• Search

  Enter your search terms Submit search form

  Web Rusted Bicycle

• Admin

  • Log in
  • Wordpress
  • XHTML

Part 2

Last time, we watched our hero pursue organizational insight from paper to digital and back to paper before ultimately becoming on of those Mac people. Will he prevail in his struggle against organizational chaos? Will he give up and concentrate on just living life? Continue on to find out!

Handheld Redux

After trading my venerable HP tower for an iBook (on which I am typing this, incidentally), I started wondering how to get all the data from my hip Mac apps into some kind of digital format.

Sensing this (or reading the notes I left around the house), my wife surprised me with a new Palm organizer for Christmas. I was back in the game.

The Palm synced seamlessly with my laptop and I found a a lot of good freeware apps. List keeping was never better. And e-books! I’d forgotten about e-books! And solitaire! These were old friends returning to the tavern.

Again, I don’t know what happened. After a couple of months, I stopped using the Palm. It seemed like too much work. I had finally started to understand that time spent fiddling with a system wasn’t really time spent accomplishing anything. Planning to do something isn’t really the same thing as doing that thing.

I feel the same guilt as with the Axim. The Palm is in a fancy shoebox under the bed. Right on top of the Franklin (Covey) planner. Like I might pick either one up any day now.

Moleskine

By now, it was 2006 and the GTD craze was in full swing. Sites like 43 Folders and Lifehacker created communities for people just like me to gather and discuss organizational preoccupations. I must thank Merlin Mann for making my affliction cool. Well, maybe not so cool, but at least I wasn’t alone anymore.

I flirted with online web applications for tracking lists and projects. But these always felt cumbersome. I also didn’t like the idea of having to be online all the time. Portability is always important, as I do a lot of my best planning in the bathroom.

The Moleskine notebook became a hallmark of these communities. I’d been keeping these simple black notebooks for a couple of years for my journals, but had never considered using one as a planner. A former co-worker and fellow productivity geek showed me how he’d set up his Moleskine. My curiosity was peaked. I’d always been concerned with how you would keep a bound book tidy as a planner. You couldn’t add or remove pages. It wouldn’t scale well. But the point was to just go with it, don’t worry about tidy, worry about doing.

I checked out some of the intricate hacks people had devised around this little notebook and was sold. I could be as crazy as I wanted to be and no one would notice. For ten dollars. I bought a pocket notebook the next day.

My first step was to divide the notebook into sections. A section for lists, a section for projects, a section for notes, a section for To Dos, and so on. Back to my old scheming ways, capturing everything like a GTD ninja.

Exactly six months later, I realized I was out of control. I spent a lot of time looking at my lists, tweaking project plans, making notes…and very little time getting anything accomplished. Further, this was all pointless, personal, pet projects. This was 1999 all over again. But I’d replaced the battered Franklin planner with a hipster cliche.

There is no rehab for this kind of thing. So I just quit.

Sanity

Responsibility finally drove me from the forest. With a baby the grandparents refer to as “extremely active”, a move to a new city, and so on, time is at a premium. And I’d rather be enjoying my free time with my wife and son (and even the dogs, at times) instead of fretting over some pointless project. Sure, I still have pet projects. But only a few and I try to keep them useful. Like keeping our files in order or scanning important papers. It’s all about clarity of thought. If something is worth doing, just do it. Don’t plan on doing it.

I also realize that some kind of system is necessary to maintain this clarity of thought. I don’t want to wake in a panic because I can’t remember what kind of primer is best for Warmachine figures. So here is my system:

• Contacts: Address Book on my laptop. Syncs with my iPod.
• Calendar: Google Calendar. Syncs with iCal on my laptop, which in turn syncs with my iPod.
• Email: Gmail
• To Dos: 3 x 5 notecard in my pocket. Only things I actually plan on doing in the immediate future.
• Passwords: In my wallet. If I lose that, these are the least of my concerns.
• Projects and Lists: A few text files on my laptop, mostly for gifts to buy, books to read, and projects I might want to do someday. As I said, important stuff, like preparing emergency escape bags for my family and tagging all my digital photos.
• Notes: Small notebook in my pocket. So I never miss an idea for a thrilling blog post or really bad short story. Really bad. And really short.

And that’s it. The point was for me to worry about what you need to do, what you really want to do and forget the rest. And then just do what you say you will. All the cumbersome technology and productivity flowcharts in the world can’t really help if you can’t get past that idea.

But then again, it’s time for me to get a new phone. And I hear I can get a Blackberry cheap….

Part 1

While the baby sleeps, I am busy adding album art to music in iTunes. Truly a twenty-first century problem if ever there was one. This one of the nagging little projects that tend to eat up my free time. I have several, all of which are about as useful as linking little pictures of album covers to MP3 files.

I’ve been this way for as long as I can remember. And this has lead me down a path looking for the perfect organizational solution. This is a long path. A sad path. Consider yourself warned.

Before I begin, I should note that I have never had an issue staying organized at work. I’ve always been able to keep my priorities in line with rather simple lists. This obsession with productivity applies only to my own pet projects. There is probably a lesson in that. But I have no time for lessons right now.

The Pre-Digital Days

It all started my first day of high school. It’s not often that one can pinpoint the exact moment of downfall, so I like to remember this. In homeroom, 8:21 am on August 29, 1989, I was handed the ECHO: Edgewood something Homework Organizer. This was a small, spiral-bound notebook where we could write down our homework assignments. When I think about it now, it seems like a pretty good idea. Have you ever tried to get a fourteen year old to do anything? Imagine trying to make a couple hundred of them take ownership of their own educations.

I used the ECHO for two days.

This really wasn’t an issue. I was a pretty orderly kid and never had much of a problem keeping my homework in line. This freed up plenty of time to work on my mullet.

Before I left for college, my stepmother gave me a Franklin Planner. It was the best thing ever. Being away from home, I suddenly had a need for an address book. And a real calendar. And there was lots more homework. Lots. This was the big shock of college I never quite got over.

I used the Franklin Planner all the way through college and into my first real job. Over time, I strayed from the Franklin methodology and used only monthly calendars, address pages, and blank paper. Blank paper was for lists, and I loved me some lists.

CDs to buy, books to read, places to visit, bills to pay, Things Never to Drink Again. You name it, and I had a list for it. To some, this may have been a cry for help from an unfulfilling job and vastly empty social life. To me, it was an intricate system of knobs and switches by which I could control my life. In fact, I used to really enjoy sitting down and rewriting all my lists–almost as much as marking completed items off a list.

By 2000, it was time to move up in technology. I’d been working in the IT industry for a couple of years and it was high time my red-Ford-Ranger-driving bad self went digital.

Handheld

Well versed in my affliction, my mother gave me an electronic organizer for Christmas. An eight megabyte Handspring Visor. This was the new best thing ever. My contacts, my appointments, even my precious lists were all there in grayscale glory. Passwords we secure! Not to mention solitaire games and e-books. Without this little device, I probably wold not have found Cory Doctorow when I did.

Truly, this was an enlightened time. Tinkering with my lists became even more fun. This was a good couple of years. And I ruined it by getting greedy.

In 2002, I went back to school. I noticed a lot of folks were carrying Windows Mobile PDAs. Color screens, wireless web browsing, Excel. Excel! I decided it was time to upgrade. Credit card debt notwithstanding, I ordered a Dell Axim post-haste. It was the new best thing ever.

For about two weeks.

To this day, I can’t really pinpoint the problem with the Axim. I see it in its tomb (a box at the top of the closet) occasionally and feel shame. Sure, it was clunky. Sure, Windows Mobile crashed all the time. Sure, the interface was counter-intuitive. But I still feel that I was the one who failed here. I could have tried a little harder to make things work out.

Finishing my MBA, I treated myself to a new Franklin planner. Now, Franklin Covey. Sleek, black leather. I immediately set about making my lists all over again. But something wasn’t right. It felt contrived. I’d been touched by digital convenience and wasn’t sure if I’d be able to go back.

Back to Basics

Fortunately, my organizational chaos did not toss me down the dark chasm of despair. By this time, I had a fiance and didn’t need these little lists and projects to prop me up. Thankfully, this woman was patient enough to let me figure this out and is understanding enough to allow me pointless projects.

So I went on for a year or so making my little lists. I was faking it, but it didn’t really matter.

After we were married, I bought a Mac–first one since college–and all was good. I kept my calendar in iCal, my addresses in Address Book. I typed up my lists and printed them out onto pages for my Franklin (Covey) Planner. And I began to think, “You know, it would be neat to somehow keep all these things digital…”

And so goes the cycle. Tune in next time for more hot handheld action, a resurgence of Luddite methodology, and the possible return of our hero to something like sanity.

At some point, around sixteen years old, I chose a path, a path away from twenty-sided dice and angry orcs. Sixteen years later, at 9am one Saturday morning, I found myself sitting around a table at GenCon Indy playing a Dual Dungeon Duel.

Likewise, after years of relative video game disinterest, I found myself last week on the receiving end of an ass whipping via Wii Sports Boxing from my loving wife.

I’m not one to believe in fate. Our lives take wandering paths via everyday decisions. For instance, not studying for a Calculus 2 exam my freshman year has ended up with me sitting at this table writing these words. Had I done a little better on that test, I may not have switched schools. Had I not switched schools, I would not have made the friends who pointed me toward my first real job. Had I not taken the first job, I would not have moved to the second job where I met my wife. On so on. Because small decisions (at the time) yield much larger impacts in our lives, it’s hard for me to swallow that I am part of some great cosmic chain spinning toward my True Destiny.

After all, what kind of cosmic chain would want me to spend time painting tiny pewter steampunk miniatures?

When it first recurred, I was a little ashamed of my proclivity for geekiness. Mind you, this was before Sci Fi became cool again via Lost and Heroes. I thought of my hobbies and interests as childish, immature. Decidedly unmanly.

Slowly, I understood that my hobbies weren’t rooted in the cosmos, but rather in cultural artifact. They say a man’s physical condition in his twenties directly impacts his health in his forties. The theory is that our body somehow takes a benchmark in our youth that influences, how it will age. (Full disclosure: I am not a doctor. I don’t have any doctor friends or neighbors, either. It’s not that kind of neighborhood.) I think our minds take a similar snapshot of interests at a more innocent time, and this snapshot determines our hobbies at a later time.

So what was I doing at 14? Playing Dungeons and Dragons and Nintendo. What am I doing at 33? Playing Dungeons and Dragons and Nintendo.

This is not to say I’m about to start sneaking beers after halftime at the football game, but some things stick with us. Other hobbies, such as hiking and camping, I can trace directly to my days as a Boy Scout.

I think of my father and his friends who have much more manly pursuits involving old cars. My dad came age in the Days of Sheer Unadulterated Horsepower, so it follows that he would spend his time working on and showing off cars. I’d like to see demographic trending data on hobby participants. Who is building model railroads? Who is restoring old cars? Do these hobbies wax and wane over time, or simply disappear altogether?

Perhaps it’s self-preservation. We start aging and our minds kick us back to the things we liked to do in youth. We forget about the intervening years and tolls on our failing bodies.

It’s hard to think about getting old when you are busy fighting off a band of angry orcs.

Alert the media. Rather, do not alert the media. For the first time in recorded history, I am the party in the house who is tired of television. I’m full up with news and political punditry. Uncle. I can’t take it any longer.

The combination of the ongoing WGA strike and highly competitive candidate showdowns for both parties swirl around like high and low pressure systems, giving us thunderheads of political commentary. With occasional breaks for Britney Spears gossip. It’s good for our country to have a dialogue about our next leaders. I like to see an involved society, citizens who finally understand that everyone plays a part in the country’s future. But I can’t help but think we are being tricked. Are networks filling the airwaves with political news just because there is nothing else on television? Is the average American truly gripped by the political primaries, or is this hype fabricated?

A person should keep tabs on what our leaders are up to. This is our collective responsibility. I’ve enjoyed watching the political debates. It’s fun to see how these folks react under pressure, to see when they are addressing an issue or just blowing a line a bull in hopes everyone will be fooled. One could devise an intricate drinking game around these debates. But after each debate, we get five days of non-stop commentary. And not just the Sunday morning political shows. People argue on The View. Anchors on the Today show attack candidates via satellite. And then rush off discuss hot new kitchen gadgets.

Little Known Fact: Tim Russert has slept 14 in hours in the past two months. You can see the fatigue in his hair.

I want to believe that the increased news attention to the primaries this year is truly due to citizen concern. But would the attention be the same if there were alternatives on TV? What if the WGA were not on strike? The increased attention isn’t just bugging me, it’s making room for more commentary by the talking heads.

What creeps me out in all of this is that the news outlets are not simply reporting, they are influencing. Each offhand remark, stammer in a debate, becomes newsworthy if the media can create a story out of it. We are not able to simply listen to the candidates and form our own opinions. We have to be lead through the decision-making process by an ever-present news ticker.

You can create drama out of anything by removing the context. How do you think they make The Real World?

If the news machine were benevolent, we should be able to cite the journalistic code of ethics and feel safe that the audience is not being manipulated. But news outlets are run by networks who exist to make money. Through advertising. And how better to keep viewers glued to their sets than to build drama, construct storylines? Maybe we aren’t being lied to directly, but there is clearly a priority in news coverage to get the viewers to return. Even if the media does not intend to lead the populace, each decision to analyze Quote A instead of Quote B has its impacts.

For the conspiracy theorists, I’ll go one better: These networks are all owned by giant corporations who are concerned with political leadership. And advertising sales.

The answer? Pay attention. And pay attention to whom you are paying attention.

I guess I could watch something else. Did you know Scott Baio is 46 and pregnant?

I’ve been enjoying Nicholas Felton’s 2007 Feltron Annual Report this week. Mr. Felton publishes yearly statistics about himself in the form of an annual company report. I find this document fascinating on several levels.

First, Felton is a graphic designer by trade and the report works as a portfolio piece for prospective work. Second, the document reveals something about the author. Not only do we see statistics like number of book pages read and beers consumed, we see Felton as someone who is willing to compile such statistics about himself. Third, the report is simply beautiful and intriguing.

Mr. Felton is not alone in his journey to quantify his life. An article in Print Magazine last year, entitled The Obsessives, brought together Felton and several other artists to document their consumption for a week. How each artist collected the data is nearly as interesting as how each chose to present the results.

Another example of personal data collection is Craig Robinson’s Personal Pies. Mr. Robinson presents key data about his life in the form of pie charts. Again, fascinating stuff.

It seems the world is full of personal data collectors. One could dismiss this as another syndrome of the times, a need for everyone to feel important. But there is something more going on here.

While Mr. Felton and Mr. Robinson each tell a story with their statistics, there is a key difference in how they choose to tell these stories. Felton uses an overwhelming quantity of data to show a complete picture of his daily life. Robinson uses more esoteric measurements, such as “% of life that my father was alive” and “% of life interested in baseball”. The resulting picture of each man is quite different, but each is compelling.

What may appear as simple onanism is actually a representation about how we all seek control in our lives. We are each increasingly harried and digitized, spread apart by responsibilities, distracted by media, and reduced to numeric ID by all institutions. Doesn’t it make sense that people should want to exert some kind of control (or illusion thereof) over their lives? Further, gathering data in this manner may actually be useful. Our country is out of control in its consumption of resources. Perhaps we would all be a little more conscientious if we woke up every morning to see a graph illustrating the amount of garbage we had generated over the past year. Perhaps we would stop complaining about the price of gasoline. Perhaps we would start thinking about changes on the personal level.

I tinkered with some personal data collection last year. For a month, I tracked chewing gum (60 pieces), Diet Coke (75 cans), hours of sleep (avg 6.425 hours), and several other useless metrics. I was going to post these in the form of sparkline graphs. In the end, I gave it up. I didn’t like the story it was telling. Sure, I was killing the caffeine, but this was the same month my son was born.

Perhaps I need to pick better metrics next time.

I’ve crossed over. When I was younger, I couldn’t understand how my parents were not interested in new music. Everyone seemed to musically give up around thirty. I appreciated older music, but that was no reason to ignore new sounds. I swore that I would not go quietly into that darkness. I would not become my father still rocking out to The Best of Mountain. And I held on for a long time.

But we all become our parents, don’t we? I woke up one day and realized that I just don’t buy much music anymore. In fact, I haven’t been buying music for a long time. My wife and I still buy a CD or three a year, but this is nothing like when I was twenty-four. I don’t anticipate new music, long for it. What’s surprising is how I feel about it. I didn’t give up–the music did.

I remember music in the pre-digital age, but only just. My son will never know it. In college, I spent hours pouring through stacks in used CD shops, looking for elusive imports from my favorite artists or cut-priced studio albums. I wanted to complete my collection. There wasn’t an Internet like there is today. No way to seek out lists to complete. It was all hunting for unknown prey. In those days, the guys in the record stores and well-versed friends were the sources for new music. Like this? You’ll love that. Now we can use Wikipedia to trace artist inspirations, Last.fm to find like-minded aficionados. It’s much easier now.

There is less mystery around music. Everything is laid out there in front of us, commoditized. Looking for an import? No need to go downtown and flip through stacks in dingy basement shops. Just look on eBay or download the tracks from an MP3 blog. Because the prey is so much easier now, there is less joy in the hunt. It’s like hunting deer in Ohio: there are so many around you can just hit them with your car.

Killing the hunt is part of it. Music has lost its nerve, too.

The Song Remains the Same was on TV the other day and I was reminded how much Jimmy Page could just shred. Thirty-five years after that concert in Madison Square Garden, I am standing in my living room, mouth agape. And I think of Pink Floyd. And I think of the Rolling Stones. And I think of everything else. I wasn’t around in 1970, but I can’t imagine how anyone hearing this music for the first time just didn’t go nuts. It was new and different and could tear out your guts. We’ve lost that.

It’s not that I dislike new music. It’s just that a lot of it feels bland, vanilla. It’d be one thing if I could not stand new bands, but most of what I hear on the radio just fades into the background, as if it’s already been turned into muzak. It’s not all dead. Wilco can still melt my face. Ryan Adams can break my heart. I want to give Neko Case a hug on a weekly basis. But these are the outliers. Most of the musical landscape is now dominated by faceless bands with interchangeable songs and similar uniforms. Each band is its own AC/DC–they have one hit and then replicate that exact sound in every subsequent song forever.

Is this smoothing out of the musical landscape a product of the proliferation of information? Did putting everything at our fingertips shed a better commercial light on everything, forcing musicians to embrace a proven mold instead of searching for a new sound? Is this where the payoff is now? Or is this just the typical lifecycle of an art form?

Or is this another harbinger of the end of civilization? That which was once exciting becomes profitable. I can buy a Sex Pistols T-shirt at the mall.

This is bigger than album sales. The musical audience has become complacent in other ways. Those people whose minds were being blown on the radio dial in 1970 were the same people protesting Vietnam. Now, we have a a faceless Top 40 and no one willing to raise a sign against a government that fights unjust wars and refuses to provide healthcare for all children. There is no coincidence here. There is only the strong correlation between a lack of face-melting guitar solos and political apathy.

My twenty-four year old self dies a little more every day. But at least Neil Young is still pissed off.

People make their living reviewing books. I am not one of these people. I don’t have the literary chops for in-depth critical analysis, but I’m not beyond praising a book I really enjoy. Consider yourself warned.

Some of the best books I’ve read have been gifts. Truck: A Love Story by Michael Perry is one such book. My dad gave it to me as a Christmas present. He’s been talking about the book since he read it, so I knew it would be good, but I was honestly surprised how much I enjoyed it.

Truck is not a great literary tome. It is a good read. Perry uses a conversational style that sucks you in from the first page with its familiarity. The book itself reads like a collection of essays as Perry restores his 1951 International pickup while courting a new girlfriend. In his humorous voice, he also describes his shortcomings as a gardener, exploits at the fire department, and run-ins with locals in his small Wisconsin town.

You could read the book quite pleasurably at face value, but I think the true nugget here is in the overarching theme: Nothing in this world is perfect and the world is a better place because of it. Consider the truck itself. A 1951 International isn’t the most sought after old truck for restoration. And Perry isn’t restoring it to trailer queen show quality. The truck means something to him because it reminds him of his roots. Perry just wants to be behind the wheel of his old pickup for deer hunting season.

Stepping further, Perry jokes about his long-time bachelor quirks as he becomes more and more involved with his girlfriend. The author, like his truck, isn’t the most sought-after model on the show circuit. The same could be said for most of us. The point to life is to try and take advantage of what we are made of. Sometimes we have to restore ourselves a little bit to grow. Maybe we don’t have to strip down to our frames and begin again, but it’s never to late to expand our minds a bit to share our lives with others. Life is about interacting with people more than how we look on the showroom floor–or the dance floor.

As I walked into the BMV, I remembered that they only take checks or cash. I’d thought about this the other night and reminded myself to take along the checkbook. Then I promptly forgot.

I don’t like checks. I pay everything I can electronically. The whole act of writing checks feels arcane. The idea of sitting down with a pile of bills and book of stamps, of making tiny ledger entries in the check register, of doing addition and subtraction, feels completely inefficient. It feels like a ritual. A chore of adulthood. Something you’d do in the 1970’s: sit down at the kitchen table after work, loosen your wide tie, run the numbers, argue with the wife about money, and then suck down a scotch in a really ugly glass. Not really my style.

Likewise, I don’t carry much cash. I don’t spend a whole lot of money in my day to day routine. And due to my legendary lack of self-control, I find that if I do have cash, I’ll probably spend it. Most places where I might partake in a little commerce take debit cards these days anyway. There’s a threefold benefit for me. One: If I have to take out the card, I think about the purchase a little more and am less apt to spend frivolously. Two: All transactions go into Quicken, where I track them by category. I can analyze our spending patterns and budgets like the organization freak I am. Three: Until I spend it, the cash remains in our bank account, soaking up .0000115% interest. Hey, every little bit helps, right? These days, everyone should be as fiscally responsible as they can.

Beyond these benefits, I see checks and cash as old and insecure technology. People have been counterfeiting bills and washing checks forever. Say what you will about hackers snatching money out of your online bank account, you have to admit that there is a higher level of skill with techno crimes than with someone mugging you for your folding money. And when something is more difficult, you have fewer potential players. And with a smaller pool of thieves, less risk for each individual to be victimized.

I’ll never be a cash-only luddite. Not until the grid goes down, anyway. And then currency will be gunpowder, children, and flour.

So I was a little annoyed at the BMV. I couldn’t understand why the county would not embrace a modern banking method. I can walk into most fast food restaurants and use a debit card, but not a government agency? Wouldn’t they get their money sooner from card transaction instead of check? Wouldn’t this result in an extra $0.004 in their coffers from some banking wizardry?

I received my digital comeuppance later that same day. A letter from my school informed me that my private information, including my Social Security Number, may have been compromised. I may be open to identity theft.

Ours is a more technological age. But still vulnerable. Efficiency has a price, it seems. The crimes are more complicated–and damaging–than robbery and forgery. Our system hasn’t quite figured out what these crimes are, let alone how to stop them. Let alone how to prevent them. On one hand, I have to believe that an electronic transaction between two banks with no human interaction is safer than a paper document delivered through the mail.

On the other hand, I want to crawl into a hole and come out when it’s 1910.

There was a lot of talk about the national ID cards this week. There’s an argument against these cards based on civil liberties, that our country is one where no one has to “show their papers”. But I’ll go one better: these cards won’t work. Our government is not equipped, at any level, to make any kind of secure identification document. The systems between different bureaucracies are not integrated, not standardized. Any attempts at communication between these systems will introduce more risk: more connection points for intrusion, more contracted software work from private firms, more replication of data on more servers. The very likely result is to expose personal data for every citizen in a one-stop shop for identity thieves.

Should we believe that unrelated agencies can secure data when the BMV still won’t process debit cards?

Think about your Social Security number. These numbers where introduced in 1936. This was before television, let alone online consumer databases. Over the past seventy years, these numbers have been used for everything from tax forms to hospital records. When you get a new job, what do they ask for? These numbers have been made useless by their ubiquity. And think about the card itself. No picture, no identifiers, no laminate. And delivered through the U.S. Postal Service. These numbers are ruined.

Despite the complete insecurity of Social Security Numbers, these numbers remain the significant identifier for us as U.S. citizens. I remain unconvinced that our bureaucracy can create a truly secure and useful document. Fix these numeric identifiers (scrap them and start over), and we would be a big step closer to securing everyone’s identity. Fix these, and maybe we’ll see if the government is capable of organizing a new ID system.

That is, right after we can get the BMV to accept debit cards.

What’s in a name? A lot, if you ask Andy Rooney. During his 60 Minutes commentary following the Iowa Caucus, he made the following enlightened observation:

Do you think the name “Barack Obama” compares to “Abraham Lincoln” or “Mike Huckabee” to “George Washington”? Maybe “Obama” is the new Washington, the new Lincoln.

Never mind for the first time in history we have a woman and an African American as serious contenders for the Presidency. Never mind we have unprecedented numbers of people–many of them young–participating in our political process. Never mind people are concerned about issues other than highlighted in media soundbites. An analysis of names is the best we can come up with? I was under the impression that names were something given to us, something most of us have very little control. I’m sure the names Washington and Lincoln may have sounded odd at some point, too.

Andy Rooney makes me mad. As a rule, I don’t watch him. It’s not that I avoid him. It’s more that it just never occurs to me to watch 60 Minutes. Why would it? I’m not seventy.

My disdain for Mr. Rooney doesn’t really have anything to do with his opinions. Sure, he’s got a dated worldview, but lots of people have even more whacked out ideas. Who am I to judge someone because they believe something different from what I do? It’s better than having no opinion at all. That’s the unforgivable crime.

No, it’s just that Mr. Rooney sits in his smug little office at the end of 60 Minutes and offers up a bit of what I’m sure he considers a voice of reason. He opens with an observation of modern life, removes the context, and shows how this is one more symptom of how the world has just gone silly.

It’s kind of a clever trick, if you ask me. A cushy gig.

But he completely misses the point. This is what infuriates me. He touches on something that is potentially a profound observation about our changing culture. But instead of following the lead into some sort of journalistic conclusion, he gives up, lets the story peter out until it is no more than the dry witticism of a rheumy-eyed old man.

This all started a couple of weeks ago when I caught Rooney’s segment on 60 Minutes. The thing about disregarding the existence of a television show is that you are not only unaware of when it is on, you are also unaware of when it is not on, and somehow therefore more likely to catch it while surfing through the channels. Life is like that.

So Mr. Rooney was discussing how people seem to be carrying more stuff than they used to. I perked up. You see, up until 7:49 pm that evening, not only had I forgotten all about 60 Minutes, but I’d also forgotten all about Andy Rooney. I mistakenly thought this might be going somewhere.

So Andy Rooney goes on to interview people on the streets of New York (a perfectly representative sample of the entire United States, of course) about what they have in their bags. He finds some commonalities. Everyone seems to be carrying planners, books, and water.

George Carlin already harped on water bottles a couple of years ago, so Mr. Rooney leaves this alone. Instead, he goes for the planners and books:

I hadn’t realized women were so well organized but one of the items most women are carrying is what they call a “planner”. They carry “planners” and a bottle of water.

When they left the house that morning, they planned to drink water I guess.

And later:

It was my inescapable conclusion that there’s a lot of book-reading going on at the office, on company time.

He closes with something glib about how silly we all are and I remember exactly what infuriates me about Mr. Rooney and the rest of the media: No one can take a leap into something more complex than a two-sided issue or anecdote about the good old days.

People are carrying more stuff around with them these days. This is a fact. My own pockets bulge with artifacts that I believe I must have with me at all times. But you can’t leave the observation at that. There is a cause and effect here.

Why do we carry so much stuff? Do we really need these things? Or have we been convinced we need these things by an army of outside marketing forces? Health groups preach on the benefits of hydration. Productivity gurus sell us on increased efficiency and higher paying careers. Cell phone companies unleash low cost data plans. Computer manufacturers convince corporations that employees with laptops improve the bottom line. It all piles up, and we are left shouldering the burden.

It’s not so much that individuals choose to keep so much with them at all times, it’s that our culture has turned us into a bunch of consumer gypsies. Isn’t this a more compelling (and disturbing) story than people planning to drink water?

It’s not Andy’s fault. He’s part of a larger media trend. A hot story this holiday season concerned elevated lead levels in toys made in China. This was a gold mine for local news. They could do plenty of man on the street interviews. They could test lead content in their own labs. The outcome? People said they are willing to spend a little more this holiday season on domestic toys. Kids are safe–see you at eleven.

But like Mr. Rooney’s army of pack rats, this story goes deeper doesn’t it? Take a look around you. Most of our stuff is manufactured in countries with questionable labor laws and low material standards. This is why everything is so cheap. We have developed a culture of conceived wealth based on possessions, most of which are acquired at ridiculously low prices at the cost of workers’ rights in third world countries and our own increasing trade deficit.

So the issue is not so much am I willing to pay a few dollars more for a lead-free blocks made in the U S of A. The real question is how have we allowed our material culture to trick us into endangering our children without anyone even batting an eye?

I want to think that Andy Rooney records an hour of footage each week for 60 Minutes. He takes an issue and tears into it. He draws enlightened conclusions about our culture, questions our actions, calls for civil disobedience. Then the editors cut him down to three and half minutes that won’t offend any sponsors or investors, cut him down into just the musings of a rheumy-eyed old white man.

He probably doesn’t even notice. I doubt Andy Rooney watches 60 Minutes. I mean, who does?

Back at it again.

It’s amazing how many things one can find to do with the day, how many excuses one can make to do something other than what is valuable. This is an odd time in my life. I have new and challenging responsibilities, yet more free time. Even now, before I walked into the dining room to write this, I took a moment to load the dishwasher and had to talk myself out of making a pot of coffee.

For as long as I’ve wanted to be anything, I’ve wanted to be a writer. I wanted to be able to call myself a writer. Until recently, I’d kept a journal since high school. Sure, it was mostly full of romantic woes and complaints about work, but also more creative and thoughtful content. It kept my pen moving, my mind searching. What I’ve always lacked was focus, purpose. A couple of months ago, I quit writing in my journal. I’d told myself it was practice, that it would help me become a better writer, that it would help me get published and to finally become the writer I wanted to be.

I’d slowly realized that the journal had become a crutch. This device was not a venue for exploration, but a stand-in for productive work. If I was filling up pages, I had convinced myself that I was moving toward some goal. But you can’t really move toward an ill-defined goal. There was no literary fairy that would show up after I filled in volume eleven and crown me a “writer”. The journal was an end in itself, an excuse. So I quit.

This was a liberating experience. I wasn’t tied to the book, to recording events and slogging through bad moods. I began to write differently–in more ways than one. To break the years of muscle memory, I started typing my personal works instead of writing by hand. I was shocked at how the change in process alone freed my mind. And I began to write pieces: essays, commentary, terrible short stories. And I had fun.

But I’m getting that nagging sensation once again. If I’m not writing for a purpose, then I can find endless dishwashers to load and pots of coffee to drink. So I’m going to write it all here in public. I’ve had blogs in the past and understand that the best sites center around a topic: bird watching, political punditry, furries, what have you. I racked my brain (and my wife’s) about my focus. I made a list of 101 ideas. I built a model car. But the thing is, I’m interested in everything. So that’s my focus: everything. It occurred to me last night. I have trouble committing to a single hobby, so why should I try to write inside that same box? I’m going to go where my head leads me and build a giant pile of work. And maybe something will emerge, if only consistent public practice.

I have other reservations about blogs and the implied self-absorption. So I’m going to treat this site as more of a collection of columns, something I would be proud to show anyone as a body of work.

But right now, I have to get back to that pot of coffee.

← Previous Page

• Categories

  • Books
  • Games
  • Links
  • Music
  • Obliques
  • Organization
  • Site
  • Technology
  • Television
  • Uncategorized

• Archives

  • September 2008
  • August 2008
  • July 2008
  • June 2008
  • May 2008
  • April 2008
  • March 2008
  • February 2008
  • January 2008

• My Photos

  www.flickr.com
  

  This is a Flickr badge showing public photos from mgdennis. Make your own badge here.
•