I'm So Happy!

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!! I'M SO FREAKIN' EXCITED!!! THERE IS A NEW HARRY POTTER TRAILER OUT!!!! AND I CAN'T STOP GEEKING OUT ABOUT IT!........wooohoo lol ok I think I can settle down just a bit.........MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM ok. ok. ok. ok. Deep breth, breath. Good. *clears throat* There is a new trailer for the up coming, sadly delayed, Harry Potter movie up. The link is attached if you wish to take a gander at it.

I am off out to New Mexico for Thanksgiving and will write when I get the chance, look for something on or before Turkey day itself. Happy travels to everyone who is going some where and be safe.

http://harrypotter.warnerbros.co.uk/site/index.html

Open Up Her Mind And Then....

Just as a note, I am sorry that the last post was so extraordinarily long. In my defense I had been contemplating that one for awhile and I haven't written anything recently, so if you need an explanation "so, OK... there you go" (Gus, My Big Fat Greek Wedding). :0)

The Only Remedy Is To Dream...

It is interesting to me how little our education prepares us for the real world. When you start school its all about learning to read and write, to count and do simple mathematics, to color and make friends. Then you get a bit older and you start, "your proper education." What they mean to say is now you get to learn about a bunch of things that once you graduate from high school you will probably never use again except to liven up conversation at fancy cocktail parties. You learn about history, being bias the way I am I like to think that this is a furiously important subject but in the grand scheme of the job world its probably not, though it does explain a lot about politics and why the world works in the way that it does today. Then you have subjects like geometry, trigonometry, economics, chemistry, biology, P.E. so that the schools can feel like they are doing something about the fact that so many people these days are morbidly obese though they only make you take it for 2 years, which in my opinion completely defeats the point. These subjects are all very important but again once you are leave high school you will probably never use them again.

Now, I know what some of you might be thinking at this time, I use that everyday or economics is vital to understanding the stock market and the way that our country's financial system works. You are completely correct but unfortunately the average person does not think about these things until they are directly affected by them, which is seldom. I am also not saying, by any means that I know better than someone else how our students should be taught or what are the things are that we should be teaching them. In fact this is, in a some what clouded way, my point. How do we know what courses the children/ young adults of this country should be following? Why is it not ok for some students, as young as 12, to want to be artists or musicians? If that is what they are passionate about and that is where they are truly gifted in, then who are we, who are the adults, who are the politicians and the unions to say that this is not ok; that they should be focusing on more usable trades or modes of study?

I believe that this is one of our main problems as a society and for that matter what is wrong with most of the major countries in the world. We are all so focused on what career path for ourselves and our children will make the most money, will allow them and us to have the highest status in society. Where this is a notable and very normal thing for parents to want for their children and for us to desire for our ourselves it totally disregards their wants and desires. Not only this but once we have indicated to them what they "should" want to do as a career, doctor, lawyer, CEO, etc. then we send them to college where they are able to expand their knowledge base and continue their educations in a glorified high school setting. It really is like high school without the parents and that you can actually get kicked out of if you don't do well in your courses, though unfortunately most college age kids don't care about that.

Once they have finished their college education, now between 21 and 23 years of age, sometimes older sometimes younger, we tell them that they are required to know exactly what they want to do as a career, 9-5, Monday through Friday for the next 30 years. Every recent graduates most hated question, "so what are you going to do with your life?"

Explain where the logic is in that? How many people do you think there are who know or knew what they wanted to do at 22? Not many, but yet this is how it is once you get out of college. "They," the wonderful disembodied "they" tell you to "get a job" or if you want to continue your educations, as some people mistakenly assume is because you don't know what you would like to do with the rest of your life just yet, you can go to graduate school. The problem is that deciding what you want to do in graduate school is a lot like deciding what you want to do with your life for the next 30+ years, and perhaps even harder. I say this because the beauty is if you get a job you don't like you can always quite and go find another one and yes it takes time but there really is no negative impact to you. Unfortunately, if you are in a graduate program you don't like you can quite, but if you do then you just wasted in the neighborhood of 20 to 40 thousand dollars.

Applying to graduate school you have to know A: what area you want to get your degree in. specifically, take psychology for example. If you were to apply for a master's in psychology you would need to know, what type of psychology you wanted to practice, clinical, child, abnormal, neurological, marital psychology. B: you would then need to know who are the authorities on that type of psychology and what their research background is in, where they studied and if their knowledge will be an asset to your educational development. Then it gets even more difficult. As if trying to decided what type of psychology of all the types their are, you wished to continue learning about you must now decide what area of that branch of psychology you wished to study. This is where I get tied up, not knowing enough about psychology I must change my analogy to something that I do know more about so please bare with me as I try to clear this up for you. We are switching our example to history. So now lets give our victim a name, "Vivian."

So now Vivian has decided that she wants to study history as a grad student, that she would like to continue to learn about Chinese history, which is just great for Vivian but now she must decide what time period in Chinese history she wished to focus on for what will become her master's thesis on the subject. Ok so Vivian, is extra special and she knows that she wants to write her thesis on something to do with the Tang dynasty. Now she must find out where the best professors are who study The Tang Dynasty of China. Eventually she finds them, great! Now she has another decision she has to make, what about the Tang dynasty does she want to study? Does she want to study about their burial practices and how those differ from the burial practices of the Xia Dynasty, or from burial practices in Japan or Mongolia during parallel time periods? Maybe she wants to write about the political turmoils during the Tang dynasty or the relationship of the emperor and the heads of the religious orders, or political relations between the Tang Dynasty and its surrounding countries? Or perhaps the size and power or the Tang dynasty gained or lost during the its dominance.

And too all these things that Vivian must decide before even applying to graduate school, she must also find out where the professors are who have interests similar to hers, which makes the number of graduate schools to choose from very limited, indeed.

So in many ways deciding what you want to do in graduate school is a lot more difficult then going out and getting a job or career path that you have the ability to change if you wish to. And many of you at 21 or 23 could not have answered all, if any of these questions? I know people who are in their 50's and 60's who, after 30 years, still couldn't answer these questions that an aspiring graduate school is asked to decided in a matter of months.

Coming back to the point of this whole mess of writing is, how does our education prepare us for such decisions? How can someone so young be expected to know for certain the answer to questions that take a life time to discover? I guess what I am trying to say is that perhaps what we should be doing in school is discovering what our strengths are, not being forced to learn things that are of little or no use to us just because they happen to someones idea of what we should be good at or what we should know.

If you are good at art, no matter what kind and you enjoy doing it, pursue that dream. If you are a gift musician do not let anyone tell you that you will never make anything of yourself by going to school to learn about music. You will never be truly happy in your career unless you are doing what you love to do. My grandmother love to fly airplanes. She told me that when she was younger she would spend all her time down at the jet way just hanging out with the guys and trying to find a way to learn how to fly one. When WWII hit the US, she signed up to fly planes as part of the WASP, the Women Air force Service Pilots, who would tow targets at the back of their planes for the boys to practice shoot at, among other things. After that she became a flight instructor and taught Navy boys how to fly planes. When she retired she raced air planes with some of her friends. She traveled and saw the world. If she were alive today and you asked her she would tell you that she loved flying more than anything and that she may not have made a ton of money but she was always happy when she was in a plane, and that is the only thing that matters. Sometimes, if we just allow our hearts to guide us and stop using our heads to rationalize away our dreams, something far more beautiful comes out of it. It can turn an ordinary life into a master piece without you even knowing it has happened. Sometimes fighting for what you truly want and love to do is worth the pain that it takes to get you there, because the place you end up in exceeds any expectation that you could have ever had of it.

It's Not the End of the World

Disappointment is a funny thing. It can happen in more forms than you have the time to count and occurs in ways that we could not even dream of. I used to think that the way to avoid disappointment was just not to have expectations of people or of events. But like so many things it was a good theory that never worked in practicality. It is normal to have expectations and it is then, therefore normal to be disappointed when things do not turn out the way that you thought they would or people make decisions that you do not agree with. This is life. You cannot stop it, nor should you want to.

Many people, myself included at times, wish to make the world stop turning. They desire to turn back the clock and change the outcome of the place that they are in. But if you change where you are today then you change who you are today. Even if you do not always like who you are, desiring to be someone else would not solve your problems, for that you must look inward. It is your choices, the decisions that you have made as a person that have brought you to the point that you are at. Instead you should look at those things and gain from the experience as to why they occurred and what you learned from the whole thing.

Most disappointment in life comes for an outside source. How much does this disappointment really affect you and who you are? Perhaps you didn't get that job that you wanted or got laid off or didn't get into the school of your choice or perhaps someone you know let you down. All these things do not and at the same time do affect us. They affect us because we had expectations for these things. We had expectations that the world would get better if we got that job or that we could run away if we got into that school or that the reason that we had expectations of that person was because we had similar expectations of ourselves, but none of these things are permanent or by any means unchangeable. At the same time the job that you didn't get was just a job there are others, maybe even better ones to be had; the school may not have been all that you thought that it would be and running away never solved anything you must face up to those things that you wish to run away from if they are ever to desist. At the same time that person who let you down is only human, their failures are constructed by you because perhaps you desired them to be something or someone that they had never been to begin with, and this, to tell the truth, is a very unfair thing to do. I do not discount myself from being part of this in anyway. i have mean times been disappointed by the actions of others but it was I who was to blame. Not because was in any way responsible but because I created an image of them that was not who they really were. I saw only the person that I wanted to see and there is were we fail on our part, by missing out on the beauty of their individuality.

The point to all this is that, as far as I can see it, the purpose in life should be to dismiss your disappointments. If things didn't go the way you thought, rather than them being all wrong, perhaps you were just thinking of them in the right way. Live life without regrets. Just remember that you made the decisions, you made those choices, and if things don't go your way its probably because there is something better out there for you. It does not do to dwell on what might have been. If you pay attention you will see that the way things are is a pretty good alternative. Be your own voice of reason and remember nothing and no one is perfect so don't get hung up on the small things, they are only temporary at best.

Quiet in a Busy World

Sometimes the best things in life are the quiet moments, like late at night when the world seems to be sleeping and the sounds of the world are lessened, you can almost hear the sounds of the world turn. Put on some soft music and embrace the effortless quiet, the calm of that time.
The lights at night, so soft, so beautiful, like stars that have fallen from the sky landing so close to the ground. The quiet time allows us the room to think, the room for our minds to breath, like a run in the morning or the early hues of a light coming over the horizon as we wake up and take in the smell of a new day we can clear away all those things that clutter our thoughts.
Sometimes after a particularly busy day or stressful time the best remedy is to turn out the lights, close all the doors, find a comfortable chair and absorb the moments of peace that you have carved out for yourself. These times are my favorite, these are the times that I wish I could fold up and stick in my pocket, carry them around the rest of the day. But instead you just have to soak them in and remember that though they are far to few they, and too spread out over the course of your day, month or year, they are the part and the hope of which makes waking up in the morning worth the trouble.
If your normal day has time enough for you to stop and sit, take a cup of tea or a mug of coffee and just engross yourself in the silence of time, then you should count yourself amoung the very luck.

P.S.
Happy Veterans day and thank you to all who have served our country. You truly are a wonderful asset to us all and even when we don't remember to tell you, it means the world to us that you have sacrificed so much to keep us safe.

The Holiday's Are Coming

I don't have anything really interesting to talk about today, or any profound comments to make. I would simply like to say thank you to everyone who has been reading and sending e-mails. I really enjoy the comments that I have received from you. It is a gift to me when you send them, because it makes me want to continue to write.

I hope that you all are enjoying the new feature on my blog, the Pandora play list. If there is any particular type of music that you would like me to play, just let me know. For now I think the jazzy, 40's stuff has a nice ease about it that lends just the right feel to the page.

My thought for the day: As Thanksgiving grows ever closer I hope that everyone is beginning to get into the Holiday spirit. I believe that this year is going to be a particularly difficult season, for more reason than one. I would just like to start it off right by saying that those who truly love you, your family and your friends, will not mind if you can not get or give them everything that they want this year. Having you with them is a gift in itself and they will love you the more for it. We all should be thankful for what we have and keeping that in mind remember that sometimes giving to those who do not have as much as you is a far better use of your time and money than giving things to those who already have everything. You could even make it a family event out of helping the less fortunate, since family is what the season is all about anyway. It is just something to think about at least. I for one am going to be donating Christmas presents to children in need and am thinking about volunteering at a soup kitchen during the Christmas season. If anyone would like to join me just let me know.

Have a wonderful weekend everyone.

America my home, America my own

Welcome to a new world. Despite whom you voted for in the election whether it was Obama or McCain, the world around you has changed. And it changed but it was not last night or this morning, it was not because one side won and the other failed to make the cut. The world changed long ago and we just didn't take the time to notice.
You see the world has been a different place for as long as I can remember and it’s not because someone got elected and someone else didn't. It had nothing to do with a political race, although I think that there are many who would heartily disagree with me but it happened when the media found that it had power.
It seems that power corrupts all. People get a little of it and then, at least for the most part, go stark raving mad, drunk with their new found sphere of influence. When the media decided that it had power, it choose to use it to fight against the establishment. It found that it could tell the people what to do, how to act, how to think and found that they could easily sway the public to believe exactly what they wanted them to. If someone wanted power, they had to convince the media that they would increase the power that the media already had.
With the ability to influence the great and diverse amount of people that live in the country the media now had control. The masses, though as individuals are a very intelligent group of people, when together they turn into a crazy mob that ransacks an area, metaphorically speaking of course, because, at the time "it seemed like a good idea" or they "got caught up in the moment." The problem lay in the fact that people like to feel that they are a part of something that otherwise would be untouchable. They like to feel like they have power, the power to change things, anything if they really want to. Young people, generally in their early to mid 20's are particularly susceptible to this type of thinking. They are new to the game and so still are unchanged by the cruel reality that most likely will settle in about 10 years. They are so desperate to be a part of something, any cause, they disregard reason and jump head first into action without thinking about the true consequences of their actions, without really understanding the implications of what will happen if what they are fighting for occurs. The media and politicians know this and feed on it; simply they use them for it.
Then when the thing goes through, when they win, or lose and they see a change being made but not in the way they thought, they see what that cause was really made of, they see its true colors, they are aghast at the result. "How could they do that?" they say, "That's not what they promised!" Horror. But for those who listened, think for themselves and take the time to really understand how and what those with the power were asking us to do, were asking us to give up, it is not horror that you see in our eyes. Oh no, it is simply the inadmissible, unignorable, and yet total disappointment that we were proved right. Even though we had hoped, against hope that by some miracle we would be proved wrong.
Therefore, take care my friends and remember that whether your candidate won or lost, only the future, the future that is now, will truly be able to tell whether those who make promises to us as citizen are equally capable of acting upon them. As a side note, little ever is done that is not done with out great trial and tribulation in its wake. In order to prosper we must first suffer. If this be the time of suffering, take comfort in the fact that it is only for a while, long or short. Always fight for what you believe in and as a country we should to remember to fight for those things that separate us from the flock, Freedom and Capitalism, for now and always.

"Our country 'tis of thee," translation: It's your Country

You know it's interesting how life changes; sometimes you are up and sometimes you are down. That old saying "where there is a will, there is a way" doesn't always apply, even though we wish it would. Sometimes the reason why you can't see the forest for the trees is because you are just missing some of the little things, not necessarily because you are using the wrong lenses.

I am not sure that we all have our equal share of good times and bad, some people sure seem to have the bad times in spades and the good times so spread out that you can hardly even remember when they happened at all. My life has been easy, in comparison to most peoples, and I am ever thankful for that, though I must admit sometimes I wish it hadn't been because then I wouldn't feel as though I was being selfish when I complained about my problems that in the greater scheme of things are trivial.

We are starting in on the hard time, which in the near future will make all of our lives a little or a lot more difficult than we would like. I guess the only real consolation is to try our hardest to remember the important things in life, like that we have each other, we have our families, we have some money, even if it is not much, and to remember that there are many people out there that, even in the best of times, struggle when we didn't. WE should be thankful for what we have been given and what we have earned. Life is far too short to be spent in distress of a temporary slump.

This is one of the greatest countries in the world and though at times we forget how wonderful and what great things we are able to achieve with the freedoms that were allowed us by those who came before us, we will always find our way back home. En lue of the the up coming election I think that it is important for this country to remember what it means to be a citizen of the United States; to take pride in the fact that we can go to the polls, cast a ballot to have our say in election of our government without fear of losing our jobs, or persecution for choosing the "wrong candidate." I think that during election times especially. this country gets in such an uproar with which side of the fence that one resides on that we forget that we are still family, we are still friends, we are still a people and we are still ONE nation, despite what the constant barrage of media coverage and campaigning politician would like us to believe.

So PLEASE, when you go to the polls on Tuesday to cast that all important voice of freedom, remember that no matter who you vote for, or who your wife, daughter, husband or friend votes for, that you still love them, they are still the same person as they were yesterday. And if they exercise the right to keep their vote secret, respect should be given to their choice for silence.

Happy Election week to all and Congratulation to all who are doing their civil duty and letting their opinion be known (whether silently, on the ballot paper or publicly announcing).