blurred

(song 4 on the album Otherwise Bleak eXistence)

nights pass sitting at the window
waiting for you to come around
I’m in this groovy isolation
watching the moonlight touch the ground

I had some guests that sat at my table
they came from other parts of town
and as they laughed I looked inside them
discovered there’s no one around

and all around are walls and a dark room
the music flows a soft sweet sound
the alcohol it works inside me
the echoes in my head bring me down
to you, but just a vision of you
and it seems that the sun will never come
to take me away to the place I need to be

and it’s hard when you know that all you love is far away
and I know all this waiting is doing me no good
but should I stop or should I move on when either way I’ll die?

axe to the grind

So my days are very full lately. Not much down time. Keeping my shoulder to the wheel, my nose to the grindstone, my feet to the fire, and any other "busy" metaphor you might care to insert here.

Filling up my days mostly with work and school. The job is very demanding and stressful and often keeps me for long hours, including some night and weekend time. A lot of classic "management" work... writing reports, executing contracts, attending meetings, creating budgets, reviewing proposals, contributing edits, tracking expenses, etc. It may sound like drudgery and sometimes it is, but actually for the most part isn't so bad. Hell, sometimes I even enjoy it. I'm also lucky to work at a really great place (World Resources Institute) filled with great people working on really interesting and important things. And in this economy, I suppose I'm lucky to be working at all.

School is less demanding in and of itself, but when layered on top of a demanding job it seems a lot more intense. Including my current class, I'm 3 classes away from finishing an MPA with a concentration in environmental science and public policy at George Mason University. My current class, Program Evaluation, is focused on learning the methods used to evaluate the effectiveness of government and non-profit programs and policies. I find it very interesting as it deals with the space where the "rubber meets the road," so to speak, in terms of looking at how resources (i.e., people and money) are applied in the effort to tackle large problems.

Between work and school I sometimes have a little time left over for my family (yes, I feel like I'm neglecting them, even if my efforts at career growth are ultimately for them), and for home maintenance, and for music. I do look forward to being done with school later this year, which should free up a lot more time for all of these. Oh, and a little time for myself as well, to do simple things like pleasure reading, or watching movies, or playing video games, or hiking with my dog, or traveling. It's amazing how little of such things I get to do these days! Or if I do, it's with a profound sense of guilt, or with a nagging fear of falling behind.

I sometimes ask myself -- for example, when I'm commuting on the Metro, or walking to class, or taking a lunch break, or dozing off at night -- why I'm keeping myself so busy, why I'm keeping my axe to the grind and pushing myself at such a frenetic pace. I mean, I have to work to put food on the table, of course, but nobody's pointing a gun to my head and insisting that I take on such a demanding job at such a high-octane think tank as WRI. Nobody's mandated that I get an advanced degree. In fact, I was doing pretty well at my previous job, taking on at least moderately interesting subject matter and working a much lighter schedule for a reasonable paycheck and reasonable job security. Why did I leave that behind?

I suppose it comes down to an innate desire to "do more be more," to make a difference in this world and contribute to something larger than myself. I want to "ride the tyger" and reach higher heights. I want to be part of the solution and leave my indelible mark on this world. And besides, I remember being bored at my last job, and that boredom being more agonizing than the 12-14 hour days I sometimes put in now.

This sounds dangerously like workaholism. While I do like my job and am more or less enjoying school, I think I need to step back and get my life back in balance soon. There's nothing wrong with striving for more, but when it comes at the expense of what Stephen Covey would call "Quadrant II" time or "Sharpening the Saw" time, then it's probably counterproductive. There's only so much one can do before reaching burnout.

Neil Young says it's better to burn out than it is to rust (or, in some versions, to fade away). I think he's right. But in the long run it's even better to avoid either extreme if possible.

three steps higher

(song 3 on the album Otherwise Bleak eXistence)




Been out feeding the great machine
making it strong so it’ll take us all away
Been out pressing buttons and crossing wires
Sparking the changes that’ll take us three steps higher

And when I push then it’s time for you to pull
and if we throw it out into the void
when we bring it in we’ll have some more
And more is better no matter what they say

Do you feel the burning sensation?
Is your heart on fire and do you want to touch the stars?
Are you cold and lonely and frightened?
Is it you that’s barely hanging on?

Gonna feed my mighty machine
make it strong so it’ll take us all away
Gonna conquer gravity
Everyone’ll be connected and everyone’s gonna be free

(In my daydreams as a child
I built the perfect fortress
In the laboratories of my youth
I found eternal life
In the solitude of my bed
I wished that I was special
In the atmosphere of my world
the air had grown so stale
In the corridors of my head
I unlocked all the doorways
In my memories of the dead
I swore I would survive)

Do you long for electric motivation?
Can you close your eyes and imagine what I see?
It’s a small price to pay for the sensation
Now the alien inside, it speaks for me

fortune cookie

I had Chinese for dinner tonight, and here is my fortune:

"You will be singled out for promotion."

This is good news. Unfortunately it didn't specify when, or to what position, but nonetheless it gives me hope. Of course, that seems to be what fortune cookies are designed for... after all, I've never seen a fortune that says something like "You are about to lose your job" or "Your spouse is cheating on you" or "Your exhaustion is a sign of a malignant tumor." The worst fortune cookie story I ever heard was from my brother, who once went to a Chinese restaurant during a somewhat lonely and depressing period in his life; upon finishing his dinner, and hoping for at least some tiny scrap of hope in his cookie, he cracked it open only to find -- nothing. What a way to toy with someone's fragile emotional state!

Anyway, if a fortune cookie is to be believed, then I will apparently be singled out for promotion. (As will my wife, actually... she got exactly the same fortune as me tonight, which I believe is a first for us.) I suppose a promotion would be welcome... I've been working really hard lately on some relatively big projects; many of them are coming to fruition and I'd love to see some payoff from it all. But thinking about it some more, I'm not sure how much of a payoff a promotion would be.

There seems to be an almost automatic assumption in our society (and the USA specifically) that when it comes to one's career, bigger is always better and advancement is always good. I certainly tend toward a blind allegiance to this concept, often finding myself striving for the next higher level without stopping to think whether I'd actually be better off there. More money and power tend to be precious commodities in the mind of upwardly-mobile man. Yet these things also have a cost, do they not? Mo' money mo' problems, as they say. And greater power leads to greater responsibility, higher pressure, and longer hours.

While I do like my work (I basically help manage a program of about 40 people working on climate and energy issues in the nonprofit sector), one thing I notice as my seniority and commensurate workload increases is a significant loss of free time. Time to just be, just enjoy, just relax, just take in life and get away and have some fun with it all. I get very little of this in any given week, and conversely am often under significant pressure; as a result I am frequently anxious, stressed, exhausted, and drained from day to day. This is already not a sustainable lifestyle, yet my workload and stress level pales in comparison to that of those who are more senior than me. So do I really want to push myself onward and upward into the equivalent of their shoes?

It is possible that the answer is "yes." It may be that over time my current job will become easier as I master its various components. Maybe the benefits of promotion would offset the personal costs. And maybe staying at the current level will prove inadequate for my needs and aspirations. But I shouldn't assume any of this to be the case. Rather, I should proceed carefully and deliberately, so that if I am in fact "singled out for promotion" I can make an informed decision on whether to accept the offer, or respectfully decline if necessary. The real goal should not be promotion for promotion's sake; rather it should be to make a contribution while keeping one's sanity and dignity intact.

sweet deception

(song 2 on the album Otherwise Bleak eXistence)




What would you say is the meaning of this life
if I posed the question
And would you believe that what you say is the truth
or would it be a fancy guess
You know I’d really like to believe that you
could take me to sweet heaven
But when I gaze on out into the blue
I stand alone and on fire

The empty spaces are empty because we cannot fill them
The empty heart is the emptiness of the universe spinning
If you look into a mirror you’ll see a reflection
Try to touch it and you will see just what I’m saying

So what if we went for a walk on the other side
of the skin that surrounds us
What if we chose to float around and dive
through space and time
Do you think the truth would touch our minds
and send our spirits higher
Or would we find it’s all a package of lies
tied up in sweet deception

The empty spaces are empty because we cannot fill them
The empty heart is the emptiness of the universe spinning
If you look into a mirror you’ll see a reflection
Try to touch it and you will see just what I’m saying

technologie domine

Spent much of today upgrading to a new cell phone. The LG enV2 to be exact. Lots of bells and whistles. Very fancy, very sleek. Have decided to ditch my land line.

Spent much of the last week staring at computer screens, playing with spreadsheets and Word documents and sophisticated business accounting and budgeting software. (And watching the Daily Show on hulu.com during the occasional break.)

Recently bought a new stereo featuring an iPod dock and missing a tape deck or record player.

Blogs and facebook and renewable energy.

Semi-disposable owner-assembled Swedish furniture.

China's lunar program. Pakistan's nukes.

Hybrid vehicles.

Somewhere, a dog barked.

I'm noticing technology's steady forward march and glowing expansion into every corner of our lives, and I'm not quite sure what to make of it. I think it's on balance a good thing? I'm relatively young but have already seen a lot of technological change in my lifetime, and it seems to be accelerating. The modern conveniences and tools and systems can be quite useful, sometimes even breathtaking (when they're not outright frustrating or terribly worrisome). But they also seem to be encouraging a gradual creep away from the older and simpler things: pen and paper, board games, dusty photo albums, newspapers, hands dirty from digging, face-to-face conversations with strangers, a walk in the park without earbuds or Blackberries.

I suppose it's an evolution of sorts, but am still trying to figure out to what end. Expanded comfort and convenience, greater knowledge, enhanced communication capacity. A brave new world. Leaving our former selves (the good and the bad) behind. Does the soul evolve as well?

This Christmas, I got two watches: one for business and "dressy" occasions; one for sports and outdoor use. The sports watch is digital with various stopwatch features, alarms, indiglo, velcro band, etc. (and inexpensive, having been mass produced in China). The business one is a very simple Swiss Army classic design... just a round face, rotating hr/min/sec hands, and a date (today's says simply "31"). It has a mechanical crown for making adjustments. It seems pretty sturdy. It's a watch, and it tells me what time it is.

I like them both, but I'm increasingly drawn to the Swiss watch. On a very strange, subtle, subconscious level, I feel like it's reminding me to stay grounded, and remember where I came from.

adolescent

(song 1 on the album Otherwise Bleak eXistence):

i didn't understand the rules
the teachers taught me that i was a fool
they couldn't make me understand
what it means to be a man

now i'm all grown up and i can't complain
really got it made but i'm not quite sane
this rite of passage has made me strong
but it took my sense of right and wrong

well i wanted to know
how a river could form from the cold white snow
and i tried to believe
that there's a god above who's smiling down on me

what is real
and what are all these feelings i feel
what is true
and which are the lies they're telling me and you

when i go to a party i'm the freak in the corner
standing alone like he's something other
and in my silence i can hear the chatter
filling the room but somehow leaving it flatter

see i tried hard to be
the magnet in the center of that gravity
but now i'm pulling away
to a faraway place where i can dream all day

what is pain
and what are all these thoughts in my brain
what is love
could there be a hell below and heaven above
what is now
is it just a place and everyone around
where to go
i guess i'm still a little child who just don't know

brother can you spare some change?

The Inauguration is upon us, and all is abuzz in Washington DC. Hope springs forth from the frozen and brittle ground, and all eyes look earnestly to Barack Obama to wave his magic wand and lift us from the depths of despair.

Such lofty expectations. I will be the first to tell you that Barack is a great man, and exactly the leader the United States needs at this challenging time in our history. I've read his books, studied his policy ideas, been wowed by his speeches, given time and money to his campaign, and watched with admiration as he first won the presidency and then navigated the transition period with unparalleled brilliance, strength, and grace. Everything I know and feel about him makes me believe he will be a first-rate president; perhaps one of the best we've ever had.

Yet at the end of the day, even with all his political power and personal ability, Obama is only one of 300 million Americans (and one of 6.7 billion people) currently gracing this troubled planet. While he will be able to do much good, so much more will depend on the masses doing all that we can -- together and individually -- to improve our collective lot in life.

I congratulate Barack Obama on a remarkable victory and wish him all the best for a successful presidency. I commend all my fellow humans to, in the words of Gandhi, be the change we wish to see.

infinity and all that's in between

So I've been reading a book that delves into some pretty heady stuff: the infinitesimal smallness of protons and the infinite vastness of the universe, for example. (In case you're interested, here's a link -- it's called A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson.) Haven't gotten too far in yet, but enough so to get me thinking about things like eternity and consciousness and the meaning of life, and the relative triviality of my problems and opinions and best-laid plans for world domination.

I find strange comfort in this, in being just a laughably minute piece of an impossibly large puzzle. I suppose it could be seen as depressing... "here we are, completely powerless little pissants marooned on this tiny little speck of a planet"; or it could be a bit troubling... "hey, no matter what I do, it doesn't really matter, so I am free of all responsibility". But it can also bring a certain perspective and humility, so that I realize a) however bad I screw up, I probably won't irreparably break the universe or the planet; b) my sufferings really aren't that big of a deal; and c) I am part of something miraculous and wonderful, and absolutely privileged to have the chance to experience and contribute to it.

I also suspect that the first law of thermodynamics applies to the human form as well. The energy that is me was here long before me and will be here long after I am gone. This is nice. Comforting. Poetic even. I can only imagine what forms I must've been before my current lifespan, or what forms I will take after I am dead and gone. A lot of dissipation and attraction and chance involved, to be sure, but what a fascinating and utterly exquisite arrangement to contemplate in any case.

So as I sign off for now and get back to the mundane stuff of daily life, I remain:

a piece of eternity,
with my faith in an impossibly awesome universe
intact,
a pulse of energy,
filled with gratitude for the opportunity to say
I am.

nothing (and everything) changes...

The new year is already 3 days old, and vacation time is quickly winding down. I've enjoyed the break, a much-needed 2-week respite from the daily grind, and am not ready for it to end. But end it must, and now a busy and intense (but hopefully fulfilling) 2009 looms. While the excitement of a fresh start lingers, and I daydream of a thousand possibilities in every single moment, I suspect that for the most part it'll be back to business as usual -- to quote The Godfathers: birth, school, work, death.

More specifically, from my little outpost, these are approximately the things I have to look forward to:

1. My J-O-B
The bulk of my time and energy will be spent on program management activities for an intrepid nonprofit environmental organization, supporting a group of about three dozen climate change warriors/brainiacs on everything from project budgets to grant reports to funding proposals to document edits to office space and staffing issues to etcetera. While often superbusy and stressful, it's not a bad gig and potential growth opportunities are always out there. It also does provide some decent measure of "meaningfulness" and I am privileged to work with a great and dedicated group of people. In any case, this is what pays the bills for now.

2. Edjumacation
I am in the final stages of completing a Master's degree, which will allegedly make me better-equipped to handle the various duties and tasks noted in item #1 above. It will also add weight to my resume as I continue climbing the ladder in that chronic quest for wealth, power, and prestige which afflicts most upwardly-mobile Americans. It is also covered by my employer, so who am I not to pursue such a valuable piece of paper? Anticipated graduation date: August 2009.

3. Music for the Masses
With the 2008 release of Anti-Social Club's debut album Otherwise Bleak eXistence now complete, the band is feeling primed and ready to get back to the studio again. A wealth of new material is under development, and we hope to begin recording in the months ahead. In the meantime I've been pumping out new lyrics at a healthy clip, and am hopeful for a follow-up to OBX in the not-too-distant future. Stay tuned, o worthy fans!

4. Family Matters
As ever, my wife, kids, extended family, and good friends keep me fully engaged, often elated, sometimes perplexed, occasionally frustrated, and frequently worried, but always grateful for their presence and support. All of the above (and below) happens within, around, beyond, through, with, for, despite, and because of them.

5. Other Stuff
Besides and betwixt all of these items, I'll be working my arse off to climb out of debt, maintain the house, get in shape, keep the cars running, tend the lawn, do the laundry, wash the dishes, vacuum the carpets, sweep the floors, check the mail, walk the dog, and try to squeeze in a few good books, blogs, eats, games, breaks, and naps along the way.

I also intend to thoroughly enjoy the inauguration of Barack Obama as the 44th U.S. president. If ever there was a time for political change, this is it...