Moving to My New Blog

I just created my new blog and posted my first entry to it. It's titled Reinventing Myself. That means I won't be posting here anymore. Or maybe not. My new blog is about how I'm seeking to transform myself in a positive way through positive ways of thinking, acting, and seeing the world. So, its scope may not be broad enough to embrace everything I want to write about, and I may still post things here that I can't post there. But I'll be concentrating on my new blog and on the effort to transform myself that that blog represents. So I hope you'll join me over there, and feel free to bring your friends with you.

My New Job

After I lost my job as a medical records clerk, I wrote that I wouldn't post to this blog again until I found a new job. Well, I've found one. No, not THAT kind of job. My new job doesn't pay a salary. But it has the potential to pay enormous benefits. I call it the job of reinventing myself. I adapted this job title from a book I've started reading: The Complete Idiot's Guide to Reinventing Yourself. I intend to do what the book suggests and by the ways it counsels.

One of those ways is to break with the past. Do new things, or do old things in new ways. So, this is my penultimate post to this blog. My final post will simply announce my new blog. I expect to unveil my new blog this weekend. Its purpose will be to chronicle my efforts to reinvent myself using what I call the power of realistically positive thinking and acting. If this blog was about or started out being about nakedly reflecting whatever interested or concerned me at the moment, my new blog will be about what I'm thinking and doing to transform myself into the person I want to be. Everything I write there will have the positive purpose of facilitating that transformation.

And you'll be able to follow my progress and, perhaps, take inspiration from it to reinvent or transform yourself into more of the person you want to be. For I suspect that most of us want to be the best we can be but haven't gotten there yet.

Gone Fishing For A New Job

I'll be out of a job come the end of this month. So, I've decided to stop blogging until I find a new one. Not only will this motivate me to find a new job sooner, but it will also clear away at least one major distraction to my doing everything necessary to succeed.

I've heard that if one wants to get really good at something, he needs to do it virtually every day. That may be true, and I would like to get better at writing and blogging. But I need to earn the money to pay my bills first. I may never be able to do this by writing or blogging, so I need to focus all of my resources right now on finding a decent job.

I look forward to my next post, because it will mean that I've found one and that I'm again able to do what I love doing most.

Being Like Jeff

I long to speak and write the way Jeff Beck plays guitar. At his best, his whole being is in every note. At my best, my whole being is in every word.

Inside each of us, there is ugliness as well as beauty. Yet, when we mindfully and continuously bring what is inside out into the light of awareness, are we not transformed and transforming? Do we not shine with the radiant beauty of Jeff Beck playing Somewhere Over The Rainbow?

I'm Being Laid Off

I wrote recently that I expected to be laid off from my job at the end of this month. I found out yesterday that I was right. February 27 will be my last day. I'm already preparing and looking for another job. When I find one, I hope it's better than the one I'm losing, even in today's economy.

My boss told me of a job that might open soon in another unit within the department and that he would give me his highest recommendation if I want to apply for it. I've heard bad things about that job, and I have misgivings about whether I'm up to it. But we'll see. I'm not desperate, but I am looking to rise above my doubts and to "feel the fear and do it anyway."

This may be a good time for it.

Musical Trio of Doom

Two of these genius musicians, Jaco Pastorius and Tony Williams, are no longer with us. But their music lives on. And John McLaughlin still lives to make more brilliant music.

Cash or Credit?

Here is an imaginary transcript of the discussion Nadya Suleman had with doctors at the fertility clinic responsible for her recently giving birth to octuplets.

"So, Miss Suleman, you're 32, divorced, unemployed, attending college, living with your bankrupt parents in a three-bedroom home, you have six children between the ages of 1 and 6, your 2-year-old is autistic, and you want to have more children?"

"I sure do, Doctor!"

"No problem. We'll just implant eight embryos in your uterus and see what happens. Will that be cash or credit?"

And Eight Make Fourteen

You've probably heard about the Southern California divorcee with six kids who recently gave birth to eight more. The first media stories about it were abuzz with excitement, but now they've become more restrained as people begin to ponder the implications of this event.

There are reports that the grandmother is so exasperated with her daughter's obsession with having children that she's threatened to leave her to her own devices. If she thinks it's bad now, just wait till the babies come home! The mother of the octuplets, Nadya Suleman, lives with her parents in a modest three bedroom house and apparently is unemployed with no source of income, and her parents themselves purportedly declared bankruptcy recently.

I feel upset about this story. Not so much about the mother herself, because I think she was almost certainly emotionally disturbed to be in her situation and still seek fertility treatment. What I find most upsetting is the doctor who agreed to help her have more children.

I don't know precisely what kind of treatment this doctor rendered, but it seems likely that it was a kind known to carry a significant risk of multiple births. I think this doctor's license to practice medicine should be revoked, or, if that's impossible under the existing laws and regulations, I think he or she should be hounded out of practice. Right now that's not possible since we don't even know who this miserable excuse for a doctor is. But if I knew who it was and I lived in Southern California, I'd want to be out picketing this doctor's clinic.

But leaving my anger and disgust aside, I worry about the children. Not only about the octuplets, but also about the other six young children, at least one of whom is reported to be autistic. How well can a single nutcase mom and her parents take care of all of them? No doubt they'll have help, monetarily and in other ways. I expect a book deal and a new cable channel series about them to compete with Jon and Kate Plus Eight. Perhaps it will be titled And Eight Make Fourteen.

But Kate has Jon to help her raise their set of twins and set of sextuplets, and even then it's a full time job for both of them, requring logistical planning and coordination that would impress the hell out of General Petraeus. How well is Nadya Suleman going to fare with fourteen kids and no Jon to help out?

And what can we as a society do to make sure that nothing like this ever happens again?

Hurdy Gurdy Joyfest

'Twas then when the hurdy gurdy man
Came singing songs of love.
Then when the hurdy gurdy man
Came singing songs of love.
--Donovan

I'm in a retro, psychedelic mood tonight. And, for some reason, I was drawn to Donovan's immortal Hurdy Gurdy Man.

I've never been sure what or who the song is about. Actually, I just read tonight that it was Donovan's gift to his musician friend Mac MacLeod, bassist in a 60's Danish-English power trio called Hurdy Gurdy. I've also heard that it refers to the then superstar guru Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.

But it doesn't really matter to me who Donovan was writing for or about. What matters is that this amazing song has always resonated with something deep inside me that yearns for ecstatic, soul-expanding release from my self-imposed semi-isolation from the wide, sometimes wonderful world that surrounds and, ultimately, IS me.

I love this song.

Donovan's original recording.


Steve Hillage's celebratory version.


Finally, Steve Hillage's Hurdy Gurdy Glissando.

Bad News = Opportunity

It's official. Many of the per diem jobs, mine included, are being eliminated, and the ones that remain will be filled by those who want them and have the most seniority. This means that I, one of the most recent hires, will almost certainly be laid off come February 28.

I could feel sorry for myself, but my house is paid for and I have no kids to support. The people I really feel sorry for are those with big mortgages and kids to feed, clothe, and put through school.

I could see my situation as a catastrophe. But, instead, I choose to see it as an opportunity. An opportunity to find another job that offers a higher salary, paid vacation and sick leave, health coverage for me and my wife, and, most importantly, makes more fulfilling use of my interests and talents.

I don't hate my current job. I like and respect my supervisors and co-workers, I keep physically active, and I'm earning money that helps to pay the bills.

But surely I can find and do something better than an entry level clerical job with a low salary and no benefits. Yes, I have my share of weaknesses, but I also have strengths that my current job scarcely taps. I need to focus not on what I'm losing but on what I stand to gain, and to welcome the layoff as a jump start to a better job and a better life.

In his remarkable novel Magister Ludi, Hermann Hesse wrote a poem called Stages. Here is a passage I cherish from that poem and which sums up my view of my situation:

Serenely let us move to distant places
And let no sentiments of home detain us.
The Cosmic Spirit seeks not to restrain us
But lifts us stage by stage to wider spaces.

Quote of the Day

Haggard's betrayal, his lies, his compulsions, his deceits are the excruciating function of this human dead end. What we have to do as Christians is open up this always-closing door, to find a way past the abstractions and neuroses of fundamentalism to a more honest and more human acceptance of gay people as God-like. Gay people, like all people, need love. We need family. And yet we are uniquely and cruelly denied these things. And no love and no family can be genuinely based on the deceit or self-hatred that are the alternatives.
--Andrew Sullivan

The Meeting

I and my co-workers have been concerned for some time about the faltering economy combined with our ever-diminishing workload in the main file room of the medical records department of a major metropolitan health care system. We primarily process paper medical charts that leave and come into our department. But as more and more of these charts are being converted into electronic form, there are fewer and fewer paper charts for us to handle. This means that our department needs fewer and fewer clerks such as myself to do the work that needs to be done, unless we can be trained to perform new tasks. Yet, even if we could be, it seems that our department won't need as many of us as it has in the past. When thousands of paper charts are moving through the department every day, many clerks are needed to pull, toss, scan, bundle, un-bundle, repair, file, and transport them. But when this daily flow of paper charts reduces to a comparative trickle of hundreds or fewer or ceases altogether and most or all patient information is processed by computer, a virtual skeleton crew can probably take care of business.

So my co-workers and I have been waiting for months for the bad news, and we just learned yesterday that it may well come tomorrow, Friday. We relatively new per diem clerks, as opposed to the "career" clerks who've been there for many years, have been asked to come in to work thirty minutes early tomorrow for a special meeting concerning "future plans" for our department. We all think this means that we're going to be told that some, if not many, of us are going to be laid off immediately or in the near future. We could be wrong about this, but I suspect that we're right and that it's time to start looking seriously for another job.

This can be a daunting task for just about anyone in today's economic free fall. For a guy like myself, it can be even more so. But a guy's got to do what a guy's got to do, and so I will.

Quotes of the Day

God turns you from one feeling to another and teaches by means of opposites, so that you will have two wings to fly, not one.
--Rumi

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said today. - ‘Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood.' -- Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.
--Ralph Waldo Emerson

Quote of the Day

THIS I BELIEVE: That phenomena do not have any kind of demonstrable, intrinsic existence. That anything that is the composite sum of other parts is, logically, impermanent. That suffering is a given in any form of existence where confusion and ignorance are present. That when confusion and ignorance have been definitively eliminated, and goodness, caring, and wisdom have entirely taken their place, that is true happiness.
--Pamela White

Quote of the Day

Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The trouble-makers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules, and they have no respect for the status-quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify, or vilify them. But the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.
--Apple Ad

The Mind as a Pair of Scissors

Jonah Lehrer, author of the delightful neuroscience blog The Frontal Cortex, posted an entry today about his new book How We Decide. This entry explains that the book examines the various factors that go into producing the various kinds of decisions we make including everything from choosing which flavor of Cheerios to buy at the supermarket to whether to take out a subprime mortgage.

In a Q&A section extracted from Amazon, Lehrer likens the mind to a pair of scissors. In this metaphor borrowed from Nobel Prize winning psychologist Herbert Simon, one blade of the scissors represents the brain and the other represents the brain's environment, and, just as we can't understand the operation of the scissors without understanding the simultaneous movement of both blades, so we can't understand the choices the mind makes without understanding the interaction of brain and environment.

In the comments section, this is what I wrote:

Jonah--
I look forward to reading your book, and, judging from Publisher's Weekly's starred review, you have nothing to be nervous about.

No doubt you address the free will vs determinism issue in your book. Herbert Simon's delightful metaphor of the brain and environment as the two blades of a pair of scissors reinforces my view that brain and environment are what the philosopher Alan Watts called a "unified field" and that the choices issuing from this field are the inevitable products of the conditions within it.

In other words, there is no freedom to choose other than what the conditions within the field produce, and there is also no determinism of something outside the field causing it to choose as it does, because, ultimately, the field encompasses everything of which there is nothing outside.

I do look forward to reading this book and to reviewing it here someday.

Sacramento Loses Again

Last night, I received the following e-mail from Bruce Maiman, now former host of an excellent weeknight talk radio program on KBFK, AM 1530. First, KSAC changed its format from liberal talk radio to gospel. Now Sacramento has lost its last even-handed talk radio program with a local as well as national focus, and it has lost an outstanding host. I'm saddened and frustrated by the news.

Is there anything we can do to stop this kind of thing from happening, or is it the inevitable way of things?

Please accept my apologies in advance for this mass e-mail. I hate them, but there many of you and sending something to each of you individually is a bit cumbersome, so I hope you don't mind.

Our parent company, Clear Channel, conducted extensive layoffs nationwide today, Tuesday, dispatching nine percent of its total workforce. I was one of those let go and will no longer be broadcasting on KFBK each weeknight.

Radio for me has never been about any ego stroke --I have no delusions of grandeur; it's only radio. And it has never been about ratings success, which we have enjoyed here and which I have enjoyed elsewhere.

What I enjoy most, and what I will miss most, is the daily interaction with compelling listeners who have things to say, whether they agree or disagree. If you are on this list, it is likely because we have engaged in conversation either on the air or via the web that I have found stimulating, compelling, perhaps infuriating and frustrating, and always enjoyable. For that, I thank you. Talk radio isn't talk radio with people talking to each other, so each of you has, in some way, been a part of that dynamic and helped make the program what it eventually became.

It's an odd thing, radio being the intimate medium that it is, and yet I have no idea how some of you even came to be listeners. The program started nearly three years ago with a completely different take than the previous host and, as a consequence, had to be built from scratch. It is no small task to build a program on a conservative radio station with a host who isn't an ideologue conservative table pounding the desk while bashing Democrats and liberals for all that ails society. Not that ideologue on the left are any more productive. Considering today's events, one wonders if this kind of behavior won't finally, finally fade away and the country can resume on a more reasoned discourse.

Because the larger corporate interests that operate the Clear Channel properties nationwide have little interest in local radio, let alone California or Sacramento, the corporate mandate today was to replace local radio hosts with some kind of syndicated programming. Who that is and when exactly that will happen, I do not know, but as I understand it, that's what's in the cards, and that's the real misfortune: With the exception of a single midday hour each on two other stations, there will be no place for Sacramento listeners to go to talk about their city, their state, their community. Somewhere, an apology for that is in order, but those who should give it most, care the least.

Again, deep thanks for your time and your thoughts. It was a pleasure to have your company.

Sincerely,

Bruce Maiman

Quote of the Day

Dan Rather, not usually my favorite pundit, said an oddly interesting thing on the Chris Matthews Show yesterday. He said that America was ready for the kind of leader who landed that plane in the Hudson the other day. I think he was right. That weird event became somehow symbolic of what the country is hoping will happen with Barack Obama as president. In the plane crash, tragedy was averted by a steady hand on the helm, a wise and prepared professional who did everything that could be done and prevailed, saving lives and giving the whole world confidence that competence and wisdom were still alive in the U.S.
--Mary Lois Timbes

It's Time to Sink or Swim

We remain a young nation, but in the words of Scripture, the time has come to set aside childish things. The time has come to reaffirm our enduring spirit; to choose our better history; to carry forward that precious gift, that noble idea, passed on from generation to generation: the God-given promise that all are equal, all are free and all deserve a chance to pursue their full measure of happiness.
--President Barack Obama

When John McCain chose Sarah Palin to run with him on the Republican ticket, I believed that he would be our next president. A crashing economy prevented that. So, today, I watched Barack Hussein Obama be sworn in as the 44th president of the United States, and I heard him give a magnificent speech that crystallized the hopes of people throughout America and the world that a politics beyond politics and a new way of seeing and living in this world can lift us from the depths to which we've fallen and to the heights of which we dream our noblest dreams.

I'm not naive enough to believe that one man alone can lift us up, even if he is the president of the United States. Nor do I believe that one man can fully inspire all of us to work together to do the lifting. No, long after the words of Obama's stirring speech and all the pomp and circumstance of his inauguration have faded into history, we must look to ourselves and each other for the determination to change the way things are and for the strength to follow through day by day and hour by hour with that determination.

As President Obama made very clear in his address, perilous and difficult times lie ahead for the world, for this nation, and for us as families and individuals. The way I see it, we stand on barren ground decimated by fear, hatred, ignorance, and selfishness, and the promised land lies on the other side of a river. We must jump into the water and swim to the other side of the river to make it to a better place. We have no guarantee that we won't drown in our attempt, but we can be sure that if we don't make the effort, we will collectively if not individually perish from physical, moral, and spiritual stagnation and starvation.

Certainly, this is how I view my own situation. I've spent most of my adult life hiding from the world and fearing to take chances and fail. But now I see that I must leap into the water and either sink in resignation or summon all my strength and skill to swim to the other side of the river. If I do not try like I have never tried before, I will surely fail, and I don't wish to fail.

So, just as Obama's presidency begins in earnest tomorrow, so does my transformation in every aspect of my life as I exercise the full power of my own "presidency" over myself and everything I say and do from that point on.

Does this sound ambitious? No more than President Obama's speech.

Quote of the Day

When we begin to treat culture as an object of our awareness, we can begin to dis-identify with its power over us and become unique, post-cultural individuals.
--William Harryman