Post Goal Setting Malaise: Learning to Lick Yourself Where It Counts

My primary goal for the past two years has been to gain acceptance into graduate school.  Everything I’ve done in my life, every action, at its core, has been streamlined to this singular focus.  Whether working on my writing projectss (those who know me understand the necessity for the extra ‘s’, as I am working four things at once, the consummate ADD creator), working extra shifts in Aussie Hell in order to stash money in my E-Trade account (www.etrade.com), taking writing classes and attending writing workshops to mine for contacts who could potentially be recommenders and/or MFA insiders and/or personal inspirers and/or sound-boards and/or guidance counselors, cutting back all but necessary expenses (though, with the economy where its at, I’m considering giving up water and electricity to save my bottom line), submitting to lit mags, volunteering at Boys and Girls Club of Greater Phoenix (http://www.bgcmp.org/howyou.htm), hosting writing workshops at local libraries, performing editing work for writers pro bona, and several other details too revealing to expose here, I have one eye in the present and the other on how this will improve my MFA applications.

Last Monday, I sent out the lot of my graduate school applications.  I know, you’re happy for me.  I will know in March whether I achieved my goal (fingers and toes and eyes crossed).  My question now is: okay, I’ve achieved my goal; now what do I do?

So far I’ve come up with sleeping, playing video games, reading, catching up on all the TV I’ve missed in the last two years, drinking, exercising my dog, spending unhealthy amounts on the Internet (no, not all porn, thank you), taking walks, listening to the radio, writing blogs (well, in this case, the ‘s’ is mis-leading because this is the first blog I’ve written in weeks), working extra just to alleviate the boredom, searching for the perfect rocking chair, watching movies, and drinking…did I mention drinking?

What does one do when your primary goal is achieved?  Set another one, I suppose.  Maybe I’m going through a state of post goal setting depression, but I can’t think of another one.  My life for two years has been singular focused, with pretty much every (almost) waking minute dedicated to one goal.  How do you find another?  Where does one go to purchase a new goal?  Does Wal-Mart have a Goal Aisle?

Maybe this thought process–set-goal, achieve goal, set another goal, achieve goal, set another goal–is uniquely American.  Maybe this idea of goal setting is our society’s way of forcing us to chase our tails.  I doubt my parents had many goals in the 1960’s.  Unless, you count: buy pot, get high, go see Janis Joplin, as goals.  Now that I think about it, maybe those are goals.  Maybe my problem is I’m searching out “Big, Life Goals” and not setting smaller, day-to-day, goals.  Maybe I’ve been so obsessed with this one idea that I have to train my brain to feel gratitude for life’s simplistic gifts.  Like right now, for instance.  My goal was to write something today.  It doesn’t have to be the scene in my novel that will lock my Pulitzer Prize (just thinking about the necessity of such scene makes me want to break out my bottle of Glen Livet…another goal!).  I’ve written something today.  Sure, it’s a non-sensical, rambling blog that no one will read and the minute few that do (HI MOM!) will gain no better sense of life or themselves by having done so.  But, my goal was to write something.  And I did.  Yeah me!

I’m sitting in my driveway in my rocking chair (which I did manage to find, on the side of the road in a trash pile if you can believe it) in the sunshine (seventy degrees and sunny in Arizona today) watching Roger (my dog, for those that do not know) chase leaves across the asphalt and lick himself and this self-actualization has dawned on me.  Goals aren’t necessarily these Earth-shattering things: run for city council, find a wife, buy a house, have a baby, get married, win the lotto, make a million bucks, get a promotion, sleep with the perfect ten at work, write the “great American novel”, sell a screenplay, climb Mount Everest, play professional baseball…etc.  Goals can be little things: clip your toenails, go grocery shopping, hug your mother, tell someone you love them, say hi to your neighbor, sit outside in the sunshine and watch your dog lick himself.  I guess Roger had a goal today, too.

Man-0 e Man-O Marriage According to the Huckster

So, I posted the clip of Mike Huckabee–former Governor of Arkansas, former Presidential candidate (though, I doubt we’ve seen the last of him in that arena)–getting his ass handed to him on a Liberal platter by Jon Stewart.  I hope you watch the clip below.  It still astounds me.  I’ll cop to the fact that I have Liberal leanings.  But I believe conservatism has its good points.  Don’t get me wrong, by no stretch of the imagination would I fashion myself along the lines of Alex P. Keaton’s Reagonomic view of the world.  I think Trickle-Down Economics is the Rich’s guilt-free rationalization for grabbing as much of the pie as possible and disenfranchising the poor.  But, wait a second, don’t cast me as a full on socialist.  In many ways I believe in certain conservative economic doctrines.  I am against bail-outs specifically and certainly against both the financial and automobile manufacturing bail-outs.  I believe in smaller government, thus what Mr. Bush has done in terms of increasing Presidential power and intrusiveness over the last eight years scares me greatly.  But there is a point where conservatism, just like all other polarizing doctrines goes too far.  Our government does need to step in and help those who cannot help themselves.  Health care, poverty, education, mental and physical illness, child care, among others, are issues which the government must intercede to balance and monitor.  And I’d say my main break with conservatism lies in SOCIAL conservatism.  In my mind this argument exists under the lines of common-sense.  Lets suppose Mr. Huckabees statements on the Jon Stewart show were the main legs of  the social conservatism’s platform.  The biggest leg being the issue of gay marriage.  Mr. Huckabee had some “interesting” points.  I’ll attack them one by one:

Mike Huckabee: “…anatomically, the only way we can create the next generation is through a male and female relationship…”

Uh, Mike, let’s go back to human sexuality 101.  The only way we can create the next generation is through a coupling of a sperm and an egg.  I’ll concede the point that said sperm and egg are created within a man and a women, but the coupling can take place anywhere.  In a test tube, through insertion of a needle, whatever.  I realize you don’t understand the mechanics of sexual intercourse, because conservatives still believe that sex is “icky”, but lets try to be adult humans here for a moment and come to grips with the marvel of technology and not leave out the truth.

M.H: “…if we change [the definition of marriage] we’d have to change it to accommodate all life-styles…”

I’m not sure if this point was made to scare us straight or what.  Is this country not the country of freedom from persecution?  When has this devolved to freedom from persecution from only things that 51% of American’s aren’t afraid of?  I can never understand why it sounds okay to lump gay marriage into the same category as polygamy.  It’s shifting the argument to something that abhors most of us, thus making gay marriage guilty by association to everything but a male-female union.  What’s next?  Well, if we make gay marriage legal we will have to make child-adult marriage legal, too.  No, its a case-by-case basis.  As Mr. Stewart astutely points out, inter-racial marriage was once illegal.  It’s case-by-case evolution.

M. H: (this is my favorite one) “…there is a difference between the equality of each individual and the equality of what we do and the sameness of what we do…”

Here, I think Mike (my respect for his has eroded too far to address him formally anymore) is confused by the definition of equal.  This is another argument tact I hear the conservative platform using all the time.  Taking a specific word that stands for a specific idea and subtly attaching a relativity to it.  There are no grades of equal.  There isn’t somewhat equal, mostly equal, kind of equal, little bit equal.  Some words can be grey.  Attach a grey definition to equal and it no longer is the five-letter symbol that directly stands for something else.  For instance, Mike Huckabee is a bigot.  Is he kind-of a bigot, sort-of a bigot, slightly bigoted?  No, you are or you aren’t, there isn’t shades of grey in bigotry.  My point is: preventing gay people from marrying is not endowing upon them with unalienable rights, Mike, thus they aren’t equal, as individuals, as people.

M.H: “…marriage is a privilege…”

Now, we’ve added condescension to the mix.  Mike, what have you done to earn the right of marriage except be born a straight, white, American male?  And yes, I said BORN.  I know you’re about to say that gay-people choose to be gay, so I wanted to pre-empt that comment.  Marriage is not a privilege, Mike.  Marriage is a right.  The sad part of this situation is that We, The People desire our government’s affirmation of this right.  This is what bothers me about organized religion.  Why should I have to pay to talk to God?  Why should I have to sit-down in a church and be led by some man who has studied the Bible in order to talk to my Lord?  Why should people be required to seek out the consent of a government to be married?  But, that is not the government’s fault.  It’s what governments do, this particular point is We, The People’s fault for allowing our government to control us this way.  Marriage is a right, an unalienable right.  What else can I say?

M.H: (here it is…)  “…there is a big difference between a person being black and a person practicing a lifestyle and engaging in a marital relationship…”

I could cite articles here, but I’d be wasting my time.  This is a fundamental belief of social conservatism: homosexuality is a CHOICE.  Psychologists have been screaming into the right-blowing wind for years about this point.  There is nothing I can say except: yes, Mike, there’s a difference between a person being black and a homosexual.  Black people are an influential sub-group that the conservative movement realized it needed to get elected.  Gay people are still not prevalent enough or organized enough or have fought long enough to be politically relevant.  Plus, Mike, once the conservatives realize they are missing out on a pocket of potential voters, how would your voting machine identify gay people, anyway?  You’ve thrown up your hands, haven’t you?  Trust me when I say they LOOK EXACTLY LIKE YOU.

M.H: “…they’re asking to redefine the word…”

First of all, let me quote Robert Downey Jr in Tropic Thunder and say: “who you calling ‘you people’.”  If Mike had said that about a black, Mexican, Jewish, Arab person the media would have burned HIM at the proverbial stake.  To counter the point, though, and I don’t think I can put it more eloquently than Jon Stewart does, GAY PEOPLE are not asking to redefine the word, not trying to reshape the world, not attempting to corrode heterosexual marriage in anyway, they are asking for there God-given right to marry who they choose.  Mike, what would Bob and Bob or Jill and Jill’s marriage next door do to your marriage beside force you to buy a wedding gift which I know you can afford?  How would Bob and Bob Greene’s marriage erode Mike and Janet Huckabee’s marriage?  Not one bit.  To quote Dr. Phil (or Frank Caliendo doing Dr. Phil): “YOU’RE AN IDIOT!”  There are so many people in this country who shouldn’t be married, Mike.  People marry wife-beaters, cheaters, alcoholics, Fundamentalist Christians (AHHHH!!!!!), old people, young people, people of all races and ethnicities and religious beliefs, people with terrible BO, but the truth of the matter, Mike, is not one of these marriages has anything to do with, or even in the slightest, affects yours and Janet’s union, so I just don’t get it.

M.H: “…the basic purpose of a marriage is not just to create the next generation but to train our replacements…”

This, my friends, is the cloaked way of saying a gay couple cannot be as good parents (trainers) as a straight couple.  For this statement I just don’t have any words.  Anyone who believes this is just flat out wrong.  Anyone who has children and believes this I fear for your kids because you are not teaching them one of the basic human sacraments: we are all created equal in His image.  I’m quite positive that a gay man or a woman would suck at raising (training) a child just as much as a straight man or woman.  And to say that a homosexual is inherently a worse parent based on sexuality compared to a crack-hole mother who prostitutes her children out but only sleeps with men blows my mind.  Absolutely blows my mind.

M.H: “…a person who does not necessarily support the idea of changing the definition of marriage, it does not mean they are a homophobe, it does not mean they are filled with hate, animosity, anger…”

I will not speak for every person who does not support the idea of changing the definition of marriage–which by the way is the politically correct way of saying a person who is against gay marriage (though you say those phrases aren’t the same, yet they are)–but I will say based on your arguments above, which are representative of the overall social conservative platform, you are a homophobe, Mike, you are a bigot.  Because those arguments are the incarnations of arguments prohibiting women from voting, black people equal rights, and every other social movement throughout America’s time.  

In conclusion, Mike, your movement is an abomination and frankly your social beliefs are comparable to ones coming out of the Third World.  As your “morality manual” says, Mike, “do the right thing” and evolve.

(Good God!  I’d love to hear what you think of the video and my analysis.  Please comment below.)

Jon Stewart: 1—Mike Huckabee: Done

White Domes With Crumbling Ivory Towers

The government has completely lost touch with the country.  Two months into every President’s first term there are a rash of stories about how the President has walled himself up in the White House and lost the heart-beat of the country.  President Bush’s group-think has been documented over and over.  But I’m not talking about the President.  The issue here is Congress.  In an oversight committee meeting last week, the spokesperson for the bureau of labor statistics said this month’s report is the “most dismal report he’s ever seen.”  Last month, more jobs were lost in one month (over 500,000) than in the last seventy years.  The unemployment rate is higher (6.7%, which you need to double for undeclared) than its been in thirty-five.  And what is Congress doing?  Bailing out banks and car manufacturers.  What are they doing for us?  Extending unemployment for six months.  Sounds correct, doesn’t it?

I am a server.  I arrived at work on Friday night to find out that a law had been passed which made it illegal for me to apply a gratuity to a table containing seven or more people, as mandated by our menu.  Through reading articles, I discovered the law was passed because the gratuity was pretax and the government wasn’t getting its cut.  So, beat on the little guy, Government, on the quickly becoming minority employed.  I realize your broke, Government.  I realize you are throwing “credit card debt to pay-off credit card debt”, as Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty said on Sunday.  But, really.  I’m more broke than you.

Government, you’ve forgotten who bestowed your power upon you.  You’ve forgotten, as Locke and Rousseau theorized, that through the social contract we’ve given our individual power up for the sake of the country.  And you’re failing us.  And this isn’t a President Bush issue anymore.  The ineffectiveness has bled over to the Capital building and beyond.  While you’re holding committee meetings to stick band-aides on the mortal wounds of the American auto industry (“Detroit needs a turn-around not a check”…Mitt Romney) , people are failing.  While you’re floating Big Banks billions of dollars with no pretenses, people are failing.  While you’re spending God-knows how much now in Iraq and Afghanistan, people are failing.  While you’re holed up in white domes, people are failing.  And the people aren’t going to put-up with it anymore.

Or will we?  The primary reason our government agents are so so out of touch with reality is because the people are out of touch with the government.  There is a chasm between our leaders and the people.  The people have left the responsibility of checking and balancing the government to the media.  We’ve stepped back and let Fox News, The New York Times, Politico.com, The Washington Post monitor our government and enact the change for us while we do nothing.  I realize more people turned out to vote in the last Presidential election than in twenty years, but voting in Federal elections is the minimum of our responsibility.  Call your Congressman has become an archaic catch-phrase.  I don’t know if that is because we feel our leaders won’t listen, if we don’t have time to pay attention (because we are scrambling to just feed ourselves), or if we don’t care.  Regardless of the reasoning, we’ve passed along our civiv duty to others.  And I don’t trust our information agents: the media, out of the mouths of these biased pundits and P.R. savvy talking-heads, and in the conglomerate run newspapers.  I don’t trust the decisions being made by my leaders.  I have no faith our government has the capability to reverse the collapse of our economy and rebuild our station in the world.  It might just be time to tear it down and start again.