Tuesday, December 18, 2007

mini-Jolts

Sit down and think for a second. Think about everything you have ever learned. All the way from birth to now, at this exact moment, sitting in front of your computer. I'm going to make a safe bet that if anyone reading my blog really really thought about it, the amount of stuff would be staggering. Shit, think of how much stuff you have probably forgotten even. Now of all that stuff, how much of these morsels of wisdom were discovered in your lifetime. I know for me that accounts for easily less than 5%.

In that little thought occured my "mini-Jolt" as I have come to call them. That is my term for those little thoughts (that for some reason I'm having a lot of lately) that make you go wow, we really are specks in time. We live 60, 70, 80 years for the fortunate ones. 100 is a miracle. There could even be a strong argument made that the first 19 years of my life (25% of it if I'm fortunate) have essentially been lived for me by the institutions that be. Not that I'm complaining, I'm sure I wouldn't have been able to figure out how to read or write on my own. And oh the things I have already learned (and forgotten). What I'm trying to get to here is, holy crap the train has been moving to that big brick wall for 19 years and I haven't ever given it a serious thought. Scary stuff.

Or exciting stuff. I was browsing the good-ole Sundance on Demand tonight and came across a great philosophy of the massively interesting broski Deepak Chopra," I start my day by saying to myself 'I hope today is even more uncertain than yesterday.'" Hear hear.

I have been in the state of mind that for the next month-ish I can in theory do whatever the hell I want. So far that has consisted of sleeping until 12, saving virtual worlds and winning virtual national championships, and surfing the 'tube. Pretty fun but rapidly losing excitement. That WILL change from here on out. Everyday I'm going to do something I didn't plan on doing waking up that morning (which, by the way, will be much, much earlier than 12). In the short term, that sounds like a great goal.

Long term though (since that is essentially what this post is about) what will this all mean? My best guess right now is that I will have beaten the system. Being a member of the rebellion at heart (had to get a Star Wars reference on meetnewschool eventually) beating systems is what I live for. I want to live more of a life than what my little speck was meant to live. I wonder if Mother Theresa, or Robin Williams, or even Hitler ever had this same thought. I wonder if Patches ever had this thought.

Early New Year Resolutions (cause its 365 days, why not have more than one friggin goal?)



  1. Never plan a day sunrise to sunset.
  2. Actually see a few sunrises.
  3. Do.
  4. Are you satisfied? You better not be.

1 comment:

achilles3 said...

LOVE this post, Joey!

Proud to call you a former student.

Beating systems is hard work...keep it up!