This prompt asks you to peruse the internets to find the biggest news story from the year you were born, and how it would have shaped your life.

Top of the list: Nixon in China (Spurs minimalist opera: Nixon in China), Britain assumes direct control of N. Ireland (Sunday, Bloody Sunday), Nixon (again) orders the Christmas Bombings (lots of protest songs), Black September seizes the Olympic Games in Munchen (couple of movies, no music springs to mind), George Wallace is shot (great song by DBT), 1st scientific hand-held calculator (HP-35) introduced $395 (Operator of my Calculator, Kraftwerk?), Neil Young releases Harvest (cool), French Connection is in theaters, HBO is broadcast for the first time, Apollo XVII lands on the moon, our last moon landing, caftans and denim are de rigueur and all over the damn place, first video game, pong, is released, Joy of Sex is published, Deep Throat penetrates the masses.

What a year. One of the best ever, no doubt. End of the Viet Nam war for America, so the war image in film and music has had a big influence on my development and outlook. Lots of great pop culture. Think about it. The first ever commercial video game is released. I wonder how many total hours I’ve spent playing games. I mean just pop culture alone. The introduction of a porn movie to mainstream audiences is such a shift in culture. How little any of them would have known where we would be 46 years later with the pornification of culture.

I really like the meme that has a picture of an iPhone with a caption reading something about your parents telling you you would never have a calculator in your pocket in real life. A $395 dollar calculator would have made a good case for that attitude back then. It’s really difficult to see where things will go when you only have one level of technology in the palm of your hand. I can see how they could never have predicted what tech development is capable of.

For this entry, you imagine there’s a book published about your life, and you make up the front cover blurb. This is to apply to your life as it is at this moment. Then think of what you would like that blurb to say at the end of your life, then ruminate on how to go from the present to how you hope your dust jacket blub should read. Easy enough.

So, I think at this point, there would be a really generic, clichéd blurb such as “My life so far”, or more than 8 copies sold. Not much to speak of. At  the end of my life, I’d like there to be something about taking on life and “winning” though that’s not the point, now is it?  Crushing my life: The Mark Story.

I’m formulating a method of living, I just haven’t lived long enough to fully articulate it yet. I’ll get there though. I’m working out what that book jacket should say. I’m developing an approach to living for someone like me.

So, for this prompt, I’m creating a list of “great” men from history to learn from. Who would they be, and what would you hope to learn from them?

This is a tough one. I’m not too big on holding up figures from the past in such high regard that I would want to sit down with them and take notes. I’m more of the mind that I would have liked someone to point me in the direction I’ve already taken in my life, but at an earlier age. The other hurdle to this sort of exercise is, I cherry pick certain ideas from different thinkers to create my own (hopefully) coherent worldview.

Having said that, who would I like to hear from?
I just finished Aurelius’ Meditations, and think it’s a pretty interesting take on leadership at that level, and the stoic attitude lines up partially with my attitude. He’d be a good start.

I think I’d like to meet my great grandfather. He was an educated man, and was a pioneer in several significant ways. He owned a sawmill that employed many men, and was an early employee of Standard Oil, owning a small fleet of trucks. He was in the generation that first saw the transition from a fully man/horse powered world to one of the internal combustion engine. I wonder what his perspective on our modern world would be.

After those two, the waters get a little murky. There’s no historical epoch I’d rather live in than the one I inhabit now, except maybe the future. The pre-penicillin world doesn’t hold much allure to me.

I just don’t think I’d learn as much from a historical personage as much as just seeing times past. I’d love to see ancient Rome or Greece. I’d like to see what a mediaeval village looked like, and how it was to live then (with the use of modern sanitation and inoculation, of course. I suppose I’d bring along some hand sanitizer).

It’s not that I don’t think I couldn’t learn anything from anyone, it’s just the burden of knowing what they didn’t. Everything they were ignorant of; germ theory, cosmology, human origins. They could learn so much more from us than they could teach modern people.

Day 14: Write a review of some form of entertainment you recently took in. Whether book or movie or TV show or Broadway play, write out what you liked and didn’t like about it. Were there any lessons to be gleaned, or was it pure entertainment (it’s okay if it was!)?

I just finished Inherent Vice a few weeks ago, so that’s a good a piece of entertainment as any.

The book is not all that different from the movie in any substantial way. It’s easier to follow the action and story, such as it is, with character inner dialogues and the like. There’s an extended trip to Vegas which furthers the story, but is not essential to the plot, and PTA was right to edit it out.

The novel is angrier though. The film is lighthearted and funny, more comedy romp than a product of real pain. Shaggy dog story one reviewer called it. The book’s version of events truly impacts the characters in a more profound way. The hurt is real. Pynchon is angry with the America of the 1970s, and reminds us we have not learned much since then. In fact, it’s only gotten worse. As if on cue, a recent expose on the modern opioid crisis points out that the same companies selling drugs like opana and oxy will in turn sell you drugs to help you kick your addiction to the former.

The key to understanding and appreciating Pynchon is that he doesn’t just go after “The Man”, big government, the military, the old guard Greatest Generation. Not just the usual suspects. He goes after both sides of a system that vies for power and the flow of money while those of us in between just do the best we can to survive and care for one another. The overall tone has real fury within it. It’s a funny book, and Pynchon is in good form, but there’s a real hurt here that I don’t detect from his other works. We’ve let ourselves down, we’ve both co-opted and allowed ourselves to be co-opted by bigger forces. And it’s not a faceless bureaucracy, multi-layered conspiracy of power that’s doing it. It’s us, or those of us, who choose to slip and skip down the trail towards dystopia. But it’s not really dystopia, is it? It’s the 20th century when you boil it down to its essence. Yes, government and bureaucracy and drug companies and The Suits. But it’s us too, those of us who self-select to move into those ranks, and those of us who are too careless or lazy to protect ourselves from them.

I wonder if they assigned this prompt to day 13 deliberately.

Here goes.

Work is the most salient one.  I worry that I’m not being effective enough. Not keeping up with my peers. I’m making progress, but I feel behind, and ineffective during my podium time. Might have to check out toastmasters.

Money, believe it or not, is not a worry. The management of money on the other hand keeps getting out of hand. I just went though a hard post-retirement lesson on crossing i’s and dotting t’s that I don’t want to repeat. Why is this so hard. You know exactly what yo have to do, and the sub-tasks are not at all difficult. It’s just the doing. Typical.

I’m worried this house is a money pit. Gutters are up next without the new door even paid for. Again, I’m not worried about the income, I’m concerned about the rolling procession of fix-it-ups we have to do year in, year out. Masonry, foundations, dishwashers, leaky tubs etc. I may have to take up some handyman projects to stem the tide.

 

I’m not big on these sort of exercises. When I’m in the right frame of mind, the words will flow naturally enough, but most times, bleh. Having said that, gamma shoobaghg lasntsi groovinaway sabasabasabah cha cha cha haaaa. Sorry, had to get that out.

This is a bad day for this sort of thing anyway. High emotion and stress all round as I head off for a work related trip. (Pause to stare out the window).

OK-there. Reason to free form for a line or two. I love my backyard. I have to spend some more time in it not that he weather’s cooled and the mosquitoes are not so unbearable. I wish our neighbor would get rid of the old blue tarp covering who knows what sort of monstrosity of a vehicle that will never get fixed up. Other than that, pretty nice yard, even with the open backyard plan with everyone sharing the space. It’s almost like a small park right out the back stoop. I wonder if anyone ever used it as such, back when these houses were first built. The entire circular neighborhood would have had a nice area to gather and piquenique. Plenty of space for football or whatever they played back in the 60s. You can’t see any remnants of that time if it were ever such. No brick barbeque pits unused for decades. I would like to set up a bow and arrow target sometime, but I’m sure our next door grumpy old man won’t approve. Probably afraid a stray arrow would get hung up in the mower deck more than anything else, though it would be in the direction of his kids old swing set, so maybe symbolic fear. Sympathetic black magic that could harm his now adult children through time and space.

Anyway, that’s a nice detour. OK- so I was able to pull our a spontaneous one out of the hat so to speak. I’m still not crazy about these exercises.

Day 10: Identify where you are in the hero’s journey. You can take it in the context of your entire life, or within the context of a certain phase of life.

It’s a thing to witness to see Joe Campbell keep coming up. I think I first encountered his ideas at exactly the right time in my life. 16 or 17. It’s an odd coincidence too that they rebroadcast the Moyers interviews recently. I watched probably 4 of the 6 or so episodes. As a teenager, you barely comprehend the bulk of what you are hearing. The language makes sense, but the ideas are based on experiences of old men and cultures long dead. They have already trod the path you are about to step out on, but their attempt to light the way is muffled and hard to grasp. Its like lying in the tent when you’re camping, listening to adults out sitting around the fire. You only catch a handful of words and phrases. Sitting at the kitchen table with multiple generations. Talk of people long dead. Events that happened decades before you were born. Before you knew what a decade really feels like.

So, here I am, maybe a little beyond the halfway point. A few years out yet from Dante’s middle years by the feel of it.

Odd, but I can’t say that I’ve really taken the path laid out in the Hero’s Schematic. I never had a mentor. I’ve never felt I’ve encountered any sort of dragon or trial by fire whos completion grants me the boons.

I like those stories, but I don’t hear the call. I hear silence.

Oddly enough though, I do feel a bit enlightened. I’ve felt it for more than a decade now, and it sustains me. I’m free from the worry that most of humanity seems to be plagued with. I retain the mundane worries of immediate concern, money, health etc. But I’m not troubled by the big one. I reflect on it. I have the same sense of wonder, but not a worry about any of it. At least I don’t worry that my actions, inactions or worries will affect any of it.

It just is, and I am I, and I don’t bother myself with it.

Day 9: Simply write about your day. What time you woke up, what your commute was like, what you did at work, how you spent your evening. (If you’re journaling in the mornings, write about the previous day.)

Typical Tuesday. Up at fivish. Forgot to put out the trash last night, so missed the pickup this morning. Can really tell a difference in ambient light at that time in the morning. Glad fall is just around the corner. Had a negative co-worker experience that I’m still mulling over. I’ll get back to that in a later post. Forgot my fork for my lunch, so I didn’t eat my green beans. Took some shirts in to get pressed at the cleaners. Worked on my French, handwriting, and journaling. Think I’ll hit the elliptical later on. Whew, what a life. I’m almost overwhelmed by the excitement.

So, that’s a pretty typical day. It’s one of those uneventful, chipping away at life kind of days. Nothing happened to note of, not in my life, not in the news. Things are afoot, wheels are in motion. I feel pretty good about everything, regardless of worker interaction. That’s what a slice of life looks like to an outsider. On the inside though, I’m living the dream in a sense. Right where I need to be, doing the things I want to do in the manner I want to do them in.

Is there more than that?

So, in one significant respect, my career is over. I retired two years ago in two months. I had a good run, but more important, I had the career I wanted because of some of the choices I made early on. There are not a lot of folks who would agree that I had a successful career, I’m sure. I didn’t make rank, I didn’t hold the “leadership” jobs that most officers vie for, but that’s OK. I did what I wanted to do with the time I had. It was my career to do with what I pleased, and did it with gusto. Ha!

Best/worst experiences.

Hmmmm. Where to begin? I’ll say that the worst of times did teach me some valuable lessons, but those lessons reinforce my belief that I did the right thing living like I did. I never want to treat people like I saw some officers treat other people, even if it meant making a sacrifice to my potential for promotion. I never wanted to behave like an asshole for the sake of the next rung up the ladder. So my career paid for it, but I did what was right.

On the other hand, I never really pushed myself to much. I couldn’t see the point of much of the work being done around me. None of it contributing to anything useful, or that would help any unit win a war. There are things I missed out on by taking that path. Things about myself and my limits that I never explored. Kinda wish I’d done that now, but there are still opportunities to push in other directions to test my mettle. The ride’s not over yet.

What does the future hold? Well, let me see. A big part of me is still skating by, not a care in the world, but I know I need to make a few changes in my attitude. Buckle down so to speak. The thing that has changed though, is my outlook. I’m much more optimistic. Not so much about doing constructive, meaningful work, but working both harder and smarter at my job, and getting more satisfaction from working in general. I’m taking work more seriously these days. I’m buckling down so to speak. At any rate, I only see my work, my job, as a narrow part of who I am. It probably makes up less of my self-definition than most adults in my phase of life. I’m not worried about that though, am I? I’ve never been one to take the council of others. That attitude has rarely been to my detriment. I’ve got only one person to keep happy, and I’m taking that job very seriously.

You’re made it one week! Refelect on what this n ewfound practice of journaling has been like. Have you enjoyed it? Has it been diffucult? Has it been what you expected?

OK- one week down, the rest of life to go.

The journaling thing was one of the “list” items I had floating around my head moreso than written down on paper before taking up the TSL. I’ve thought for a long time that I should be writing, keeping a record of my thoughts, and seeing how my thinking changes and evolves over time.

I never did it. I never seriously put pen to physical or digital paper and kept a journal for any significant amoun of time. For whatever reason, the act of sitting down at a platform and deliberately thinking about thinking never occured. Any attempt at creating a larger narrative or even jotting down random thoughts was relegated to the confines of memory.

So, here I am finally. Writing my (prompted) thoughts down. Doing it for an extended period, and building up a few lines of pure Markness.

I feel good. It remains to be seen if I’ll keep it up. If I’ll maintain the habit of daily or weekly journaling. Most likely, I’ll taper off again after the required prompts are fufilled, and the last 8 weeks are done. But I’d like to keep doing it. I’ll probably never be one to sit down on a regular schedule and just let the thoughts and feelings flow. More likely, I’ll write, if at all, as the spirit moves me. When something gets in my craw, or when I’ve got some really pointed about culture that I’d like to explore, I’ll take up the (digital) pen and write.

Take my very first blog entry on attending the Qawwali concert. It wasn’t prompted by a badge or agon requirement. I just wanted to express something about a particular incident in my life. An attempt to better organize the buzzing going around my head at all hours. It’s also good practice for the articles I’m supposed to be writing at work, so it’s a handy way to practice the skills of organization and crafting a succinct story about a specific topic.

That’s how most of the rest of my blogging/journaling adventure will likely go. Sporatic, but hopefully at least a little higher quality than the average online entry.