When you're young you can talk about what you'd like to do or be when you get older, but when you get older and you're still talking about what you want to do or be, it isnt' going to happen. There is point in your life when you realize your life is what it is and it isn't going to change much until your life isn't anymore.
I love to read print Sunday newspapes. I buy the Tacoma News Tribune, the Seattle Time and the New York Times. I'd buy the Washington Post and others but they're not available here, let alone Sunday when I got to Starbucks to get them and my doppio con panna (double espresso with whipped cream, yummy stuff).
And I love the travel and style magazine with the NY Times Magazine to see all the places I could visit or live, both of which I'd like to do, but both of which I know won't happen for a number of reason, least of all is money. After spending all of my youth traveling and moving so often as the youngest in a family of an Air Force officer, I found a home here and haven't moved since.
I sat down and counted that I've lived in twelve different places in 7 different states or countries by the time I was 18, after which I was kicked out and then lived in 12 different places in 6 different states until I was 40 when I moved to Washington where I settled down and never have moved since. I suspect I have one more move left as eventually the owners will evict everyone to replace the building, originally built in 1969.
The problem is that I dont' have the money anymore to afford a move, partly why I haven't moved since you never recover the cost of any move, and partly because I love where I live, it's large and open with a big view of the southeast with Narrows Strait in the foreground and Mt. Rainier in the background.
I tell folks I don't have to go outside to enjoy the outside, it's right out the windows where I can see everything or sit on the deck and enjoy the fresh air, my many plants and the quiet of the neighborhood (most go to work leaving it quiet during the daytime). And I can always just open and the doors and windows to let the wind and air into the place to clear everything out.
But I've always wanted to find a place I want to die. This place isn't it, but I haven't found it either, and I'm not sure I will find it. For many, really almost all, of us, we don't die when and where we most want to be. Very few of us die where we want to find our last moments. The choice often isn't ours anymore, but others, usually family, medical people or government folks.
Which is why I keep looking, why I keep hoping, and why I keep wanting to find the last place I want to live and quietly find my last moments. That's not to say if circumstances were bad enough that death was an immediately reality I haven't found a place to just sit and die, out of sight of everyone wanting to intervene. I have and will never tell anyone.
But it's where I want to live quietly these last years enjoying life. Everywhere in the world is frought with problems and issues, usually economic or financial where living there would cost more than here and most likely beyond my means, meaning my annuity and savings. So until I find that place, here I live, a place I enjoy life, just not die.
But moving to that best place likely isn't going to happen, not in my lifetime. Well, maybe, because you just never know.
Sunday, March 18, 2012
Friday, March 16, 2012
Putting Yourself Down
My favorite hobby is putting myself down. Comparing myself to others and comparing my accomplishments, or more so the lack of them, to those of others. I learned it when I was a kid when my parents pounded it into me, as well as my siblings, long and often, always making the other sibling and others better than each of us.
I've never understood why some parents to that, but then often it's what they learned, what they experienced and the only thing they know. That's what spouses and parents are about, replicating our families when we were young. Men often pick their wife to be their mother, or the opposite for some, and women often pick their husband to be their father or the image of them in their mind.
And if we've been subjected to that since we were very young, then it becomes ingrained, almost hardcoded in our mind where we do it when our parents aren't around and even when our parents are gone from life. It's what we know, sometimes it's all we know and it's hard to change.
Hard not just to be comfortable and satisfied with what we have done, how our life has turned out, and it's easy to put ourself down and feel like a failure. It always lurks in the shadow of our mind, ever present in our consciousness, and never ceasing to remind us about other, about ourself and who's better. Not us.
I often think this is what causing people to follow a life of self-destruction. Like that new or news, but I saw it in my brother and feel it in myself all too often. I've never lost the feeling and my Dad, when he was alive and we talked after he kicked me out, reminded me of it everytime.
And now with the Internet, it's so easy to find people who appear to be doing better, doing more and having a better life than me. It's so easy to feel you've failed, failed yourself in what you could achieve. It's like the person who asked the inventor about his new product, "How good is it?", and the inventor said, "Compared to what?'
We're the inventor of our own life, and we always keep asking ourself the same question about ourself and our life, "Compared to what?" That's we do. It's what's embedded in American culture, comparing, judging and proclaiming what or who's better or worse. We are a part of it and we do it too.
To ourself and our life. And all of the self-help books, programs, etc. don't and won't work. They only make it obvous to ourself and only makes it harder to overcome the thoughts and feelings. Those books, interviews, all of it, only reminds us and reinforces what we already think and feel.
We are what they teach us not to be or do. We are their examples. We are their stories which don't have good endings. And we their failures as our own failure. We try and have our moments, but the prevailing feeling and thought is failure. Pounded into us from when we first heard from our parents.
And in the end, we will likely say at best our life of ok, because in the end, it really doesn't matter what we think or feel anymore. There isn't any more to feel or think ourself a failure. It's the same end everyone faces no matter their life or how they thought or felt about it. We all just end with ok.
I've never understood why some parents to that, but then often it's what they learned, what they experienced and the only thing they know. That's what spouses and parents are about, replicating our families when we were young. Men often pick their wife to be their mother, or the opposite for some, and women often pick their husband to be their father or the image of them in their mind.
And if we've been subjected to that since we were very young, then it becomes ingrained, almost hardcoded in our mind where we do it when our parents aren't around and even when our parents are gone from life. It's what we know, sometimes it's all we know and it's hard to change.
Hard not just to be comfortable and satisfied with what we have done, how our life has turned out, and it's easy to put ourself down and feel like a failure. It always lurks in the shadow of our mind, ever present in our consciousness, and never ceasing to remind us about other, about ourself and who's better. Not us.
I often think this is what causing people to follow a life of self-destruction. Like that new or news, but I saw it in my brother and feel it in myself all too often. I've never lost the feeling and my Dad, when he was alive and we talked after he kicked me out, reminded me of it everytime.
And now with the Internet, it's so easy to find people who appear to be doing better, doing more and having a better life than me. It's so easy to feel you've failed, failed yourself in what you could achieve. It's like the person who asked the inventor about his new product, "How good is it?", and the inventor said, "Compared to what?'
We're the inventor of our own life, and we always keep asking ourself the same question about ourself and our life, "Compared to what?" That's we do. It's what's embedded in American culture, comparing, judging and proclaiming what or who's better or worse. We are a part of it and we do it too.
To ourself and our life. And all of the self-help books, programs, etc. don't and won't work. They only make it obvous to ourself and only makes it harder to overcome the thoughts and feelings. Those books, interviews, all of it, only reminds us and reinforces what we already think and feel.
We are what they teach us not to be or do. We are their examples. We are their stories which don't have good endings. And we their failures as our own failure. We try and have our moments, but the prevailing feeling and thought is failure. Pounded into us from when we first heard from our parents.
And in the end, we will likely say at best our life of ok, because in the end, it really doesn't matter what we think or feel anymore. There isn't any more to feel or think ourself a failure. It's the same end everyone faces no matter their life or how they thought or felt about it. We all just end with ok.
Wednesday, March 14, 2012
Some Days
Some days when I wake up I feel like the words I read once, "A bowl of oatmeal stared me down and won."
And Some days when I've been writing, editing and updating Web pages on my Mt. Rainier NP photo guide all day I feel by the evening the only thing I want to do is have a face to face conversation with a pillow, to sleep and dream. Today is one of them.
Being Obsolete
I like to see the current state of consumer technology, especially electronics and music systems. That's not to say I follow it obsessively or even more than casually. I just like to see what's there and where it's going. But as we know and see more quickly the progress in technology comes at a price, obsolescene, not just what you have and use, but what and who you are. Yes, we become and are obsolete.
That's not new in our culture and society. It's as old a bosses decided to fire or retire older employees, not so much to save money but they found younger ones better, or at least in their mind, neglecting the experience and wisdom of older employees. We're just not progress anymore when new is the operative word.
And it's as old as family shuffled the elderly family members into corners of their life. And it's as old as some who just wandered away from the mainstream to find themselves living in isolation from the world. We've seen the many stories and we know the many people, and most of all we fear our own obsolescence, real and inevitable.
And it's not new it's a progression through one's life. The young generally want the new and the older cherish the old. We go with what we know and what new we can learn and master. Everything else just isn't important, even people. But what's important isn't what you keep personally important as you get older, it's how you see it relative to you, your life and the world.
It's about meaning. Meaning in a person's life, to them, to their world and the world itself. What the young don't realize and know is what older people already have experienced and know. We are all obsolete, it's only relative to when and how much, and at the rate of progress of technology, it's only going quicker and faster. The young will see in their 30's what we, the older generations (in my 60's), saw in 40's and beyond.
I collected vinyl records from the early 1960's, mostly my brother's but some mine, but not seriously until I was in the service and bought my first stereo. Vinyl lasted well into the 1990's when CD's became mainstream replacing vinyl. In the years of vinyl records, tapes of all sorts of size, speed, format came and went, but only really studio master tapes survived along with Digital Audio Tapes (DAT's) for copying and distribution.
This meant the standard audio stereo system was basically intact from the 1950's through the 1990's and even into the first decade of the 21st century. The improvements in technology was still around the basic idea of a stereo system, only the technology and quality of the components changed. My stereo is still intact but pretty much little used anymore outside the amplifiers to power the speaker system.
I say little used because now almost everything is run through my Mac computer. My turntable, an AR-X, yes, an audio antique but a great one, is still used as I'm putting my 700 vinyl records into iTunes via Vinyl Studio application . The two studio DAT decks and two CD (one CD-RW and one CD-R) aren't used except to keep them working as all my CD's are in iTunes
I added an Apple Airport express to connect the Mac to the stereo's amplifiers and added a Internet radio application (Radium), replacing the tuner, to stream any FM radio station to the Mac and the stereo which controls the speakers through the home. And while I haven't decided what to do with the little used components, as there is no market for them anymore, it only shows how obsolete really great audio equipment can become in the face of progress and technology.
And it goes to show how easily we can and do become obsolete by just being who we are. We can't stand still anymore, because if you do, you'll be obsolete real fast, and it doesn't matter anymore how old you are. Something the younger generations are learning. Feeling old isn't about being old. Not anymore. And being obsolete isn't either.
That's not new in our culture and society. It's as old a bosses decided to fire or retire older employees, not so much to save money but they found younger ones better, or at least in their mind, neglecting the experience and wisdom of older employees. We're just not progress anymore when new is the operative word.
And it's as old as family shuffled the elderly family members into corners of their life. And it's as old as some who just wandered away from the mainstream to find themselves living in isolation from the world. We've seen the many stories and we know the many people, and most of all we fear our own obsolescence, real and inevitable.
And it's not new it's a progression through one's life. The young generally want the new and the older cherish the old. We go with what we know and what new we can learn and master. Everything else just isn't important, even people. But what's important isn't what you keep personally important as you get older, it's how you see it relative to you, your life and the world.
It's about meaning. Meaning in a person's life, to them, to their world and the world itself. What the young don't realize and know is what older people already have experienced and know. We are all obsolete, it's only relative to when and how much, and at the rate of progress of technology, it's only going quicker and faster. The young will see in their 30's what we, the older generations (in my 60's), saw in 40's and beyond.
I collected vinyl records from the early 1960's, mostly my brother's but some mine, but not seriously until I was in the service and bought my first stereo. Vinyl lasted well into the 1990's when CD's became mainstream replacing vinyl. In the years of vinyl records, tapes of all sorts of size, speed, format came and went, but only really studio master tapes survived along with Digital Audio Tapes (DAT's) for copying and distribution.
This meant the standard audio stereo system was basically intact from the 1950's through the 1990's and even into the first decade of the 21st century. The improvements in technology was still around the basic idea of a stereo system, only the technology and quality of the components changed. My stereo is still intact but pretty much little used anymore outside the amplifiers to power the speaker system.
I say little used because now almost everything is run through my Mac computer. My turntable, an AR-X, yes, an audio antique but a great one, is still used as I'm putting my 700 vinyl records into iTunes via Vinyl Studio application . The two studio DAT decks and two CD (one CD-RW and one CD-R) aren't used except to keep them working as all my CD's are in iTunes
I added an Apple Airport express to connect the Mac to the stereo's amplifiers and added a Internet radio application (Radium), replacing the tuner, to stream any FM radio station to the Mac and the stereo which controls the speakers through the home. And while I haven't decided what to do with the little used components, as there is no market for them anymore, it only shows how obsolete really great audio equipment can become in the face of progress and technology.
And it goes to show how easily we can and do become obsolete by just being who we are. We can't stand still anymore, because if you do, you'll be obsolete real fast, and it doesn't matter anymore how old you are. Something the younger generations are learning. Feeling old isn't about being old. Not anymore. And being obsolete isn't either.
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