The 8-fold Path

The ironic thing about academia is that you need to be very disciplined to be successful. And yet, if I were disciplined, I probably wouldn't have entered academia in the first place. You have to be driven, self-disciplined, even obsessed with your subject. You have to go out and blaze new intellectual trails. You have to immerse yourself in the extant literature. You have to eat, drink, piss, and shit your subject matter (unless you went to harvard, in which case, you'll get a job even if your only publication is your skid-marked whitey-tighties).

But if I were capable of that sort of dedication, I probably would be out saving the world or making gobs of money. The reason I went into academia in the first place is precisely because I am too lazy and incapable of dealing with stress to make it at a 9 to 5 job, much less a 9 to 9, high-stakes professional job.

This irony presents itself to me as I try to study for my first giant qualifying exam. I vacillate between thinking of myself as some kind of noble, spiritual resister of the capitalist culture of greed and self-glorification that has such a life-killing grip on modern industrial society and thinking of myself as a just a lazy shit whose neuroses are going to wind up wasting my many opportunities for happiness, notoriety, and success.

I was once an ambitious person. I wanted to be important, and I believed that I could do it. I really believed that I had some grand destiny out there somewhere. Now, half the time, I don't know if I really want anything, and I believe myself to be fairly incompetent. Where did that ambition go? Where did that confidence go? I don't know. I am lightly tethered to this existence. I just watched a documentary on the Buddha...he, too, was lightly tethered, but something tells me he knew something I don't. The first noble truth: life is suffering. The second noble truth: suffering has a cause. The third noble truth: suffering can be stopped. The fourth noble truth: there is a path that leads to the end of suffering. That path lies in the realization that there is no self...it is our attachment to ourselves that leads to suffering. But, if Buddha is right, that realization leads to peace, to joy, to contentment. Easy for him to say...he didn't have student loans to repay.

a few pics

Pretty in Pink Hancuffs

I just watched Pretty in Pink with my girlfriend and some of her pals. I think John Hughes is single-handedly responsible for men learning inappropriate dating habits. In his movies, relentlessly pursuing a woman using dramatic gestures that violate her privacy and personal space is considered romantic and often ends when a reluctant woman finally gives in to her true feelings and goes out with the love struck Romeo. In real life, such behavior would be considered stalking and would probably end in a jail cell.

Thanks, John Hughes!

On drawings and politics

Well, as this blog has apparently turned into "window into a mildly insane man's subconscious," I'm guessing my readership has once again dwindled.

But I enjoy making stupid pictures. Like, truly, deeply, enjoy it. Cause i start out making a few lines, and all of a sudden, it starts looking like something, and then, poof, something is there that wasn't there before! And somehow or another, as unskilled as I am, they come out reflecting some kind of something that I had inside me. It's kind of a miracle..the miracle of genital headed horses.

I know I'm supposed to be brimming with thoughts about American society and politics, but I just can't seem to scrape together any inspiration about those things lately. Why? I don't know. Maybe it's cause I don't even know how much I owe the government in student loans (let's just say it's more than I will earn in at least 1 year, probably two, at my first job, assuming I actually get one), and I'm projecting my own financial anxiety onto the whole country. But maybe it's cause we have a system that is so unresponsive, so hopelessly beholden to well-financed organized interests, so awash in infantile political jeremiads, that we are totally incapable of pro-actively dealing with the problems we face as a country. It used to be that a good crisis could jolt our incremental system into passing meaningful (though admittedly reactive) legislation. But we have just undergone two significant crises (the market meltdown and the gulf oil spill) without being able to marshal the public outcry into any kind of real, substantive change. Energy and climate are up next on the agenda...but my hopes for a cap and trade system being passed are low. Not only can we no longer make good, long-term, proactive policy...we can't even make good RE-active policy anymore!

So, I don't know...I go through periods like this where I just don't give a shit about politics. Weird, cause it's my job...probably an occupational hazard. I'd much rather draw random pictures of spider cowboys wrestling a mad scientist or something.

Or maybe it's just too damn hot to pay attention. I hate the heat...I want to be able to wear my hoodie, damnit! Not call forth the atmosphere from Venus into my crotch whenever i go out to get the mail. Air conditioning...if you were a god, I would worship you.

Laid Back, with my mind on money and my money on my mind.