All posts tagged Life

  • June 15, 2008

    What I’ve Learned

    Accept personal accountability for every action that you take. Realise that you alone control your actions. To let any external factor dictate what you say or do is to cede control.

    Stasis is a dangerous state of being – a thousand times moreso for the young and unestablished. Be wary of those who are comfortable at a standstill. Adapt, adapt, adapt.

    Disdain what you cannot have. Greene wrote that ignoring these things is the best revenge. Look to the past: not to remember past hurts or bear grudges, but to examine and learn from the mistakes you have made. Do not dwell on those who have passed you by. Treat their choice as an opportunity to improve yourself for the next candidate.

    Create value. Build a new media presence.

    W.C. Fields advised to never trust a man who doesn’t drink. Conversely, be wary of those who regularly drink to excess without concern for the consequences of their actions, both personal and interpersonal. The regular abuse of alcohol is nothing more than a mechanism for ceding control of one’s accountability. Recognise that their choice is indicative of greater inner issues, and walk away.

    Create dialogues. It’s easy to contact almost anyone online. Use this to your advantage.

    Read. There is no new problem you can have that someone hasn’t already solved and wrote about in a book. Furthermore, the web has allowed an incredible amount of voices to emerge. Once you’ve sifted through the garbage, follow those whose voices speak to you.

    Write. If only for yourself. Keep a private blog and aim to write in it most days. If you haven’t already discovered the manner in which transcribing your thoughts allows you to view an issue with renewed clarity, you’ll be amazed. I can’t wait to look back at my private journal in ten years’ time. Hell, Ryan wrote that in six months’ time I’ll have discarded most of what I claim is important now. Through reading my archives, I’ve found that two months has been a consistent timeframe in which I’ve noticed enormous shifts in personal values.

    Listen. Don’t just wait for your turn to speak. Don’t interrupt. If most people are happy to fill a conversation with their words, indulge them.

    Communication is key. In a knowledge economy, income disparity exists primarily between those who can and cannot communicate. Read. Write. Learn to express your ideas clearly and succinctly. Communication is key.

    3 Comments / Writing /

  • May 18, 2008

    Taxing The Piss

    “We don’t think there’ll be a simple change-over, because we know many young people simply don’t like the taste of beer, or straight alcohol,” she said.

    “That will be a good thing if it delays some people from having their first introduction to alcohol, or if it puts them off drinking for a number of years. That will have a positive impact.”

    This is the dumbest bunch of bullshit I’ve read in a week. Can you say, “prolonging the inevitable”?

    The Australian Government intends to increase tax on “alcopops” by 70%, as this will supposedly “help to cut teenage drinking, because the so-called alcopops disguise the taste of alcohol”. Up until this point I’d been rather blasé about the issue, but the truckload of bullshit that Federal Health Minister Nicola Roxon wheeled into the discussion has prompted me to respond.

    People like to get drunk, regardless of age. It’s been glorified throughout history. It’s glorified everywhere you look in the media. Getting drunk is fun. More importantly, getting drunk teaches individuals to become responsible for their actions.

    My introduction to binge drinking occurred at around age 15, three years before our national legal drinking age allows a person to buy, drink or possess alcohol. It took me around a dozen violent vomit explosions and killer hangovers to realise that my actions, however fun they were at the time, had consequences. I learned that drinking a lot is fun, but it fucks you over. I learned personal accountability for my actions.

    My experience was not uncommon. Beginning binge drinking at the age of 15 was later than a lot of my peers at the time. It’s what teenagers do – experiment, participate in risk-taking behavior, and learn. There’s a small percentage who don’t learn, and who are thus plagued with problems throughout their lives. That’s another discussion entirely, though.

    “Cask wine is the drink of choice for someone who wants to get hammered,” Mr Smeaton told AAP.

    He’s not wrong. From experience, goon is the cheapest, most popular decision for the discerning binge drinker.

    “We need to increase the tax on things like full-strength beer, on cask wine, and on port.”

    Okay, now he’s wrong. Increasing taxes in an attempt to quell an activity that members of society knowingly participate in is an act of social engineering, in its simplest form. And it’s not going to work.

    People are going to binge drink, regardless. Alcopop sales will plummet, and both goon and straight alcoholic spirit sales will soar. And then they’ll attempt to implement further tax hikes, and then where does it end?

    Look. Taxing the shit out of an activity isn’t going to reduce its prevalence. I doubt that the popularity of binge drinking has increased in any other manner than proportionately. There’s more kids than ever, so there’s more of them that binge drink. This has gone on for generations. Hell, wasn’t rum used as a currency during colonial times?

    The act of binge drinking in ingrained into our national culture. Logically, we should teach kids how to handle alcohol from an early age. I don’t mean teaching as in the bullshit hour-a-week program that they probably still receive in early high school, as I did. I mean, really raise, address and discuss the issue with kids from a young age.

    Tax ain’t the answer. You can’t throw money at – or in this case, take money from – an issue to make it go away. The problem’s deeper than that, and it deserves a reasonable, rational response.

    2 Comments / Writing /

  • May 17, 2008

    An Autumn Storm

    I’d spent several hours interacting with media. A casual glance out the window at 3.45pm revealed a dark storm front approaching from the west.

    I pulled up the Bureau of Meteorology website. Their rainfall radars confirmed as much as I assumed: wet weather was on its way. I sent the link to my housemate, and went outside to take my dry clothes off the washing line.

    It took an hour for the ominous clouds to break. As soon as they did, I shut down my computer and stepped outside to sit and watch the show.

    After spending six hours immersed in the realm of technology, it was utterly disarming to witness the storm pass across and dump its contents on the earth. Ignore the manmade caricature of ‘mother nature’: this was the natural environment reacting to impossibly complex calculations and connections occurring in the atmosphere kilometres overhead.

    My thoughts turned to the nature of the technology-based world in which we live. Realistically, power surges resulting from electrical storms have the potential to destroy the entire interconnected network.

    In August 2005, I read in real-time what later became the Survival of New Orleans weblog. It consisted of live updates from the Directnic office in central New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina, and the resultant floods and disorder. It’s been preserved here for posterity, and it has its own Wikipedia article. It’s one of the most memorable blogs I’ve ever read, and it remains a fascinating study concerning human response to disaster.

    The storm that I watched in silent awe passed within twenty minutes. As the rain subsided, a rainbow was left in its wake. Lightning and thunder rolled around the suburb while the last remaining sunlight of the day lit the cloud mass. This was a truly exciting experience that I relished. I pity those who chose to remain inside, oblivious.

    Contrast the two shots below, which were taken at 4pm and 5pm respectively.

    Indooroopilly pre-storm, 17 May 2008 Indooroopilly post-storm, 17 May 2008

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  • May 14, 2008

    On Luck

    A Ben Corman post reminded me of an article I read within the last month – unfortunately, my Googling skills seem to have failed me, so I can’t link it.

    The article described a world-renowned musician at a dinner party. A woman introduced herself, and told him that she’d “give anything to play like him”. He immediately responded: “no, you wouldn’t”. She wouldn’t devote the thousands of hours of practice in social isolation to master the craft, as he had.

    People always want the quick fix; they don’t want to put in the required effort to be truly knowledgeable, or talented, or athletic, or popular, or rich, or all of those things. Logically, that’s why people are so enamoured with the notion of celebrity: so that they can live vicariously through the lives of the rich, the athletic, the talented – without having to change a damn thing about themselves.

    I hear that L word thrown around a lot, too. Sometimes at me, for the small achievements I’ve made and opportunities I’ve undertaken. But it’s not luck. Luck is very rarely the reason why intelligent people end up in enviable – ‘lucky’ – positions. It seems that “you’re lucky” is the automatic response to news of any significantly positive personal development.

    A fork in the road. You can spend the rest of your life wallowing in “could have”, “should have” and “would have”, wishing that you were someone else. Or you can take action, and work toward becoming the person you wish you could become.

    In life, there’s very rarely a quick fix. If you want to achieve something significant – something that’ll be perceived as ‘lucky’ by less motivated people – you have to work hard for it.

    So, which road will it be?

    No Comments / Writing /

  • May 3, 2008

    Confidence On Earth

    Hangovers have an unexpected effect on me. Instead of being crippled by the combined factors of apathy and malaise – the usual products of a hangover – I find that my creative output is greater after an alcohol-affected night.

    The sky doesn’t give a shit about humanity. It’ll keep turning, regardless. Our petty thoughts, opinions and relationships are beyond meaningless when considering the enormity of the earth. The human tendency to name these entities – sky, clouds, earth – seems laughable in this context. It’s human nature to attempt to understand, and then dismiss this knowledge as understood. How could we ever completely understand the nature of this planet’s natural environment?

    I don’t mean in terms of scientific fact.

    You look across a valley while driving on a highway. You stare into the vast expanse for a moment. And then you turn your head away, dismissing the opportunity to devote time and thought to the incomprehensible forces that have shaped this planet for x years. Again, applying the human concept of time to minuscule, incremental developments within the core of the very earth we stand on seems laughable.

    “To know yourself is to be yourself.” Sure, they’re cute lyrics, but they contain truth, too.

    Confidence is being able to devote the necessary time to making decisions that you’re comfortable with. Endeavouring to only act with confidence in one’s actions is admirable; the theory is much easier than the practice. Feelings of doubt regarding one’s actions and sense of self may be innately programmed; more likely, these feelings are shaped by our peers during our social development.

    Self-confidence lives in the now, and has everything to do with your philosophy. Really confident people do not need to speak about or flaunt how confident they are. Real confidence is unshakable and is not determined by any outside person, situation or event. You don’t need someone to boost your confidence, or to accomplish something to feel good about yourself. What you need is a philosophy that you can live by, and be proud of yourself for. When you are a good person, when you set out to achieve your dreams, when your morals raise above laws and politics, you will be self-confident. – Alex Shalman

    Tangentially unrelated thoughts incited by a beautiful, sunny Saturday afternoon that I’m soon to spend with my parents and brother.

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