Quarter Mile

What a busy week I'm having. Shock! Is this what it's like to have your schedule packed? I can't handle it. Normal people are superhuman. I can barely stay awake for six consecutive hours. This is going to be a huge problem in New York. Can someone install nap rooms or something in the city? I've read that Tokyo has these. Tiny sleeping cubicles that you can rent out for a mid-day nap. This is something we need to transfer over right away.

By busy I mean I've had two fantasy football drafts, a few friends popping in, Georgmeer here in San Diego, a last run of going to look at people's computers and giving them important music, and minor work messes to sort out. Plus I've picked up a spare project here or there -- btw I'm starting a web/blog design company, spread the word -- and I've been writing on deadline. The last thing sprung out of nowhere and in the span of a few days I went from writing purgatory to cranking out lots of words. What this has taught me is that I'm pretty sure I'm only motivated by deadlines. All those writers who write because they just have to do it, otherwise they'd shrivel up and die inside, those people are true writers. I only write when external pressures come calling.

"Write for yourself." Possibly overrated.

Also our cousin (and aunt) are here for a squash tournament, and she's usurped George's room. Early bird gets the comfy bed I guess. My cousin is gonna be a senior and will be using squash to leverage her way into her preferred college. I've noticed that people will talk to my cousin for a good ten minutes before rewinding to say they don't actually know what squash is. For the record, it's like racquetball but predominantly played by old Jewish people. It's the sport of the Upper East Side.

I've been reading over T's practice ACT writing bits and trying to help her improve them. The classic 1-3-1 school essay -- thesis, three points, conclusion -- really does a tremendous disservice to learning to actually write. It just makes writing so formulaic and boring. No wonder most people hate writing essays. It's entirely pointless within the confines of 1-3-1. It just becomes Mad Libs, or math. There has to be a better way to show that you "get" something.

A good friend of ours got surprise engaged over the weekend and he announced it over GroupMe. No phone call, no text, no email. GroupMe. For a group of close friends, we're all incredibly secretive about dating situations. I don't know if this is something abnormal or if most people just like to keep their shit private.

I'm pretty sure George and I are part of the root cause of our group's ____ mentality. We love secrets way too much and have a penchant for gossiping. Everybody's business is our business. That's like the family motto. However, this means people are reluctant to divulge things to the group as a whole and nobody actually knows anything except through guessing and hearsay. So when someone is about to pop a question -- or in this case, the question -- we find out after the fact and not before. It's like people don't trust each other or something. Cheers, to friendship!

You would think someone would have asked me for my pre-engagement advice by now. But no, they have not. Not one single person. Even some of my bestest friends. "Hey Jon, I'm about to marry so and so, what do you think?" Although perhaps their not asking me proves their wisdom.

When I told my friend about this sudden engagement, she asked if the couple was happy. I hadn't even considered that. I mean, is that even relevant anymore? Who knows if anyone is happy? Just say yes to the dress.

In other news, I spent a Monday morning driving around San Diego, helping JMZ sell off his beloved BMW M3. It's been sitting in our garage for a few months and nobody is around to drive it. The guy who came to look at it loved it from the jump, and the buddy he brought along was a huge BMW geek. They wanted to get matching M3s and he'd been looking for one in good condition for months.

Riding in the back, cruising up and down the freeway to get the carburetor warmed up, I spent a lot of time listening to their conversation about every aspect of the car. Having never participated in a used car purchase before, I realized that I'd likely be swindled pretty easily. When dealing with things that cost thousands of dollars, it's best to have some skepticism. This guy though, he was a super stand up guy and he and this car belonged together. Plus, as we discovered, him and JMZ had the same birthday. It had to be fate.

Toy Soldiers

Over the last few nights, Lilly and Chris have been educating me on cheesy 80s soft rock with our/their shared Spotify playlist. They're dropping hits I didn't even know I knew and none of us have been very productive during our shared late nights. "At This Moment," Billy Vera & The Beaters. "You and I," Eddie Rabbitt and Crystal Gale. All this technology and we can't karaoke with friends from our bedrooms. Someone get on that.

If you wanna get crazy, jump in and add on to 80s soft rock madness. It's an open playlist. Lilly is also gonna educate me with a Jheri curl playlist that I'm already excited about. Shalamar, DeBarge, Kashif, I'm coming for you. Also I learned that "All Cried Out" is not really an Allure track. I can't get into the original, like at all. Sometimes you just have to go with what got you here you know?

I don't even know what to think about this Richard Aoki thing. Scott Kurashige, American culture professor and director of APIA Studies at Michigan had this post in response, "My Initial Thoughts on the Richard Aoki Controversy." Was he or wasn't he? This is like finding out Grace Lee Boggs killed ____. (I have to blank it as typing the name would probably be blasphemous.)

I'm working my way through Mike Davis' City of Quartz again. I think I first read it ten years or so ago, upon Mary's recommendation. It stuck with me a lot, and it led me to read a lot of LA-based non-fiction. City of Quartz mostly deals with who controlled Los Angeles and traces the evolution of power in the city -- and how the city separates the haves and have nots. It's really great. I happened to be thinking about the book while up in SF and not five minutes later we walked by a big pile of giveaways on the corner and there it was. Right on top. "No fucking way," I thought. "I have powers!" Normally I'd be loathe to take a book off the street like that but this was a case of kismet.

This leads me to believe that I should read Kurashige's The Shifting Grounds of Race: Black and Japanese Americans in the Making of Multiethnic Los Angeles. It could be dry as shit but we're about to find out. Actually I don't mind a little dry, it might be good among all this fluffy fiction I've been taking in.

Also, my go to torrent site went down. This is curtailing my culture consumption by the nth degree. Especially books. Goodness where am I going to get those books! My night shift nursing friend texted me at three in the morning (she reads a lot at work): "Deliveroid is down, what do we do?!" Panic, that's what we do. I can't go back to buying all my books, I just can't. Yes I know this attitude is in direct opposition to my writing career. Still, I believe data wants to be free. Can't fight the bytes.

Summer's End

This is already a problem, I know. @relationships is this Twitter account I started following a few weeks ago and it just has the best/worst things to say about well, relationships. I have no idea who runs it, what this is for, but me and almost 400,000 other people can't be wrong. I like to imagine this is stuff I'd say to girls, or stuff they've already said to me. Or just advice I'd like to dole out.

A few of my faves:

• "I know we're not dating, but whenever I see someone else flirting with you, I want to shoot them in the face!"
• "He saw you. He met you. He wanted you. He liked you. He chased you. He had you. He got bored at you. He left you. He broke you."
• "Promises: we break them. Memories: they break us."

It all makes a nice companion/counterpoint to the Helen Gurley Brown obits that have been going around.

"Helen Gurley Brown, or H.G.B. as she's known in the Cosmo universe, is the patron saint of Cosmopolitan's sex-centric brand of female empowerment. The author of the then-scandalous self-help book 'Sex and the Single Girl' -- which advised women on how to better enjoy their jobs, relationships and bodies -- Brown re-branded the magazine with her frank, sexy tone in 1965, when most women's magazines were focused on family and home economics."
-How Cosmo Conquered the World-

Over the weekend one of my favorite people in the whole wide world came back to visit San Diego. She used to live here maybe seven years ago. The story of how she met AMR and Henry is a great one. In fact, I need to record AMR telling it, in his inestimable way, and then preserve the video for eternity. It involves my craptastic Old Navy Oregon tee, some random girl's boobs, and lots of squishing. I wasn't even there to witness, probably because I was at home dealing with some pre-breakup post-makeup soon-let's-breakup almost-not-yet-makeup stuff. Definitely that's what I was doing.

The ensuing summer was a great time to be in San Diego. Gems was leaving in a few short months so we had limited time to make the most of it. Everyone was single, everyone was ready to play, and it was late nights and fun times on dance floors everywhere. I forgot who took the credit for bringing Gems in. This was like a big deal then. Getting the credit for bringing a person in. Whichever of you it was, AMR or Henry, great job!

Now that I think about it, that was probably the last classic San Diego summer, ending our 2003-2005 run, before everyone split and moved away. #nostalgiaultra. The other night we drove out past Belmont Park's Big Dipper roller coaster, to Gem's old house on Mission Bay. The whole place was dark but we analyzed the exterior for changes and tried to figure out what kind of people lived there now. Certainly they were no naughty nurses, or night owls. We sat in the car, blasting a few Hall and Oates tracks and then gave it up one final time, fists in the air.

Closure.

Roadmap to the Future

The other day my mom asked me about Mitt Romney. What he was about, how he differed from Obama, etc. I gave her a semi-explanation but basically said, "You're probably pro-Romney." Generally I just assume any older Chinese person is Republican. Or maybe that's just the Chinese parents we grew up around. Del Mar, say hey!

In all the parties my mom has hosted here, I can only recall a few dinner conversations that have even touched on politics. During one of them, my mom's good friend was trying to explain why everyone had to register and vote for Obama. Hearing her rail against Romney was surprising.

Later I asked her if her pleas generally fell upon deaf ears. She said, "probably."

This was an interesting article about Paul Ryan, Romney's newly selected running mate. It's mainly about Ryan's economic theories and his rise to prominence in the Republican party. I took one of those "which are you" quizzes awhile back and Ryan came up as my match. That, plus his (prior) allegiance to Ayn Rand, made me pay attention to him. Of course I'm not a Republican but I try to read as much as possible of the other side, especially on the economics stuff, in which I'm fundamentally conservative. Reading all of Rands' books will do that to you.

What Ryan espouses is pretty drastic though. Privatization of Social Security, vouchers for Medicare and Medicaid, a government that is drastically scaled back. And the military. There's always the military. Since 2001, "annual defense spending has risen more than a hundred per cent...and it already constitutes more than half of all discretionary government spending." Anyone surprised by this?

"In practical terms it would make most of what the federal government does -- from maintaining infrastructure to air-traffic control, environmental regulation, and crime fighting -- unaffordable. Ryan's path to prosperity, in other words, is a path that ends with the federal government spending its money on health care, Social Security, and the military, and little else."
-Call That A Budget?-

I keep trying to dig into what I really think about the ideological gap between the Republican and Democratic ways of handling money. I tend to start with what rules I'd impart on my children. Am I responsible for their financial well being? For how long? What legislation would I pass to keep them accountable? For some reason though, I'm pretty sure using the parent/child analogy isn't helpful in thinking about national economics. So I should probably not try to model it that way.

In the 1990s, Charles Barkley's grandmother once admonished him for supporting the Republicans. She said that only rich people were Republican. His reply was that he WAS rich. (Barkley is pro-Obama now.) That's basically how it lines up. If you've got money -- or are ultra-religious -- you're Republican. If you're not, then you're a Democrat. Obviously it's not that simple but that's the two dichotomies. It's rare to meet people who don't vote according to their financial status/background. Which makes sense I guess. Even if that seems kind of predictable.

Really, I think it just comes down to "earn" and whether you think those quotation marks are necessary. Younger Randian me would have knee-jerk said, "Nope, those aren't necessary." But older me knows better. What I don't know is what older me thinks about other stuff because I'd put all that aside for awhile. I guess it's a good time to start figuring that shit out again.

"Ryan told me that the class of Republicans elected in 2010 was transformational. 'Usually, you get local career politicians who want to be national career politicians,' he said. 'They’re more cautious. They’re more risk-averse. They’re more focused on just reelection.' He went on, 'This crop of people who came up are doctors and dentists and small-business people and roofers and D.A.s. They’re not here for careers -- they’re here for causes."
-Fussbudget: How Paul Ryan captured the G.O.P.-

Another thing that caught my eye was Ryan's proposed ten year budget, which amounted to only 70+ pages. That's novella length. I mean, it's probably dense as hell but I would've thought that planning our nation's fiscal future would take a lot more ink. Throw that sucker up on Amazon for 99 cents Paul, I'll download it.

Last Saturday my mom pulled up to the driveway in a newly purchased Lexus GS 350. She'd been talking about getting another car for awhile now and after seemingly endless consultation with friends and family -- I think George gets her roundabout decision making process from my mother -- she decided to eschew a used car (my recommendation) for a new one.

My mom was positively giddy as it's the only car she's ever chosen, because my dad always used to pick our cars. I doubt she'll be this happy ever again, until there's a grandchild presented to her. I know George inherited this giddiness from my mom because she got a new bike recently. Take a look at this smile on George's face from her big day and that's exactly what my mom looked like last weekend. Now we are a family of go-getters. My mom in her Lexus, George on her bike, and me on whatever they aren't using.

In related news, I am now free to drive anywhere/anytime I want because we are a two car family again. Thanks for caring about me during this joyous time, you know who you are. Who you are.

My mom has also declared that nobody else can drive her car. Except maybe family. It's just too pretty and precious. We spent an afternoon shuttling between Walmart, Costco, and Target looking for the right sized floor mats. Keep in mind that the car already comes with factory perfect ones. My mom just wants an extra layer of plastic protection. I took the opportunity to explain to her what O.C.D. was. She's been constantly using that acronym ever since. "Is this OCD? Is X's mom OCD? What else is OCD?"

All of it Mom, you've made us all OCD. For life.

Funky For You

I hate silence. It doesn't work for me. Yet I often find myself surrounded by silent people. This is a problem. In this article, "On Shutting Up," the author says that he used to think "awkward people beget awkward silences." Um, isn't this what silences are? Awkwardness? The article concludes with the sentiment that maybe silence is a beautiful thing. However I'll go ahead and contend that no, it is not a beautiful thing.

Perhaps it's anxiety. I'd never thought about it that way. Are silent people less anxious about social situations because they just don't care about the dead space in-between? Don't they see how boring they are? Why are you taking up this wonderful seat across from me if you're just going to sit there like an inanimate object? Nothing is worse than someone who insists on being in the middle yet contributes nothing. We used to have a term for this. I forgot what it was.

Hum, this might be a corollary to my 2011 declaration about attempting to talk to non-talkative guys. Sometimes I'll play a game where I resolve to not say anything until the other person does. Most of the time I lose. I can't handle the silence!

Next social event I'm going to just sit there and not saying. Actually wait, I've done this before. At horrible wedding dinners. Actually have I ever been to a wedding where the wedding dinner was enjoyable? With strangers I mean. I don't think so. Nobody is invested to talk to anyone around them because you'll never see each other again and really, you're just a table of one-offs. Then I just put my head down and eat my food and wait for the coffee to arrive. And I go wash my hands a lot.

Forget it. The move is just to pull out my iPhone next time and play a podcast. That will be a statement. "I'm comfortable with silence, very comfortable."

"Before virtually every social encounter I have, I anticipate the conversation rather obsessively. What should or shouldn’t I ask this person? What might they like to know about me? Do I come off as cocky, naïve, or neurotic? (Probably.) It’s both exciting and unnerving, because I feel as though I arrive prepared. But I’m also left disappointed when an encounter falls flat. In overthinking the encounter, I leave no room to be surprised."
-On Shutting Up-

Actually I'm not that fond of chatterboxes either. I guess it's just the lesser of two evils. Here's the rule of thumb to determine if people call you a Chatty Kathy behind your back: are you entertaining? Some people have a lot to say but because of the way they do it, it's boring as all hell. They could tell me about their incredible Mars landing and how they got to meet aliens there and back. Boring.

Other people will talk about their day but put just the right spin on things to make it amusing and worth the time. Please, when in doubt, opt to be amusing. Or silent.

Annus Mirabilis

Spent my weekend with Ren McCormack, the gang of K-Town, John Keats, and a murderers' row of murderers. So much can happen when you just stay in and watch/read things. Back in May, I went to see a SD Junior Theater production of Peter Pan that exceeded all expectations. I vowed that if I was in town when they did Footloose, I would have to go. Well, on Friday I dragged L with me and we had a great time. Laughing.

A good way to ruin Footloose is to cast the most awkard moving Ren possible, and then to have hilarious dance routines, most likely choreographed by someone way out of touch with current trends. And when the underage girls are flouncing around with too short skirts in front of an audience of parents and children, it just gets fantastically uncomfortable. Also most of the second half was accompanied by a hip hop soundtrack blasting through from the wedding party situated next door. T-Pain and Reverend Shaw's sermons don't mix that well. Needless to say, we'll be back for the Junior Theater's next production.

Also, I went to the movies four times last week. Two near midnight showings for action flicks and then a couple of indie romantic comedies. That might be a new record for me. In order for romantic comedies to work, the main actress has to be very compelling and both Safety Not Guaranteed and Ruby Sparks work because of their leads. Aubrey Plaza is the embodiment of seductive sarcasm and Zoe Kazan out-Zooeys Zooey Deschanel. Of the two, Ruby Sparks is much better, but the premise for Safety Not Guaranteed is both based on a true story and brilliant. "Wanted: Somebody to go back in time with me. This is not a joke. You'll get paid after we get back. Must bring your own weapons. I have only done this once before. Safety not guaranteed."

In Ruby Sparks, Paul Dano literally invents his own Manic Pixie Dream Girl and while it's impossible to not be cognisant of this trope, it's also impossible to resist. I mean, MPDG is what guys like me live for. Even if it's unoriginal and a real life impossibility. "Too many guys think I'm a concept, or I complete them, or I'm gonna make them alive." Every time I watch one of these movies I wonder what kind of Manic Pixie Dream Girl I'd write. She'd be brunette, of course...

Actually, Ruby Sparks is sort of about tearing down the myth of a dream girl. Think a literary Mannequin. I'm almost afraid to watch it again because I don't want to notice its faults and right now I can't think of a single thing I would have changed about the movie. As it turns out, writer/star Zoe Kazan is the granddaughter of Elia Kazan, director of On the Waterfront, A Streetcar Named Desire, East of Eden. Damned if cinematic prowess isn't inherited. There's a scene at the end of Ruby Sparks that is just so well acted and written. Zoe Kazan is my hero.

And then there's Bright Star, which I've had waiting in its red Netflix envelope for too many months. I use my Netflix queue as "to be watched" list and most of the time I don't recall what made me stick something on it. With Bright Star I suspect it's because I heard it was Abbie Cornish's best work and somehow that made it matriculate to the top of my queue. Or maybe it was because she once dated Ryan Phillippe, and that somehow made me want to watch her movies? Geezes I hope that's not the reason.

During most of Bright Star, which is slow paced but effective, I was Googling away to get some historical background on John Keats and Fanny Brawne. They suffered from a great love and Keats' ineligibility to marry Brawne because he had no name and no money. Of course, Keats is now regarded as one of the greatest poets that lived but during his lifetime, it was estimated that his three books of poetry sold about two hundred total copies.

Keats had a cadre of friends and admirers that financially supported him and while they recognized his brilliance and tirelessly promoted him, that didn't help much when it came to the reality of his social status. The strangest thing about Bright Star was how it was just so matter of fact that Keats and Brawne would not be together. This was not a story about a love that conquered all. If anything, their love was restrained beyond belief and it wasn't until he was near death -- Keats died at twenty-five -- that they were engaged.

At the beginning of the year, I read Dan Simmons' Hyperion, which references Keats many times over, and is, in fact, titled after Keats' poem. The rest of the Hyperion Cantos are named after another of his poems, Endymion. It made me want to give Keats' poetry a try but I don't have the patience to decipher Ode to a Nightingale nor the inclination to slog through the rest of his work. There was a time I would have, but I think I've lost my interest in stanzas and meters. Plus it's impossible to read this stuff without someone explaining it to you.


Somehow this has turned into a review post. Which is not what I intended. While I'm here though, Bill James' Public Crime is much recommended. If you like murders and serial killers, this is the book for you. Bill James is famous as the father of sabermetrics -- the inspiration behind Moneyball -- and this has just been his side obsession. If you can count reading hundreds of true crime novels and becoming an expert on the subject as "just a side thing."

It goes to prove that if you care about something, you should obsess over it.

Didn't We Almost Have It All

So I'm listening to a podcast with Chuck Klosterman and Alex Pappademas. Between the two of them they've profiled many of the biggest celebrities. During this podcast they talk about whether hanging out with a celebrity for a few days, with the limited access that a profiler receives, allows you to get an accurate sense of who that person is.

Klosterman feels like all the journalist gets is a glimpse of what the celebrity is like, but only filtered through their goals and what they're trying to convey through participating in the profile. (Promotion for a new project, 90% of the time.) Pappademas feels like two days is enough to get a pretty good idea of the person in question.

It made me think about how there are lots of people I've met and hung out with -- especially in the last few years -- that have fallen into the category of "two days or less." Given that time table, assuming you're hanging out semi-alone and engaged in constant conversation, I think it's very possible to know who a person is. At least building upon that initial feeling and then assessing what that person is about.

Some people are better at hiding themselves than others, and sure you're only seeing them in limited situations, but I don't think it's a reach to say that after two full days of being around someone, you can form an accurate feel for them.

But I'm often too trusting of my instincts, so I could be way off. I sure would like to some celebrity profiles though. Maybe I'll just start with normal people, and profile them.

• Pappademas on Robert Pattinson (2009) and The Situation (2010)
• Klosterman on Britney Spears (2008) and Jonathan Franzen (2010)

Another Grantland podcast I was listening to suggested the idea of a media fitness coach. You know how when you hit a certain point, or start just falling behind, you're just not with it anymore? Of course you do!

A lot of people complain about not having the time to keep up with music, movies, books, etc. So just like when you fall behind in fitness, you're able to hire a coach, Wildes and Jacoby discuss the idea of hiring someone to come and tell you about what's going on in the world of (pop) culture. If you're consistently lost when people around you are talking about Game of Thrones, Frank Ocean, or Fifty Shades of Grey, your weekly culture fitness coach is there to help.

Now the coach's job isn't to make you a cultural savant, but they'll direct you and train you into someone who can talk the talk at a basic level. Why would you pay for this service? Because it would be faster than learning it on your own. Plus, with a full time job, a family, and who knows what else, this is the most efficient way to kind of stay up on things. Or I guess you could just forget about all that and have your friends call you a fuddy-duddy behind your back. Or to your face.

Most of all I want this idea to take off because I would like to be a media fitness coach. I'll tell you what to read, watch to watch, what to listen to, and compile a nice digest of all such things. Plus I'll articulate why this is important and why it's worth your time. That's the important add-on, a reason to consume. You'd pay for that right?

I mean, maybe the people around you already produce this service, but what if your peers aren't any more with it than you are? I rely on a network of friends, Internet sites, and Twitter to keep me semi-current, but there's a level that I can't even reach of what to know. Like, I'd enjoy the services of a literary fitness coach, or a what's going on in modern art fitness coach, or a politics coach. Otherwise my culture muscles will just atrophy away!

Live if you really want to

Hello world, what a week I'm having. I've been so so productive. Starting just two days ago I re-did all my passwords, starting from the throwaway stuff to the top level items. You gotta change your passwords at least once a year and although I'm a bit late, I suddenly got in a panic that I would be hacked soon. No mas!

Then in a flurry of activity I committed to paying actual rent in New York -- for a two or three month span at least -- and that means I have to go now. Heat or no heat, I'll be in New York by September. That will also coincide nicely with some friends arriving (or re-arriving) to New York so even though the summer is fading away, nothing is better than fall in the city right? I am already saying things like "Man, September and October went by so fast!"

And on things checked off the to-do list, you can't discount the back and forth I've been having with my Mom about work stuff, which has resulted in a flaring up of our old dynamic. The one where I tell her not to worry and she tells me she won't. Yet that just increases her worries. "Why is Jon not stressed out about this? I must go find out!" And then we both lose our patience and go sliding into useless anger. I don't believe in stress alright?

They say that you can tell how well a guy will treat his girlfriend by how he treats his mother. Well, if this is any indication, nobody should ever date me. When I argue, I like to go straight for the throat. If I'm gonna get all riled up about it why bother trying to ram through understanding? Go for the win, go for the gold, that is the American way.

A few months ago I instituted a "just email it to me" policy for my mom regarding work reminders. She's too used to coming when I'm in the middle of something and telling me something she just thought about. Only instead of a task like "take out the garbage," this could actually be relevant. And since I'm buried in something, I forget because I'm not paying attention and that leads to dramatics soon after.

The lesson here is that sometimes, even with family, email is the answer. Actually, email is almost always the answer. This is why "must have Gmail" is (always and still) on my dating requirements list.

Wednesday and Thursday I spent playing basketball and re-learning WordPress. What I discovered from the last time I mucked around with backend WP is that it's just as simple/hard as I recall. It's come a long way since 2005-ish though.

I sang the praises of Jessica Hische the other day, and indeed she's inspiring, but it was watching the video of a talk she gave that really got through to me. In the talk she counsels her fellow designers to just "grab the reins and fucking do it," in regards to learning the HTML/CSS/Javascript stuff they need.

You don't need to master coding, but learn as much as you can and don't be lazy. Even if it takes three weeks, once you get the basics down, you'll build from there. Then if you need to bring in the professionals, go for it. (In fact her philosophy is to always use the professionals.) But keep your skills increasing and eventually you'll D.I.Y.

Technically I've been mucking around with copy and paste HTML for over a decade. I've gotten better but I still can't do anything from scratch. Even if I learned one tag per week, I'd have mastered HTML by now if I had taken the time out to properly learn it versus just slap shit together over and over. It's about efficiency. I can do a site, but it'll take me ten times longer than someone who knows exactly what to get into.

I think this "grab the reins and fucking do it" applies to everything else pretty much. Finding someone else to do it for you is hit-or-miss. When in doubt, just learn it. That goes across the board. Except for handyman work. I'm still outsourcing that. Dirt is gross.

Jessica also talked about how college is supposed to instill the desire to learn. Yes it's most often perverted into "get knowledge, go out and make shit," but fundamentally college is about learning to love learning. The joy of it. I'm pretty sure nobody actually did that. Tell me if your college experience was different. By junior year people are generally locked in and no longer taking credit courses about dinosaurs and cultural anthropology.

Part of the reason I left Michigan with a semester left was because I'd lost all interest in what I was supposed to be studying -- philosophy. Most of my time was spent in the computer lab cutting dance show videos, fiddling around with websites, doodling with Photoshop and Illustrator. It didn't occur to me that I wanted to do these things at any high level so I just learned enough to make do. Instead I should have just gravitated toward taking some of those classes. Or better yet, screw the classes and just learn it, because that's one thing you can definitely learn on your own: computer stuff.

Another part of Jessica's ethos is that "the work you do while you procrastinate is probably the work you should be doing for the rest of your life." While I don't totally agree, there is a great point in there. Chase projects that you like to do, especially if you're in the position of not being forced to monetize them. Shit you actually enjoy doing will be of higher quality, even if not on the bottom line.

This is different than "do what you love" I think. Everyone would do what they love, duh. But sometimes you love it because you don't have to do it. I think she's talking about just doing what you enjoy, even if it doesn't make money. The money, or acclaim, will come. That's what I got out of researching Jessica anyway.

I've also decided to stop caring if my hyphens (mosty for compound words) are in the right place. Who cares! No longer will I live under the tyranny of Merriam-Webster. It's my party and I'll hyphen if I want to, hyphen if I want to.

The other part of the reason I left college early was because I never went to class and I was too into having fun instead of being responsible. Oops, $120K, down the drain.