Sam's

When I'm depressed, nothing can help me if I'm not willing to be helped — not drugs, not people, not time — nothing. Depression can create or consume; it can ignite or extinguish. The only way to overcome is to choose to do so. Only one person can fight depression: the person suffering from it.

Others can help, but only if I'm willing to let them; words can help, but only if I'm willing to listen; drugs can help, but only if I'm willing to take them; time can help, but only if I'm willing to let it pass, not just pass me by.

It's a strange thing to have such a keen awareness about something, especially concerning myself, yet be so baffled by it. It's almost beyond comprehension. It's beyond my control, but it's not beyond my grasp.

I've reengaged so many times that it's hard to have anything but doubt regarding this time; however, I'm choosing to view my efforts with hope. There is no reason why it might not work this time and there is a damned good reason why it might:

I'm willing.

Last week Apple introduced several new things related to education including iBooks textbooks, iBooks Author, and iTunes U (for all entities, not just colleges).

All of these are significant, and the potential for these tools is exciting. The video they presented (7:21) at their event does a good job of illustrating why what they are doing is important to them and for students and teachers. Something one of the educators they interviewed said stuck with me:

There is no reason today to assume that kids have to use the same tools they did in 1950; in fact, to do so is to prepare them for a world that's already passed.

Six decades is obvious, but I would say tools one decade old are easily too far behind. To not take advantage of the newest tools possible is to leave kids behind, in part because it affords new ways of engaging, interacting, and ultimately learning. If you do any kind of work that deals remotely with using computers, it is imperative that you know how to stay current. What is cutting edge today will be commonplace five years from now (remember, the iPhone was introduced in 2007, and the iPad in 2010).

To me, part of learning is being able to take new things — information, tools, people, ideas — and integrate them into your life or work. To allow students to use technology that is outdated is to set them up for failure down the road. It's possible that Apple will actually alleviate some of this by continuing to make iDevices ever easier to use, but they will keep changing. Students must be prepared by being used to the pace of change.

Technology plays a more important part in our lives every day and this is a trend that will only continue, even accelerate. A child entering kindergarten today has never known a world without iPhones in it. High school freshmen do not remember the introduction of the iPod. These are not novelties or marvels to them, they are simply a thread in the fabric of modern life. To pretend otherwise is to do them a disservice.

As I know more of mankind, I expect less of them, and am ready now to call a man a good man, upon easier terms than I was formerly.

— Samuel Johnson

It sometimes seems as though life can become defined by expectations — whether it is what you expect of yourself, of others, or what others might expect of you. When you think about it, most expectations are unrealistic, because you are making an assumption about at least one thing that you either do not control or do not fully understand. Granted, it may be reasonable to expect a minimum of someone, but that's not what I'm getting at. What interests me are the unspoken goals we give ourselves and others that drive our decisions, our thoughts, our actions, and ultimately our lives.

Why do we allow our lives to be dictated by such an invisible force? What is to be gained by it? What does it matter if an expectation is met or not?

You may have heard the expression "it is what it is" at some point. Well, unless you are lucky enough to live completely free of expectations, that's not the case. Everything is given context by someone because it is either the same as or different than what they wanted, predicted, desired, needed, or relied upon happening. It is only human to look to the future and the past, but I find it bizarre that we perpetuate this vicious cycle of putting unnecessary weight on almost everything we do.

For some, expectations are an excellent motivator. They strive to meet them, push beyond them, and create ever more challenging scenarios in which to put themselves. Others are crippled by expectations. Pessimism and cynicism alone do not account for this. The weight we give this pressure to make something happen is so heavy that it can prevent attempts at meeting expectations from even being made.

Perhaps the most common occurrence of expectations playing a role in how things happen is in perfectionism. Attempting to attain perfection is a completely self-defeating goal. Yet, once this pattern becomes ingrained as a habit, it's almost impossible to see the world in any other way. Anything short of the very best, or a little better, seems unacceptable. "Failure is not an option." It's bullshit.

There is so much beauty in what lies outside of perfection. Art is in some ways the very antithesis of this idea: denying judgement, achieving a solitary existence outside of what anyone thinks it ought to be. When something stands completely on its own, regardless of influence, it becomes something that cannot be tainted by these outside forces.

Art doesn't give a fuck if you approve of it; it doesn't spare a thought as to whether or not it is good enough; it doesn't question its motives or its impact. Art simply is. Why should we expect anything different of ourselves?

Congress, noun.
1. the legislature of the United States government[...]
4. the act of sexual procreation[...]

Congress is trying to fuck ruin the Internet as we know it, unwittingly or not.

I use the Internet every single day. I truly believe it is one of mankind's single greatest inventions, because it allows for such free, open communication and expression. It interconnects billions of people in a way that almost no other thing on Earth can. What is more important than that?

The Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect-IP Act would fundamentally change the way the Internet behaves in the United States. It would cripple parts of our economy and society. Unwittingly or not, this cannot happen. I am not alone in this belief:

• Wikipedia is protesting by blocking basically every English page on the site today (with the exceptions of the SOPA and PIPA pages).

• The Electronic Frontier Foundation describes how PIPA and SOPA violate White House principles supporting free speech and innovation.

• Google has a list of those in opposition of the bills and a nice summary about why "Members of Congress are trying to do the right thing by going after pirates and counterfeiters but SOPA and PIPA are the wrong way to do it."

Please do your part to prevent these bills (or anything like them) from becoming laws. Write your congressperson or send a message to your senators; petition the White House (they listen). Learn as much as you can stand to about these bills; tell your friends and family why it is important to have our voice heard and encourage them to do the same, as I'm urging you.

Mr. Daisey and the Apple Factory, which was originally titled Where Your Crap Comes From, is a monologue adapted for radio from Mike Daisey's The Agony and Ecstacy of Steve Jobs. It explores his visit to Shenzhen, China and his revelations about the origins of his iDevices.

In Against Nostalgia, an op-ed published the day after Steve Jobs' death, Mr. Daisey relays this experience:

I have traveled to southern China and interviewed workers employed in the production of electronics. I spoke with a man whose right hand was permanently curled into a claw from being smashed in a metal press at Foxconn, where he worked assembling Apple laptops and iPads. I showed him my iPad, and he gasped because he’d never seen one turned on. He stroked the screen and marveled at the icons sliding back and forth, the Apple attention to detail in every pixel. He told my translator, “It’s a kind of magic.”

Mr. Jobs’s magic has its costs.

This unearthing of what I knew to be true but pretended didn't exist is a shock. The existential angst it produces is almost incomprehensible — that this is a story being told about people on the same planet boggles the mind.

It seems Apple is trying to help improve this situation, but it is such a giant mountain to climb. The lack of basic human rights these Chinese citizens have is appaling, yet it seems many of them are grateful for the opportunity. Or maybe we just tell ourselves that.

After all, magic, like life, is merely an illusion.

Back when SOPA and PIPA were first becoming part of public consciousness, I sent an email to my representative in Washington, D.C. expressing my disapproval of the bill, and stated quite plainly that if it were to come to a vote and she supported it, I would not be voting for her, were she to seek reelection. Well, I finally got a response of what I assume is a form letter. At least I know it got through, but I doubt my representative ever saw it herself. Regardless, I felt compelled to rattle off a response:

Congresswoman Granger,

I appreciate your email, and hope you do understand my concerns about SOPA. I would like to elaborate on why it is not something that can be passed and strike the right balance.

While combatting counterfeit goods is important, DNS blocking is not the way to fight piracy of any kind. Corporations, media outlets, and even individual citizens should not gain the ability to block websites of any kind by simply claiming a copyright or trademark infringement. Physical goods should be dealt with in the physical realm, tracked down, and confiscated. Fundamentally changing the way the Internet behaves will not solve these or any other problems, and will introduce violations of our rights of free speech and fair use.

The Internet cannot be regulated; it is not something that can be owned. The best way for purveyors of any good to protect their properties, intellectual and otherwise, is to provide legitimate means to obtain them via official channels, and make sure that they are easier to use than the pirated alternatives and as reasonably priced as possible. I believe this would be what some like to hold up as the free market at work. I believe in regulation, and think we should have more for sectors like finance, but not when it is being used to aid business models that are outdated.

I've never pirated music, because it is not worth the hassle — it is easier to use iTunes. As a creator myself, I never want to acquire things illicitly, and I condemn those who do so simply to save money. But when those offering products and services refuse to make their wares accessible in a sane way, I encourage those who can stomach piracy to do so, because poor business execution and management should not be rewarded.

It is not the job of you or any of your colleagues to help businesses make money; it is your job to keep hurdles out of the way that prevent legitimate business from being conducted, and to ensure that the consumer is treated fairly under the law. SOPA does not even begin to accomplish this, and as such should not be considered, even in an altered form.

I use Reeder to subscribe to 41 RSS feeds.
I follow 199 Twitter accounts.
I follow 52 Tumblr accounts.
I follow 21 Stellar accounts.

I don't read all of these things all of the time, but I do read most of them most of the time. If I see something talked about or linked to more than once, I know it's probably worth checking out. If it's long, I might save it for later using Instapaper or Reading List. A lot of these are for my entertainment, and the a majority of the news I read is tech related, skewed toward Apple.

I have the AP Mobile app, which I use solely to receive breaking news via push notification. If there's a huge international story, I know about it. If there's an ongoing story, they only share the most vital happenings, not pestering me with minutia.

I receive the Messenger Update emails, which I skim, and rarely click through. I hear about the most interesting things in Wise County from Joe or my family. I don't read the paper. I sometimes haphazardly stumble across the news on television and am usually reminded why it is rarely intentional...

In 2011 I made a couple of improvements to my life;
in 2012 I intend to maintain these improvements:

Awfully Sugary Sweets

Sometime in the fall of last year, my mom shared a segment with me from the Dr. Oz show about the amount of added sugar the average American consumes on a daily basis. He laid out spoons of sugar, showing in a a very concrete, visual form how much of this stuff we pour into our bodies every single day (22 teaspoons — we should have less than 10).

I was horrified. I know I was a bit worse than the average American, even though I'd never tracked my intake. Between carbonated beverages, coffee, tea, chocolate, breakfast cereals, desserts and snacks in general, I was overloading on sweets without even being aware of it.

So, with this newfound awareness, I began to slowly cut back. Instead of two or three teaspoons of sugar in my tea, I only use one. If I do have dessert or sweet snacks, I only have one serving. I drink water, sugar-free mochas, and occasionally juice.

Now my goal is to have only one sweet thing per day. If I want a DrPepper for lunch, that's it for that day. Oftentimes I will put it off until evening so I can have a cup of hot tea sweetened before bed. Sometimes I just don't have sugar beyond what occurs naturally in foods like fruits, vegetables, breads, etc.

The sweets I do have are wonderful, because they are more of a treat now. It was difficult at first to give up the nectar, which is why I made a gradual change rather than a drastic one, but it is now simply part of my diet (long-term habit, not short-term fix).

Running Into Shape

During the same autumn time period, my mother had surgery on her neck. After several weeks of recuperation, it was time for her to begin exercising some, and she asked if I would walk with her sometimes. I figured it couldn't hurt anything, and I'd be helping her. I knew it would be good for me, but I never imagined how good.

After walking with her on a few occasions, slowly building some muscles up and gaining a bit of endurance, I felt an urge that I could not recall having in quite some time: I wanted — née, needed — to run. So, I started.

I use an iPhone app called Runkeeper that keeps track of how far I run using GPS, tells me how fast I'm going, and gives cues for when to speed up and slow down based on the workout I select. I listen to music while I run. My favorite so far is the Social Network soundtrack.

In the month of November I ran and walked for a combined total of over thirty (30!) miles. Unfortunately, I came down with a nasty cold in early December, right about the time the weather took a turn for the chillier. So, I rested. Having had walking pneumonia once in my life was enough. When I get sick, I slow down until I get well.

Picking back up where I left off, three workouts back I set a personal best for pace, crossing the ten-minute-mile threshold for the first time on a particular workout (my goal was 10:30). I never thought I would be someone who would be able to just go run a couple of miles several times a week, but here I am, doing it. It feels great.

Weighing the Consequences

I've never been fat. All my life I've been blessed with an incredibly active metabolism, even when I was not eating very well or working out at all. But, in recent years I had packed on some extra pounds. I was still slim by American standards, but I was the thickest I'd ever been. It was such a slow and cumulative effect, that I barely even noticed. For years I weighed somewhere in the one-hundred-seventy-something range (I am 5' 11-1/2" tall).

So, when I noticed that I'd begun to lose some mass, my clothes were fitting somewhat looser, my torso was ever so slightly more defined, I decided to weigh myself. I weighed one hundred sixty pounds. It has easily been a decade since my weight was that low. I was a little freaked out.

Then it dawned on me: these things I'd been doing that have made me feel better, are making me healthier. I'm taking care of myself. For the first time in a long time, I care enough about myself to give thought to what goes into my body, what kind of shape it's in, and how this effects me mentally. For someone who has had incredibly low self-esteem, this is monumental. I'm proud of myself. I want to live, and live well.

Not Solving Again

On the way to a new year's party, I listened to a podcast about fresh starts and modest changes, resolving to skip new year's resolutions. I have had this belief for years, but this was a wonderful reminder. So, while I did share a new year's wish, I did not make any new resolutions.

This year, I simply intend to continue to take care of myself, learn new things about my health, and keep improving my quality of life, one bit at a time. I didn't need to start anything particular on the first day of January, it was just a nice time to reflect on the changes I'd already enacted, and realize that I can choose to make my life better any time I want. I had already begun a trajectory that was helpful, I just want to maintain that momentum.

Most changes of any import are not easy and take time. The hardest part is starting. Why not start now?

Life happens one moment at a time, whether we are aware of it or not. The pace we go from one state of being to another and our means of travel are merely perception. Things take place; feelings happen; moments occur. It's quite simple, really:

Row, row, row your boat, gently down the stream.
Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream.

Existence is but an illusion. What we see, feel, think, and do is all a matter of deciphering what we are given, then deciding what to do with it. We can choose to ignore our surroundings, embrace them, or flee; but reality cannot be escaped, only viewed from a different perspective.

Happiness cannot be achieved.

For me, happiness is not a goal — awareness is. Regardless of the situation, if I can truly be aware of myself and my environment, in that moment I am accomplishing my truest aim: living. If I am joyful or passionate, then that is what I want to express; if I'm sad or angry, I want to convey it. Emotional states are not failures; failure to make manifest my emotions is avoiding living (something I have done plenty).

This is the essense of why happiness is not achievable and is simply not a useful word anymore:

...by default when we aren’t rid­dled by sad­ness we say we are happy — but really it isn’t true and that’s why we feel like we are never quite happy enough, because we can’t sus­tain true feel­ings of hap­pi­ness for more than a few moments.

We live life reach­ing for those intox­i­cat­ing moments that are far and few between if we are very hon­est with ourselves.

If we spend our time trying to regain past feelings or realizing the future, it can be incredibly difficult for any single moment to be apparent to us. Seeking out happiness can be one of the most effective ways of ensuring its absence. Happiness can only be had in the moment, fleeting or not — it cannot be attained, merely experienced.

The future cannot be recreated.

I can neither change the past nor experience the future; however, I can both affect and receive the present.

This may seem impossible at times. I cannot have arrived where I am without having taken the steps I have; nor can I get somewhere without taking a single step first, now. It often seems that planning is necessary and having a memory is simply human, but for any of these memories or plans to have meaning, I must be able to experience them as I come across them, to live each moment as it arises.

I can both experience the past and change the future; however, I can only do either of these in the present.

Living gives life meaning.

I once had a fortune cookie containing this message:

Creating is the greatest proof of being alive.

I tend to agree with this. If you make art, that's proof; if you have children, that's proof; if you leave your mark on the world in any way by bring something into existence that wasn't before, that's proof.

Evidence alone does not define humanity, though; nor do pulse and breath alone make a person. It is that which cannot be measured, which cannot be put into words that makes us who we are. Call it what you want, but life does not exist in a vacuum, and it certainly defies definition by mere mortals, try as we might.

Perhaps this search is its own purpose; or maybe there is none. Either way, we continue to seek meaning. In doing so, we create meaning for ourselves, whether we are aware of it or not.

In life, in art, in food...

Does beauty exist in a vacuum, or only next to the grotesque?

Without mediocrity, without failure, does success still look like brilliance?

Does genius exist without idiots?

Does perception determine what everything means, or does everything determine our perception? Each of us defines our own reality by the events, feelings, people, and experiences that each of us encounters. Is all relative or absolute? The truth is, we are not even capable of determining whether our existence is one of absoluteness or of relativity.

Black and white is easier for the human mind to comprehend, but our world consists of hundreds of shades of gray and millions of colors. Do we limit ourselves by viewing the universe in a prism defined by our minds, rather than observing the full spectrum of the universe?