Short term vs. long term

Actions reveal priorities. If we say that today, we're going to exercise, but we end up spending all day watching television, that reveals our priority. Basically, we like pleasure, and dislike discomfort. Exercise or studying can be boring, difficult, uncomfortable. Playing video games or watching television is enjoyable, pleasant. We go towards pleasure and away from pain, as any organism does. Makes perfect sense, right? And it is true, as long as you view it in a short term perspective. For this afternoon, playing video games or wasting time on Facebook is pleasurable, but if you did that every day for ten years, in the long term, you'll have a whole lot of pain. You won't see it immediately, but you're building to it. And exercising or studying may be uncomfortable now, but in the long term, there will be pleasure to come from it. It’s like those studies with kids where they give them the option of taking a marshmallow now, or waiting for a while and getting more marshmallows later. Some take the immediate marshmallow, and some wait, knowing that there will be greater pleasure if they wait. We’ll want to be the kid that understands that what is short term pleasurable now will lead to long term pain, and what is short term uncomfortable now will lead to long term pleasure. And if we’ve got that, if we’re able to correctly see what leads to pain and what leads to pleasure, it won’t be difficult to have our priorities in a good place. ☺

Peace,

Dave Roel.

The state of your life is nothing more than a reflection of your state of mind.

- Wayne Dyer

The (Book) List

So I'm making another list, one that I will (hopefully, eventually) actually complete this time. Except now with books-- I've read some things by some of these authors, and I already highly recommend them. If you have any suggestions, feel free to add them in the comments!

Jamaica Kincaid - I've read her short piece Girl and decided to check her out. She was born in Antigua and moved to New York to become an au pair, and a lot of her writing has to do with the subsequent experiences she had.

• A Small Place
• Annie John
• Lucy

Gabriel Garcia Marquez - He writes a sort of absurd brand of magical realism, which totally appeals to me.

• 100 Years of Solitude
• Love in the Time of Cholera

Marie Howe - She's a poet, and I've read "Practicing" (which is sort of explicit) and "What the Living Do" (which is not-- it's also the poem one of her collections is named for) and thought both were really well-written and emotionally impactful.

• What the Living Do

Virginia Woolf - I've never read anything by her, but lots of people have suggested her to me.  I was told to read her works in order of their publication, since the evolution of her writing style is amazing in itself.

• To the Lighthouse
• The Waves
• The Years

Octavia Butler - She's a female African-American sci-fi writer, which is unfortunately not something that ever seems to happen with sci-fi. She's also amazing, so there's that.

• Patternist series
• Lilith's Brood series

James Baldwin - I don't know much about him, but he was a civil rights activist. I read his short story Sonny's Blues and got really into it.

• Go Tell It on the Mountain

Ray Bradbury - Fahrenheit 451 is one of my favorite books, but I never ended up reading anything else by him.

• Something Wicked This Way Comes
• Dandelion Wine
• The Martian Chronicles

Junot Diaz - I've only ever read some quotes of his on activism, but he's incredibly well-spoken  and powerful.

• This Is How You Lose Her
• The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

Haruki Murakami - I don't actually know anything about him, but he's been recommended to me loads of times.

• IQ84
• Norwegian Wood

Catherynne M. Valente - Ditto with Murakami.

• Deathless
• Palimpsest

Reticulated observancies

So I think it's become pretty obvious that Facebook, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Apple, etc., have no compunctions about being colossally intrusive to our privacy or handing over our information to anyone who asks. Which is fine, I'm not particularly enamored of any of those guys. Actually, I'm kind of sick of all of them. I still use their products and services, but I don't trust them. I keep my identifying information to a minimum, and I don't post anything particularly personal. I put up with them. But I won't be sad to see any of them go. Which will be history's final laugh on them, of course. They think they are irreplaceable. They're not. In a matter of a few decades, they will be history and dust. As all things eventually are.

Gigantic media and data empires will never give us a satisfying way of life. They are designed to keep us complacent consumers. I wouldn't mind throwing out every electronic device I own and replace every one with open-source, self-built Arduino stuff. I wouldn't mind living surrounded by fab lab furniture and open-source utilities. I wouldn't mind being a fringe eccentric, living on the outskirts of society's game. That can be a very fulfilling way of life.

The great philosophers, Heidegger, Nietzsche, etc., have usually told us that the modern world has turned in unhealthy directions. Our potentiality is being blocked. We have unwittingly been sent on a track; we are following programs that have been laid out for us by historical cultures — Platonist, Socratic, etc. We're repeating pre-fabricated, pre-designed, pre-configured projects that were laid out for us before we were born. This limits our potentiality — we might be something different, the philosophers tell us. We can choose to be in the world in different ways.

How about a cartoon? ☺

The Reward from The Animation Workshop on Vimeo.

Peace,

Dave Roel.

There comes a point in life when you realize everything you know about yourself, it's all just conditioning.

- Brian Buckner

Staying on track

If you're taking online classes, keeping up with them can be difficult, especially later in the semester. I know for me, I have the most trouble with them at the very beginning of the semester-- when I'm still getting used to having to do actual work-- and towards the middle, when I've started to lose all motivation. Here's some tips for staying on top of your classes, online or otherwise:

• Schedules. I've started making spreadsheets in Google Drive (or you could do them in Excel, or whatever else) of all the work I have to do for each class and when it's due. Even just updating it, I feel productive. Everything's all color-coordinated. It's much cheaper than a day planner and much more organized than a simple to do list, but it provides the satisfaction of both.
• Set aside time. If you get into a weekly rhythm of, say, Do Class A & B's homework Monday and Wednesday, Class C's homework Friday morning, Class D's homework on the weekend, it's really easy to stay on track. Assuming, of course, that nothing unexpected bumps you off your schedule.
• Keep track of your grades. I mean, it's good in general to know where you stand in a class so you know what you need to do to get the grades you're okay with (and whether you may need to consider withdrawing). But what I learned to do in high school is to calculate what scores you need on tests in order to pass the class and study however long you feel you need to meet that minimum. Ideally, we'd all devote our full attention to all the classes we're taking, but it often doesn't work out that way. So it's definitely helpful to know which classes you can afford to wing your way through, especially by the time finals roll around.

Full disclosure: I don't devote as much attention to school as I should or as I'd like to, but I think that's the case for a lot of people as well. Many people just can't afford to, with jobs and other responsibilities. But my point is, these tips are pretty much the minimum-- as in, even I do these things, so clearly they don't require that much effort. In my experience, they work, too. As long as you know what amount of work you personally need to put in to get passing grades.

Stay classy,
Caitlin.