Don’t drink so much.

Don’t plan anything farther in the future than your relationship stretches into the past.

Here is a nifty little website that I happened upon today: the Responsible Shopper.

I’m not sure why, but with each week that passes lately I’m turning into a bigger and bigger hippie.  I actually took my mom’s comments about the low prices at Forever 21 (don’t laugh–we were in Vegas) to explain to her the idea of externalized costs.  For her, the problem is that she doesn’t know about the many ways that our consumer culture does damage to the planet, to cultures, and to individuals.

My problem, on the other hand, is not knowing what to do with that knowledge.  Enter Responsible Shopper.

There are three parts to the site: Learn, Act, and Live.  Learn is a browsing-friendly overview of many of our favorite consumer-product-based corporations, like Starbucks, WalMart and Disney.  Act is where the bleeding hearts try to get you to sign something or do something that will have a positive impact on the practices of those corporations.  Live is where you can learn about alternatives to the things provided by those corporations.

Go.  Read.  Be Responsible.

Get one.  (That’s right, I did.)

The conditions under which you should not buy an iPhone:

1. You live under water.
2. You live in space.

Listen guys, I know you’re thirsty.  It’s San Diego, it’s August, and every living thing that doesn’t have the ability turn the handle on a sink is suffering.

Here’s the thing: You’re not going to find what you’re looking for here.  The way that I know that is that you all are still just a bunch of lone scouts, randomly wandering the vast expanse of my countertops.  If you were going to find something here, you would have found it.  You’ve been over and over the likely territory, and since you haven’t yet managed to organize yourselves into a cringe-inducing line of scavengers, let’s assume that is not in your future.

So, I honestly think the best thing you could do is go look somewhere else.  I don’t have what you want, clearly, so your short lives would be better spent elsewhere.

Also, the first one of you who bit me had better be the last one, or else I’m going to abandon the peaceful coexistence we’ve been enjoying faster than you can say “thumb”.

Yep, that’s me.  I’ve been thinking about quitting.  I’ve been thinking about picking one of my many themes/disciplines/hobbies to focus on and write about.  Finally, it came to me.

Unsolicited advice from an unqualified source.

This way, I can jugde, rant, elocute, preach, and spew about whatever I want, and it all stays together under this new bit of continuity.

This is going to be fun.

I couldn’t work this afternoon.  Sometimes you hit a wall, and today my wall was about 2:30.  Rather than fester in a lack of productivity at work, I decided to make the call and achieve productivity elsewhere, so I went home to continue unpacking.

Today, it’s trying to get the office set up, which means unpacking the boxes of professional teaching texts, grad school papers and other things that I will need to keep handy in the case that I actually decide to finish my thesis and my MA.  But that’s not what I want to talk about.

I also found a box containing all of the stage manager’s scripts for shows that I had worked on.  Not only scripts, but all of the cards, programs, photos, and other memorabilia from that time in my life.  It was amazing to sift through it all and be bombarded by memories of friends and loves, drama both performed and lived.

Turns out there was one guy who thought I would be good at something, so he gave me the opportunity to do it (not unlike my current job, it turns out).  The guy was Amir, that show was Assassins, and I was the painfully underqualified stage manager, trying to make up for my lack of experience with hard work and charm.  And that’s pretty much what I did.  The experience of watching that script, those actors, and that black box of a room being transformed is one that I will always feel honored to have.  It was magical, friends, magical.  Like falling in love, or visiting your favorite place, or just having a really good day, it is the kind of magic makes you want to do it again.

Though not every cast, not every director, not every crew makes something magic, there is something about the pursuit of it that is compelling.  I worked a full time job in accounting and administration during the day, only to be able to maintain my theater habit.  I stage managed eight shows over the course of just over two years.  I am fairly certain that there was a six-week period when I didn’t actually see my roommate because my schedule was so ridiculous and demanding.  But I was young, and exhaustion meant little.

Some day, I will write a post about the actual musical Assassins, in order to defend my irrational fascination with people who tried to kill American presidents. Maybe I’ll write about some of the other shows I did, too.  Some day, I will write a post about my experience working for Jeopardy! and the hardest promise I will never get to break.  Today, though, I’m struck by the resounding passion I still have for these things, though they are so far from where I am now.

I am embarassed by the radio silence here.  Sometimes, the embarassment makes me want to not break the silence.  One of my favorite internet marketing guru insists that not doing something at all is better than doing something poorly that you *could* do well.

This thought has led me to spend the last 2 months fantasizing about archiving all my content, changing the homepage to simple .pdf of my resume and moving on.  In the end, this blog hasn’t really been about anything other than me, which is really only interesting if you already love me.  I have fantasies of making this a fantastic knitting blog.  I have fantasies of making this blog about ethical SEO and non-hyped 2.0.  I have fantasies that even my plain, boring little life can be made interesting by writing it down.  But, if you’re reading this, then you know I have done none of those things.  So, I was going to quit.

But then, I came by to review an old post that may have interesting implications for my work.  And I reread some things that I wrote.  And I enjoyed them.  I enjoyed reading them at least as much as I enjoyed writing them. I forgot that I enjoyed this whole thing.

Maybe I’m not ready to give up on this.