Three Dreams @Trust30 06/17/11

The Future/Dreams theme continues

Dreams by Michael Rad

Abide in the simple and noble regions of thy life, obey thy heart. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Write down your top three dreams. Now write down what’s holding you back from them.

(Author: Michael Rad)

3 Dreams

1. 2 to 3 years worth of bills in savings, to tide me over on the next unemployed spat

2. Publish my 3 partial/completed NaNoWriMo novels

3. Start a physical business (First concepts are a Non-Profit, Indie Bookstore, something else)


Steps to take to achieve

1. Get another job then find a second one, scrimp and save
2. Finish writing/re-writing then self/epublish
3. Once money is moving inward into the family (on unemployment now) then research demographics, start up costs, Kickstarter perhaps, etc.

I gave myself permission last night to be me.
I accept myself as Me.

Deacon Blues by Steely Dan
Written by Donald Fagen and Walter Becker
Used without express permission
Pulled from their website

my personal theme song since High School

DEACON BLUES

This is the day
Of the expanding man
That shape is my shade
There where I used to stand
It seems like only yesterday
I gazed through the glass
At ramblers
Wild gamblers
That's all in the past

You call me a fool
You say it's a crazy scheme
This one's for real
I already bought the dream
So useless to ask me why
Throw a kiss and say goodbye
I'll make it this time
I'm ready to cross that fine line

CHORUS:
I'll learn to work the saxophone
I'll play just what I feel
Drink Scotch whisky all night long
And die behind the wheel
They got a name for the winners in the world
I want a name when I lose
They call Alabama the Crimson Tide
Call me Deacon Blues

My back to the wall
A victim of laughing chance
This is for me
The essence of true romance
Sharing the things we know and love
With those of my kind
Libations
Sensations
That stagger the mind

I crawl like a viper
Through these suburban streets
Make love to these women
Languid and bittersweet
I'll rise when the sun goes down
Cover every game in town
A world of my own
I'll make it my home sweet home

CHORUS

This is the night
Of the expanding the man
I take one last drag
As I approach the stand
I cried when I wrote this song
Sue me if I play too long
This brother is free
I'll be what I want to be

CHORUS

#Trust30 The Future 06/16/11

#Trust30
06/16/11 Prompt

The future

Decide what you want the future to be and make it happen. Because you can. Write about your future now.

(Author: Cindy Gallop)

My future, what to make of it. How to create and invent it. I feel torn on all sides of the equation. I feel that our, the world society nationally state level community personal, I feel that our future is being dictated by forces outside of human control. The planet is shifting, the world and cultures are being moved by forces they cannot see, cannot control, cannot even comprehend. The species is standing on the precipace, on the edge of an Extinction Level Event. I have written that I believe the Financial Crisis of 2008 was an extinction level event. Perhaps I was incorrect. However daily I find more and more people that have been out of work, unemployed or underemployed, since 2006 in many cases. That event has killed so much of what had formerly made America one of the better places to live on this planet.

Now there is further financial unrest in Greece and Spain. I see tie ins, causal links to what struck the US from 2006 to 2008 (Which is how long the event took to unfold from what I have observed and read, with historical precedents dating back to the late 1870s in France where similar financial events led to the French Revolution and if you tilt your head sideways a little one can draw parallels to the British / American Colonies situation that led to the formation of our own nation. Yes I see links and tie ins on a historical basis for the current World Recession and America's entry into Second World Nation status that has precedents dating back to the formation of our nation. Maybe our politicians should be historians instead of lawyers, we might have a chance then.

So I am a little unsure how to craft or invent my own future. I see various things coming about in my future:
A drive for 2 to 3 years of bills/income in savings (Since it looks like that is the average unemployment time-frame in American anymore)
Start my own business (as one cannot rely on any other employer calling you back for interviews it seems like over these last 3 months only 3 companies have come back with a comment / decline the rest have just disappeared it seems like)
Self-publish: with the death of the traditional publishing field, which honestly happened about the mid 1980s with the death of the midlists and the consolidation of most publishing companies, the routes to publication currently lie in e-pubs, self publishing, or small press either your own or someone else's. So that route is one other means to create my own future.
Gardening: I think gardening, herbs and vegetables will become very important in all American's futures

There you go, save money, my own business, publish what I want and grow my own food, this is the future I envision for Americans.

#Trust30 post Out of Order...Alternatives

#Trust30 Prompt
Out of order

“What alternative opportunities, interpretations and paths am I not seeing?” They’re always there, but you’ve got to choose to see them.

(Author: Jonathan Fields)

What alternatives am I missing. I am job hunting right now. It is a dominate factor in my every waking moment. From searching, some pavement pounding, updating of skills, reading on SQL and XML (waiting to find out if I get an interview for a data processor spot or not), I am working on stuff, and standing still at the same time. I dredge into Transition, Sustainability, getting incensed with politics, and sleep days at a time in despair. I know what used to work, I know the old ways no longer work, I know that networking and contracting and pay cuts and contraction will dominate the US landscape for likely the next several generations (unless it all implodes as I also fear will occur, or at times hopes it does in pique and despair) at the very least. Contraction and Sustainability are the upcoming themes. Also reading "The Windup Girl" by Paolo Bacigalupi as a superb potential future for us all.

Still I do not know what else to do. What other alternatives do I have in this time frame. I can let my house go under, drag my wife and son into homelessness, still seek for work, try to self-motivate (despite a low Follow Thru in KCI) and push on as best I can. I want to Minimalist, I want to draw down, I am so tired of the US Societal landscape, what else is there for me down here in the SE to do though. If I could drop off 40k in value on my house, I could put it up on the market and then head back north where relatives are at, would be good for the wife. Son wont go. So what are the alternatives, the differences to explore, to seek out. Guess maybe this post is just venting and good to clear the head a little.

#Trust30 Prompt

#Trust30 06/14/11 One Thing to Accomplish

#Trust30
06/14/11
Prompt

One Thing by Colin Wright

Do your work, and I shall know you. Do your work, and you shall reinforce yourself. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

...Write down one thing you’ve always wanted to do and how you will achieve that goal. Don’t be afraid to be very specific in how you’ll achieve it: once you start achieving, your goals will get bigger and your capability to meet them will grow.

(Author: Colin Wright)

One single goal
I have never had concrete goals, aims, drives, desires.
Never been that way, never wired up in that fashion, no overarching driving urges to motivate me in this sort of fashion.

I want to finish a novel for real. I have just over 50k words towards 65k some, from one year of NaNoWriMo. I have over 20k in a couple of others as well. Working on the outline of a potential 20k some story to add to a few others for my first self published short story collection. I have multiple other writing products all hobby/interest oriented. Very distracted currently being unemployed. Really a distraction, fear and worry along with impending bills all taking a toll on creative and drive inside me. Still no over reaching drive or goal.
So choosing writing, choosing to self-publish my first real products. I have multiple collaborative pieces out there online. Nothing that is solely, 100% Mine.

Specifics: An outline
Choose the first item
Finish / Start the writing portion
Source the art/cover art (either self or friends)
Research epub file formats to create myself
Clean and Edit, solicit help fm. Friends in this stage
Put together, final review
Post online
Tell anyone that will listen


Post written listening to this musician
Jeanette Hawkins

#Trust30 out of Order Prompt 5 Years on either side

#Trust30
Out of Order Prompt

There will be an agreement in whatever variety of actions, so they be each honest and natural in their hour. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

What would you say to the person you were five years ago? What will you say to the person you’ll be in five years?

(Author: Corbett Barr)


5 Years ago
Learn more SQL, start up the classes now, SAVE SAVE SAVE the Economic Extinction Event is coming in 2 years and you get smacked by it hard, multiple times, and always always always trust your gut instinct, it is not wrong.


5 Years hence
Pick a direction someday
write
hug yourself more
coffee good
books good
writing best of all

#Trust30 out of Order Prompt Too Scary

#Trust30
Out of order Prompt
The other terror that scares us from self-trust is our consistency; a reverence for our past act or word, because the eyes of others have no other data for computing our orbit than our past acts, and we are loath to disappoint them.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Emerson says: “Always do what you are afraid to do.” What is ‘too scary’ to write about? Try doing it now.

(Author: Mary Jaksch)

What is too scary to write about? There are so many things that are too scary to write about. Thoughts, feelings, actual reactions to things that go on about you, what you are deep down, who you are deep down inside, allowing someone inside far enough to see a little of the real you and then watch them leave after a single glimpse.

How about the reaction to that single glimpse
Or the realization you get when you are doing housework items and the mind is racing and you are porpoising between manic energy and just wanting to lie down and sleep until it all goes away (which it never will but the heart does not understand that temporal concept), until it is all better. That the world is safe, your family is fine, you can sell your house without losing it, you have work that fulfills and pays the bills. Or about the anguish inside your heart because you are not contributing to the family income, you are not a man because you are not finding work after 2 months of looking since you were laid off due to budget cuts in funding coming into the agency you worked at, how the pain inside of all things to create and then you just sit at the laptop and are drowned in inertia, how that all feels inside, with no one to share it all.

TMI, that is too painful to discuss for us all I suspect.

06/09/11 Personal Message (out of prompt order)

#Trust30
Out of order now
06/09/11 Prompt
To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men, that is genius. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

What is burning deep inside of you? If you could spread your personal message RIGHT NOW to 1 million people, what would you say?

(Author: Eric Handler)


My personal message, what do I want to share with others out there. I sit here in my space that I have, at a desk that is simple from something my wife saw on Oprah I believe, just a hollow core door I stained that sits on two short end bookcases we have, and it is one of my favorite desks I have ever had. Cheap and large. I have never had a single desk this large at any job in my life.

I sit here waiting for a recruiter to call me about the possibility of an interview soon. I hope so, I dislike, it hurts the Male/Man that I am to not work, to not contribute to the upkeep of the family as I have grown into.

I sit here and think my wife wrote an excellent paper on the differences between how she was raised and how I was raised. This paper was for her College Comp I class as she is working towards a degree going to school part time. She nailed my family perfectly in the short 5 paragraphs.

I sit here and wonder what personal message I have to share. I talk to people I know about Transition and Peak Oil and how I perceive the World Economy. I have started a whopping 3 coffee cans with seeds in them, Cilantro and Chives to start out with. I want to have solar on my house, I remember debating alternative energy back in High School (1978 was that topic I think), and I cannot get my fiction down onto paper to turn into my first ebook to post online for sales. I know I need to diversify my income streams (hell make income streams to be honest). I have started re-reading Rolf Pott's book again seeking insight. I just finished reading The conactive Connection by Kathy Kolbe and I wonder simultaneously how to redo my resume to show my Fact Finder and Implementor skills off best, at the same time wondering how to recharge my Follow Thru to complete the stuff I want to get done.

I sit here and wonder about a personal message.
I wish it were be nicer to one another, help out instead of put down, and just be yourself.

I think it is a wish that people would respect one and another, give people work to feel valuable and useful, and to just be yourself (If you can sure as all heck I cannot be myself).

Or just read...

Day 3, Turn it Around

#Trust30

Day 3
06/03/11

Identify one of your biggest challenges at the moment (ie I don’t feel passionate about my work) and turn it into a question (ie How can I do work I’m passionate about?)


I am having a hard time finding work, or I am having a hard time completing several writing projects dating back years.

So How Do I More Effectively Find Full Time Employment than how I am going about it now?

How Can I Motivate Myself To Complete These Writing Projects I have Taken On.

06/02/11 One Strong Belief

#Trust30 Writing Prompt
06/02/11
One Strong Belief by Buster Benson

It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude. - Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance


The world is powered by passionate people, powerful ideas, and fearless action. What’s one strong belief you possess that isn’t shared by your closest friends or family? What inspires this belief, and what have you done to actively live it?

My one strong belief not shared by my closest friends or family resides in my opinions of what and where the world is evolving/devolving into.
Between the focus on continued consumerist growth, coupled with an unwillingness to face the empirical evidence of climate change along with simple logical deduction that finite resources (i.e. coal, oil, natural gas, phosphates, heavy metals, etc.) all are finite and eventually they will run out and have to be replaced with other alternatives.
So I believe that massive change is coming. Change the likes of which the world has not seen since the Fall of the Roman Empire, since the last full on Ice Age, change comparable, or worse, to all the post-apocalyptic movies and novels hint at.
I suspect once it hits, for us Cold War Era Brats, we will think back fondly on the suppositions that went into Nuclear Winter and think that would at least, could have been survivable.

There is no actively living this belief, I am working against it to help stave it off the best am able.

06/01/11 One Sentence on what today means

#Trust30
Daily Writing Prompt
06/01/11
One Sentence on what today means to you


What does today mean to me, it is a day I could pay bills with the money I withdrew from my 401(a) since I was laid off two months ago.