Week 11: Brain Dump *Private*

I decided to make this post private.  It is on my personal blog (https://msvprivateblog123.blogspot.com/?zx=7a8a443d043ee815).  Make sure you turn the settings to private so no one can see it :)

Week # 11: Brain Dump

Writing just what is going on in your mind is a crazy and disorganized process.  Right now I have had a tension headache for 2 days and I keep on thinking of the pain on the left side of my face.  I also read a lot of books about mediation for fun........and to help me fall asleep.  Anyways expert mediators are supposed to be able to handle higher levels of pain than us non experts.  They learn to be curious about their pain and make friends with their pain.  So I am trying to use days like today where I know I will have a dull pain all day to take a step back and be curious about it.  

Another thing that is on my mind is that I have to write everything down to make sure I remember it.  I have not kept up my to do list the last couple of days and it makes me feel disorganized and that I am constantly forgetting something.  Speaking of which I forgot to post Digital Friday until this morning.  It was something I forgot to write down and it just slipped my mind.  

The English teacher part of me is pained by how disorganized this post is.  There is no theme and I just ended the last sentence with a verb!  But the point is not perfection.  The point is to become comfortable with your inner voice and your writing voice becoming one. 

 I really wish you could make some posts private without making a separate blog.   I guess that defeats the point of blogging?  Blogging is something people do to share their ideas with the internet so by its nature it is public, but where is the space for private thoughts when the format of a blog is more comfortable?  

Word Count: 302

Week # 9: The turning point

I just finished the non-fiction book Dreamland: The True Tale of America's Opiate Epidemic by Sam Quinones.  This novel weaves together several stories of heroin addicts, their famines, and the drug dealers from a small town in Mexico.  For the heroin addicts the turning point being prescribed prescription pain pills. There is a sad story of a star football player who suffered a knee injury and was prescription Oxycontin.  When he ran out of Oxycontin he went to heroin because it was cheaper. In order to afford his new habit, the football player began selling heroin and bought a gun for protection. He ended up dying from a gunshot wound during a drug deal.  

I think you could argue that there were many turning points in this football player's life.  If only he was not prescribed Oxycontin then he would not have ended up dead before the age of 20.  Another turning point was moving onto heroin and another was deciding to sell heroin. He had the opportunity to change at any one of these junctures, but the addiction was too strong. 

The football player’s story is that of one bad decision after another.  Once he was addicted to oxycontin it seemed like he was set to follow a path downhill to his eventual doom.  The most disturbing part of this story is that it is one of the many stories of young people who have died too soon due to opiate addiction.   

Word Count: 245

Week # 8: If my book was a song it would be "Mad World" by Gary Jules

I recently finished Dream Land by Sam Quinones.  The book is about the American Opiate Epidemic and how we got to the opiate crisis we are in today.  It weave the stories of young illegal Mexican dealers who are seeking a way out of poverty with the lives of rich, white, suburban teens who have everything and still feel the need to escape and isolate themselves first with prescription painkillers and then later with heroin.  I have always loved the song "Mad World" by Gary Jules.  Remember watching at the end of the film Donnie Darko when I was a teenager and thinking that is what life can be like for some people.  It is a mad world.  Teens who have so much are wanting to escape.  There must be something our society is not providing to our youth to make them feel like there is "no tomorrow" and that they should want to "drown their sorrows."  You contrast the experience of these teens with privilege and to the drug dealers from this small town in Mexico and the contrast becomes a bit wild.  They dealers come from extreme poverty and should have many reasons to want to escape into a drug induced dream world but they don't.  Instead they are focused on pulling them and their family out of poverty.  

I am not sure what the solution to the opiate epidemic is, but I do think that Sam Quinones points to how the problem is deeper than just over prescribing prescription pain killers.  We have to look at what is causing people to want to escape or numb their emotional pain with drugs in the first place. 

Word Count: 278

Week # 6: Capote

My first thought about the movie Capote is that it is about some deeply flawed human beings both the two criminals and Capote himself.  Capote uses his fame to weasel his way into the lives of the people of Holcomb and the criminal's live himself.  He appears to be there for them and has empathy but is doing so only for his own gain.  He uses the pain of especially Perry to entertain his friends.  It seems like a sick experiment and from what I know about Capote's life after publishing In Cold Blood, I think Capote paid for it with extreme guilt.  

Both Dick and Perry are also deeply flawed.  They committed a horrible murder and end up paying for it with their lives.  It makes me wonder about human nature.  How can people cause each other so much pain and for what?  Money? Fame? Fortune?  Is this the natural consequence of society measuring success in terms of fame and fortune over contributing to the good of humanity?  

I finished reading Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI.  Both this novel and the movie Capote are about true crime and a person's journey uncovering the reason why the murders occurred.  In Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI the motivation was greed.  I have read the novel In Cold Blood a few times.  I think one of the motivations was greed but I would not argue it was the main motivation for either Perry Smith or Dick Hickock.  

Word Count: 263

Week # 5: Quote that speaks to you

“Wisdom cannot be imparted. Wisdom that a wise man attempts to impart always sounds like foolishness to someone else ... Knowledge can be communicated, but not wisdom. One can find it, live it, do wonders through it, but one cannot communicate and teach it.” 

― Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha

The reason this quote resonated with me was because of a podcast I listened to this week.  The episode was You 2.0 Decide Already by NPR's Hidden Brain.  Basically, we learn that humans are the only animal that can use their imaginations to predict the future, and guess what we are terrible at it!  Often what we predict will happen and what actually happens is completely different.  As I was listening to this episode I kept on thinking both how right this premise is and also how I would not be able to understand the ideas presented in this podcast at the same level a few years ago.  I feel that I have enough experience at this point to realize that things do not end up as bad as I predict and are not worth the worry I put into them.  Applying this wisdom in real life is another challenge.

It feels liberating to know that there are scientific studies out that that prove humans suck at predicting their own futures.  I have a tendency to try and overthink a problem in hopes that all that energy will allow me to "out think it."  Instead of actually solving the problem, I end up creating additional fictional problems and what if scenarios that add to the problem.  The only thing thathelps when a worrisome situation comes to fruition is just being present in the moment and dealing with things as they come.  

Word Count (not including the quote): 277

Week # 4: It's all about the plot

So far in my book, Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI, the plot is going slow but I feel like it is going fast.  At this point I think over six Osage Indians have been murdered.  A few were shot in the head, two were blown up in their house, and some were poisoned.  There are some vivid gory details explaining the state of the bodies, which made me second guess reading this before falling asleep.  Despite the gore, I have been nightmare free so I will probably continue to read this before bed.  

The plot itself is slow because there is not much progressing on the case itself other than Tom White, a former Texas Ranger, was put in charge by the F.B.I.  The last 40 pages or so have been about the history of Tom White.  Tom's life is so interesting and full of action that it feels like the book's plot is progressing when it is not.  Tom's dad was the sheriff of Austin, Texas and their house was literally attached to the jail.  Tom witnessed a lot of action in his childhood, including his first hanging at the age of 11 (I think).  Tom's  but I am learning so much about Tom White and his background that it feels like the plot is going faster than in reality.  

Word Count: 232