Author Archives: Dave

Author, blogger, thinker, developer, and all-around digital creative. Applied theatre professional. Mac enthusiast. Coffee fanatic.

“Angel”

Almost since I first began placing words on paper, I’ve been struck by how stunningly  beautiful the word “angel” is in it’s sound. Something about the way it slides from the lips of the speaker to grace the air and our ears with its sound…the way it points to something so peaceful…makes it possibly the most amazing word that I can imagine. 

That Creeping Blackness

I’ve written a lot about the uniquely American tradition that is Black Friday over and over again here…I doubt my opinion on the consumerist pseudo-holiday is any secret. Usually I’m inspired to write about it just after the insanity has ended and the stories begin to run about the atrocities that were committed in the name of getting a bargain. However, it appears that “Black Friday creep” is all the rage among big retail businesses this year, so I guess I’ll let the posting begin early, as well.

It’s so comforting to know that our national ethics are in such a strong state. After all, profit is the most worthy of goals, and thus must supersede the basic treatment of employees as human beings as all worship at the polytheistic altars of money and consumerism. Don’t you agree?

I’ve avoided Black Friday for a long time, and this year will be no different. I certainly can name the stores that I will intentionally not visit this Friday, thanks to the media coverage of their poor decision to rob employees of their dignity of being able to spend time with their families.

The irony of the situation is that Thanksgiving is not currently a holiday with any religious affiliation, so, were we to choose a holiday that culturally could be universal without regard to the religious affiliations of many citizens, this would be the day. Yet corporate profits are so precious that we can’t allow even that one day with family to be guaranteed. And, honestly, it’s not like the basest of our human desires don’t already cause all of these retail stores to make a proverbial killing in profit on that day. Moving sales up a few hours is simply the underbelly of greed.

My sincere hope is that the retail stores that are open tomorrow in anticipation of beginning Friday’s sales early find themselves in a deficit of customers, as that is the only language that they appear to speak. I earnestly hope that they lose money this year, and are able to trace it to the fact that they didn’t care about the family lives of their employees.

And, unfortunately, I’ll likely be doing yet another post about someone being injured or arrested or in some other way humiliated as people fight for a deal on Friday morning. Or perhaps tomorrow. I don’t look forward to hearing about it.

And I certainly won’t be any sort of participant in it.

A Socially-Acceptable Identity Crisis

While this may not be any huge secret, I’m one of those people who could never decide what he wanted to be when he grew up.

The issue with that is that…well, apparently, I’ve grown up. It happened when I wasn’t looking, I swear. You wake up one morning and all of the sudden you’re eating breakfast and going to a 9-5 job. I mean, who knew?

In case you missed it, I’m in school. Again. This time, an arts school, just a quickie, to do some technology certification work. This harkens back to my New Year’s goal of changing my day job, because I needed something more creative. While I’m having a bit more difficulty than I had anticipated in adapting back to the life of a full-time student, I’m noticing that I have the flexibility to be very creative a lot of the time. I’m juggling two writing projects, brainstorming design ideas for two different websites, and doing theatre work with students who are on the Autism spectrum. Life is hectic (as you may have guessed, what with my writing a Friday post at 12:30 on a Sunday morning, and all), but its good.

The problem with my having so many interests is that there’s always stuff for which I don’t quite have time. I wish I had more time to read fiction, to study theology, to get back to my two-books-monthly reading schedule (textbooks and technical manuals on things like Javascript not included).

Ultimately, though, I need to learn to be content with where Karen and I are in life’s adventure, and to focus on doing what I do have time to do well. That’s a hard lesson for me to learn, because I don’t do contentedness well…and I say that much to my own chagrin.

The good thing about the stressful life of a student is that stress forces you to grow. So does paring down your lifestyle for a while. If I can learn these personal and spiritual lessons along with what I need to learn for career-change purposes, I’ll be really have come out of this situation a better person.

Adventures

My wife’s slogan about life is, “it’s an adventure!” I usually find myself with simultaneous excitement and anxiety about where the adventure takes us. The most annoying tendencies that I see in myself are entering new parts of the adventure with expectations, and then becoming discontent with the adventure. There’s much to be said for soaking in the experience of the journey.