One Piece at a Time

Three months.  Doesn't seem like it's been three months, but I suppose it has.  I've stolen the title for this post from Mr. Johnny Cash.  Not so much because I'm doing something big one piece at a time, but because I like the line "One day I devised myself a plan that would be the envy of most any man."  I don't know that this is totally true in this instance, but it appeals to my own personal sense of drama.

So the other day I was riding back from work at Bush League Consulting, thinking about how much I really hate working there.  Not because it's such a terrible place to work per se, but because I hate what I'm doing, or maybe not doing.  I'm so miserable that it keeps me from doing a good job sometimes.  I need to insert, as sort of an aside that will be relevant shortly, that I have been considering joining the Coast Guard Reserve.  There's a few reasons for this, but they're not really important at this point.

Anyway, I was hating work, and thinking of the absolute dearth of other jobs that I would actually like doing around here, and the idea struck me:  If being a reserve officer pays enough, I can just QUIT my job, and not have to take another one; i.e. be a stay at home dad.  I did the math, and between the savings realized by not having child care expenses, paying off a couple of bills prior to my quitting, and the Reserve pay, which I have tentatively verified, in terms of cash flow, we might even be a little better off than we are now.  Win all the way around.

Now, I suspect that the five of you who actually  see this blog are thinking that Grey has finally stepped off the deep-end he's been flirting with for the past year or so, but I actually don't think this is the case.  There are a number of potential positives that I see:

• I get to stop hating what I'm doing;
• Maintaining the house, which I have to do anyway, becomes my job.  This is positive in that I hope it might alleviate some of the bitterness I direct towards my spousal unit (who is a mobile disaster) if I'm not having to be house keeper after already working 50 hours a week;
• It would give me more time with my kids; particularly the new one, whose beginning and arrival have been particularly "traumatic", for lack of a better way to put it, and;
• It'll give me some time to lay out the economic storm until I can find something i really enjoy again in a couple of years, while still contributing positively to life.

So I'm going to go talk to a recruiter next week.  See what sort of needs they have, where I might fit in.  I'll know a lot more after that.  I've rambled a bit here about needing to effect some sort of change in my life, and I'm hoping that this might be a place to start.

Inquisition

I have often wondered about the seeming loss of inquisitiveness, of self awareness, that seems to be the state of many of the hominids around me. Sheeple, as my brother might call them.  I was having a conversation with a buddy of mine (who doesn't read this blog), who, in spite of being a fairly bright guy, is pretty much a lift wing hippie.   

- Before you tune out, this is not going to be a political rant, even if it seems like it's going to go that direction. - 

I pointed him the direction of an interesting essay I had read that gave a quantitative approach to how our taxes are broken out.  I gave him a while to read it, then asked him what he thought.  He replied, and this is damn near verbatim, "I though it was OK until I saw the numbers, then I pretty much stopped reading.  It's just easier for me to hate the upper class."

I was stunned.  Really.  Now, his political inclinations at this point are pretty much irrelevant.  What pretty much stopped my heart was his refusal to dig into an issue he found challenging, and his willingness to just march on blindly carrying his prejudices.  And he's a smart hard working guy who I have a lot of respect for.  And he's not the only one.  Not even close to the only one.

Talk to your average person about religion.  And again, I am not trying to attack any particular

 view point, but a mind set.  When asked "Why do you believe...?" the response is often "Because my pastor said so." or "Because the Bible says so."  Well crap buddy.  I heard your pastor say that you need to buy me a steak at Ruth's Chris.  Let's hit the road.

But really, where did it all go?  Where did the 

drive to inquire, and discover, and seek truth, go for so many of my "colleagues"?  Am I imagining that it was ever even there in the first place?  Are there no longer Mallorys around saying "Because it's there."?  Or if there are, are they all employed by NASA or CERN; and there's no room for your average dumb geologist to try to be something a little more than a bipedal sack of water going unquestioningly and unflinchingly through life?

God, I hope not.  If this is the only chance we've got at this thing, shouldn't we all try to make it be as rich and full as we can; up to and including digging into the challenges, seeking the truths even if they stretch us or surprise us.   Maybe do that thing simply because it is there and needs to be conquered.  And I can't imagine doing it the other way.  In fact, it appals me.  The need and ability to stretch ourselves is what got us off the savannah in the first place, and has brought us this far.  Now, standing at a cusp, it'll be what carries us onward, if we choose to keep looking.

Anyway, if you want to talk about this with me, I'll be over there, looking over the edge of that horizon.

Request the Pleasure of Your Attendance...

Well, I haven't felt particularly "writey" the last few weeks.  A combination of work busy and general lethargy towards this pursuit I suppose.  I should make myself feel worse about that, but really can't.  I keep telling myself that this blog has to be about something, but really, it doesn't.  Just a pursuit towards something to try to make myself a little broader.  Not that I need any help with that!

But I digress....  I was driving in to work at Bush League Consulting (actually, that's an excellent name, I will keep it) on Friday morning, and I noticed one of our overhead traffic signs reading something to the effect of "Heavy traffic on I-95 and I-66 in DC on Feb. 20 for inauguration traffic."  OK.  You have to drive an hour and a half to get to I-95 from that sign, and then another hour and a half to DC.  To me this is not unlike announcing on the aforementioned sign "Montreal rush begins at 1400, eh."

What this got me boiling about early in the morning is that I can't listen to, or read, the news without some mention of the damned inauguration.  Now, and I don't really care about your political affiliation,  hear this:  THE CHIEF EXECUTIVE OF THIS COUNTRY IS NEITHER RESPONSIBLE FOR, NOR ABLE TO FIX, ALL OF ITS WOES!  OK, caps lock screaming completed.

We have elected a President, not a messiah.  We also have three houses of government, so news flash here, the President can't do anything without the assent of Congress.  So please, enough with all this.  Would it be possible for us to understand how our government works well enough for us to move the hell on and get with the business of of running the country?  And give me my NPR station back.

Thanks 

Question of the Day

When I have a little bit of a buzz on, I can play guitar like Eric Clapton.  At the same time, GN'R sounds just as brilliant as a Bach cantata.

What does that say about my guitar playing?

Cult of Personality

I left college with a decent handful of psychology classes under my belt.  Part of this was a genuine interest in psychology, though I admittedly took all of my classes with the cute pysch professor who could sing the hell out of some blues.  But I digress...

One of the things we did early on in one the classes was a Meyers-Briggs analysis or our personalities, which I suspect most are familiar with.  I am an ISTJ.  That's introverted, sensing, thinking, and judging.  Typical scientist.  And there isn't  much wiggle room in the analysis.  I tend to peg the extreme ends of any personality test I take.

The other day while chatting with a friend I was introduced to Typealyzer.  The hook of this website is that you drop in your blog address and it will make a Meyers-Briggs type analysis of your personality type based on your musings.  Being one for an experiment, I dropped in this address and out came ESFP.  That's extroverted, sensing, feeling, perceiving.  Seriously?  Seriously.

Now, truly, this thing could be full of garbage, but there is at least some base level of interest in that it must queue in on words, phases, or styles that suggest personality types.  This got me to wondering why, at least in the "eyes" of some random web analyzer, I write in a style that is reflective of a seriously different personality.

I know I use this blog to mull though things out loud, as a chance to wrote something that isn't a technical document.  You know something that (attempts) to speak with metaphor, reflects maybe a little of who I'd like to be.

And that, right there, is the rub, and what occurred to me after a while.  I write who I want to be. Clearly I write what I want to do, where I'd like to be, but who I want to be is maybe a little bit of a different story.  I've always been one to think that I am pretty comfortable in my own skin.  After all, at this stage in my life, my personality is unlikely to change, except possibly to get a little stranger, which is probably bad news for the people around me.

Really, as I think many of my past posts have reflected, it's not really the personality style, but the idealized life style of an ESFP  that I've been writing about, and that is making the Typelayzer get a little mixed up.  Maybe I should feed it a Compliance Status Report and see where it goes from there.

So maybe this little thing is meaningless; maybe it adds a little more weight to the argument that I need to make some changes in the heading of my life.

GenderAnalyzer just can't decide on me.  What does that mean?

The Year in Review

I typically would rather say more useful things here, but sitting here alone in the office, having endured a couple of more parting (hopefuly) pokes to the eye, I'm afraid I only have one thing to say:

Fuck 2008.

Solstice

I find it somewhat ironic that now that the days will finally start getting a little longer, it's still going to keep getting colder yet.  A trick of perihelion I suppose.

I've never been one to think that I have any problem with seasonal affective disorder, or any such thing, but I am really looking forward to spring this year.  I see a day trip somewhere in my future, shortly after the turn of the year.  The scenery around here is drab enough without having winter blow in a continuous mix of dreary damp days, with temperature and pressure swings fit to make your sinuses leap from your skull.  I need some mountains with some cold sharp air and a view where you can see for a couple of miles.

But really what I'm looking forward to is spring.  The early part of it when he trees just start to bud and leaf out.  That green is different than the green of summer.  More awake.  Carries more promise.  But more than the colors I think is the smell.  It still gets pretty cold in the spring, but even in the mornings when you can can see your breath, the air still carries a sweetness on it that you can smell up in the front of your nose.  It's a smell you just don't get any other time of year.  Maybe it's just me being a little nuts, but that smell makes me smile, even thinking of it now.  It's the smell of a new day and a new season.  I don't really think I have much to say with this post.  Except maybe to "torture" myself for another three and a half months or so.  I'm just jonesing for that early morning light and that great alive smell.