State of Blog (ver 1.1) Why Blog, Again?

When I started this blog in late November of last year I asked myself a question: why blog? The answer I gave seemed sufficient. But in truth, it didn’t really address the question. It was little more than a mission statement: the world of an aspiring writer as he takes steps towards refining and hopefully selling his work.

But that wasn’t really the full answer, so far as I can see it. So that’s why we’re here again. The question returns, in a bit of metablogging retrospection I’d like to call the State of the Blog Address.

You see, the problem with giving you the up close and personal view of what it takes to be a writer is that being a writer is a long, abstract, fairly boring process. I sit and goof off, until I write a bunch of stuff down. I do this for two months. Then I sit on it, until I’m ready, then I spend two months going over everything I wrote and make it better. Rinse and repeat with new ideas.

If I only made my blog about when something relevant happened in my writing, I’d be posting maybe every two weeks. Probably more like three or four. And I want to blog more regularly than that. Or … not regularly, but at least with a higher frequency. Regular is for regular people, and I’m not. Just consider me your irregular literary rock star.

So the blog really isn’t about writing. For an author’s blog, I talk about writing and the process and my books almost none. Instead, the blog has become more of a statement on life. Part philosophy, part observation, part sounding board. It’s limited only by what I do with it. And as such, it’s grown past a place for writing-related news. Instead, I want it to be something more.

To create one must have experiences. One can’t create in a vacuum. If you live in a Skinner box, you are only going to be able to create based on the reality of your Skinner box. To be successful at creating one must make a normal life look like a Skinner box and go beyond the mundane to something much different and more interesting.

So that’s really what my blog is about. It’s about finding the content in everyday life. To blog with anything resembling frequency I have to continue to pull worthwhile things out of my day to day experiences, which are repetitive and not worth talking about more often than not. It’s a practice in insight and world view. There’s as much interest as I make there be.

So everything I write is written to help me connect to the world and connect the world to my writing. There is no vacuum, I write in the world I perceive, and if I can mine ideas out of it I will be stronger for it. A writer must have an eye for the worthwhile in the worthless. The moment in the noise.

So my writing blog isn’t about writing, but at the same time it is. Writing has to have content. We don’t just write words. We write meanings and purposes and images. This blog is for me to express myself one-on-one with an audience, sure, but it’s also a content-generator. What comes to me here helps inspire and reinforce the mindsets and attitudes that push me to continue to make new fictional content.

The hope is that it’s useful. That my kind of slanted world view appeals. In a way, it’s a direct line to the kind of themes and ideas that will make up my eventual fictional works. Somewhere a long way down the road, I want people to be able to read a novel by me and read a blog post and say “this is clearly related.” The blog will be the nonfiction centerpiece of a fiction writer.

A writing blog should aspire to no less.

I'll Never Have A Degree ( underestimate me at your peril )

This is a bit of a historical piece. The history of my education, I suppose you could say. If a bit of biographical information isn’t going to do it for you, you can move along to the rest of the only vaguely biographical articles on this site. Otherwise, sit a spell and learn about me and learning and our torrid love affair.

Under whose nose and behind whose back did said affair take place, I hear you ask. Well, it took place under the nose and behind the back of the Institution. The School. The Man.

You see, I was always a gifted child growing up. Driven to excel and succeed in all of my academic pursuits. I was regularly near the top of my class, regularly the overachiever and teacher’s pet and any other insipid comment could be made about that kind of child because we all know exactly what they’re like.

In junior high I started missing class. Sickness, struggles, mental breakdowns and just general laziness all mixed together to make me the most truant child I’ve ever seen who was still attending school. Only my typical teacher’s pet ways kept me from being removed completely. By my Sophomore year of high school, I missed slightly more school than I attended.

This is probably the best thing that ever happened to me.

Why? Well let me tell you. I was in school a fraction of the time of other students, yet I had a 3.5 GPA. I learned well, teacher’s loved me, and I did well with schoolwork. What I didn’t do was attend classes. And somewhere along the way, I missed the indoctrination seminar that turns willing learners into process pre-adults ready for their futures.

I love learning. I really do. I crave it at all times. This makes me something of an odd duck among adults because somewhere on the train from child to adult everyone seems to lose the love of learning. And I believe that the main reason for this is because everyone eventually goes to school where the love of learning is psychologically beaten out of them.

Now, the following opinions are generalizations. They’re what I believe typically happens, or happens enough to have an important effect. I’ve seen exceptions many many times, but it’s not enough to stop the tide. Just so nobody says “But I saw…” Yes, I imagine you did. That doesn’t mean it’s always true. Just keep that in mind.

What is a school? A school is an institution where children are processed into a societal norm. They are given the status quo’s agree-upon “Standard of Education” in an assembly line fashion until they are old enough to be taken in by the labor force, at which point they’re punted out into the real world.

Does that sound harsh and cynical? Perhaps. But look at it this way: our society has deemed kids working as bad, and education as good. There is no real monetary gain to be had by educating people for so long, but the public insists. And thus kids are instructed at an embarrassing monetary deficit to those in power. So it’s done in the most expedient and effective manner available, even if it’s not the best manner.

Regardless, as I was saying, I would guess that despite the troubles that being gone from school so much caused me, in the end it might have saved me from completely burning out on it. I was bored and I was never there. I can’t imagine what it would have been like had I actually come to class and the like.

High school ended and I went off to college. A part of me was reticent, especially since high school was such a disappointing experience (and after everyone said and I foolishly believed it was full of opportunities).

College was touted as an entirely new experience. An experience that was full of opportunity and new vistas of learning. A place for people who loved to learn. An escape from the rigorous and potentially restrictive criteria of a high school. The entire world of human knowledge was going to be made accessible to my whim.

Guess what? College isn’t like that. College is like high school, but in many ways its even worse. A college is an institution with pride and tradition. People who graduate from the school and come back to teach are fiercely loyal. Alumni talk fondly of their alma mater.

Colleges teach academic thinking, not knowledge. Academic thinking is much more limited, much more self-serving. A college is distinguished not by the knowledge they teach but by calling themselves distinguished. It is intellectual and social elitism of a staggering order. It is professors teaching students in the ways they were taught, reinforcing dogmatic learning structures that are catered towards similar (but much more subversive) indoctrination as that carried out in high schools.

The universities and colleges used to be centers of innovation and respect, but these days have decayed into status symbols and degree-factories. Why does innovation not come from universities anymore? There are many factors outside the scope of this article, but one reason is that a university is under no obligation to innovate and does not care to or strive to. Professors care about tenure, which means playing conservative and to expectations. Students are to be given degrees in the fine tradition of their forefathers. Certainly we could not change with the times and still uphold that tradition, could we?

I went to college and dropped out. Twice. The first time I was unaware of the underlying problem, and blamed myself. The second time various factors came into play that precluded my return. At this point, could I return? Very easily. But I will not. In fact, I might never step foot in another university again.

If you ask me, this is cause for celebration.

Schools do not teach learning. In fact, schools discourage learning. Learning means independence and ideas and critical thinking. Our structured learning centers are there to prepare people for the ‘real world’, jobs in professional careers where thinking is nine times out of ten discouraged and looked down upon. People do not ask for degrees to get critical thinking and highly skilled individuals. They ask for degrees because they can continue to play on the mental mindset of someone who has undergone years and years of highly structured instructions, protocol, and logistics.

A person who loves learning does two things in this environment: stops loving to learn or gets out. I got out, and even so it took me months to recover my sense of ‘I can learn and want to learn’. Proponents of independent education call this unschooling. The period where a person stops relying on outside motivators and threats (grades and expulsion and disappointing ‘superiors’) and finds motivation within to learn and a desire to gain tools and knowledge.

I can learn. I do learn. I’m regularly picking up new information and skills, without ever bothering with class work. I read voraciously of nearly anything I can get my hands on. I google a dozen things every day. The internet is a vast resource where learning is almost always free when you know how to look. And even when it isn’t, it’s much cheaper than we’re being told. Paying thousands of dollars to a college is insane when all it takes is the internet, some time, and the desire to learn.

I would put my understanding of many topics on par with a college student. I would put my ability to pick up new idea higher. I can teach myself something much faster than someone could teach it to me. That ability gives me freedom. Freedom to gain knowledge. And in today’s world, knowledge and skills are the one thing separating someone successful from someone who is not.

I’m not talking a simple recitation of facts. I’m talking learning reasons and motivations and the underlying forces behind the facts that are presented for memorization and recitation. I’m talking the ability to question, the ability to stare the status quo in the face and demand a reckoning. That is knowledge. That is what a learned mind can do. To not just understand the way things are but see that that is not all there is, that there can be and is more. It is only for us to take that step and find it.

That is nothing that can be taught. It must be found within one’s self. But nobody ever lets us know that, and instead we’re chasing after papers that mean little and years of work that amount to a numbed mind.

I might never get a degree, I might never even sit in another classroom in my lifetime, but I will keep learning because I desire it and it’s there if we want it and it’s our right to be able to gain what we can have and can reach for. We only must take the effort to. And so while I will have no diploma, while I might forever be a mere high school graduate, I will also be a force to be reckoned with. A mind full of continually changing and expanding understanding.

Self-educated. Self-made. Not to mention empowered.

And free.

I Met A Real Blogger!

Today I went and met Morgetron, for the exchanging of my prize that I won in her contest for my rescued copy of Machiavelli's The Prince. Good trade, so far as I was concerned. Morgetron herself was wonderfully delightful and patient with my shy and introverted ass. I actually started to say something meaningful towards the end, too! That's always a plus.

It's strange seeing someone I only knew as an abstraction on my screen, even if her blog is chock full of pictures and videos and whatnot. It seems very unreal to take this concept that you have and turn it into a living breathing person. Not bad, but kind of unsettling in that good gestalt-altering sort of way.

Anywho, this is just a check in to say that I'm not sure what's going on in the next little while, but I'm hoping to get back to work soon on editing, and hopefully blogging semi-regularly. A couple of topics I have slated to be writing sometime in the next week or so, just to make sure that I do:

• on wanting to indulge in poet-thought
• on schooling, degrees, and self-education
• blogging, two months later

See you on the other side.

Those Days Off Are Going to Kill Me

I took yesterday off from work and most everything else to just sit at home and relax and recharge. I hadn’t had a day quite like that in a while, and I felt as though I deserved it. So I took it. For the whole day I did nothing but play video games and watch shows and talk to friends.

Unfortunately, that was the problem.

I had forgotten what it meant to do nothing. While it’s enjoyable, I fall quickly and deeply into a sort of self-destructive ennui that is staggering in its depth and complexity. And I can’t explain why. I just know that when I set aside time to do nothing, I do nothing and I feel myself slowly start to dissolve into nothing. Time passes, I exist, but it … feels very hollow and dangerous. Like a gaping maw reaching out to claim me.

Over the summer I spent 10 weeks doing nothing, and I wonder if perhaps this is not just a dim memory of that. There is a kind of strange existence that comes when you have absolutely nothing to do and nobody to watch over you. It’s a state of nature where all obligations seem to not exist or matter any longer. Motivation is an idea, not a real thing from outside. The various processes of our lives are stripped quickly down to a simple Maslow-like hierarchy.

And today I’m back to work, and glad to be. One day reminded me of all those others, and what they meant and what they did to me. Alone and adrift, motivation is difficult to carry out. And I still haven’t succeeded yet. What that means for my eventual future of self-employment is hard to say, but I’m learning. And I feel the lack of motivation during this recharge period I’m going through. I can feel the need to find it again growing in my mind.

But work isn’t the solution. It’s a distract, a time-eater, that allows me to gain money and thus to be endured. The real solution is something much more ephemeral, much harder to find. That solution escaped me still, but I need to keep grasping for it. When I find it, things will change again, I’m sure.

Where is Ziggy Stardust?

I heard The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars last year, 2007 in a long line of anno domini. Five years from 2007 is 2012, when the world is supposed to undergo some sort of radical shift, if you believe in ancient cosmological calendars. Some say the apocalypse; some simply say a major world-wide paradigm shift. The moment I heard Five Years, I knew that I had an album that would carry me from then until the supposed end of the world.

For those of you unfamiliar with the album (perhaps the greatest album of all time, right next to Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, IMO) David Bowie sings of Ziggy Stardust, a Martian who comes to a doomed Earth with a message of salvation through rock and roll. Ziggy drowns in compassionate excess before being torn apart by his fans in the self-titled song towards the end of the album.

Some days I wonder if sacrificing yourself for the message isn’t the best idea.

The message still exists, however. That Five Years carried far beyond the original message that Ziggy brought so long ago in 1972 means that either a) it’s just a song and the world really wasn’t going to end in five years or b) because of the message we narrowly averted disaster, which remains hanging over us like a bomb ready to drop.

I would prefer A, in a safety sort of way. I really don’t think we’re suffering from impending apocalypse. That just seems silly. People have been playing that “The End is Nigh” card so hard through history that it’s become old hat.

At the same time, we all recognize the possibility. While very few of us believe the end is nigh, we can conceive of the possibility. Indeed, if we think about it, we could easily end up that way fast and hard. We’re eternally perched on a slippery slope where a few bad choices would plunge us straight into end times.

Which is B, I guess. And really, is B so bad? Ziggy asks us to realize what we’re doing, desperately crying out at us to change and become something better. We only have to strive to grow, strive to live, make the right choices that will save us all.

Oh, and stop tearing apart our saviors.

Ziggy is killed and then comes back and sings two more songs. Sort of like Jesus, but with make-up and androgyny and a guitar. Which probably wouldn’t have flown with Jesus being in the desert amongst conservative religious folk. But otherwise, it would have made a hell of an impression. And then Ziggy leaves us, and the decision’s on our heads.

What became of Ziggy Stardust? Where did he go? Here we are, now 35 years after he said we were five years away. Is the clock still ticking? Is Martian time just really weird? A Martian year is only 1.88 Earth years long. That doesn’t account for such a major discrepancy. So maybe Ziggy just gave us a chance, the best he could do, before he allowed us to figure it all out for ourselves. Kind of like Jesus.

Ziggy Stardust lives on, though. The man and the icon. The icon lives in all of us who have taken up his call. Live like it matters, because we’re all doomed. Dream for something better, to try to save us from our eventual destruction. It’s on the efforts of the few that many are saved—either physically saved or saved in that pseudo-spiritual enlightenment kind of way.

Ziggy Stardust’s message is similar to mine. I don’t need to belabor the parallels. If you’re confused, ask, but you should be following along a little more closely. And the banner I’ll raise is in his name as much as anyone’s. It doesn’t matter if he’s real or not. Our belief in him makes him real. Kind of like God or Santa Clause or Osama bin Laden even. They exist as figures because we believe in them. Without our belief, they are just ideas or notions or (even worse) just some slowly decaying piece of animated meat.

So I ask again, where is Ziggy Stardust? You would think if he’s still binging on his rock and roll lifestyle someone would have caught on. So that can’t be the answer. It could be he retired to some island to live in luxury. Or maybe he’s tucked away in a mountain monastery pondering the deep mysteries of life. These all sound rather appealing, but I don’t really think any of them are true.

If I had to guess, I would say Ziggy Stardust is out doing exactly what Elvis and the black Michael Jackson (not the Space Michael we know now) are doing: lying low, living life, and trying to touch people in a smaller more intimate way.

Ziggy played guitar, but maybe he doesn’t anymore. Certainly not on a stage. But I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s an aging effeminate guy—a little strange and a little crazy but very persuasive—wandering around with a beat up old guitar playing to earn food to live on and maybe a place to sleep. A Ziggy who looks for people who are looking for answers. A Ziggy who waits for someone to finger him but until then will go about his business.

And I’m pretty sure he would explain his life like this: You can’t inspire everyone because everyone can’t handle the message. That doesn’t mean the message is bad or that people are bad, just that sometimes they don’t mix well. I can only be burnt that badly once. Instead, I’ll just try to find the people who are ready for it. That way, I’m not going to get killed again, and maybe I’ll inspire the next person who will step up and risk it all to tell the message to everyone.

Because despite the risks, sometimes everyone needs to hear a message of love, potential, and rock and roll. Living free and suffering hard and loving it all.

Anything to keep that clock ticking. Anything to keep the hammer from falling.

Anything to keep us living.

Leave Taking

So I’ve kind of been taking a break lately. The editing has stalled and I was forcing it and it just wasn’t working out for anyone. The book was hurting. I was going insane. And my poor friends were dealing with sorely tested patience as I went through day after day of frustrated editing-angst.

I eventually just let it go. I’ve been working pretty solidly for a few months after never doing it before. It might be time to sit and let the batteries recharge a little. So I’ve been doing that for two weeks. My brain feels a little better. My ideas machine has started working again. I’m watching a lot of movies and reading a lot and learning more and more. I have entered an absorbent phase.

Right now, I’m starving for input. I just devour articles and lectures and learning. I sit and watch movies compulsively. I tear through reading. And I use it all as food for whatever infernal machine powers the thing that is me. Hopefully, the engine will be roaring soon, and we’ll be back on track, but I’m not really going to hold my breath too much. I kind of deserve a break, and I’m willing to take another fortnight if that’s what it takes.

While I’m doing that, I’m kind of working on the blog, but … my mind and attention is elsewhere. I’m writing stuff, I’ve scrapped a couple thousand-word articles because I felt they were written not with passion but out of a sense of obligation. If this is a job, I’m not going to do it. I do this because I love to talk and think at an audience that is hopefully receptive.

Oh, yes. I almost forgot: Rayne at So Many Stories gave my blog a wonderful little review. Very nice, though I wonder if it’s just because she met me and I gave her a little-known webcomic. That kind of gift tends to inspire insane gratitude. I know I’m very thankful to the person who gave me said webcomic.

Writing other articles. I’ll post what seems most pertinent. Hopefully you’ll forgive sporadic content in exchange for getting content that I really believe in and feel good about. I know I would.

On Religious Freedom

WARNING! This post makes no attempt to be fair and biased about religion--a topic near and dear to people's hearts. If you're easily offended when someone attacks religions in general, please skip this post. I think my points are valid, but if your faith is of that silly 'unassailable due to righteous indignation' type, we're going to be unable to hold a discussion here. kthx

So I'm an ordained minister. I've been one for a week and a half now, ever since Tuesday, January 8th, 2008. I figure I should remember a date like that, because ordination is supposed to be a pretty big deal, one of those things that you remember with a piece of paper and maybe a party but you certainly remember the date.

In becoming ordained, I guess I've chosen a religious affiliation. So, as of the time of my ordination, in perpetuity, I am a member of the Universal Life Church (ULC). The ULC is not a Christian organization, though they welcome Christians. I suppose that in the truest sense they are nondenominational. All people are welcome to join, no matter their faith or beliefs. There are no dogmas to the Church, and there is little in the way of official services/facilities in the traditional sense.

What they do offer is instant ordination to anyone who wants it. You join the ULC, provide your name and address, and they will officially ordain you in their faith. In doing so, you have all of the various pluses of being an ordained minister (monetizing your practice you're taxed like a minister, which is good and bad), among which is the legal ability to perform wedding ceremonies.

If this sounds a little shady and underhanded, instantly being ordained online, then perhaps you're looking at it the wrong way. The ULC has won through multiple legal battles the right to ordain whoever they wish into their faith and for their ordination to be as valid as that of any church, be they Jewish or Catholic or Protestant all the way down to Pastafarian or Jedi (do we really have official ministers in these religions? Doubtful).

What is important is the bias of our government and lawmakers towards religious institutions. Marriage can be conducted by a Justice of the Peace, but the power also resided in the ordained ministers. In fact, marriage is one of the only legal powers granted to an ordained minister over Joe Blow on the street. However, the criteria for ordination are typically conflicting. Many religions force someone to adhere to a strict credo, go to seminary or other similar religious school, and then devote their life to a congregation in exchange for little more than an inflated sense of self-importance and one more legal right.

The ULC wishes to take this power out of the hands of the few, and into the hands of the many. When we believe that to be an ordained minister requires that kind of time and dedication, we set up a state of power in which there is a religious elite that we feel should have more. That kind of mindset states that we should be subjected to the decisions of a religion minority who not only are more entitled than we are, but also deserve to have more legal power because of the strength of their religious convictions.

I believe this to not only be false, but harmful to society and the individual as a whole.

Religion is an inherently very personal thing. And one that has forever been entangled with the legal systems of all countries, despite efforts to pull the two apart. However, when God is on our money and in our Pledge of Allegiance and our highest governmental leaders regularly point to their faith as a guiding factor, we know that those efforts are more or less superficial. They claim religious ambivalence, but we've already shown that they're willing to grant superior legal status to a religious official over a 'normal' person.

However, in doing so they perpetuate the system of the religiously devout being pulled into a higher state of power. As a mostly Christian country, it's no surprise that the Christian special interests hold significant sway over the workings of our government. That is because on some level, people are raised to believe that those men and women who go through religious indoctrination are somehow more valid in their opinions than anyone else. Ordination grants legitimacy, a holy sanction that makes them freed from the confines of most secular concerns.

This could not be further than the truth. Ordination is not a structured thing. A religion might enforce schooling and devotion to weed out all but the most faithful (and most controllable) but there are options to grant the same legitimacy in 5 minutes sitting at your computer. In the eyes of the law, my ordination and that of a man who paid thousands of dollars to go to a seminary are entirely equal in rights and legitimacy.

And the same rights and privileges are open to everyone. We do not have to exist in a state where the religiously devout are granted greater rights in the eyes of the law. I want to be clear on this; ordination IS NOT a matter of faith or religion. It's supposedly tied to that by traditional religions, but that's mostly as a way to further the legitimacy of its ordained ministers in the eyes of the laity.

Instead of seeing it as an enlighten minority, see it for what it is, a system that grants rights based on supposed faith. This system of allowing greater rights to a religious official just undermines the separation of church and state that our government purports to be under (and I believe should be under). And it's not picky about it, mostly because it couldn't afford to be without angering too many people. In the eyes of the government, any religious official is inherently granted higher rights than a normal person; for no reason other than a religious institution says they are worth granting rights to.

This is why the ULC exists. It does not enforce a faith, because it isn't about faith. You can be whatever faith you are and be a member of the ULC. It opens its doors to all peoples of any walk of life. It does not require you to go to school for your faith. While it might be important to do so in more dogmatic religions, in ULC your personal beliefs are inherently your religion and there is no way to teach you what you believe.

And most importantly, it has no qualms about granting you rights that are supposed to belong to a privileged few. You sign up, and it will give you what is supposed to not be for you, but those in power. And you have just as much legitimacy (if few resources, admittedly) as a Catholic Priest or a Protestant Reverend or a Jewish Rabbi. You have the exact same rights as these people instantly, should you choose to take them.

It's only when we choose to take freedom for ourselves that we show that we truly value it. I believe that the more people who accept their freedoms and as much autonomy as they can, the further we can wrest power from the minority and into the hands of the majority. The best place to strike is at faith, that supposedly unassailable bastion. When we take true religious freedom as an individual, instead of under the control of those who took this freedom and didn't tell you you could do so, too, we say essentially 'I will not allow someone to have more rights than me because they claim to be more pious.'

Religious freedom, the freedom to practice as you believe and the freedom from control by people who would abuse the religious cracks in our legal system, is an essential step to freeing oneself from oppression by those who would gladly subvert your freedoms for you when you remain silent--or ignorant.

More information on the ULC, ordination, the legal status of ordination, and the various requirements to perform marriages legally ( some states have more requirements than simply being ordained, but the ULC offers services to help meet those requirements ) please visit the ULC website at www.themonastary.org or www.ulc.net.