or really from people I know.

I know people who are depressed, I'm in love with someone who's depressed a lot of the time. Her reasons are different than mine, and create their own problems. She says she feels lonely, and that I help, but she still feels lonely. I can relate. I feel loved most of the time, though sometimes she does play mind games (I don't care to explain the situation. just suffice to say that as far as I can tell we're as healthy as circumstance has allowed) but that's not what any of this is about. I feel lonely because I don't have anyone who really knows what's going on. I still feel sad a lot of the time, and being numb is better than that. I smoke, though I don't drink as much anymore, and that helps. I also take my pills to prevent mania, and psychosis and worst of all mixed episodes, and that's a daily compromise, but I still feel tired in my very centre.

I don't think someone whose depression is rooted in pain from the past can really understand what it's like to feel bad for no reason. Sometimes it's the lack of a reason that hurts the most. I'm scared of death, and realise this every night I sleep alone, thank god I don't sleep alone much anymore. I don't feel like I want to die, though I am tired of my current life and see only a few thin threads that lead me out. I still want to do things and learn things, and create things, but I don't know anymore how long it's going to be until I get to do it for real, get to do it on my own. get to just fucking be what I want to be. I'm tired of working too hard for too little return. I'm tired of keeping myself going with weed and music. I'm tired of waking up every day to go to classes that feel like wastes of my time. And I'm just tired generally.

I already feel somewhat disconnected because of the damn drugs that are keeping me from debt violence adultury and potential death, I don't need to feel more disconnected because of some terrible neurochemical tweek.

I could get on some new drugs, but that's a long process, and one which is going to be hard, and unpleasant. I just don't know if it's bad enough to go through with all that. I'm keeping myself out of the part that's the most destructive. why it has to be the part that's most enjoyable is just a cruel trick.

I'm sure I have more to say, but now music is going to be far more help to me. so Off I go to record a song or two.

thank god for seroquel weed and the release of steam that this blog may provide.

Inexpensive DNA diagnostic tool for use in the third world.

an important venture I'd suggest supporting if you're able. Could make a world of difference.

exude

Busyness is no excuse for lack of creative output. While the time one has may be limited the time in which one creates should never go by the wayside. Would that I were going to school solely on loans and grants, rather than paying for it, at least partially, with work, I would have the time I want to devote to creation.

I always feel like there is something in me that needs to get out. it isn't a matter of the nature of output or the quality others apply to it, it is about a vision which I cannot help but share. When asked to make my work more accessible, though I fight with the temptation, I avoid doing so. It isn't because of simple pride about the "rightness" of what I intend to do, or because I don't believe that being more accessible wouldn't benefit me, but because If not fully expressed, what is lurking inside my mind will continue to stew, and boil, and percolate until m mind is no loner my own; until I am filled with the lurkings of ideas unfulfilled, and passion put towards the wills of others.

when I am obstinate and choose to perform my songs improvised, it isn't because I wouldn't be able to rehearse and perform songs. Of course that would take me a huge deal of time, and I would need to write songs in a slightly different way. I Improvise because there is so much melody, and interaction, and desire to produce in my head that I am not satisfied simply performing songs which already exists. For me the creative process, the act of making something new, is truly fulfilling. When I perform a song I have written, I enjoy it, I enjoy the feeling of playing it, but when I improvise I feel something entirely unique; I feel the deep satisfaction of taking that which is inside and putting it out.

If I do not I will burst.

I am irrepressible. This is half because of my neurochemical deficits, and half because I have found that creation is nigh the only thing that makes life worth living.

I am not producing to give myself notoriety, though I do want people to hear me, to read me; I am not producing to say that I have; and I am not producing to make something which will last longer than me; I am producing because I have to.

It doesn't seem like it would be as simple as that, but in the end, it is.

I must create. The fact that in every class, every day of work, every moment of distraction, I am exuding and idea, or a verse, or a melody, or a simple thought which will later build a story. I am not ever comfortable with lack of output. Everything I do gives me reason to create more.

I don't suggest that this makes me unique. I imagine that if more people truly knew themselves they would see that there is also output in them which needs to go out, I simply suggest that I have found that which is in me doesn't sit well. The things I must put out, really aren't going to stay silent without me wanting to explode.

Lack of time is no excuse, because there is never lack of desire, and never lack of inspiration, and never lack of reason.



Produce.


that is all I can do


Create

that is all I am


the times I feel most alive are when I create, when I make, when I become something new.


Would that those were my only hours. I will do what I can to make a life where creation is the goal, and the only goal. Until then I will post sporadically, and burst with ideas. I will fill notebooks, and play songs which no one will ever hear; and gradually I will put out more and more of that which yearns to escape from the rigid edges of my mind, until I am satisfied, or until I am dead.

a question asked and answered.

It's easy to become jaded and bored with the world when so much experience leads to the same general range of emotion. When one's affect is truncated to no longer include the vast extremes of mania and depression, everything else seems like a half measure. This is half blessing and half curse. It is easy to presume that I am lucky because all I must do to fall asleep at night is take a pill, but it is equally easy to presume that it hurts to not care.

That sounds like somewhat of a contradiction. Apathy, however, genuinely is painful. It is made more-so by the insight into one's desire. Just like belief, no one chooses apathy. One can make the motions of caring, but to actually have a deeper part of oneself activated there has to be the turn of some key, a key to which I haven't access.

When becoming jaded with all of the shortened range of experience that fill my life I fluctuate between contentment and complete discontentment. At least in that I have a full range of experience. Also along with becoming jaded I am thankful for the ability to operate in culture despite my chemistry, and so it is all shot through with ambivalence. I love the ability to function, and hate the inability to feel as deeply as I could before. Each night and each morning is a sacrifice of range for functionality. I'm pleased that I get a choice, but I'm not pleased that the only real acceptable choice is to submit myself to drugs and society. My choice is rendered meaningless because no one would accept a decision to forgo my medicine; no one would accept my decision to, by society standards, fail.

I continue with this course of action because unmedicated I have lost relationships, liver function, and financial stability. I resist the action because unmedicated I am given days of wakefulness filled with writing, a flow of ideas which never stops, and feelings others take illegal drugs to experience. I take my pills in the hopes that they will lengthen my life, prevent another depression, and lead me to a successful job in research, but all I'm truly guaranteed of is a restricting of my affective range.

The question every bipolar person has to ask is haunting me. Is it worth loosing mania and hypomania for a normal life? If the continuation of my illness weren't likely to lead to suicide, debt, and potentially so many other unpleasant ends, there would be no question at all. I'm stuck knowing that I sacrifice a unique ability to experience life with the seasons and to feel more deeply than nigh all my peers. I must take my pills and know that by doing so I cut off a whole range of possibility that so many others have mined successfully to create some of the greatest art there is. I must subdue the wildness in me, and perhaps a modicum of the greatness, in order to aim for a more acceptable success.

Another installment of my seasonal affliction.

Daylight savings time was invented by people who's alarm clocks went off at 6. The sun was painfully absent from the beginning of their days. They saw fit to set our clocks back and hour when the light began to fade so that their mornings would feel like mornings rather than the ends of the previous night.

If only the world ran on my schedule. My nights have been so much longer. by the time the clock has struck Five, the sun has set, the crows have flown off and the cold has begun the leech into my bones. It doesn't help that there's a sort of cold that has reached its fingers around my mind.

I was feeling the icy fingertips of winter slowing my thought before the time changed, but the removal of the sun from the bulk of my daily activities didn't help slow the progression of depression's insidious tendrils.

Lack of sun, determinism of season, and a cruel chemical trick played on my by my DNA, has left me feeling slow, snappy, and altogether deficient. This isn't new for me, but I had hoped this seasonal shift would no longer be a factor in my life. I did expect to begrudge the leaving of the sun, and I did expect the season to have a slowing effect on me, but I did not expect to still be so beholden to my moods.

I fell into the trap of thinking that modern medicine could solve my ills in a single swift strike. This is a silly error, which I would not have made had I been thinking more clearly, or even paying attention more closely. I should well have known that my little fluctuations are far from over.

partly of course I was simply hoping that I could be strong enough to subsist on a single medication. It's not surprising I wasn't quite that strong. With so much going on in the way of school and work, as well as my creative endeavours, it is no surprise that a single chemical change would make me better.

I feel that I most certainly could subsist on few, or no, medications if I were in an etirely different social situation, but in school, in this world of schedules and responsibilities, bills and tests, I am left to the wills of my moods, or the modifications of medication.


It's no wonder that the successful manic depressives of eras gone by were so often from families with money. With the money to spare, and the time to really put towards a creative endeavour, perhaps I too could have been great. Perhaps I still can be, but time is the important variable here.

Perhaps when I get some new drugs, and more time I'll write more, and sing more, and play more, but these aren't things I want to put in the sector of what if. I want to say fuck you to the mundanity of undergraduate edcuation and just put my time into my two favourite artistic avenues (music, writing). I don't suppose I'll drop all my current responsibilities, but the temptation is pretty great.

the ridiculousness of the 24 hour news cycle

The 24 hour news cycle is rather ridiculous. I'm sitting in a coffee shop and there's a TV in the corner playing CNN. for the last hour there's been some ridiculously indepth coverage about some kid getting blown away in a balloon. It's being treated with the same gravity and importance as a military coup, and the result is one child having had an exciting, potentially scary, day, and no injuries all around. This is the sort of thing which gets covered now. It's somewhat sad. Now that we have to have news at all hours of the day news has to be made. It's notable that so little really happens in the world during a single day. There are far more notable things occurring today than a child being blown away in a balloon, and yet that's the most sensational thing, so millions of dollars are spent covering the event.

It just seems like a rather ridiculous use of money, of time, and of human resources. I know this criticism has been made before, but I feel like it's reasonable to make it again.

the nature of apathy, and how I hope to fight it.

I often have these grand designs before I sit down to write something. Before dosing of in my earlier class I had wonderful ideas about what to write, and little bits of them still stir in the back of my mind, but the will is gone. So much now that is the way of things. I have some idea for which passion flows, yet when I actually get to implementing the idea my passion has gone. Some of it's the drugs.

I can't say if I'd be apathetic without the medications, but I do believe it wouldn't be quite as bad. Of course it's not as bad as when I was taking SSRI's, but the issue is still there. Only the deeply bothersome, can make me angry (which was not always the case). I don't like apathy. I was such an idealist, and I so much wanted to spread the wondeful things I had found to all those who surrounded me, now I don't feel that desire so much. My idealism has fallen by the wayside, and though I can find myself having a small bit of caring for other's plights, I just can't seem to get worked up about it as I could in the past.

Of course apathy seems like a relatively harmless ill, but it bothers me. One of the few things about which I can care, is that fact that I don't. It's one of those lesser ills that feels like a gateway to the greater ills. The less one cares about bad things happening to others, the less one does about those things.

So here's my suggestion, Though I suppose it's primarily to myself; when apathy grasps at your chest, breathe in deeply and pause, and then breathe out quickly and do something. It sounds silly, modifying apathy with breath, but I swear that's a key way to get around the problem. Just stop and force yourself to care. It's easy to see after a while, that the things we do often leave marks on us. The things we seem to care about become the things we actually care about. The things we think about tend to come up again and again. Forcing yourself to do something, forcing yourself to sit down and breathe in a breath of action, a breath of willingness to do something will change that apathy and inaction into action, and eventually into caring.

a few things to look at.

here are some lovely things to look at to go along with the things to listen to I posted a short while ago.

some cool Indian illustrations

Art made from different coloured rice planted in rice paddies.




The Moon Fell On Me some beautiful, stark drawings and captions.

Where my time has gone.

When I'm not doing this I'm actively doing something else. It's been a long month full of excitement of various kinds. I started work on Monday. I had a shift Monday and Yesterday, and have one tomorrow. It's a fun job thus far. I like the general nature of it. I'm working at a mental health facility. We're a transitional facility for people in crisis. The idea is that we provide a place for people to get through whatever their current issue is, be it an active mania, a suicidal depression, or a psychotic episode. The idea is that after the client has finished with service at a more restrictive mental hospital, or some psych ward after a 5150 (the designation in CA law underwhich someone may be kept against their will for psych evaluation, requires intention to harm oneself or others)

We're here to help people in crisis get through that crisis and set them up with services afterwards. We can get them in touch with social workers, housing, monetary assistance for prescriptions, all sorts of things. It feels good to be doing something that really does help. We are indeed making a difference in the lives of our clients. Even clients who come in more than once are positively affected by our programme.

I'm pleased to be working above all. Having a job is so relieving. I'm getting back into the flow of working, which is a nice feeling. I haven't worked hours this long in a very long time.

In the time leading up to starting work at this job I've been really busy with my band Oh Wait, Too Late. We had a show opening for two wonderful Sacramento bands, Knock Knock, and the English Singles. Knock Knock is one of my favourite bands, so I was rather excited. It was a good go. I've also been writing, though that's fallen a bit by the wayside with school and work.

When I have work I wake up at 9 ish, go to my 10 o'clock class, then I'm in class unitil 2pm. I take a bus back to my house at which I get in my car and drive to work. I work from 3 to 11:30. It's a long day, and when I come home I just deal with the necessary things.

It's disappointing not being able to get writing or music done on those days but it's worth doing and I enjoy finally having money.

I've also been working on some songs on my own. Some have been in the experimental vein I've been mining for quite some time, and one is more standard.

I've been trying to get my musician friends into a group where each of us writes a song each week, or couple of weeks, and then we play all of our songs for eachother and then we write another. We decide on one topic for the song to be about. I basically just want to get my musician friends in one group so I can get them into a band mode.

The first song we're doing is about New York. I'll write about New York later, and why I want to move there, but the song is a bit about that. One of my friends just moved to New York and she sort of stirred the spirit in me. I want to be in a place with a real scene, and a real variety of music. I don't feel like anyone will care, listen, or appreciate my weirder stuff in a place like Davis or Sacramento. I don't know if they will in New York either, but I feel like musicians migrate there. It's like a mecca where I can find other musicians of similar sprit.

Oy. This has been rather ranty, but for the first post back in a while that's ok. I'll try to post again on a regular schedule, but I don't know if that will actually happen. I certainly do hope to try.

but as I said earlier, if I'm not doing this I'm doing something else. So these months of inactivity haven't been pure inactivity, they've been activity in different sectors.
If there's any interest I can get people links and contacts and all that. I'll try to write more because I feel bad for leaving this blog so barren.

Adieu.

more music people should hear.

Radiohead Vs. Dave Brubeck - Five Step

Radiohead - Bangers + Mash

one great radiohead song, and a great mashup of Fifteen Step, by Radiohead, and Take Five, by the Dave Brubeck quartet.


Something good out of Kansas, who would have thought.


pretty awesome stuff. The pop crossover of all the guitar interplay I love



better than any band based on Harry Potter deserves to be.



It may be impossible to dislike the song Dying is fine, by Ra Ra Riot.

So awesome. The wonderful band Vampire Hands

Music everyone should get to listening too.

This is music ya'll should listen to. most of it should be stuff you many not have heard. So this is the music I love. There's plenty more, but these are just the things that are mostly overlooked and the things that are so good they could never suffer from over exposure.



A great song by a great band.



as good live as it is recorded, if not better.



definitely a favourite.



this one is a Defining album, and song, for my high school years. "I just got this symphony going" by The Fall of Troy.



A little too awesome, Battles performing "atlas"



ridiculously catchy Sia singing "the girl you lost to cocaine"



Gomez "in our gun" my first dabblings in Indie Rock started a bit with these guys. Before that it had all be Jazz, Ska, and Punk of various stripes.



This is an obvious influence on so many artists, and I'm not going to pretend most people haven't heard David Bowie, but he's so good. David Bowie, doing Rebel Rebel.

in conflict with the daily grind

I've been wasting my days. Nights go late, and early mornings are a thing of the past. I've been biding time until my break comes. I don't know what my break will be. I have all of these goals, and I can't quite get all of them in order. It's not a problem with indecisiveness. I can settle on a goal, and keep following it, but so far it seems that most of these decisions will be made more by the pattern of events than by my on will and desire.
Today and in days past my life often feels like a pretty big waste of effort. I would rather be writing, or playing music, than working on papers and taking tests. I've been fighting against the things the world requires of me, and begrudgingly doing just enough to continue getting by. There aren't any good guidelines for how to live the way I want to, or the way I need to. I don't want to be dulled by drugs and arbitrary responsibilities.
How much money I make isn't going to have any influence on how good my life is, nor is it likely to get me remembered. It's a selfish goal, being remembered for something, but it's not the sort of selfish that detracts from anyone else. I have to create and discover. I've tried being stagnate, or just living through my life in the haze that everyone else seems to live in, and I can't seem to do it.
I don't feel real in my days of taking classes and working. I feel like I'm wasting the days of my life that I'm never getting back. It's more important that now be brilliant, and enjoyable, and remarkable considering the fact that I don't believe in something afterwards. I don't want to waste what, by all reason I can muster, is the only time I have.
I only put time into my creative goals when I'm procrastinating about doing the work required of me. I can't start doing research tomorrow, and thus far only a few people are willing to pay for my music. I can't spend all day writing and then expect to be able to pay for rent and life and all these things.
So I'm writing this now because I feel conflicted. All of my goals are contrary to the way the organised world works. I can't work with society on these things. The life of a musician isn't one that's easily obtainable. That life means working temp jobs and playing music in all the free time you have. Being a writer means doing your writing when you're alone in your room, forgetting about the work you do all day. People don't treat these things I love so much as careers. Finding someone to pay you to write is ridiculously difficult. The same goes for playing music. I don't know how to go about this. The things that most fulfil me, the things that most give me reason to keep on living, are not the things that will give me money for rent, for food, for a phone. The stuff that gives me what I need to survive and be involved in modern society has nothing to do with that which fulfils me.
Maybe when someday I'm making money as a researcher I'll be ok about all this, and will be able to put all my efforts into creative things, be it creating experiments, or writing, or making music. That day can't come soon enough. Slogging through every day, feeling worried about how I'm going to sustain my life, worrying about being alone, worrying about if anything I do is worthwhile, all of that shit is going to populate my days for quite some time. I can't seem to get past all of that superfluous shit, that drags me down into the mundaneness that seems to keep everyone else mildly content.

A tribe without history, description or subordinate clauses

"BRAZIL'S PIRAHÃ TRIBE
Living without Numbers or Time

By Rafaela von Bredow

The Pirahã people have no history, no descriptive words and no subordinate clauses. That makes their language one of the strangest in the world -- and also one of the most hotly debated by linguists."

I heard about these guys a while ago, it's very very interesting, and brings up some interesting problems for linguistics as a whole. If you're remotely interesting, go and read this.