Jerry and The Hatricks

JERRY & THE HATRICKS

2009 and another year rocks and rolls in. My new year's resolution is uniquely unmaterialistic, which is fine except that I have totally run out of money before the end of January! The challenge (not 'problem' note) is that this causes me no pain and... No Pain equals No Gain!
SO, I sit in the comfortable heaven called, 'Durban with a view', and wonder how to turn myself (and new year's rez) upside down so as to have enough dosh to see a movie and buy a chocky. That always was my yardstick. It may seem paltry to you but it describes a symptom of the sustained state of financial freedom that works for me.

A few universal truths >>
1) I am clearly not a bizzynizmun.
2) Yoga and bicycle riding is cheap (dirt cheap) but the things it leads to are a little more expansive, like buying a cup of tea at the beachfront after the ride.
In today's wereld, and let me not fool myself, bandwidth is the currency of happiness, like the cell phone of yesterday, the car of the 80s, the hairstyle of the 60s and footwork in the 50s.
3) So, there are things we like and can do easily. There are things we don't like doing and put off interminably. That's why we go to school. Up at 6, dressed for 7, assembly at 8 and home at 5 to 3.
Every day..except joy days on the weekend.
Which is why most schools have to have uniforms. Imagine if we ALL left school and simply had no desire to go and get a job - up at 6, dressed for 7, meeting at 8 and home by 5.
Corporate tie, no tie, west coast casual, east coast leisure......as long as we all look the same in the same place at the same time. Cool.
So, the world looks after itself and generation after generation considers themselves free to choose.

It works and it is what got Obama into the BIG JOB. Cool.
Sadly, I suspect that I am one of the failures that slipped thru the net. So, jobs don't come easily. My uniforms have stains and my Rolex is fake.
How then to be part of that working world?
FAKE IT, bro', fake it.
But Fake doesn't last, not with me at any rate, so in keeping with the New America, I shall repackage the concept and call it ....

'FICTIONALIZE YOUR LIFE'.

Just a little - keep the balance, don't pull a Walter Mitty on the crowd.

OK! What do I need to be? For a while? A salesman? A concerned filmmaker? Wheeler-dealer?
This is not as inauthentic as it sounds. All of us do it. When we go out to eat we consider what flavour of meal and atmosphere we feel like. Is it Italian? Morrocan? Indian? I am not fond of hot foods, but like the Indian ambiance.....carbs are bad, but Italy has flair....
For the odd hour or 2 we imagine we are global rich kids dining in Montmatre or languid backpackers slowly slumming in a New Jersey diner.
Yet, ask most people why they don't travel more and the answer is, "I can't afford it, but would love to one day."
So, reverse the fiction. Dream the Big Dream, the Piazza in Florence. Live a little bit of it tonight, with a borrowed Vespa, your lady at your side at Papa Gino's Florida Rd Pizza Place.....Easy as pie.
And, if you like it....dream on....aim higher till your fiction becomes your REAL.... because, if you don't, it won't!
I got the following in the mail today.....I haven't read it yet, but the image of the old guy on the bike blew me away and surely has something to do with where my head is now. SO I have added it to this blog and will, like you, read it for the first time, published!
and that is all, folks!

(That is my contribution to the Global Internet Movement to Blog Obama's Inauguration.)

GIMBOI!

RECEIVED from Brian Parker who got it from:

www .advrider.com/forums/showthread.php?t=413306&page=10

Sent: 30 December 2008 10:58 AM To: 'budgie@changingplugs.com' Subject: FW: VIP
make a mental note, a mental impression, of this photo, and it’s not "ATGATT" either.

It’s not the bike, it’s the ride, but the bike is also important.

There are no options to the instant here and now. It is what it is. We are, at the present, only one thing...a singularity. We see ourselves and others as complex because of the lower cone. There are multiple paths that could have all led to the current state. We find people interesting because of the future cones, what they might do very soon, or much later. But to change, to alter future outcomes, requires time.
I am amazed that as a society how little we discuss the nature of time. We are taught to read a clock, when to show up, when to leave, and that's pretty much it.But time is such an important element. Time is both empowering and a deceiver. The cosmic trickster that Ceiling Cat invented when he was more than just a little drunk. We are always a point, a singularity in the instant. But what can we be in an hour? A week? A Year? If there is any aspect of life that I have f*d up, and I think I share that distinction with almost everyone who has ever been born, it is in my understanding of time.
However you want to look at it, time moving by us, or us moving through time. There is motion and change
This little animation is my favorite, and kind of the core of the apple. The dark spots are possible events that we actually experience. The smaller dots are events that may or may not happen. We make choices and that alters the flow of our life, But those choices also alter the future of our possible lives. Those little dots move in an out of the range of possibilities depending on the path we choose. So it is not always about waiting. If you want to kiss that pretty girl...I suggest you get to it. She may never be be this close again, as she has her own life path. And more than that, perhaps all the future little dots that represented a life together have moved from possible to impossible while you were "still thinking".
"If you are not handsome at 20, or strong at 30, or wealthy at 40, or wise at 50...you will never be handsome, or strong, or wealthy, or wise" - Old English Folk SayingI think the big cuts are interesting. Such things as drug abuse, racism, a life of selected ignorance, all remove huge segments of what is possible. But so do good habits (they just remove a lot, but certainly not all, bad possible outcomes).So the choices we make, and those that are made for us, change the shape of our cones. In fact, what I think the cones of our lives wind up looking like an expansion chamber where the shape is the possibility, and the outcome is that path within those boundaries.
It starts it small, because in the short term future, children do not have many options. Those come later, and the pipe gets much bigger. The shape of the cone expands if we are smart and fortunate, and contracts if we are not. As we face the latter part of our lives we may be forced into an ever contracting cone of possibilities due to the choices we have made, and the fact that minds and bodies age and change. The possibilities still exist, but some of the good ones are now outside the cone. But maybe some different good ones are now within.But we do always have choices, and one of the greatest gifts is that while we can not stop time, we can change the shape and size of our life cones. And the number of good possibilities. Even as life may shrink them, if our choices are such that there are good possibilities within the cone...all is well. Or is if we make the right choices. Just having a lot of good possibilities means f*k-all if we do not make the choice and effort to make our life path go through them. Missing possible outcomes is no less sad than missing the impossible one. Probably sadder.And here is where time steals the plot. When we make bad choices, or find ourselves in a situation where bad choices have left us with a very narrow cone, or a shape that catches more bad dots than good ones, we have to accept that to broaden the cone, to make it big enough to start capturing good possible futures, we have to allow time to work its magic. It may take years, and we are not hard-wired as a modern species to deal with time periods much over Two New York Minutes. While not acting at all may be futility itself, expecting those actions to have an immediate impact on the possibilities of a better future may be folly. Sammy chose wisely...both for the possibilities and then choosing the right ones.