Archive for August, 2009

Writers block.

Livejournal has a section on writers block. It has sample questions for you to start a journal entry on. They are short questions that can be given a short answer if you wish, or can be given a long answer if you want to devote time to it.

“How do you react when you get nervous in social situations?” I don’t really have this problem. Are people that write secretly unable to speak usually? “How do you think technology will impact your future?” I have a career in it. Otherwise, technology will not have a significant impact to the important goals of my life. “Would you donate a kidney or bone marrow to a stranger?” No. “What is the worst piece of advice you’ve ever received? ” There is never a stupid question. “If you were to open your own theme restaurant, what would the theme be and how would you express it to the customers?” It would be called ‘Food’ and thats what you would get there. “Why do you love your body? (Sponsored by Body by Victoria® from Victoria’s Secret.)” Who says I do?

Ah blast, still not feeling creative juices. Sometimes, I just have something to write about, but I have too many unconnected unripe ideas in my head to make anything meaningful. Sorry, journal. *hugs journal*

August ends tommorow. This summer has been, without a doubt, one of the coldest in memory. I never got a chance to go to the wavepool. My grass stayed green, which is a far different story than its brownness last year. Fall is right around the corner, and before it gets even more mind numbingly cold my major goal for the fall is to finish the back yard fence.

Carrie and I have been spending alot of time together for the last month. Shes a very good friend.

Work keeps on going.

I rarely have downtime and live a busy life, so I know more has been going on, but my brain has been very out of gear all day. Maybe its because I have a pacing puppy dog in the room with me. I’ll try a better journal tomorrow.

In tonight’s dream, I set off to europe with a few friends with the goal of making the perfect ceaser salad. Never mind that I had no idea what ingredients actually would make a perfect ceaser salad or where I would get them from, or for that matter the geography of Europe, somehow I just knew I was in Europe and we were boating across channels, watching people make out in parks, traveling through alleyways and visiting restaurants in search of the perfect ceaser salad. It was like weird al’s “the biggest ball of twine in Minnesota” where stuff just happened, regardless of if it made sense or not. at one point we were in a series of enclosed alleyways where the people were extremely rude, and we left a doorway and determined that the last quarter mile was collectively one giant themed pirate ship. At the end of the dream, we came across a guy who asked us to join his ceaser salad club. I noticed i tried eating raw chicken and spit it out. Then I woke up.

Off to Duluth today!

I love to travel.

When I travel, I always consider that even though I am seeing a lot, I am missing out on even more. I can travel on a straight line through Chicago and not even scratch the surface on all the things to see in the city.

Consider taking I-35W through Minneapolis. Have you seen it all? Have you seen the sculpture gardens, have you seen the art at the walker? Have you explored the caves on the st croix river or watched bald eagles soar near red wing? No, you need to get off the road, you need to think 3 dimensionally.

This always floors me when I go on a road trip. For example, my last trip, I went through Colorado:

Yeah, sweet! I’m in Colorado! But all I am experiencing out of Colorado is that paper thin blue line that is a road. I didn’t get to meet anyone, go to any events, see any hidden unique landmarks. I didn’t get a chance to see Estes Park or Colorado Springs, or visit Park County (South Park). And even if I did, these are as high name landmarks as the Metrodome or Mall of America, and it is not what makes Colorado great.

To make it worse, the continental US is HUGE. It would take you 5 days of constant driving at 80 MPH to travel the entire 48 state border. 5 DAYS. You think waiting to get out of a 45 minute class on calculus takes along time, imagine 5 solid days of travel and not even scratching the surface of the vast volume of land that makes up the US.

And thats just an example of a place in driving distance from me. I want to get a passport and some money to travel the world in my life. I only live once, I am only going to be able to realistically do this sort of thing for the next 40 some years. In those 40 years I want to see amazing things, make my life worth being alive for. I want to scuba dive the Great Barrier Reef, I want to hike the Volcanoes of Hawaii, I want to see the Pyramids in Egypt, I want to explore castles and ancient colosseums in Great Britian. I want to experience using a gondola taxi in venice. I want to taste real italian food in italy.

As it turns out, even if somehow ive seen the whole world (which I couldn’t do in my lifetime), I still havent seen the whole world. Because there is another dimension to consider – time. Once you have witnessed something, an event gets locked in time. You can’t go back and revisit it. By nature, we are always traveling in a forward direction through time. For example, I visited Defcon 17 in vegas 2 weekends ago. I could say, that was fantastic, I want to do it again! But simply attending Defcon again is not the same as visiting Defcon 17 again. Its a completely new animal. May look the same, may smell the same, but its not the same. Defcon 17 happened at 2901 Las Vegas Blvd. S, Las Vegas, NV from July 31st through August 2nd 2009. It is interesting that this “place”, Defcon 17, has both spacial and temporal coordinates in order to describe itself. That is, it exists in 4 dimensional space – it has a definite location in 3 dimensional space, and also only exists in a specific location among the 4th dimension of time.

This presents a problem for me. That is, even if I visit something once, as soon as I leave that area, whatever I was visiting has already changed. Visiting New York City in 2000 I am sure is a much different ball of wax then visiting New York City in 2002 (WTC attacks). There is always events happening everywhere, from Irish Fest in Minneapolis, to a loon taking off with a fish in its mouth off of the Mississippi River, to a sunrise in prospect park, events that just as fast as they happened get locked in history, events I will never be able to witness.

What I am saying here is that even just within miles of where you live there are going to be thousands of interesting things to see thorough your life. And beyond that is an entire huge world full of different locations, geographic formations, nature, literature, and people, which even if you spent every waking minute of your life you could not see all of.

So my question is this, with all this world to see, more than you could possibly see in your life, and with the end of your life relatively coming up so fast (We’re going to be almost 30 in less time than it took us to get from highschool graduation to now!) then why are we all spending so much time worrying about whats on TV and causing relationship drama within the friends you are close too? Why would you not make any goals for the future, hoping that something good happens to you? Theres so much to do in the world and so little time! Live right now! Do something! Whats stopping you?