Thursday, February 08, 2007

Out

I sort of want to sketch something right now. I don't quite feel like paint sketching though, this is more of a paper feeling. I know that nothing would come out if I started. I'd being with a nice little curve. From there I'd get nothing. I've got nothing to sketch, and yet it feels like I've got a masterpiece waiting to get out of here.

It's interesting.

I'm going to bed at a decent hour tonight. That's a really good feeling. No complaints there. This week has been much less sleep than I usually get. We're working on it though. I'm gonna learn from it.

There's a lot of business going on right now. PLC, sweethearts, Sem vid, the athletic options, school, basketball, independent adventures- It's a lot of business.

I've got to prioritize them better.

Fact: My associates and I are capable of creating amazing things. The Sweethearts project, informally codenamed Project Formidable Aroma, has taken a lot of work. I'm not sure if I'm allowed to talk freely about it yet. There's going to be some really cool results for you all to see real soon. Nick will probably post a run down on his blog once it's all through.

Back to the point. It's been a lot of work. Me, Jaron, Brad, and Nick got together a couple days after school and worked for a really long time. Coming home those days was considerably different than coming home on any other day. On a normal day I'll come home and check the blogs, read the news, check extralife, popsci, gamespy, wikipedia, blogoscoped, then wander off.

On work days things were different. The four of us came over here and we sat down and started trucking. It was interesting, to see that after five hour of being on the computer I wasn't even connected to the internet. I hadn't even noticed. We were just booking it along, getting business done.

And so I started thinking. What could we accomplish if we really set out on it?

At this point, honestly, pretty much anything. I'm looking at our skill base, and things are wide open. We could use someone with mad web-design skills. Some programming skills would be favorable.

But really now. You put Me, Jaron, Nick, and Brad in a room together for a while and we could get you elected president if we really wanted to. We could operate a highly successful website that got a thousand hits a day. We could change the world.

Right now I'm not changing the world, at least not as much as I'd like to be. Changing the world is a great feeling. The wonderful part about changing the world is that no one ever specified how much of the world you needed to change.

I believe I have changed the world, at least for a little bit. I know my contribution to happiness and progression isn't too much, but I'm glad that there's at least a little bit. I figure that every person I help with Physics or Math means one more brownie point chalked up on the great whiteboard in the sky. I think that every time I write something that makes someone smile or laugh or think or realize or want to be better- that's a point too.

I want to change the world for the better. I wonder why. Is it an ego thing? Is it genuine altruism?

I love AP History. It is beautiful and applicable at so many levels. I find myself going back to it time and time again. Anyone in my English class knows it- I keep busting it out. I'm seriously digging AP History. Rockwell is a raging studmuffin.

Also in the English department: I really like argumentation. Debates, arguments, whatever you want to call them. I love to get into them. I wish we could spend more time on it. There's something great about being able to look at a topic from both sides and find the most effective counter to whatever April just said.

It goes back to Physics, this argumentation thing. In physics you've got a couple basic formulas that you use. The most prevalent is Newton's second law, F=MA. It's a party.

So we've got eight or so basic ideas and concepts to work with. These eight concepts can be switched around and substituted algebraically in order for us to solve anything that gets thrown at us. "What's that, you're spinning a 2 kg ball above your head on the end of a rope of rubber bands with a force constant of 1100 n/meter that's 1.5 meters long when it's totally unstretched at a rate of 22 revolutions per second? And you want me to find out the centripetal force after two revolutions? Should I find out when it's gonna break if the rubber bands have a breaking point of 500 newtons? Yeah, probably"

And we could do it.

Ok, so maybe not that problem specifically. I bet Landon could do it if we gave him enough time. In fact, I could probably get it with a lot of work. It'd get into calculus and be super trippy, but that's alright.

The point is, we'd have to use a bunch of little concepts and ideas to figure out the whole factor there. There's gonna be centripetal force, potential energy, kinetic energy, tension, all that business.

We take eight tools and apply them in various combinations to solve any problem that comes our way. It's our tool box. I love my tool box.

That's what argumentation is like. The source we're talking about gives us tools. In this case, tools are quotes. We've got external tools too- tools like history or scientific research. When all that's pulled in, we've got to take a look at it and say "Alright, how am I going to assemble these tools to fix the problem?"

I've got Karl Marx writing a book, the cold war with Reagan doing all sorts of fun stuff, and television ruining my life. Sam said that he grew up with TV, but Autumn said that her sister is Wack cause of TV. How am I going to put it together to fix the problem?

I love putting things together to fix problems. Maybe that's why I love Physics, Chemistry, and Math so much. Mmm mmm good.

I'm toying around with the idea of creating a private blog. One that nobody else could read. It'd be the same concept as typing stuff up and saving it on my hard drive, except this would be much more likely to last a year.

The only reason I'd consider doing this is because of the sensitive nature of some of the stuff I really need to explore in writing. I really want to talk about all sorts of business, but my better judgement tells me that that's just not a great idea. With now good writing is for my problem-solving processes though, it seems a shame to be unable to talk about the big issues here.

What if Levi stole my girlfriend and there were valuable lessons to be learned here? It'd be impossible for me to write about it. The girl would get her feelings hurt, Levi would get mad. I'd feel embarrassed about the situation. It's just not something that I could do. It'd hurt more than it'd help.

But what if there was a way to get the beneficial aspects of blogging about such an event and the feelings it creates without the pain? There are certainly enough benefits of writing to justify searching for a new possibility. By writing I can finally get feelings and ideas out all the way. It's hard for me to do stuff like this in person to most people. Some people are a little different, and I can bounce philosophy and ideas and metaphors off of them all day long. They are the small minority. I can dribble any cognitive function I want off of a blog.

Unfortunately though, some cognitive function is just too sensitive to blog about. Not that it's a big deal, because it's not.

But what if I want to write about track, but can't because my track team buddies would read it and call me out for being a pansy? What if I'm not satisfied with the way things are, but can't exactly come out and say it?

These are the problems that bring growth in people. I grow a lot when I sit down and think and write about what's going on. How am I supposed to write and think when doing so would obviously be a bad idea?

And so I'm thinking about it. It goes against my nature, that's for sure. I'm all about sharing, I hate hiding things. I rarely ever close the door to my room. It closes maybe twice a day, at tops. And even then, it's only closed for two minutes max. I honestly don't like closed doors at all. I don't like closing doors on what I have to say either.

The percentages change a lot, but the reasons for me sitting down and writing are about half for me, half for you.

Honestly, this might not do anyone any good. I'm still running at 50% efficiency though, and that's good enough for me.

But wouldn't I rather run at 100 than 50 percent? By keeping a secret blog I'm guaranteed a 50 percent success rate. Here I've got at least a shot at 100.

So it's sort of a catch 22 here. I can write everything here and censor, or I can write some business over there and gimp myself.

We'll see what happens. Chances are I'll start one pretty soon. What I'd like to do is have a time release deal. Where, in a year from now, I release posts. The concept would be that after a year anything that was too sensitive to write on a public forum such as this would have become not sensitive, and could be released for consumption. That way we both win. Just sorta slower than usual, that's all.

I think that's what I'll try. It sounds like a grand adventure.

Comings and goings of blogs are interesting. I wonder how many people are actually still writing a year after making their blog. I'm coming up on the two-year mark of near constant blogging. I'm happy about this. I've said it before, I love this blog.

But it's interesting to see who stays and who goes. Just interesting, that's all.

What are my plans for the future of this blog? A few things-

1. Keep posting. This is the most important thing. In reality, it's the only thing that matters here. I've just got to keep coming here and leaving a dump of words. It's good for me. Maybe it's good for you. I like to think it is. I want to be a posting machine. I set a goal at the beginning of last summer to post at least once a week. As far as I know I've been doing pretty good on it. I need to keep writing. This thing's gonna last forever.

2. Finally upgrade to beta. Everyone's upgraded now. I have failed to get with the times because of the pseudo-custom template I've got running for me right now. It doesn't exactly roll over without any trouble, so I'd have to do some work on it. I need to upgrade and get some cool stuff over on that side bar. I'd like to include a quote of the period-of-time, and a picture of the period-of-time. There's other stuff that would be cool too.

3. Keep this as my blog. I want to start another website one day. Something different, a little more professional. This will always stay though. This will be the place where things always come. Where the big rants, the little business. All that is here. It'll stay. I want to get something professional going on somewhere else too, but that comes later.

Projects. I'm getting those crazy irresistible project run-like-crazy-at-the-moon-because-no- matter- how-far-away-it-is-and-how-hopelessly-screwed-you-are-you-want-nothing-more-
than-to-run-like-crazy-at-the-moon feelings again. They haven't been this strong since the beginning of the school year. During that particular epoch of project run-at-the-moon's the world saw the creation of the Taylorsville Alliance and Taylorsville Ultimate. Both of those projects are currently dormant, but there's a good chance both of them will be making a come back in the near future. With this much motivation, how can we lose?

So that's really what I want right now. Some accomplishments. Sure I want to win at basketball. But that's not what I really wish I had going for me right now. I really wish I had some projects running around. Things I could start, things I could maintain.

Yep, I'm gonna work on that. The project this week was Formidable Aroma. I think next week is going to be something a little different. Something good though, that's for sure.

I love leadership. I love being part of a team and getting work done. I can't wait to have a job. I hope that whatever I end up doing in my life requires a daily meeting to look at what we've done and what we still need to do. I hope there's brainstorming, I hope there's that rush of chemicals and galvanized wind in your neurons when a new golden idea comes rushing through. I hope we get to make something awesome. I hope we get to change the world.

2 comments:

Kortney said...

Wow, you've got a lot going for you. Yay for fun projects and yay for the feeling of accomplishment. You totally dominate in that area. No joke. You're amazing; keep up the good work!

Anonymous said...

You make long, but interesting blogs, Thatch. Sorry I don't get around to reading them more often :P

Anyway, the bit with the math nearly killed me. Are you trying to kill me?