A few notes

Here are a few notes I've had on my facebook page, I thought I'd toss them on here. I'm so prog, my notes are in 11.

Eleven first observations of being a work at home contractor

Thursday, June 1st 2010

1. My morning commute is about 20 feet, from the bed to the living room.

2. I can do laundry and dishes while I'm at work.

3. It hasn't been hard at all to stay focused on my work that pays by the hour.

4. It is somewhat, as it always has been, hard to focus on all my work that doesn't pay by the hour, and may never pay at all.

5. Since I had to get the living room ready to be a workspace, the bedroom remains a maze of boxes.

6. I have only myself to blame if the coffeepot is empty.

7. I am happy to already have some leads on other work, since the IRS gets crabby if you only contract with one company.

8. I am eternally grateful that my former employer was willing to remain my largest client.

9. I can play my music as loud as I want while I work.

10. The cleaning service for the office still hasn't been by yet... oh wait, that would be me... crap.

11. The one hour lunch is a beautiful thing. 

Eleven first observations of being a Colorado resident

 Monday, June 28, 2010

1. I love the weather. Lack of humidity is brilliant.

2. I don't think I'll ever get tired of seeing the mountains.

3. The Duffeyroll Cafe makes kickass cinnamon rolls.

4. The predominant tree here, at least in my area, is the cottonwood.

5. The Denver area park/trail system is stunning. Many parks are connected by trails and I could bike or walk around most of the area without ever crossing a street.

6. $70 desk + instructions for assembly = 3 hours of work. $70 desk - instructions = 1.5 hours work.

7. Everything I need is less than a mile away.

8. ...hmm?.. oh, what? Sorry, I was staring out the window.

9. I probably should have been here years ago.

10. Even though I just got here, I can't wait to travel. Looks like Utah might be my next stop.

11. In the morning there seems to be a light smell of cinnamon on the wind. Also seems to be there in the petrichor after the rain. Don't know if it's a plant or what. In researching what this might be I also discovered that cinnamon may be used to cover the smell of a rotting corpse, and that an unfinished chemical process in the production of meth may also smell like this. Colorado keeps it interesting.

Eleven first observations after The Road

 Sunday, September 27, 2009

1. I will never get tired of driving all over the country. I haven't even driven over the whole thing yet. I've pretty much ignored the east coast.

2. The inside of the hotel room has no relation to the outside.

3. I love having friends I can stay with all over the place.

4. I've been to big cities and to the middle of nowhere. I've seen towns time forgot, towns bypassed by the freeway. Towns on hard times and towns on their way back. But I've never been to a town that actually seemed cranky to be where it was. Until Green River Utah. Really, there was a weird vibe there, like the buildings were wishing to be elsewhere. My thought that buildings could have wishes might be related to number 5.

5. Listened to the entire Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy series on audio book. Actually kinda disappointed at the end. Not because of the plot itself, but Mostly Harmless seems kinda disjointed and rushed. Also disappointed that Fenchurch vanishes and Zaphod isn't in it.

6. IHOP has football themed dishes right now. The 'draft pick' is great. Scrambled eggs, spinach, roasted tomatoes and parmesan cheese. Go get it, now. Really, I'll wait.

7. Camping was ok but a bit of a bust. Snow and cold prevented camping in Colorado. Got rained on while camping the last two days.

8. Kansas and Nebraska are both long drives but I much prefer Kansas. Grasslands in the west, rolling hills in the east. Vast distances stretching to the horizon. Nebraska - tall corn at the roadside... can't see anything but corn.

9. Mark Twain museum - what an amazingly full, complex, hard, rich and tragic life. Reading him as a kid was a disservice. I need to read everything that isn't Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn now.

10. If you ever have to drive across north central Illinois I recommend highway 2 from Dixon to Beloit. Very nice drive along the Rock River. And, if you're interested, you can stop in Dixon and see the boyhood home of Ronald Reagan. I wasn't, so I didn't.

11. For the first time ever, I am not relieved to be back home after a long trip.

Internal Processing Systems or The Three Amigos - Westward Ho!

The average human has 3 decision making modes. I'm talking in the philosophical sense. All thinking actually happens in the brain, little neurons firing away. But I divide this thinking into 3 categories. The Brain, The Heart, and The Gut. The Genitals don't count because they can only think one thing. That doesn't count as making a decision.

The Brain - Logic, rational thought, deep processing. The brain is where information is processed and sorted. Choices can be held at arms length. If you need to remove your emotions from a choice, the brain is the tool to use. Very much like a computer, the brain is good at sorting all the shades of grey in the world and getting to the core of a problem. The brain is your defense against a world that wants to take advantage of you. The brain can think itself in circles with all the possible outcomes until we freeze and can't make a choice. The brain can over think, leading to incorrect conclusions. The brain learns and stores skills so you can actually do more with your life than breathe, eat, shit, and mate. The brain dreams when you sleep, sometimes just for entertainment, sometimes to continue processing information. The brain always wants more information and this is one thing that drives our need for discovery and our desire to understand. Unfortunately too many people have figured out ways to turn their brains off. And sometimes the logical choice isn't what we want and isn't what we need. We are human after all.

The Heart - Emotion, feelings, desires and wants. The heart is the opposite of the brain. Love lives in the heart. But, like a hummingbird, the heart can flit from one thing to another, one feeling to another, without realizing the consequences or seeing the long term effects. The heart has a long memory when hurt but a very short one when presented with something it wants. The heart wants love but never considers that love can hurt as much as it heals. That love can change. That once you find what your heart yearns for, you might not want it, or it might not want you. The heart clouds the brain so that you see what you want and you avoid conflict. It can get so wrapped up in what other people want, thinking that's how to get what it wants, that you begin to lose yourself. The heart, though, attaches you to people important to you. It makes you loyal and allows you to trust people so that you aren't lonely. Despite the heart's vulnerability, most people still find it worth while to expose themselves to the danger because love, friendship, and trust are ultimately so rewarding. Everyone has heart but sometimes they shut it out and forget what makes their heart feel good. Sometimes they get hurt so bad they wall off their heart so no one gets through. It's hard to realize that just makes things worse. The heart can get stuck lamenting what it has lost. But if you listen, the heart is also the place where you are reminded how much you loved your first box of crayons, and there was a time when you thought being an astronaut lion tamer was a perfectly reasonable career (were you the astronaut, or was it the lions?).

The Gut - When the brain says "bzzprf...does not compute...grhhbzz...error..." and the heart says "Wah wah woe is me I'm so emo" the gut is there to dope slap the other two. The gut will say "get up off the floor and get on with it!" The best time to do something is always now. The gut is instinct shaped by experience. The gut quiets fear, musters will, and does. This paragraph is short because the gut doesn't talk much and can't waste time with words. Kinda like Chuck Norris.

What does this have to do with me, now? After many years of listening to my brain and heart fight, I have finally listened to my gut. Could I have heard it sooner? Maybe, but like I said, the gut relies on experience. It can take time to get the experience you need. Now I've listened and my gut said, "This is your compass. It points west. Move to Colorado. Even the few things left in Wisconsin that are good can't give you the long term happiness you need. It's time to go."

So, dear friends, I will be moving to the Denver area in summer of 2010. The plan as it stands now is to go find a place to live in March or April and move in June or July. There are many details to finalize but my gut keeps reminding me "don't think, don't feel. It's time to do."