This last couple days has been quite unreal. It started with a call on Friday asking if I still wanted a job at the university. I went to the interview on Monday. It went well and I was anxiously awaiting the “you’re hired” call when I received a call about another job. I accepted that interview as well. I figured, might as well keep my options open. And then I got the callback from the first interview saying they wanted me to come in for a follow up.

Today, I went to the second interview and then the follow up of the first interview. By some miracle, both jobs seem perfect for me and are way better than my current job. Both jobs want to pay me more than I’m making now and give me a schedule that doesn’t conflict with my studies in any way.

The first one offered me the position today, whereas the second one said they had to interview another person and they would let me know on Thursday. I decided to accept the first one and not wait for the possible Thursday call. There were numerous reasons why I chose the first one, and it was by far one of the toughest decisions I’ve had to make.

After the papers are filed and my resignation letter turned in in a couple days, I will have a better paying with better hours job that I don’t hate and actually want to go to. This has been a great day.

This whole process has been very interesting for me, because I’ve never had to pick between two outstanding job opportunities before. Granted, these are just part time student positions, but my current death ship position has made me realize just how important it is to pursue the things you want to do and not just take what is handed to you. It’s really difficult to market yourself and get people to see that you are worth something, and had the death ship not motivated me to find something better, I probably would have remained lazy about it.

If you can’t see the YouTube embedded video below, click here instead.

I’m still waiting for the part at the end where the guy comes out and says, “My wife got the Shake Weight and I’ve never been happier!”

This is an awesome little link I found at Tech Dirt. It includes information about why it’s wrong to share music online, brought to you by the RIAA. Some of it is meant to be used in schools. I think the RIAA has finally given up on the current generation of “songlifters” (new term they created) and are now out to win the hearts and minds of the youth. Start them early so they’ll be spending all their money on MP3s by the time they are teenagers.

What’s great about this is that it’s as dumb as all other school lessons. It’s made to look cool and hip, by someone who is completely out of touch with that generation. I think my favorite part is Activity Four: Make Your Own Music, where students are encouraged to write a song (about why “songlifting” is wrong) so that they may feel what it is like to create intellectual property that they wouldn’t want “lifted” from them. It also includes this: “Generate enthusiasm for this part by performing the rap verses on the worksheet (or have a student perform them).” I really want to know what these rap verses are, but I haven’t had any luck locating the “worksheet.”

The recording industry is really out of ideas it seems, all except for the most obvious ones: embrace new technology, reward the fans (don’t sue them), charge a fair price, and try new business models. What they don’t seem to understand is that kids these days are quite adept at all things technological. They know how to get music and that’s all they care about, especially considering that they don’t have much money beyond an allowance. Keep in mind that kids can’t download merchandise or tickets to concerts for free (not yet, anyway).

The gauntlet hath been thrown downeth. Thank you for bringing out the big guns early on. I have thought about these questions a lot and I don’t have satisfying answers. That’s part of the reason why I keep thinking about them and have chosen an academic path that helps me search for the truth. What is my life worth if I don’t even know what it means? Yeah, so I get a good job and pay my bills and buy shit I want. Whoop-tee-frickin-doo-dah. I like stuff as much as the next person, but I need more than that. So let’s get on with these questions.

1. “What is love?”

The simple answer to this question is: “Baby, don’t hurt me.” Granted, it always pops in my mind because it’s a catchy song lyric, but it is somewhat of a valid answer. The need to love and be loved is part of the human condition. It’s something we have built into us and yet we don’t seem to know how it works. But we are definitely afraid of being hurt by our loved ones for a variety of reasons (loss, abuse, heartache, etc.). However, this fear doesn’t really explain love.
One thing I find interesting is that we are perfectly happy saying we love someone or something and yet we haven’t got a clue what love means. If we look at dogs, they are capable of loving us it seems, and they don’t understand it any better. Based on this comparison, it seems reasonable to say that love is a function of our biology. That we love because chemistry, emotions, and instinct tell us to. But then can we still love someone without the need to propagate our species. It seems like we can, because there are varying kinds of love. Spiritual love, platonic love, and (my favorite) sexual love. These derivations suggest that love is not just a function of our biology, but more a function of our mind. We are able to separate what we choose to love and how we choose to love it.
I still like the first answer, though: “Baby, don’t hurt me.”

2. “Where is the soul?”

The exact location? You don’t want to know what it is, just where it is. Or maybe you already know what it is and you just need to find it. Well, a lot of people think it resides in their heart. This seems a bit hokey, since the heart is just a muscle that moves a lot of fluid. Others believe it’s in their brain. Again, it’s just matter inside your skull; hardly a home at all. My answer is that it doesn’t actually exist. Now, before you get offended and say, “what do you mean it doesn’t exist? Do you mean I don’t exist?” First of all, you don’t exist, but what I mean is that the soul is not an entity that takes up residence in any matter, space, or time. So it does exist, but not here in this plane of existence that we currently find ourselves trapped in. You may be asking how this works. Think of your body, the mass of decaying matter that will eventually stop functioning and cease to live, as a vessel that carries your being while you are interacting with this world. When your body dies, your soul carries on elsewhere, because it wasn’t ever here to begin with. Your body is just a conduit for your soul to experience something different. I’m not sure how I can explain it any better and I feel this is quite plausible. In fact, I’m pretty sure this explanation does not conflict with any religious tenets, it just lacks the heaven/hell/God aspects. Feel free to tell me I’m wrong, though.

3. “What is the meaning of life?”

There are several attempts at explaining this one in the realm of philosophy. One is that you are here to know yourself and you can only do this by using your thinking and reasoning abilities. In this way, you are fulfilling your true potential by being something more than an animal; a super being, if you will. If I ask: Who are you? You’ll give me your name, your job description, maybe where you are from, what school you attended, or a variety of other identifying attributes. But is that who you really are? Your name is just words that give you a label, but how is that really a part of your being? You didn’t even name yourself. Someone else gave you your name, therefore it is your parents’ idea of what you should be called. If you don’t like what your parents named you, you are able to change it. And if you did change it, would it change who you are? Your job is something you do. It makes you money and passes time, but how is it something that defines you? Sure it may be something you love to do and something you can’t possibly see yourself not doing, making it seem like a necessary and sufficient reason for your existence, but it’s not you. These are descriptions of you, but you are more than that, are you not?
Another more common explanation for the meaning of life is that life is meant to be lived. That you are here to do things like help others, experience the world, and enjoy yourself rather than sitting on your ass watching television all day. Honestly, is there any difference between being a potato on a couch and being a potato in a coffin? I loves me some TV as much as the next person, but my intuition tells me that there is something wrong about spending countless hours watching moving pictures on a screen. But to put it another way, life is change and motion, whereas death is permanent stillness.

This is my response post to this post. I wanted to comment, but I thought it was going to get too lengthy. I’m sure your questions were meant to be rhetorical, but I will answer them as best I can.

Most important life choices are not simple for a reason. If you could easily choose between choice A and choice B, there would not be any reason to think about them. And rarely are choices ever broken down to just two. Many times there is a multitude of choices making it even more difficult and brain-asploding. I’ve noticed an ongoing trend that people are becoming more and more indecisive every day. My hypothesis for this is that people are scared of making the wrong choice causing them to not want to pull the trigger. Better to not choose at all than to make the wrong one. But what if there is no right choice? You cannot presume to know that every outcome will be pleasant. But by not choosing, you are essentially saying that you prefer someone or something else to make the choice for you. In this way, you become a passive participant in your own life, rather than the active liver you are meant to be. For me, I try hard to live by intuition, meaning I try to clear my mind of the garbage that constantly floods it and then listen to what my intuition has to say. It’s not always easy, but what I’ve found is that it helps me make decisions without letting stupid things like emotions cloud my judgment.

Everything is not a trade off. Some things are meant to happen to teach you things. Your situation is as it is to help you, not make you miserable. It may not be your most favoritest perfect happy situation, but who ever gets that? Even people who have everything aren’t satisfied, because they only think they have everything and what they really have is junk. I absolutely loathe my current job, and I’ve tried to find another, but so far no luck. It doesn’t mean I have to be miserable there. I need to learn to live with a sucky situation and use it as my motivation to do my schoolwork so that when the time is right, I will shed that job like a two week-old layer of skin. One of the things that makes me happy at work is reminding myself that I’m not going to be there forever.

You are unhappy now, because you’re not getting enough Vitamin D due to lack of sunlight exposure. The atmosphere in Michigan is too dense with water vapor, which blocks most of the ultraviolet rays that cause your skin to produce Vitamin D. Take a supplement or just do what everyone else does: get some happy pills.