If I were to die playing a drinking game it would be taking a drink every time the author used the phrase "does it bring you joy?" This was the way to decide if you should keep something or get rid of it. Her basic idea is that you need to get rid of things that do not bring you joy. She proposes you get rid of things by category starting with clothes, then miscellaneous items, then books, then mementos. She says to put everything on the floor so you see everything and can see what you have and what excites you and brings joy. After you get rid of 50% or more of things then you should put stuff back. You should do this using vertical storage and avoid stacking at all costs. If you are putting something at the bottom of the stack, do you really need it? How high can your stack get? She also claims you should throw away as many papers as you can. She also treats her things and house similar to how you would treat a person. All items have a role in your life and some roles are to teach you that you do not need things or were not interested in them.
I listened to the audio book and took some of what she said into consideration but did not follow her method. I had a physical copy that I am giving to my parents for Christmas but I plan to steal it from them or get a copy for myself at some point in the near future.
Saturday, December 22, 2018
Friday, December 14, 2018
Hillbilly Elegy (Audio book)
This book is about a guy who got out of the rust belt in Kentucky in the Appalachian Mountains and got educated and became a lawyer. His mother was not great and he never had a father and grew up with his grandma. The people he grew up around (hillbillies) had a very difficult time accepting their own flaws.
After WWII, industry tried very hard to get people to leave Appalachia and move north to the factories. The alternative was to stick around and work in a coal mine or other poor jobs. His grandparents left Kentucky and went to Ohio. These hillbillies were not quickly accepted as they were white like the others but had very different culture. All politicians are crooks and not all bad people are rich but all rich people are bad. His grandparents were democrats but did not want to hear the excuses for not being successful. Their children, his parents, should have had a head start because of this move by his grandparents as the family was close to caught us with the native Ohioans by then. Once they had kids his grandpa was a violent alcoholic and his grandma secluded herself from everyone else. However their financial situation was much better than it could have ever been in Hillbilly country. The family matters we family and nothing was shared with others outside of the family. Even if you were family and left the house, you still lost out on hearing about the activities in the house. Two their children were "successful" and two were "failures"; however once the grandparents figured their shit out and grandpa stopped drinking they separated but worked together to help their children and grandchildren. When the author was a child, the town they lived in gradually disintegrated from a proud town to something that resembled the Kentucky towns they came from. Bad neighborhoods have spread from the ghetto to every neighborhoods. This is due to decreasing home values and high expenses of moving. They also started loosing jobs in town due to the steel company ARMCO merging with the Japanese company Kawasaki. The reality is that poor working people work less than college educated people, however the thought is that they work more. People do not realize how lazy they are. Additionally most working class families did not help their children with school, however his grandparents did. Social class is not about money but the desire that your children do better than you did. His grandmother taught him to fight even though she never hit him, except once to show him how a punch to the face did not hurt too much. She told him the number one rule of fighting was to never start a fight, unless of course you had to to stand up for yourself or someone else, i.e. a kid being bullied. His parents moved away from his grandparents and started fighting. This resulted in dropping grades and getting chubby. This fighting was not new as everyone fought and yelled at each other, however the fighting in his own house was new to him. His mom started drinking and threatened to kill him so he ran away. His mom ended up getting arrested and he started to see the employees of the courts were different from his family but the people there were the same as them. He saw more difference when he visited his uncle in California. He had many half siblings but the one he grew up with, Lindsey, was one of the most adult people he had in his life even though she was not much older than him. His type of religion was not traditional as his grandmother despised organized religion; however it required him to work hard for himself (God helps those who help themselves), take care of your family, forgive, never despair as God has a plan. Him and his sister never learned anything about men besides they disappear due to the revolving door of father figures. His life with fathers eventually came full circle and got back together with her original husband and the author ended up living on a farm with him. Church going people got to church on a regular basis live a happier, longer, and richer life. His father became religious and he started attending church more and more and began to distrust people who did not believe. He also believed he was gay as a child as he preferred the accompany of men than women. His grandma brought him back into reality by asking him if he wanted to suck dick and told him he would still be accepted if he did. When his grandpa died, the funeral was held in both Ohio and in Kentucky. His grandpa protected him, usually with guns, taught his the difference between knowledge and intelligence, and how to treat women. (His grandparents were very concerned about perverts). After his grandpa died, his mom started abusing, instead of just using, prescription drugs and ended up in rehab. As a result his grandma ended up raising her two grandchildren but allowing them to take care of their selves as teenagers. As a result he learned about the underworld of addiction, and again saw people just like him. His mom treated her addiction as a disease, which does have some scientific basis, but this did not help her. All he wanted for his sister was someone who treated her well. At 14 his mom decided he had anger problems and explained his situation, without telling anything that would get his mom in trouble with the law. Having nowhere to turn, he decided to go to his biological dad's house as he saw it as the least bad option. However this did not last and he moved back to his mom's house, which was not a good situation. However she left her boyfriend to get married to a Korean guy. He started struggling in school largely due to his situation living with his mom and started smoking pot. He blames some of this on the fact that he was separated from his sister. When his mom demanded clean urine from him, his grandma decided he should move in with her and follow her 3 rules, get good grades, get a job, and get off your ass and help her. He wanted to escape to Jackson Kentucky but his grandma escaped from Jackson. His grandma loved the Sopranos and the only problem she had with Tony was that he slept around. His grandma bought him a $180 calculator and made him do well in school. He also made friends and got all of his grades up. While working in a grocery store, he learned the class divide of frozen food and baby food and tabs allowed for rich people only. He also saw the abuse of government aid programs. This was the first time he lost faith in the Democratic party and many other white working class people saw these abuses as well. Their neighbor got section 8 housing and looked a lot by them blurring the line between the working and non-working poor. His grandma was all over the place between radical conservative to European socialist. Why was their neighborhood so much different than his fathers? The Truly Disadvantaged by William Julius Wilson talked about what happened when the working poor moved to communities that could not could not sustain the growing population and those who stayed were the really poor. He was writing about black people but was very relative to his life. This book told of the government encouraging social decay with the welfare system. But he questions when people did not leave their abusive partner, why they did drugs, why couldn't they see their effect on their children. The hillbillies all live in a world of irrational behavior resulting in debt and need a bailout. We all yell at each other and hit each other in front of the entire family including the kids. This has a very negative effect on the kids. People cannot hold down a job and use lies as excuses for the behavior. The working class white life expectancy is going down due to diet and lack of exercise. The author was able to see this side of the world with his mom but was fortunate to see the old school hard work of his grandparents with an intact, loving, and stable home. For 7 years, he moved almost every year, had run ins with social services, fighting, new fathers every few months, etc. In 10th - 12th grades he lived alone with his grandma in the same house, got a job, had stability, and developed happiness. He got accepted into Ohio State but he felt he was not ready for the unstructured style of college. So he went and joined the Marines during the Iraq war even though he could not run a mile and did not get up early. His family was happy about it but his grandma never liked the decision but wrote him letters of encouragement every day. He learned a lot about himself when being cut off from his family for the first time in his life. When he graduated boot camp he went back home and learned how people looked at him differently and how he looked at food differently. Her healthcare premium increased so he helped support her, and for the first time he felt the the provider and a real grown up and felt the greatest joy he ever experienced. His grandma had a collapsed lung and they ended up pulling the plug when she showed signs of getting worse. When in Iraq he saw a boy smile like no one he had ever seen when he handed the boy a $0.02 eraser and learned how lucky he really was to grow up with hillbillies who loved him and is still striving to be like that boy with the eraser. The marines teach you how to be an adult and assume zero knowledge of anything and helped control his life throughout his entire day. It also changed the way he thought about himself; made him believe in himself, learn about leadership, allow him to fail but also allowed him to try again. In all, it really taught him that he what his grandma always told him, that he could do anything. He learned how much he undersold himself and how much everyone in the white working class was underselling themselves. After the marines he started classes at Ohio State.
When at Ohio State he was with many people from his home town and saw "brain drain" where all of them left and none planned to go back. He was acing classes and knew he wanted to go to law school. He started working for a man in the Ohio State house and saw politics from a different view. He got a second job as a consultant at a non profit helping abused and neglected children. His mom heard about his condition of over worked, tired, and with mono and a staff infection and took him to the emergency room and took him to her house while he recovered. When he recovered he got a third job but ended up dropping his job in the Ohio State house even though it was his favorite because it paid the least. When he left his senator was fighting for payday loans which helped the author through some difficult financial times. However those in charge did not understand his situation because they had never been there so they were trying to eliminate them as they took advantage of people with their high interest rates. An ignorant dip shit 19 year old bitching about the Iraq war encouraged him to graduate early so he did as quickly as possible and graduated with a double major summa cum laude. He went back home before he started law school. The great recession and the not so great recovery created a great sense of cynicism. There was not a lot to be happy about since most of his areas sense of pride is love of country. There were not many uniting factors for the country. This was like a religion to them. Obama seems like a foreigner as he cannot relate to anyone he grew up with, he is incredibly successful in school, as a speaker. Obama and his wife hit at all of their insecurities. The people do not trust the press because they are full of shit. Many of the white working class are super pessimistic and do not know what to believe as they cannot believe anything. We cannot trust the new, government, college is working against us, jobs are not working. Why should I try? Conservatives are blaming the government for peoples failures so why should they try? The working class whites are the most pessimistic and the only group that less than half believe their children will have a worse life them then. He felt like an alien because of his optimism.
He wanted to go to Yale but did not believe he would get in but applied on line because it was easy. The most expensive the school is, the cheaper it is the poorer you are. If your parents make $30,000 per year, UW schools are $10,000 while UW Madison is $6,000 and Harvard is $2,500. But no one knows this so most go to cheaper schools even though they really are more expensive. Yale made him truly wonder if he really belonged, this was the first time he felt out of place as a tall, straight, white man. Even though Yale is diverse, almost all come from intact well off families. When coming back home, he lied to a stranger about going to Yale to avoid feeling like a trader. The upper class needs to open their hearts and minds to newcomers. There is a very large difference culturally, food, fashion, domestic issues, etc between the working poor and the privileged. The first year at Yale he learned more about how the world works than about law. Going out to a fancy dinner, he realized how ignorant he was about expensive dinner. After his first year at Yale he learned how the white collar people use networking to get a job instead of flooding job sites with your resume. This is the effect of social power, which working class people to not have. Even after bombing an interview, Yale was able to get him a second interview even though he had no reason other than his network. Finding out info on different routes in law school was dependent on using your network so he just asked, everyone. He learned about social capitol when his professor told him to not take a position and instead to be himself and put his girlfriend above a path he did not really want. He ended up moving to Kentucky near where he grew up with his girlfriend. Being a hillbilly, he did not know how to get ahead and relied on others to teach him how to be successful.
His girlfriend called him a turtle as he withdrew at even the hint of a conflict as he did not know how to have relationships with others. She pushed back at him and he ended up yelling at her and started to realize he was becoming like his mother. When he got into a fight with his girlfriend, and he apologized, she did not know this was a surrender and that she should go in for the kill. She told him she accepted his apology because she did not learn to fight in the hillbilly culture. Her family had love and acceptance. Instead of a councilor, he figured out a lot of his issues in books and learned there are a lot of books about his issues. 40% of children in the working class had adverse childhood experiences where as only 30% in the white collar children. Being in constant fight or flight mode in childhood changes your brain to always be ready for this fight. Unstable homes create a vicious cycle. He worked through this by talking with his family members and learned that the successful ones in his family had to learn to not fight. He realized that everything was a fight in his family and that he needs to work hard to break this habit. However he had his girlfriend and she is able to help defuse him by learning to work with him and although he was getting better, two of him in one house would not be successful. All of his successful marriages he saw were with someone getting with someone from outside of their community and culture. He knew his life would require constant mental focus to have a calm and positive life. Looking at him mom's life with sympathy changed his perspective of her. Her parents drank and fought and it affected all of the kids differently. However some of her life choices are her fault, some of that requires her to buck up. He figured out his mom was addicted to heroin right before he graduated Yale law school he did not feel as happy as he should have been. He learned that being a hillbilly, you never knew the difference between love and war. He graduated, got married, moved to Cincinnati, and made it and achieved the american dream. However his old life drew him back in when his mom hit rock bottom again. He offered to help her and drove to a motel in the middle of the night on a Tuesday. His plan to give her money carefully and track it seemed similar to what his grandparents did for her previously.
The best way to look at his culture's problems is that you cannot fix them, but you can put your thumb on the scale a little bit. Although there were lots of issues with his family, his family is what allowed him to be successful. Although they were not constant good role models, they were what he needed when he needed it. All his successful family members had the support of at least one family member as well as mentors at work. Europe is better than America at allowing children to achieve the american dream. Also the south, rust belt, and Appalachia have the worst change at achieving the American dream. There is a lack of role models. Utah is one of the best places to achieve the american dream largely due to the Mormon religion. Social services do not look at families like a lot of minority and hillbilly families are and do not look at uncles, grandparents, etc as family and look at them like foster parents without certifications. We need to mix the rich and poor and not allow entire neighborhoods to be supported by section 8. Being successful in school is seen as feminine in the working class culture.
The upper class/rich/educates vs the working class/poor/uneducated have very different cultures. This is seem at Christmas where the rich spend less on Christmas presents and the price tag is not what makes it successful or not. Additionally they live longer, go to church more, are happier, etc. People lose contact with their parents not because they want to but because they have to to survive. Any chance those people have is with the people around them. We all need to wake up to this, especially the hillbillies. We need to help people find love and create engagement. Does our conduct help or hurt our children. How can the government help if we do nothing? We broke all of this. We need to fix it. Stop blaming and look at what we can do to make things better. Are we becoming the monster?
After WWII, industry tried very hard to get people to leave Appalachia and move north to the factories. The alternative was to stick around and work in a coal mine or other poor jobs. His grandparents left Kentucky and went to Ohio. These hillbillies were not quickly accepted as they were white like the others but had very different culture. All politicians are crooks and not all bad people are rich but all rich people are bad. His grandparents were democrats but did not want to hear the excuses for not being successful. Their children, his parents, should have had a head start because of this move by his grandparents as the family was close to caught us with the native Ohioans by then. Once they had kids his grandpa was a violent alcoholic and his grandma secluded herself from everyone else. However their financial situation was much better than it could have ever been in Hillbilly country. The family matters we family and nothing was shared with others outside of the family. Even if you were family and left the house, you still lost out on hearing about the activities in the house. Two their children were "successful" and two were "failures"; however once the grandparents figured their shit out and grandpa stopped drinking they separated but worked together to help their children and grandchildren. When the author was a child, the town they lived in gradually disintegrated from a proud town to something that resembled the Kentucky towns they came from. Bad neighborhoods have spread from the ghetto to every neighborhoods. This is due to decreasing home values and high expenses of moving. They also started loosing jobs in town due to the steel company ARMCO merging with the Japanese company Kawasaki. The reality is that poor working people work less than college educated people, however the thought is that they work more. People do not realize how lazy they are. Additionally most working class families did not help their children with school, however his grandparents did. Social class is not about money but the desire that your children do better than you did. His grandmother taught him to fight even though she never hit him, except once to show him how a punch to the face did not hurt too much. She told him the number one rule of fighting was to never start a fight, unless of course you had to to stand up for yourself or someone else, i.e. a kid being bullied. His parents moved away from his grandparents and started fighting. This resulted in dropping grades and getting chubby. This fighting was not new as everyone fought and yelled at each other, however the fighting in his own house was new to him. His mom started drinking and threatened to kill him so he ran away. His mom ended up getting arrested and he started to see the employees of the courts were different from his family but the people there were the same as them. He saw more difference when he visited his uncle in California. He had many half siblings but the one he grew up with, Lindsey, was one of the most adult people he had in his life even though she was not much older than him. His type of religion was not traditional as his grandmother despised organized religion; however it required him to work hard for himself (God helps those who help themselves), take care of your family, forgive, never despair as God has a plan. Him and his sister never learned anything about men besides they disappear due to the revolving door of father figures. His life with fathers eventually came full circle and got back together with her original husband and the author ended up living on a farm with him. Church going people got to church on a regular basis live a happier, longer, and richer life. His father became religious and he started attending church more and more and began to distrust people who did not believe. He also believed he was gay as a child as he preferred the accompany of men than women. His grandma brought him back into reality by asking him if he wanted to suck dick and told him he would still be accepted if he did. When his grandpa died, the funeral was held in both Ohio and in Kentucky. His grandpa protected him, usually with guns, taught his the difference between knowledge and intelligence, and how to treat women. (His grandparents were very concerned about perverts). After his grandpa died, his mom started abusing, instead of just using, prescription drugs and ended up in rehab. As a result his grandma ended up raising her two grandchildren but allowing them to take care of their selves as teenagers. As a result he learned about the underworld of addiction, and again saw people just like him. His mom treated her addiction as a disease, which does have some scientific basis, but this did not help her. All he wanted for his sister was someone who treated her well. At 14 his mom decided he had anger problems and explained his situation, without telling anything that would get his mom in trouble with the law. Having nowhere to turn, he decided to go to his biological dad's house as he saw it as the least bad option. However this did not last and he moved back to his mom's house, which was not a good situation. However she left her boyfriend to get married to a Korean guy. He started struggling in school largely due to his situation living with his mom and started smoking pot. He blames some of this on the fact that he was separated from his sister. When his mom demanded clean urine from him, his grandma decided he should move in with her and follow her 3 rules, get good grades, get a job, and get off your ass and help her. He wanted to escape to Jackson Kentucky but his grandma escaped from Jackson. His grandma loved the Sopranos and the only problem she had with Tony was that he slept around. His grandma bought him a $180 calculator and made him do well in school. He also made friends and got all of his grades up. While working in a grocery store, he learned the class divide of frozen food and baby food and tabs allowed for rich people only. He also saw the abuse of government aid programs. This was the first time he lost faith in the Democratic party and many other white working class people saw these abuses as well. Their neighbor got section 8 housing and looked a lot by them blurring the line between the working and non-working poor. His grandma was all over the place between radical conservative to European socialist. Why was their neighborhood so much different than his fathers? The Truly Disadvantaged by William Julius Wilson talked about what happened when the working poor moved to communities that could not could not sustain the growing population and those who stayed were the really poor. He was writing about black people but was very relative to his life. This book told of the government encouraging social decay with the welfare system. But he questions when people did not leave their abusive partner, why they did drugs, why couldn't they see their effect on their children. The hillbillies all live in a world of irrational behavior resulting in debt and need a bailout. We all yell at each other and hit each other in front of the entire family including the kids. This has a very negative effect on the kids. People cannot hold down a job and use lies as excuses for the behavior. The working class white life expectancy is going down due to diet and lack of exercise. The author was able to see this side of the world with his mom but was fortunate to see the old school hard work of his grandparents with an intact, loving, and stable home. For 7 years, he moved almost every year, had run ins with social services, fighting, new fathers every few months, etc. In 10th - 12th grades he lived alone with his grandma in the same house, got a job, had stability, and developed happiness. He got accepted into Ohio State but he felt he was not ready for the unstructured style of college. So he went and joined the Marines during the Iraq war even though he could not run a mile and did not get up early. His family was happy about it but his grandma never liked the decision but wrote him letters of encouragement every day. He learned a lot about himself when being cut off from his family for the first time in his life. When he graduated boot camp he went back home and learned how people looked at him differently and how he looked at food differently. Her healthcare premium increased so he helped support her, and for the first time he felt the the provider and a real grown up and felt the greatest joy he ever experienced. His grandma had a collapsed lung and they ended up pulling the plug when she showed signs of getting worse. When in Iraq he saw a boy smile like no one he had ever seen when he handed the boy a $0.02 eraser and learned how lucky he really was to grow up with hillbillies who loved him and is still striving to be like that boy with the eraser. The marines teach you how to be an adult and assume zero knowledge of anything and helped control his life throughout his entire day. It also changed the way he thought about himself; made him believe in himself, learn about leadership, allow him to fail but also allowed him to try again. In all, it really taught him that he what his grandma always told him, that he could do anything. He learned how much he undersold himself and how much everyone in the white working class was underselling themselves. After the marines he started classes at Ohio State.
When at Ohio State he was with many people from his home town and saw "brain drain" where all of them left and none planned to go back. He was acing classes and knew he wanted to go to law school. He started working for a man in the Ohio State house and saw politics from a different view. He got a second job as a consultant at a non profit helping abused and neglected children. His mom heard about his condition of over worked, tired, and with mono and a staff infection and took him to the emergency room and took him to her house while he recovered. When he recovered he got a third job but ended up dropping his job in the Ohio State house even though it was his favorite because it paid the least. When he left his senator was fighting for payday loans which helped the author through some difficult financial times. However those in charge did not understand his situation because they had never been there so they were trying to eliminate them as they took advantage of people with their high interest rates. An ignorant dip shit 19 year old bitching about the Iraq war encouraged him to graduate early so he did as quickly as possible and graduated with a double major summa cum laude. He went back home before he started law school. The great recession and the not so great recovery created a great sense of cynicism. There was not a lot to be happy about since most of his areas sense of pride is love of country. There were not many uniting factors for the country. This was like a religion to them. Obama seems like a foreigner as he cannot relate to anyone he grew up with, he is incredibly successful in school, as a speaker. Obama and his wife hit at all of their insecurities. The people do not trust the press because they are full of shit. Many of the white working class are super pessimistic and do not know what to believe as they cannot believe anything. We cannot trust the new, government, college is working against us, jobs are not working. Why should I try? Conservatives are blaming the government for peoples failures so why should they try? The working class whites are the most pessimistic and the only group that less than half believe their children will have a worse life them then. He felt like an alien because of his optimism.
He wanted to go to Yale but did not believe he would get in but applied on line because it was easy. The most expensive the school is, the cheaper it is the poorer you are. If your parents make $30,000 per year, UW schools are $10,000 while UW Madison is $6,000 and Harvard is $2,500. But no one knows this so most go to cheaper schools even though they really are more expensive. Yale made him truly wonder if he really belonged, this was the first time he felt out of place as a tall, straight, white man. Even though Yale is diverse, almost all come from intact well off families. When coming back home, he lied to a stranger about going to Yale to avoid feeling like a trader. The upper class needs to open their hearts and minds to newcomers. There is a very large difference culturally, food, fashion, domestic issues, etc between the working poor and the privileged. The first year at Yale he learned more about how the world works than about law. Going out to a fancy dinner, he realized how ignorant he was about expensive dinner. After his first year at Yale he learned how the white collar people use networking to get a job instead of flooding job sites with your resume. This is the effect of social power, which working class people to not have. Even after bombing an interview, Yale was able to get him a second interview even though he had no reason other than his network. Finding out info on different routes in law school was dependent on using your network so he just asked, everyone. He learned about social capitol when his professor told him to not take a position and instead to be himself and put his girlfriend above a path he did not really want. He ended up moving to Kentucky near where he grew up with his girlfriend. Being a hillbilly, he did not know how to get ahead and relied on others to teach him how to be successful.
His girlfriend called him a turtle as he withdrew at even the hint of a conflict as he did not know how to have relationships with others. She pushed back at him and he ended up yelling at her and started to realize he was becoming like his mother. When he got into a fight with his girlfriend, and he apologized, she did not know this was a surrender and that she should go in for the kill. She told him she accepted his apology because she did not learn to fight in the hillbilly culture. Her family had love and acceptance. Instead of a councilor, he figured out a lot of his issues in books and learned there are a lot of books about his issues. 40% of children in the working class had adverse childhood experiences where as only 30% in the white collar children. Being in constant fight or flight mode in childhood changes your brain to always be ready for this fight. Unstable homes create a vicious cycle. He worked through this by talking with his family members and learned that the successful ones in his family had to learn to not fight. He realized that everything was a fight in his family and that he needs to work hard to break this habit. However he had his girlfriend and she is able to help defuse him by learning to work with him and although he was getting better, two of him in one house would not be successful. All of his successful marriages he saw were with someone getting with someone from outside of their community and culture. He knew his life would require constant mental focus to have a calm and positive life. Looking at him mom's life with sympathy changed his perspective of her. Her parents drank and fought and it affected all of the kids differently. However some of her life choices are her fault, some of that requires her to buck up. He figured out his mom was addicted to heroin right before he graduated Yale law school he did not feel as happy as he should have been. He learned that being a hillbilly, you never knew the difference between love and war. He graduated, got married, moved to Cincinnati, and made it and achieved the american dream. However his old life drew him back in when his mom hit rock bottom again. He offered to help her and drove to a motel in the middle of the night on a Tuesday. His plan to give her money carefully and track it seemed similar to what his grandparents did for her previously.
The best way to look at his culture's problems is that you cannot fix them, but you can put your thumb on the scale a little bit. Although there were lots of issues with his family, his family is what allowed him to be successful. Although they were not constant good role models, they were what he needed when he needed it. All his successful family members had the support of at least one family member as well as mentors at work. Europe is better than America at allowing children to achieve the american dream. Also the south, rust belt, and Appalachia have the worst change at achieving the American dream. There is a lack of role models. Utah is one of the best places to achieve the american dream largely due to the Mormon religion. Social services do not look at families like a lot of minority and hillbilly families are and do not look at uncles, grandparents, etc as family and look at them like foster parents without certifications. We need to mix the rich and poor and not allow entire neighborhoods to be supported by section 8. Being successful in school is seen as feminine in the working class culture.
The upper class/rich/educates vs the working class/poor/uneducated have very different cultures. This is seem at Christmas where the rich spend less on Christmas presents and the price tag is not what makes it successful or not. Additionally they live longer, go to church more, are happier, etc. People lose contact with their parents not because they want to but because they have to to survive. Any chance those people have is with the people around them. We all need to wake up to this, especially the hillbillies. We need to help people find love and create engagement. Does our conduct help or hurt our children. How can the government help if we do nothing? We broke all of this. We need to fix it. Stop blaming and look at what we can do to make things better. Are we becoming the monster?
Thursday, December 13, 2018
The Book of Joy (Audio Book)
Very interesting listening to the Archbishop Desond Tutu, the 14th Dalai Lama, and a third Jewish guy Douglas Abrahams have conversations. This post is more a collection of thoughts. It might get edited to make some logical sense or I may wait until I read the book and write a different post.
The Dalai Lama is very interested in science and it is very interesting to learn how he listens to science and it seems his beliefs are based on science.
I really like listening to the archbishop talk as he has a very interesting and beautiful voice.
"I would rather go to hell as there are more people to help there"
Look at thing from others view points. Separate your mind from yourself.
Observe more and judge and form opinions less.
Meditate and think about stuff. A cat can sit quietly and not think about anything. Meditation is about reflection, separating yourself from this issue, thinking about thinks in different ways, from other people's perspectives, and thinking about things you normally do not think about. One perspective is your own but in the future.
Connect with people on the human level.
Have fun in life and laugh at yourself. Use humor to defuse situations.
Think about death.
Appreciate thing, be grateful for things. Write down instead of just thinking about them.
We are all connected.
Compassion is the most important thing to have.
There is a lot of talking about Nelson Mandela. His struggle and time in prison is the reason he was such an effective leader. He went to prison angry but learned to be calm and think of things from others perspectives while in prison.
Smile.
Life is broken and imperfect laugh to help accept this. Accept your human limitations. Accept the past and the reality of the situation. Suffering is inevitable and you need to suffer and struggle to find joy. Forgive yourself. You are a flawed human just like everyone else.
True joy comes from other people in deep loving relationships with others. It is not learned, it is lived.
Negative emotions come from 2 things. Too much focus on yourself and accepting reality as it appears. Need to think of others and look at reality from many different points of view (others, future, god's view).
The Dalai Lama is very interested in science and it is very interesting to learn how he listens to science and it seems his beliefs are based on science.
I really like listening to the archbishop talk as he has a very interesting and beautiful voice.
"I would rather go to hell as there are more people to help there"
Look at thing from others view points. Separate your mind from yourself.
Observe more and judge and form opinions less.
Meditate and think about stuff. A cat can sit quietly and not think about anything. Meditation is about reflection, separating yourself from this issue, thinking about thinks in different ways, from other people's perspectives, and thinking about things you normally do not think about. One perspective is your own but in the future.
Connect with people on the human level.
Have fun in life and laugh at yourself. Use humor to defuse situations.
Think about death.
Appreciate thing, be grateful for things. Write down instead of just thinking about them.
We are all connected.
Compassion is the most important thing to have.
There is a lot of talking about Nelson Mandela. His struggle and time in prison is the reason he was such an effective leader. He went to prison angry but learned to be calm and think of things from others perspectives while in prison.
Smile.
Life is broken and imperfect laugh to help accept this. Accept your human limitations. Accept the past and the reality of the situation. Suffering is inevitable and you need to suffer and struggle to find joy. Forgive yourself. You are a flawed human just like everyone else.
True joy comes from other people in deep loving relationships with others. It is not learned, it is lived.
Negative emotions come from 2 things. Too much focus on yourself and accepting reality as it appears. Need to think of others and look at reality from many different points of view (others, future, god's view).
Sunday, December 9, 2018
The Alchemist (audio book)
I listened to half of this audio book at work and the other half at home. I believe I would get a lot more value out of listening to it again all in one sitting. The book was about a shepherd who was looking for the meaning to life and ended up selling his sheep to go to the Egyptian pyramids. He met people along the way who helped him and others who changed to path to his personal legend. He encounters all kinds of set backs and sees other making excuses for not achieving their personal legend. One individual not making progress was a crystal merchant, who he ended up working for, who was waiting for retirement before achieving his personal legend. The boy eventually got to the desert on the way to the pyramids and stopped in the oasis. There he had a dream of war coming to the oasis which ended up occurring. He ended up meeting the alchemist who helped him to figure out what his personal legend was and to teach him the was of the world. They ended up being robbed and gave up all of their money as it is "rare that money can save your life and that money is of no use if you are dead." The boy ended up talking to the wind and the sun to "become the wind". The boy finally got the the pyramids and started digging for treasure only to have his money stolen and his life threatened once again. He finally found the treasure.
The boy was on a quest and did not allow what he was doing in life at the time to interfere with his goal of embarking on his personal legend. He also learned that being one with the universe is something anyone is able to do. He also learned that after he dies he will become one with the universe again. He learned the power of omens and how to tell which omens were important. He also learned from observing the lives of others what they were doing right but also what they were doing wrong.
It was an interesting audio book but due to the fact that it was an audio book and not a real book I was not as connected to it and definitely missed out on some parts of the book.
Sunday, December 2, 2018
The Power of Now (audio book)
This is a fairly simple book but is a lot to take in. I definitely need to get a physical version of this book to look back at and to also slow down and think about certain sections.
The book talks mostly about living in the present. Everything happens in the present and the past and the future are just illusions and are not real. Pain is also an illusion and is simply your eagle mind resisting something it cannot change. You create all of the pain in your life. Observe your body and your eagle mind. You are simply an observer along for the ride. Just observe but do not judge.
The book talks mostly about living in the present. Everything happens in the present and the past and the future are just illusions and are not real. Pain is also an illusion and is simply your eagle mind resisting something it cannot change. You create all of the pain in your life. Observe your body and your eagle mind. You are simply an observer along for the ride. Just observe but do not judge.
Saturday, December 1, 2018
The Boys in the Boat (audio book)
This book was very slow to get going and also talked about a lot of different characters in the beginning of the book. Due to me not following characters well, especially in audio books, I also did not finish this book. However I stuck through the entire 14 hour audio book. This book was not my favorite and I would be in the minority saying I did not enjoy the book. It was very well researched and told the story very well; however I struggled relating to the story.
The book focused largely on Joe who was poor and his family abandoned him after his mother died and his father remarried. It also a lot about the man who built the boats for Washington as well as many other schools once Washington started winning in his boats. It as followed the coach of the team. The story told of the team as they were freshman, then sophomores, and finally junior when they ended up going to the Olympics. The story telling was great and the narrator did a great job sharing the story. However I may have preferred a little less depth of character and the team. I would have been fine picking up at their junior year. In summary it was a long book that was inspiring and shared many points in world history. However I was not as inspired as I "should" have been and was largely just along for the ride.
The book focused largely on Joe who was poor and his family abandoned him after his mother died and his father remarried. It also a lot about the man who built the boats for Washington as well as many other schools once Washington started winning in his boats. It as followed the coach of the team. The story told of the team as they were freshman, then sophomores, and finally junior when they ended up going to the Olympics. The story telling was great and the narrator did a great job sharing the story. However I may have preferred a little less depth of character and the team. I would have been fine picking up at their junior year. In summary it was a long book that was inspiring and shared many points in world history. However I was not as inspired as I "should" have been and was largely just along for the ride.
Sunday, November 25, 2018
Killing Kennedy (audio book)
Bill Orilley did a great job with this book. Lots of history that I was not fully aware of. Lots of conflict within the Kennedy white house. Lots of issues with Russia and communism and why we got into Vietnam, Also lots about Cuba and how we wrecked that relationship. Also a lot of info about the killer and the murderer of the killer.
Hope to listen to others by him. I did checkout Killing Reagan right after but am afraid I will not get through it before it is due.
Hope to listen to others by him. I did checkout Killing Reagan right after but am afraid I will not get through it before it is due.
The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy
Really good book. Lots of jokes similar to Futurama. Lots of logical and statistics jokes. The answer to life, the universe, and everything is 42 but we do not know how to ask the question that would make sense of the answer. Mice rule the world. Lots of references in other media are made to this book.
My Friend Leonard
Good book but definitely not as good as A Million Little Pieces. I read it while deer hunting and finished it in 3 or 4 days.
It followed James after rehab. It started with him in prison and onto Chicago where he found his girlfriend from rehab had committed suicide. He called on Leonard for help and Leonard made him eat a lot and had huge dinner parties. He also got James a job delivering briefcases. Leonard went from an illegal company and turned it into a legal one with the use of phone cards and foreign countries. James had a few girlfriends and all of them were super attractive and super successful because he is just that special... Turns out Leonard was gay and died of AIDS. He left all his money to James and to make sure Lilly's grave would be tended forever. Again, James was just that special.
Overall a good book but it was hard to get past James's ego at times.
It followed James after rehab. It started with him in prison and onto Chicago where he found his girlfriend from rehab had committed suicide. He called on Leonard for help and Leonard made him eat a lot and had huge dinner parties. He also got James a job delivering briefcases. Leonard went from an illegal company and turned it into a legal one with the use of phone cards and foreign countries. James had a few girlfriends and all of them were super attractive and super successful because he is just that special... Turns out Leonard was gay and died of AIDS. He left all his money to James and to make sure Lilly's grave would be tended forever. Again, James was just that special.
Overall a good book but it was hard to get past James's ego at times.
Sunday, November 11, 2018
Pivot (Audio Book)
Pivot make an analogy between basketball and life. Both are all about momentum and you need to pick up the ball and bounce it to create momentum. However the most unique part about both basketball and life is you have the ability to pivot and see a completely different view of the world without giving up the ball.
I honestly do not remember most of the book as I listened to it on my drive home before and after my vacation to Seattle. I both started and finished the book on my commute to work.
Basically the author talked about needing an emotional experience to change, getting a mentor, forming a habit, ect. If you do all of this and give his organizations lots of money you can become a better person and accomplish more of what you want out of life. One interesting note was that you do not need money to pivot but money is like gasoline on a fire and will help you accomplish more faster. You need to spend emotionally, time, or money to truly pivot.
This is a pretty shitty write up but is still better than listening to repetitive songs every time I am in the car.
I honestly do not remember most of the book as I listened to it on my drive home before and after my vacation to Seattle. I both started and finished the book on my commute to work.
Basically the author talked about needing an emotional experience to change, getting a mentor, forming a habit, ect. If you do all of this and give his organizations lots of money you can become a better person and accomplish more of what you want out of life. One interesting note was that you do not need money to pivot but money is like gasoline on a fire and will help you accomplish more faster. You need to spend emotionally, time, or money to truly pivot.
This is a pretty shitty write up but is still better than listening to repetitive songs every time I am in the car.
A Million Little Pieces
Wow what a book. I know it is filled with lies, however it does not fail to entertain. Upon finishing the book I looked up James Fray, found out what was proven to be a lie in the book, and also looked for other books written by him. I immediately ordered My Friend Leonard and hope to get to that book soon.
The book is about an addict who should have died but was saved by his friends, family, and rehab center. He focused on all of the people who helped him from the guy who drove a van who surprisingly was married to a councilor at the rehab facility. To all of the other addicts that befriended him, including his girlfriends who turned out to truly be imaginary in real life.
A few times in the book he seemed to be overly negative of people who were proven to be liars which at this point in time is pretty ironic. He also told his story as though he was the exception and everyone saw something in him that they did not see in others. It really brings into question his ego and how far he would stretch the truth to write a good story.
Never the less it was very interesting to see the world from the perspective of a potential drug addict. Hopefully his next tale of half truths is just as entertaining.
The book is about an addict who should have died but was saved by his friends, family, and rehab center. He focused on all of the people who helped him from the guy who drove a van who surprisingly was married to a councilor at the rehab facility. To all of the other addicts that befriended him, including his girlfriends who turned out to truly be imaginary in real life.
A few times in the book he seemed to be overly negative of people who were proven to be liars which at this point in time is pretty ironic. He also told his story as though he was the exception and everyone saw something in him that they did not see in others. It really brings into question his ego and how far he would stretch the truth to write a good story.
Never the less it was very interesting to see the world from the perspective of a potential drug addict. Hopefully his next tale of half truths is just as entertaining.
The Beet Queen
I read The Beet Queen because Allie's grandfather asked me if I had heard about it or read it. It was an interesting book that spanned the majority of a family members lives each chapter being from a different characters point of view. It started with 3 children having their mother leave them. 2 took a from Minneapolis to North Dakota the other was kidnapped. The girl Mary lived with her aunt and uncle. The boy left his sister and because a traveling salesman. The youngest brother because a priest in Minneapolis. Mary seemed to have a negative impact on the lives of her extended family and their friends. She ended up taking over her aunt and uncles meat business. Her cousin lost her best friend to Mary, did not like getting dirty, took no part in the family business, became a model, on her own she started a restaurant that failed, had a store that failed, had one marriage that she was never happy in so it failed, she went insane and would net speak, her second husband died, and she killed herself shortly after. Mary's stolen friend ended up pregnant from Mary's brother Karl. Karl left and was not there for the child, however Mary very much was. Sometimes even too much for the child's mother. Another important character who poked his head in from time to time was Wallace. He was Karl's other lover, the one who delivered Dot, another failed father figure, and the one who brought sugar beets to North Dakota. This changed the town and brought in big business. Wallace was unmarried and was instead very involved in the community. So in order to make up his failings to Dot he set up a beet celebration and rigged the voting to allow Dot to become the beet queen. Everyone knew or thought they knew that he rigged this, Dot was mad and as a result it was yet another failing of him as a parent. Failure seemed to be a common theme of this book. Lots of parents failing their children and how even when the parents did not fail their child, Sita was arguably less successful than Mary or Karl.
Overall this was an interesting read but definitely not my favorite. It did however spark my interest in reading more novels about the mid-west and from local authors.
Overall this was an interesting read but definitely not my favorite. It did however spark my interest in reading more novels about the mid-west and from local authors.
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