Christopher Hitchens

On this day 2 years ago I cried.  It was the 2nd time that I can remember crying over the death of someone that I didn’t know.  The first was George Harrison.

Christopher Hitchens passed away from complications due to esophageal cancer, the very same fate that his father had suffered.  

I can’t say why I cried when George Harrison died, but I did.  I can say why I cried when Christopher Hitchens died.  I cried because we lost one of the greatest communicators ever.  We lost a tireless fighter who always fought against the unjust, unthinking, and unsure.  We lost one of the greatest debaters ever.  We lost someone with unending wit and humor.

While he was extraordinary at convincing people what to think, he did more than that for me.  He taught me how to think.  He taught me that it was critical to examine everything carefully; to filter every source of information.  He taught me to never be satisfied with less, ever.  He taught me.

Because of Hitchens, and later a few others, I am an athiest, a contrarian, an avid reader, and politically informed.  I’m a better father, husband and citizen because of him.  

I don’t believe in heros, but if I did, Hitchens would be one of mine.

Christopher Eric Hitchens

b. 13 April 1949

d. 15 December 2011

If you are interested more in Christopher, start with these YouTube links and go from there.

Update

I have gone a whole month without buying anything for myself on the internet.  I haven’t gone back and looked but it’s possible that I haven’t done that since 2006 or 2007.  I thought initially that it would be really hard and that I’d slip up and have to confess, but it hasn’t been as hard as I thought it would be.  I imagine there will be times where it will be harder, but overall changing my mindset was fairly easy.

I’ve had one time that I can remember where I considered making a purchase.  My laptop (macbook from 2007) battery wasn’t charging correctly a few days ago and my mind turned immediately to wanting to purchase a chromebook online, but that passed within 15 or 20 minutes.  I was able to get my computer charging and all is well again and I’ve avoided spending 300 dollars.  I’m not sure if I would have bought a laptop out of impulse before, but I know I’m not going to now, which is clear progress I think.

Reading has become a good distraction for purchasing for me as well.  I’ve been to the library twice in the past few weeks.  I am an avid reader already, but I have really stepped up my frequency in November.  I put behind me several non-fiction books already (Parent Effectiveness Training, Your Money or Your Life, and a quarter of the 1000 page Arguably, Essays by Chrisopher Hitchens) and fiction (Breakfast at Tiffany’s and half of Lolita).

I feel like this kind of acts like a substitute in a way for buying.  It allows me to browse and find interesting things and bring them home much like I would on Amazon, but then I’m able to return them and also fill my mind with interesting ideas, situations, and characters.  I’ll keep updating the situation as I go. Hopefully I can make it through the holidays, though I will be purchasing a few presents for others via Amazon.  I’ll just be staying away from throwing things for myself in the shopping cart.

A Moratorium on Internet Purchases

I’ve decided to not buy anything for myself1 on the internet for an entire year2.  I want to do this so I can stop being a hypocrite.  I’ve been going on and on for a while at home about being minimal, getting rid of excess stuff, only to short-circuit the entire process many times with my keyboard and mouse.  

It’s too easy to buy stuff through Amazon.  I really like the idea of coming home and having a box waiting for me on the doorstep.  It’s a lovely feeling having something shiny and new to come home and open.  But all too often that stuff ends up being something I resent having to get rid of or find a place for in the future.  

To illustrate how bad this has gotten for me let me share a story.  Last Father’s Day my daughter drew a picture of me, for me as a present.  It was a stick figure of me and next to me was a tall stack of “blobs” that dwarfed me by at least a head and a half.  I asked her what the stack was.  She said, “Daddy’s boxes.”  If she weren’t 4 years old at the time she probably would have drawn little black “a’s” on them to show where they all came from.

Clearly, this will be really hard.  But, I’m determined to waste less of our money and to bring my habits more in line with my desires.  I started this project in secret on November 1st and I’m happy to report that I’m internet purchase free so far.  I decided on the “internet” part of the plan because there will be things that I need, but in order to help me determine what are needs and what are wants I wanted to make acquiring things much harder.  So if I need something I’ll have to venture out into the world and purchase it in person.   

So far I have needed something 1 time in the last 12 days since I started this plan.  I replaced the super-cheap brakes on my bicycle and I needed some brake cable and various fiddly bits to complete the project.  So I procrastinated for a few days and then finally made my way to Cumberland Transit on West End on my lunch hour and purchased the things I needed.  Not only did I avoid an online purchase, but I avoided a wrong purchase.  I learned, by talking to an employee, that what I would have purchased for myself online would have been the wrong thing.  I was under the impression that I wanted a “road-bike” cable kit, but I really needed a “mountain bike” cable kit.  So I saved a return via UPS as well.

1. I am allowing myself online purchases, but they must be for someone else or for the household in general. (e.g. gifts or household necessities.)

2.  I got this idea from http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/ check out his site if you want.  He has very challenging ideas about money.  Well worth the read if you are unhappy with your money situation.

Winter blues

“Then there was the bad weather. It would come in one day when the fall was over. We would have to shut the windows in the night against the rain and the cold wind would strip the leaves from the trees in the Place Contrescarpe. The leaves lay sodden in the rain and the wind drove the rain against the big green autobus at the terminal and the Café des Amateurs was crowded and the windows misted over from the heat and the smoke inside...”   - Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast

I hate the cold weather.  I always have.  Lately, I’ve figured out what it is about the cold that I really dislike and it doesn’t have much to do with the temperature.

It’s the light, or lack thereof.   It comes around this time of year when the sun starts to set before I leave work.   Soon, it will be dark when I have to wake up and that’s really when I start to hate the cold weather.  

I’m not a morning person, never have been. But, my ability to rise in the morning really takes a beating when my alarm goes off and the sun isn’t even up yet.  

How have we managed to arrange our lives so that our jobs require us to get up before the sun?  Many of us wake up before the sun, so we flip on a light switch so we can see in order to get dressed.  We use electricity to brew a cup of coffee to wake us up.  We remote-start our cars 10 minutes before we plan to leave so it is warm inside for our commutes.  And we make all of this an hour worse than it has to be by rolling our clocks backwards right at the start of the bad weather.  

How easily all of this would be solved if we decided that whatever we’re doing is not important enough to do it before the sun comes up.  I believe the bears have it right.  Take the winter off.  That’s what my body is trying to tell me to do.  

One of my goals is to arrange my life so I never have to get up before the sun does.  I’m pretty close I think.  I’ll update my progress on that front as this journal progresses.  

p.s. Daylight savings

Here’s my solution that  would fix the daylight savings situation immediately.  Adjust the time everyday, 365 days a year, based on sunrise and sunset.  Pick a time, whatever we all agree upon, and restart our clocks everyday to that time when the sun comes up.  I like 6 a.m.  You may like 4:30, whatever, it doesn’t matter.

We all have phones and computers and wifi enabled devices, etc. that could do this for us.  Guess what, tomorrow the sun is going to rise 3 minutes later than it did today.  So tomorrow that is 6 am.  We lose 3 minutes of our day or we gain 3 minutes, minutes we’ll never notice day to day, but we will notice at the end of a long season.

This way we get the most use out of our sun, year round.  Right now we get too much light in the summer and not enough in the winter.  This way we get the maximum amount of light everyday of the year.  Write your congresspersons...

Serial obsessive

Jennifer and I recently visited our friend Valerie in Charleston, SC.  When we were there Val pointed out something to me that I knew about myself, but she really gave me a good-natured hard time about it.  It caused me to think some more about it and definite, so here goes...

I'm a serial obsessive.

Here's what this looks like for me.  I find someone or something that interests me and I devour all the information I can possibly find until I tire of it.  Then I move on.  Usually I incorporate some part of that obsession into my core identity, but not always.

I have reason to believe this is genetic, but I won't tell you which of my parents is to blame :)

The cycle lasts anywhere from a few hours to a few years.  

Here's a non-comprehensive list of things I've obsessed over (as well as when the obsession started and waned), most of these things I still enjoy, but I have moved on from obsessing...

• Basketball (Middle School and early high school)
• Learning Piano (Middle School and High School)
• Frank Sinatra (High School)
• Choral Music and music education (High school and Early college)
• Colts Football (College and early adulthood)
• Audio production (2005-2008)
• Liverpool Football Club (2007-2008)
• Atheism (2007-2009)
• Objectivism (2008)
• Science, specifically evolutionary studies as well as origins of human life (2007-2008)
• Food, specifically the industrial food complex (2009)
• Scooters (2009 - until I saw that motorcyclist wreck right in front of me)
• Golf (2010 - present)
• Minimalism (2011-present)
• Debt elimination and money management (2005-present)
• Organization (2012 - present)
• Woodworking (2013 - present) though I've always enjoyed watching programs like New Yankee Workshop, etc.
• Philosophy and Psychology (2013 - Present)
• Online journaling (2013 - Present)

I'd like to think I've absorbed the best of these things and left the obsession behind.  Also, realizing that I do this has helped me in some ways to break the cycle.  I find that I'm more likely now to spend more time learning and I'm less likely to spend money on things that I will eventually drop.  Progress!!!

What is this?

I've found I'm much better at writing than talking.  So this is a place for me to organize my thoughts, be deliberate, and challenge my thinking before speaking.

Why a journal?
I've done enough reading and listening about psychology to be convinced that frequent writings about our thoughts and emotions can help us better understand ourselves and our world. 

I really got excited about doing this while trying to understand why my daughter thinks and acts the way she does. As most parents would, I would love nothing more than to know what she is thinking, how she is experiencing our world. That is the most rewarding aspect of parenting, I think; I get to live life through her eyes and try to understand her point of view.

Maybe if I can understand me better, I can understand her, and others, better.

Who is this for?
Mostly, this is for me.  However, I hope that those of you who have an interest in me will find this worthwhile as well. 

Why open?
Somehow our culture leads us to shield our true selves from others and we are convinced it is for their benefit.  We mold ourselves to what we think others would hope us to be when we are around them. Then we discard that when we are alone and we go back to being who we are inside our own heads. Or perhaps we never leave our own heads and we try to be what others want us to be on the outside while still being ourselves on the inside.  

(Thinking about that now while writing about it seems terribly stressful to me.)  

I think that is especially true with our loved ones, we want to live up to some ideal we think they have for us.  However, being a parent, I know this not to be true. I want nothing more than for my child to be who she is and not to worry about what I would have her be.

So, with those thoughts rattling around in my head the last few months I've decided I'll do what I think everyone would like to do.  That is, share our thoughts and emotions so we can better understand each other and feel more like ourselves more of the time.