This week, while listening to an episode of the KunstlerCast, I discovered a very interesting blog by Charles Hugh Smith — Of Two Minds. If you enjoy blogs with short posts, bulletted lists of “how to (insert topic of the day here)”, and a general concern for the coolness of the blogger, you will not like Smith’s blog.

If, on the other hand, you enjoy long, well-written posts, interesting ideas and thought-provoking articles, you will like it.

This guys writes a lot. I started looking over the site and was drawn to this article: the Peculiar Dynamic of Boomers’ Non-Retirement. I’m going to summarize it with a few bullet points, but please take the time to read the article. Then come back here and read the rest of this. Please! hahahaha

• Baby boomers are not retiring for a number of reasons. Stock market problems, the housing market fiasco, etc.
• Few private sector employees have an actual functional retirement program (they have been systematically fucked out of them years ago, if you’ll pardon my French).
• Young people are not finding jobs for a number of reasons (see all of the above). It doesn’t help that the massive baby boom generation is not retiring.
• Few baby boomers will inherit substantial wealth.
• He sees no obvious solution.

Now, as I begin to comment on this stuff, please keep in mind that Charles has a massive  number of posts on his site. So I may not be familiar with some of his writing. He may have already said what I’m about to say.

The first thing that came to mind was something my grandfather told me, when he was about 92; “Bob, the problem is that nowadays people just live too damned long.”   He was probably right, but I don’t really want to start euthenizing people yet.

I think the solution, if there is one, involves changing our expectations, and looking over Charles’ writing, I suspect he might think along similar lines. We should expect less in the way of consumer goods. In fact we should desire less. Getting rid of our consumerism would solve a lot of our problems. It may be hard to do this voluntarily, but I think it will be forced upon us.

Another part of the solution will be rejection of the “credit lifestyle”, which of course is directly related to consumerism.  Every day I read posts from blogs written by people who are actively dropping out of  the credit/consumer bullshit lifestyle.

For my generation (I’m 46), I think we will have to adjust our expectations about actually retiring. I think that for most of us semi-retirement will be more realistic. From what I’ve seen of full retirement, most people just sit around watching TV most of the time anyway. Oh, they might take some trips, but the rest of the time can be pretty boring! I’m sure retirement is more attractive if you work in a mine, a factory, or you’re a cop or a fire fighter.

I think it’s important to realize, however, that lowering your expectations in these areas isn’t a bad thing. Perhaps I shouldn’t use the term “lowering”, but rather say “changing our expectations”. Change them so that they are in line with a meaningful, peaceful, good life, rather than one full of stress over acquiring the next trinket.

In the meantime, I would like to self-refer you back to one of my earlier posts on insulating yourself from the chaos economy. It is one of those posts with an annoying and simplified bulletted list, and a lot of fairly obvious ideas (obvious, but not universally popular in our society). Then I’d suggest you go and read a lot of stuff on Of Two Minds — it really is full of fantastic content.

If you are interested in urban planning, the issues affecting large metro areas, or the future of the Dallas/Fort Worth region in particular, you might be interested in the Metromorphosis Symposium, put on by the Greater Dallas Planning Council, in November.

I listen to the KunstlerCast every week.

This episode, Modern Family Living,  was really pretty interesting, discussing boomerang kids, boomerang parents, etc., and their relationship to suburbia. Very good talk. Give it a listen.

Of particular interest to me was the stuff about how suburban living, good communications technology, and cheap air travel, have allowed so many of us to live far from our families. Having been through a couple of family illnesses in the last year, this really struck home. Luckily, I live very close to my parents, but we are about 4 hour from my inlaws — still not that far by today’s standards. It was nice to be close enough to help them.

Well, it is September 1. That means Fall is here, right?

It was a rough summer. Besides August giving us day after day of 104 degree heat, we had some other challenges. We’re OK, but I’m sad to say that our gardens did not get tended very well. Just too many other concerns, and since we don’t actually have to live off our gardens, the heat took its toll. Likewise, I decided not to bike commute when it was so damned hot.

On the bright side of sustainability, however, our little 1960s house performed pretty well this summer. That means it kept us cool without massive electric bills. Granted, when it was 105 outside the AC ran a lot, but not contantly. There is something to be said for having a small home, with low ceilings (less air mass to cool or heat), and properly size overhangs preventing a lot of direct sunlight from entering the home in the summer. I’m sure the new windows we put in when we bought the house have helped a lot. Getting new doors, that will properly seal, in a week or so.

What would help our house the most as far as efficiency would certainbly be new insulation. Of course, that will be a pain, so we’ll have to just wait on that.

Anyway — in the coming weeks it will be time to re-work the gardens, get some Fall stuff planted (greens, etc), construct some new frost covers, etc.

I wrote this article on my other blog yesterday, about the micro-budget film “Monsters“, from the UK. The film has created something of a buzz at film festivals, and it looks quite interesting. Some nice metaphors and themes in the movie.

Anyway, the point of that article is actually kind of appropriate for this blog too, so I’m posting it here. Other blogs, especially those like Far Beyond the Stars, discuss the potential of technology to allow us to take more control of our lives. This film, Monsters, was made by just a couple of people, using inexpensive off-the-shelf technology. I’m just blown away by this, though really not surprised. This kind of thing is really a testimony to the notion that there are really no significant barriers to creating your own art , your own business, your own “thing”.

It has been a hard few months, due to family illness, etc. However, I’m back and the blog will continue.

Jerry and the gang's Third Place.

I’ve seen two mentions this morning of the idea of “the Third Place” — a place that isn’t work, and isn’t home. It can be the coffee shop with WiFi where you actually get your work done, the bookstore or library where you love to spend time, or the cafe where you love to meet your friends.

Anyway, the little library I run has this book, The Great Good Place: Cafes, Coffee Shops, Bookstores, Bars, Hair Salons, and Other Hangouts at the Heart of a Community, which I read a while back. It is all about this phenomenon. Good book. Check it out.

Video from TED. Good stuff.

My friend Tom is an expert in training, personal coaching, and stuff like that. Sorry I can’t quite describe a job title for him — he’s an eclectic thinker who has always been a big help to me. We worked together about 8 years ago, and we’ve kept in touch periodically since then.

Anyway, Tom and I were talking the other day and he suggested I might read this book, The Power of Full Engagement. I’m a couple of chapters into this book, and I must say it is pretty interesting. The author’s position is that what we really need to do in our lives, to improve quality of life and job performance, is to manage our energy.

I’m sure many of you share this experience: you work all day. Your energy level fluctuates a lot during the day. When you get home you have no energy left, and feel like simply eating some bad food, maybe having a drink, plopping down in front of the tube, and going to bed. Repeat this process for five days.

Compared to a lot of folks I have a fairly healthy lifestyle. Not perfect, but not horrible. I practice martial arts a few times a week, do some skateboarding and cycling, and try to make sure we get some healthy home-cooked meals every week. However, there is a lot of room for improvement. At work, I sit at a desk. I like my work. It gives me a lot of room to exercise some creativity. However, it is a pretty solitary job. Sitting at a desk all day is actually exhausting. As a result, my performance at work really fluctuates.

Frankly,  I don’t think it is realistic to think any human being can work at a desk, or work period, for 8 hours a day with really high concentration for the whole time. And of course, that is why no one really does that. It simply isn’t really possible.

The authors of this book agree.

OK, so I’m into this book. The author talks about the need for people to use and renew energy in four areas of life: physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual. He emphasizes that there needs to be a balance between expenditure and renewal in each of these areas, and that often people are fine in some areas but way off in others, which creates problems. You need to renew your reserves during the day, not just while sleeping at night.

So I’ve started a new thing at work. I set my computer to remind me in mid-morning and mid-afternoon to get up and go for a 15 minute walk, and then drink at least one glass of water. Seems like not that much, but 15 minutes is about a mile of walking, so it provides exercise, gets my blood circulating, gets my eyes off the computer, gets me some fresh air, and of course some Texas summer heat.

Gonna do this for a month and evaluate it’s effects. I’ll continue to post some things about this book as I continue reading it.

If you have comments on this book, please submit them. I’d love to hear your thoughts.

This TED talk really gets down to it. “It” being the fact that we (in our modern societies) tend to measure things that really don’t make us happy. Good stuff. Watch.