Sloth it Off

Wow, just had a really crazy month and a half in which my brother finally came to visit. Things eventually got weird as in too much nervous energy and cabin fever for him. I'm glad he's back and happy again. I want to rest and breath but I've got too much to do. Not that I'm not just resting, but I'm feeling really guilty about it. So what do they call that? ...rest without relaxation?

The Pics

I've been looking at pictures of the devastation in Japan. I can't even stand to look at it. So sad. So much destruction.

Wishes For Fishes

Woke up despeately missing my fishes. Angel Rocket, a white tetra and Volcano, a black and orange guppy the color of cooling lava. They were troopers. They lasted over a year as we added other pretty little no-name fish, like the tiny ones with the electric blue stripe down the side. I loved to watch the tank every night when I sang my boys to sleep with "Colors of the Wind" from Pocahontas. (That's what they wanted to hear and it always did the trick even though I'd have to get kind of loud to reach the high notes.) One day we bought a new tetra from M@*!@&'s. He was going to be a new best friend for Volcano and Angel Rocket. A day or two later, everybody looked funny, kind of "mossy". They had Ick, which is such a descriptive name. We put the drops in and tried to save them but everyone died... So I woke up in the middle of the night, deeply sad about the fish I used to love and the little children who used to love them.

A Happy New Year

Wow. Sorry to be missing in action but I think I am busy being happy.

A few days ago I found a file where I wrote "you can't expect to be happy until you realize you can't expect to be happy". Which I didn't even realize was a way for me to justify/pass off lowered expectations as wisdom...

You people, and you know who you are, really helped me become a person. I thought it was just the strange random magical luck of the Internet that found me people who were willing to be interested. And wonderful people willing to talk to me. THANK you.

You know, that was really kind of a rough ride for me, coming through all that. I think denial was my best coping mechanism. There was a lot to break through. I am so grateful to be free. I want it to be known that I made myself unhappy. As a square peg, I really had no business trying to deny my corners and squeeze into a round hole. You can't fake your personality away. I can't believe I could try to pretend not to be weird! That's like my main appeal! : )

Well I still have some technical difficulties and I've just finally figured out that amicable doesn't mean easy and I really do need to do ALL the work and that's okay I just needed to accept that. Meeting to get together and "decide things" that never actually happen are still time-consuming, time passes... So that's my first work of the year.

Of course I am not dating but I have a couple prospects that I'm happy about. One of my friends even gave me a nice Christmas present.

I hope those reading this can feel my love and appreciation for your attention, acceptance and concern.

Xoxo,
Sue

Dude!!!

Random Act of Culture

Scattered, Like Brains

Good golly. Yeah I've been spending way too much time on Facebook being social. I feel happier, but stupider for it. Okay, not stupider, but less studious. I should really be reading articles.

I am trying to form an opinion about what I think the effects of the de-pegging of the Chinese RMB to the dollar and the inflation it is causing in China and the likely ripple effect of inflation in America. And also the changing work culture there. I've heard that many young people are leaving rural areas to move to the cities and work in the service industry and many of the people who went to Beijing to work the Olympics never went back home and that's causing labor shortages in the factories. And change is going very quickly. The currency rate bump up is going to be like 4% soon. So I think import prices from China are going to increase a lot and I wonder what effect that will have on the North American economy. In the latest DOL numbers, the Producer Price index is up .4%, the Consumer Price Index is only up .1% but wouldn't the PPI directly influence the CPI, uh, causally? Will we recover our domestic production capacity? In time? Will we increase imports from India and Mexico? Will this fluctuation affect the entire globe? What areas will benefit? Am I a citizen of the world or of America? I want to tell my friends what to do...

And you guys both probably know I am in over my head. Which leads me to: How do I form opinions? I feel like... you know, this is a little raw. But for whatever reason, I feel like a noob. I've avoided having opinions because I didn't want conflict or criticism or have to defend myself or even to make waves. So I've got some issues with this. But I feel like I have pretty good intuition and a good sense of "how things are", I've got a good position to monitor different market segments like advertising, collectibles and restaurant supply, which behave differently, so I have quite a bit of national data to work with. And I think most essays do start with a certain hypothesis in mind. I think I have anough flexibility to change my opinion if I find I'm wrong. How do I analyze things without trying to read 5 huge books and falling into a morass, trying to become an economist? I don't know to what standards I have to hold myself personally accountable for? I know the standards of journalism are strict. It's just there is an incredible amount of space between Perfect and utterly stupid and I'm not even getting on the board anywhere because it won't be "correct". How do I find my place?