I just want to get something out before it's Tuesday. Packing and moving all day. Tomorrow I'll Be all out. The place I'm moving into is still fairly dirty so it won't feel like home until it's gotten some serious love, and cleaning will be a little more time consuming since I'll already have my stuff there. I'll have to clean a section, move my stuff there, and then clean the section where my stuff was. Enjoying a book on tape on my way to and fro.
What is wealth? I sat by a stream in the pine barrens this last week and what I experienced there was more beautiful than any piece of artwork ever made. People pay millions of dollars for paintings by great masters, when far greater works of beauty can be found for free. Though we are destroying them, with our factories and shopping centers and housing developments.
What makes someone rich? I just read that according to some psychology research on happiness, being time rich is far more beneficial to happiness than being money rich. Meeting basic needs and such makes a big difference, but after that, you will be more wealthy exchanging extra money for extra time. I haven't looked in depth at that, but I assume you need to have something worthwhile you'll be spending the time on. Loved ones, being of service, creating and enjoying beauty.
More and more psychology is exonerating my viewpoint that the modern world is totally insane, and most people are chasing dreams they've been sold on TV that won't even make them happy, or will provide only the briefest of highs, before returning them to the dull hell they have created for themselves that they are constantly trying to ignore via our ubiquitous glowing little screens.
The bad news is that many people are going to die, cursing how much of their life they wasted. The good news is, it's possible to live a different way. There truly is deep beauty and joy and meaning to be found and had in life. It's not an impossible dream. But it is a challenging one.
Well, our stories of heroic quests wouldn't be very interesting if it was all super easy.
'night :-)
-Isaac
Monday, July 31, 2017
Sunday, July 23, 2017
Communication...From beyond the grave! wooOOOoooo...
When I say "grave" what I really mean is, from beyond time and space. Beyond space natch', because you are accessing this from whatever point in space you are at, via your interwebs, not my current space, as I'm typing this. Time... well I guess the same argument could be made for time, since you are reading this at your current time, rather than when I am posting this...
OK, now that I've thoroughly negated my whole point, what I'm trying to say is, because I won't have easy access to my blogger account until late on July 29th, I'm setting up my robot minions to post this automatically on Sunday, so there is a post happening next week (this week? last week? depends when you read this I guess.)
Since it hasn't happened yet, I'm just going to make a few predictions that are probably safe:
-TBJr's class is awesome, what the hey, how does he keep making every class so fresh and so clean (clean).
-I hate mosquitos and ticks so, so much.
-I am dirty, sweaty, and tired deep down to my brainstem and my bones.
-I feel like I'm home, and I'm so happy to get to swim in the paradisiacal little swimming hole surrounded by stately cedars, bright green sphagnum moss, cute little pitcher and honeydew plants, and the medicinal, magical tea-colored water of the pine-barrens.
-Tracker folks are big-hearted and awesome, I love them.
-Abducted by aliens, but they were cool.
OK, I still really really need to pack now, so I'm going to say good by, again.
From... Beyond the Space-Time
-IO
OK, now that I've thoroughly negated my whole point, what I'm trying to say is, because I won't have easy access to my blogger account until late on July 29th, I'm setting up my robot minions to post this automatically on Sunday, so there is a post happening next week (this week? last week? depends when you read this I guess.)
Since it hasn't happened yet, I'm just going to make a few predictions that are probably safe:
-TBJr's class is awesome, what the hey, how does he keep making every class so fresh and so clean (clean).
-I hate mosquitos and ticks so, so much.
-I am dirty, sweaty, and tired deep down to my brainstem and my bones.
-I feel like I'm home, and I'm so happy to get to swim in the paradisiacal little swimming hole surrounded by stately cedars, bright green sphagnum moss, cute little pitcher and honeydew plants, and the medicinal, magical tea-colored water of the pine-barrens.
-Tracker folks are big-hearted and awesome, I love them.
-Abducted by aliens, but they were cool.
OK, I still really really need to pack now, so I'm going to say good by, again.
From... Beyond the Space-Time
-IO
Wednesday, July 19, 2017
Cue Travel Montage Music
It's already late in the week. And it's about as late as it can get, for this post, as I'll be leaving for the pine barrens for a Tom Brown Jr. course in about an hour.
I would have thought, at some point, the summer would have gotten less busy for some significant length of time, but I think the days I spent studying for my tests were about as much break as I'm going to get. Maybe the week and a half that I'll in Fairfield Iowa will be more relaxed. Except, I've got lots of work that I have to do for the soon approaching school year, so I'll be bringing that with me and working whenever I'm not spending time with friends.
In case you're curious, that trip will happen around August 6-19th, though I've still got to figure out the exact dates (and how I'm traveling. I was assuming car, but considering how pressed I am for time, if I can find a cheap plane ticket, that might be a better idea.)
So, perhaps I'll have some exciting stories around the end of July, when I come back from my Tom Brown Jr. stuff. But for now, all I can think of is how much stuff I still have to do before I leave.
Talk to you later, dear friends.
Stay Crunchy ;)
(That's the name of my awesome travel-montage/dance-breakdown music below. Enjoy.)
I would have thought, at some point, the summer would have gotten less busy for some significant length of time, but I think the days I spent studying for my tests were about as much break as I'm going to get. Maybe the week and a half that I'll in Fairfield Iowa will be more relaxed. Except, I've got lots of work that I have to do for the soon approaching school year, so I'll be bringing that with me and working whenever I'm not spending time with friends.
In case you're curious, that trip will happen around August 6-19th, though I've still got to figure out the exact dates (and how I'm traveling. I was assuming car, but considering how pressed I am for time, if I can find a cheap plane ticket, that might be a better idea.)
So, perhaps I'll have some exciting stories around the end of July, when I come back from my Tom Brown Jr. stuff. But for now, all I can think of is how much stuff I still have to do before I leave.
Talk to you later, dear friends.
Stay Crunchy ;)
(That's the name of my awesome travel-montage/dance-breakdown music below. Enjoy.)
Sunday, July 9, 2017
schedule
This serves as both the blog post for this week, and the explanation of why the blog post for this week isn't something longer or more creative.
My Schedule for the next few weeks:
My Schedule for the next few weeks:
- By Monday of next week (17th) (Or sooner. The sooner the better): have apartment for next year.
- This Wednesday: teacher certification test #2.
- Saturday: teacher certification test #3.
- All other time this week: Studying or apartment-hunting.
- Sunday: Tom Brown online class.
- Tuesday: drive home, pack for classes.
- Next Wednesday (the 19th): drive to NJ for a week and a half in the pine barrens of brain-melting Tom Brown Jr. classes, ending the 29th.
- 29th: drive back to NH.
- 30th and 31st: frantically move everything to the apartment I've hopefully signed a lease on.
- August 1st-3rd: sleep.
Wednesday, July 5, 2017
Gerunds, infinitives, and subordinating conjunctions
Work work work'n away. Actually having a lot of fun learning the stuff I was shaky on, using Khan Acadamy. Maybe too much fun. But hey, I'm learning grammar! Finally! Why did it take this long to actually learn it? I think it was just taught in a boring and unfriendly way in grade school, and I never learned it there, and from then on all the teachers just assumed I knew it.
Main observation: there are A LOT of unfriendly jargon words used to describe things. But what they are describing is not so unfriendly. There is a lot though, that I don't know. But really, I've gotten along fine without it, simply by doing the "does it sound funny" test. But every now and then, a writing teacher would say, "you can't make that a sentence, it's a gloop-ity-glargle-phraxis (I'm trying to give you my experience, though I now know what the actual word is.) And I would be confused because the sentence sounded just fine, and never really understand why it was wrong.
Now I know that many of those were dependent clauses that I'd made into sentence fragments and though we use them all the time in speech, they are technically not "proper" written English. But I also know that, because they are used in speech, they are fine for informal writing, or as dialog. You just have to know what you're doing. And that's why they always passed my "does it sound ok?" test but often got caught by my writing teachers.
Also, I'm learning all sorts of juicy tidbits, like how it's ok to start sentences with "but" (or more generally, with conjunctions. (I had to look that word up. Grammer-speak continues to elude me) and end them with "for" (or more generally, prepositions.) It's true! See for yourselves (yourselves: 2nd person plural reflexive pronoun):
https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/grammar/parts-of-speech-the-preposition-and-the-conjunction/types-of-prepositions-and-phrases/v/terminal-prepositions-prepositions-the-parts-of-speech-grammar
https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/grammar/parts-of-speech-the-preposition-and-the-conjunction/correlative-conjunctions-and-starting-sentences/v/beginning-sentences-with-conjunctions-the-conjunction-the-parts-of-speech-grammar
Main observation: there are A LOT of unfriendly jargon words used to describe things. But what they are describing is not so unfriendly. There is a lot though, that I don't know. But really, I've gotten along fine without it, simply by doing the "does it sound funny" test. But every now and then, a writing teacher would say, "you can't make that a sentence, it's a gloop-ity-glargle-phraxis (I'm trying to give you my experience, though I now know what the actual word is.) And I would be confused because the sentence sounded just fine, and never really understand why it was wrong.
Now I know that many of those were dependent clauses that I'd made into sentence fragments and though we use them all the time in speech, they are technically not "proper" written English. But I also know that, because they are used in speech, they are fine for informal writing, or as dialog. You just have to know what you're doing. And that's why they always passed my "does it sound ok?" test but often got caught by my writing teachers.
Also, I'm learning all sorts of juicy tidbits, like how it's ok to start sentences with "but" (or more generally, with conjunctions. (I had to look that word up. Grammer-speak continues to elude me) and end them with "for" (or more generally, prepositions.) It's true! See for yourselves (yourselves: 2nd person plural reflexive pronoun):
https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/grammar/parts-of-speech-the-preposition-and-the-conjunction/types-of-prepositions-and-phrases/v/terminal-prepositions-prepositions-the-parts-of-speech-grammar
https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/grammar/parts-of-speech-the-preposition-and-the-conjunction/correlative-conjunctions-and-starting-sentences/v/beginning-sentences-with-conjunctions-the-conjunction-the-parts-of-speech-grammar
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)