Tuesday, July 26, 2011

Electric car dream

One of the things about recovering from surgery and living alone: I daydream. I've always been a daydreamer, but lately I'm daydreaming about how I want to create my life after grad school.

I know this:

I want to move to the West Coast, even though it means leaving everything I've  ever known.

I want a hybrid/electric car, not just any car, I want the electric Tesla Roadster in bright green.

Reality check: I really am going to move west. If you follow the blog, you may even be able to come along with me. And the Tesla Roadster starts at about $111,000. That I don't have. It's an awesome car: lots of pickup, wicked style, quiet, safe and good for the environment. It can go 245 miles on one charge. I can live with that. It's small, but so am I. I think we'd make a perfect fit. It's a great daydream.

The problem with my electric car dream (aside from price) is that I can't seem to let it go. I find myself plotting, trying to figure out how I could come up with an extra hundred thou. A heretofore unknown rich relative who dies (I'm sorry) and leaves me the money? A lottery win? (I should probably buy some lottery tickets.) A sugar daddy to fund my ride? (I'm ok with the ride; it's the man who doesn't fit in with my dream.) Or maybe I should just start saving my pennies. Not!

So, how do you do it? How do you make a very unlikely dream come true? (And don't tell me to read The Secret, I don't buy into that philosophy.)

Hey, I have an idea: you can all buy copies of my MFA book next May when I publish. That should get me a few dollars closer! I feel another dream coming on...

Monday, July 25, 2011

I'm back! And the real world sucks.

I am such an old, lazy teenager! In December, I took a break from the blog for the holidays and now it's, what? July? Like any good adult adolescent I have many good excuses, especially the shoulder surgery I had in February that continues to require twice weekly physical therapy.
Turns out that, even though my mind believes I'm still an adolescent, my body knows better. So I took a semester off from grad school, went to summer school to make it up, and now I'm ready to write.

As part of my recovery, I have spent a lot of time on the couch pondering the TV. One show really got my imagination going. It was Through the Wormhole with Morgan Freeman, and it was a (mostly) scientific based inquiry into the idea of collective consciousness. One scientist studied the magnetic fields generated by the electrical activity in our brains and found some evidence that we influence each other in this way. That got me thinking.

The world just seems to be getting crazier. Believe me, I've seen a lot of crazy and I've watched a lot of news. Earthquakes, tsunamis, flooding, fire, famine, heat and drought are pressuring a large portion of the world's population. Add in the worldwide economic crisis and over 10 years of war, and you create a human pressure cooker. Just look at the inability of the US legislature to make any progress on the budget. Is it just politics? Really? Would our elected officials take our country to the brink of disaster just to make political points? And if so, what does that say about our collective mindset?

Why aren't we out in the streets demanding a compromise? None of us run our household budgets this way. If we are chronically short of money, we go looking for another job, work more hours, or hell, have a yard sale. We don't let our children go homeless, hungry or naked. One can only cut so far.

OK, no backlash. I know the government has to make cuts. I'm all for it. But I also know that to make a dent in the deficit, we all have to sacrifice. And if that means that those who earn a quarter of a million dollars a year have to pay another five hundred dollars in taxes, then suck it up. That's six week's groceries to me, how many lattes for millionaires?

I think I'll just go to physical therapy, take a pain pill, and get back on the couch. For now, anyway.