My Last Nerve

Life (or the God of your choice, if you prefer) puts certain people in your path as growth opportunities.  Think you're nonviolent?  Think you're serene?  Life will give you people who test you.  And with everything else I have going on right now, I do not want to deal with this same...old...issue from the same person.

Deep breaths.  Meditation.  Yoga.  These are my friends.  These can overcome my impatience and my frustration.

Standard disclaimer: the person(s) to whom I am referring is not on Facebook or Twitter and is certainly not reading this blog.  It's not you.  You are wonderful.

Two Words to Fix the NCAA Tournament

"Strategic Unfairness"

Today's NCAA Tournament games have been boring.  We've seen exactly one close game (Wichita State/VCU) and one game that sounds like it was good, but I was flying to Connecticut (Syracuse/UNC Asheville).  That's a one hot album every ten year average.

The real problem with the tournament is that the selection committee has gotten too good.  Thanks entirely to the movie Moneyball, advanced statistics have made it possible for people to compare teams from different conferences very fairly.  Gone are the days when Murray State would be patted on the head for its one-loss season and given a 13 seed.  Now, teams like Wichita State regularly get 5 seeds, which leads to matchups with VCU that no one cares about.

Do you recognize the problem?  If Murray State were a 13 seed, some 4 seed was probably going down today.  We'd get a buzzer beater, we'd think that an underdog had won a huge upset, and everyone would be happy.

Solution: we need to reintroduce corruption into the selection process.  No one wants to see Wichita State play VCU, but underseed them both, and I will LOVE to watch them take down an over-seeded Baylor or Michigan team.  An additional benefit is it allows athletic directors and other NCAA types to engage in yet another form of corruption, which will make them happy.

Stress and the Future

I'm a mess with stress, though I present it with finesse.  It's a tough time.  No need to go into the details.

This stress comes from worries about the future.  However, I have no doubt that I'm going to keep eating, sleeping under a roof, and doing all the things that are critical to a healthy, full life come July 1st.  There is a zero percent chance I go hungry or homeless.

Instead, my stress comes right from my fears about my self-image.  Specifically, who am I when I'm done at Wake Forest?  How does it affect my status, how others perceive me?  I'm also worried that the next j.o. I take will keep me from doing the things that matter.

Really, the things that are causing my stress are that simple and that inconsequential.  Like, maybe Bryan doesn't need to take such a job.  Or maybe Bryan can quit such a job if he finds it is getting in the way of what matters.  He has a very good friend who did just that, and life worked out just fine for her.  As for status, whatever.  The only people who judge someone by the status of their job are jerks and...me, I guess.

And I don't think I'm a jerk.  Insert smiley face emoticon.

If you're going through a tough time, I recommend you break down what scares you.  A little honesty and introspection can show us that a lot of the fears about the future we have aren't nearly as bad as our heads make them out to be.  Everything that you really want and need is always available to you.

Ben Riggs' latest masterpiece directly influenced this post.  Make 15 minutes to read and digest it.  You'll be glad you did.

Yoga Clothes and the Landmark Forum

Wait, Lululemon encourages people to join the Landmark Forum?

Man, I try not to judge another person's path, but this is an organization that charges a hundred bucks for yoga pants made in sweatshops and actively supports the favored ideology of every a$$hole Wall Street banker.

Fck Lululemon.  Most companies that exploit spirituality at least make token gestures towards doing the right thing.  Lululemon can't even be bothered with that.

Kicking Ass to Live

I read an article over at Elephant Journal last week that talked about how asana is only one limb of yoga, although we Americans tend to treat it as the end all and be all, and how advanced practionners should move past the need to hit every pose every time.  Right on.  I've written about the very same things in this space.

However...

Over the last week, life stayed heavy, when I thought it was getting lighter.  I broke under the load a little bit.  I spent the weekend on my couch with ESPN.  I needed the break, but I woke up today knowing that I needed to get back in the game.  I needed to work out the stress that I had accumulated.  So what I needed was an ass-kicking hour and a half of yoga.  I needed to sweat the pain away.  

Asana isn't the only thing, except when it is.

The Backlash to the KONY Backlash

First, KONY should always be your favorite terrible hip-hop acronym.

I was about to write a long piece blasting those people who wanted to get all smug about the KONY video.  Once I started to read about the backlash, I slowed my roll.  I haven't watched the video and don't intend to, but the criticism sounds fair.  Invisible Children should be commended for an innovative and effective outreach campaign, but it won't do to simply swap sets of butchers.

Yet my core worries about Andrew Sullivan and the rest of Smug Brigade remains. The quote from Rebecca Rosen in the link is worth a copy-and-paste. "It would be a terrible outcome," Rosen wrote, "if those who initially pushed the video along were discouraged by this experience from further engagement, overlearning the lesson and believing there is no positive way for Americans to engage in the world abroad."  I am FB friends with a lot of high school students who shared the KONY link, because I am sure it was the first time any of them had ever thought of the scale of human rights violations in Africa.  Their outrage and desire to help is completely sincere.

If any of them are reading this, please don't let anything you hear about Invisible Children compromise that sense of outrage you had while watching the video.  The truth might be more complicated than the video portrays, but your urge to want to do something is a beautiful thing.

Packing Conflicts

At the end of the month, I am moving out of my apartment.  Like a responsible adult, I have already started packing.  Remember, nothing makes me feel better than feeling like a responsible adult.

Like most everything else in my life for the last year, packing leaves me profoundly conflicted.  I am excited about what is to come but terrified that I don't know what that is yet.  I am both excited and terrified this move represents a step towards a new job and possibly career.  I am excited and relieved because moving out represents another break from my soon-to-be previous employer but sad because living in this apartment has meant so much more than said employer, has opened up so many amazing doors, and has led to the creation of so many wonderful friendships.

I've reached the point where I'm pretty comfortable with who I am.  Few things that can happen to me could still rock my sense of self, although I know that something down the line will do just that at some point.  But as for now, starting down a move and job fears, all I can think of is that I've done all of this before, so I don't get too worked up about anything.  However my situation resolves itself or doesn't, there will be good and bad aspects to it.

So I think being conflicted is probably an indicator that I can see more of the whole the picture.  Not all of it by a long shot, but enough to know...something worth knowing, I guess.

All of these conflicted emotions, and all I'm doing, at least for now, is putting a lot of stuff in storage and moving up to Bull City.  Given the 95 percent chance that I eventually move out of the Triangle, I can't wait for, and can't stand the thought of, the conflict I'll feel then.

One thing I am not conflicted about: LSU has a real shot of knocking off Kentucky.  CHAOS ALWAYS CHAOS (c) Takao Yamada.