It all came together, finally, tonight. Another crisis hit me this weekend, the “What the f— am I doing with my life?” feeling I get every so often, which seems to coincide suspiciously with occurrences of my bank accounts bottoming out.

What occurred to me was that I wasn’t really advancing any causes that are important to me. Since the day I sold my soul to the devil, sometime in June 1999, I hadn’t given a second thought to what might be important to me in life. Even when I quit my engineering job, I made it no further than “What slightly interests me?”

Shazaam! I had been asking myself the wrong question the past five years!

What I *should* have asked myself was: “What is wrong with my world now and how will I affect change/influence it so it matches my vision?”

That question begs a list. And a list gives direction. I would then have to ask myself: What education will I need? What resources and connections will I need to bring such changes about? What skills should I acquire? Who else shares my vision(s)?

This is going to be fun. My guess is this list is going to be somewhat fluid and things could flip-flop, but here’s where I stand as of today.

First Stab at List:
Healthcare
-Educate people about preventative health
-Reduce reliance on pharmaceuticals
-Make sure every working person and student is properly insured for health emergencies and automatically covered for preventative care
-End farm subsidies which promote junk food products and unhealthy fillers/sweetners
-Distinguish between “food” and food products in FDA guidelines/policy

Politics
-Make sure shitheads don’t get elected to represent me
-Reduce power of corporations to influence government
-Increase minimum wage to a living wage
-Promote single-earner family/community structures with social policy, increase (good) parent-to-child ratio
-Promote community-building and children-friendly spaces
-Increase quality of cooperation and understanding among other cultures

Education
-Practice democracy in school systems in function and design
-Focus on personal development, communication, relationship management as critical development skills for youth
-Assess “grades” such that students better understand what skills they have and what they lack
-Make education affordable/accessible for everyone
-Increase extracurricular involvement opportunities for youth

Environment
-eliminate use of pesticides and herbicides
-eliminate use of hormones in animals and humans for food production and birth control
-eliminate large-scale ecosytem disruptions caused by mega-farms (acres of similar farmland, orchards, trucking 75% of country’s bees into one state for 2 weeks); make communities more self-sufficient/local-emphasis, diversify locally
-Advance clean energy
-Minimize wasteful chemical emissions to air/water (power, transportation)

Poverty
-Make dignified housing accessible for anyone of any income

Prisons
-Rehabilitate criminals instead of caging them
-Legalize and monitor drugs

Fun Stuff
-Permanent, easy hair removal
-healthy cigarettes
-eliminate overhead power/phone lines
-design a community and/or pleasing home environment
-design own clothing/jewelry
-eliminate boring, standard, ticky-tacky houses, cars, buildings

Well, that’s a start. Off to bed now and maybe I’ll revise, prioritize and beef up the list so I can get some more direction in my life’s actions.

Changes (poem):
Stomach turning
Turning to face reality once again
How a paycheck can make you feel so far from your dreams
So here I am again
Spinning in the mud
Unimpressed with myself
At the end of the day, what was there to show for your efforts?
I’m so used to rewards
Am I just addicted?