by Jamesscotthenson | Apr 15, 2017 | Blog
I am not as anti-tax as I should be.
It’s annoying that someone has the ability to take money
away from me without my consent, but it seems to be the price we pay for living
in a society where we don’t have to worry about raiders coming over the hill
raping and pillaging. I also try to be aware just how fortunate I am, and remember
that I drive on roads and can call an ambulance if run my mouth a little too
much and Barbara body slams me.
On the other hand, I get it when people are angry with how
their tax dollars are spent.
That the government is simultaneously malicious and incompetent
seems like a given. I understand people being frustrated how their money is
used to help others because it is done so ineffectively, and I get people not
wanting to see $60,000,000 literally go up in flames on a Syrian airbase.
I don’t really feel any of that is my business because its
not within my control.
This is the time and place and culture I have been born
into, and I only have control over how I respond. I am frequently encouraged
not to claim the cash I take in for a few reasons. Some make the case that I
will do more good with it than the government will, others that we are taxed
too heavily as it is. While I don’t necessarily disagree with them, integrity
(in my mind) dictates that I only do this if I am willing to plainly acknowledge
my choice in the case of an audit, so I claim every dollar that comes my way. I
don’t know why but it is important to me that I be able to say that any
unclaimed money is a mistake and not intentional on my part.
That’s just me and my perception of honesty, I get why
people don’t claim cash. Honestly, no criticism here. I don’t
mind admitting taxes can stress me out if I am not mindful of the process.
It’s much more complicated than it needs to be, and the whole process seems so
opaque that I feel like it is inevitable that I screw up somewhere along
the way.
If we think about it, we are taxed in multiple ways for
being alive, everything is trade-off that we don’t have any control over.
We trade the years of our lives for experience and memories
and we can’t move on to anything new without leaving some things behind. I
suppose the percentage of money I send in every 3 months is just a more
contrived version of this.
Or maybe that’s just what I tell myself.
by Jamesscotthenson | Apr 15, 2017 | Blog
Seth Godin talks about taking “the Long Cut” instead of
trying to find the easy way to do things or taking a short cut.
This is a difficult concept in this day and age where we are
so accustomed to getting what we want, when we want, exactly how we want it.
On the surface, getting what we want, when we want it is
good, but it seems to really diminish the value of things as well.
I think this is especially true with the things we work for
and the expectations we have for how quickly things will come our way.
Ever since starting this blog I have been bombarded with
emails about how to get 100,000 people on my mailing instantly. People follow
me on Instagram promising thousands and thousands of followers if I click their
link or follow them, the same thing happens on Twitter. Now I am getting these
offers for podcast downloads.
I don’t know if this is an outdated idea, but my entire
business plan is to offer quality work and hope this brings people my way.
This has worked well with the counseling and life coaching
and meditation instruction. I know that the internet is a slightly larger pond
than Lubbock, Texas, so I am working on building an email list and I try to
cross-promote what I do, but I don’t think I ever really want to have inflated
numbers or people who follow me because they want me to follow them back.
I wonder if getting things so quickly and easily has taught
us to dabble in things instead of perfecting a craft and doing the work
required to create something real.
Learning that somewhere in the neighborhood of 70% of Barack
Obama’s Twitter followers were bots, and that most celebrities average between
19-35% of their followers being fake, it looks like we live in a world where
image is far outweighing reality (Trump falls into this range too, this isn’t
me being political).
It’s weird to talk about taking the long cut in a high-speed
world, but it also seems like the only way to build a solid foundation.
Image only carries a person so far, but it seems like the
first thing many of us want to focus on, and this is understandable when we
live in a world where image is confused with reality. It may be more fun to
think about how you are going to decorate your house, but it’s not going to
last very long if you don’t pay attention to plumbing first.
Work is fun. Work is good.
Things change drastically when we do something because we do
it rather than for some specific outcome.
What is something you love to do?
What is something you are willing to build slowly, to craft
into something you can be proud of?
Is image truly important?
Can we create anything worthwhile if image is our primary
focus?
by Jamesscotthenson | Apr 14, 2017 | Blog
The 2nd episode of the Dying Daily Podcast is available
on Libsyn and Soundcloud.
This episode explores the idea that people do what makes
sense to them, even if it looks irrational or unskillful from the outside.
It asks how our judgments might affect our relationships with other
people, and our relationship with ourselves.
This was a tough one to get right, and I do not think I did,
but my recent soapbox about the perfect as the enemy of the good didn’t leave
me a lot of room to shelve it. I worked on making the cuts and edits flow
better, and I tried to adjust the volume as per a suggestion I received. I
would appreciate any feedback you might have about anything on this episode.
Thanks for listening and helping me get this podcast off the
ground.
by Jamesscotthenson | Apr 14, 2017 | Blog
There are certain times that I know I shouldn’t make
decisions.
When I am tired.
When I am angry.
When I have that general feeling of wanting to jab at people
for no real reason.
When I am hungry.
When I am down.
When I am super happy.
I still make decisions during these times every so often,
because it is hard to make the decision not to make the decision when these
things are present.
I usually do an okay job of sticking to these rules, but
every once in while I don’t, and it never turns out well.
When I am tired, everything feels overwhelming and vaguely
ominous. Not the time to make decisions.
When I am angry, everything feels stacked against me and
everyone seems like they suck. Not the time to make decisions.
When I have that general feeling of wanting to jab at
people, I end up jabbing at people. Not the time to make decisions.
When I am hungry, small things can bring anger, and my focus
is elsewhere. Not the time to make decisions.
When I am down, everything seems hopeless and useless so
there is no reason to try anything. Not the time to make decisions.
When I am super happy, everything seems doable and easy and
perfect and I will overcommit. Not the time to make decisions.
Essentially, it is dangerous to make decisions when we are
in any kind of extreme (even a little extreme) emotional state, because
everything is tinged by something that doesn’t necessarily have any correlation
with reality.
Emotional states are very temporary, they are not good for
long-term decisions.
Emotional states globalize very subjective experiences, they
are not good for important decisions.
It’s seeing past them that’s the tricky part.
by Jamesscotthenson | Apr 13, 2017 | Blog
This has been a difficult week in a couple of different
ways.
I am learning I cannot go without sleep like I used to.
Staying up two nights on the weekend has killed me this week, and I think the
90-mph blowing dirt we live with this time of year isn’t helping. I’ve also
been keeping my sugar below 26g per day, so my body is rebelling. Max caught
the stomach bug going around, so I had to rearrange clients this week to be
home with him. I really hate inconveniencing my clients, but vomit and fevers
have their own agenda. My dog is really sick too, we are trying to nurse her
back to health with about a dozen different medications. We’ve lost all of our
animals over the past 3 years, she’s the last of the big pets. I don’t
generally consider my job to be difficult, but this week was.
All that being said, I am still conscious of the fact that I
have already won at life.
I have a family that loves me and likes me, and I love and
like them. I don’t really have unhealthy conflict in my life with healthy
people. Even with unhealthy people we are usually able to find a way to bring
something constructive out of it. My wife is an independent professional
wrestler who teaches kids in China English every morning. We are paying pff
debt every single month. Tyler is a unique kid who really doesn’t care if
people make fun of what he likes and he doesn’t let it change what he does.
He’s also a hard worker and got a job at Sonic this week. He’s going to wear
skates and everything. Max is my little partner in everything. He sat at the
vet with me for 3 ½ hours yesterday and we watched octopus videos the whole
time. He only cares about octopuses and robots. I love my parents and my
parents-in-law. I love my job and my clients. I love living in Lubbock.
Like I said, it doesn’t really matter what happens, I’ve
already won.
I do not know that the podcast will be a weekly thing until
the blog is no longer a daily thing. I enjoy doing both of them, but I have to
be careful about how much I commit myself to. A few people have already
cautioned me about this, I try to listen to the people who love me and are
wiser than me these days.
I am looking forward to blogging less frequently once this
year is up, I think I can craft better posts and do more research on them when
I am not trying to produce something every day. I would also like to have some
more continuity and flow to the blog, I think I can do that starting in about
163 days. It’s really flown by.
I am really enjoying One Punch Man on Netflix. It’s just
awesome and fun. Tyler told me about it, and I have been glad he did.
Take care, enjoy your week. Look at all the ways you’ve
already won.
Being born at all is one of them.
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