I think it makes me scared to think of what I want.  I was reading a book about the corruption persisting in Kenya and part of the lesson that the account seems to sweat out is that western aid and can do are as likely to be part of the problem as part of the solution.  It kind of forces me to confront my motivations like most people doing things in that space.  I mean I think I still want to go, but now I wonder if part of my drive to go to that part of the world is a childish desire for adventure.  Yes, I think my reasons are very clearly that I want to do something to address all the problems I see in the world and I don’t think I can learn if I don’t go and learn first hand in the place where all the problems are greatest.  That said, I think I also want to go because I want to see another way of life.  I want to have that experience because it seems like it would be so eye opening.  I guess another thing is just that I miss wandering.  My mind is only able to go a few steps before it stops.  I miss being able to do more.  To think more.  But maybe it is just me.

It scares me to think that I might never be happy with what I do.  I know I am a person that needs to feel impassioned by what he does but I am also a person paralyzed by my fear of exploring something unknown.  Sometimes when I think of how I decided to postpone doing anything beyond staying at the job this year if that was prudence or fear.

But yesterday watching Avatar, the movie revealed a bit more reason underpinning my instinct to pursue this path.  Without spoiling the movie and ignoring the overly simplistic characterization of the central struggle, the conservation message of the film belies there is a beauty to life extending beyond just success.  Beyond success, status, and popularity there is love and unity.  I know I sound like a hippy, but I think what bothers me and has bothered me about the work positions I have held up until now is that the community is defined by conforming to a hiearchy to who should fit in and who should be popular and struggling to coexist in that structure all in the name of profit.  I have never cared that much about it I guess.  I can’t get behind that motive.  I think it is all reversed.

Watching Avatar reminded me I care so much more about the beauty of nature, of community, of connection.  It is startling in fact to realize how much I care about that in comparison to what I have been doing.  I have been scurrying to fit in in this new job and produce results, that I have forgotten what I am chasing again.  Life is much more bearable and because of that it is much easier to just chase the carrot.  But it is not the carrot I want to chase.  I want more than just success.  And a job or a promotion or fame really can’t give me what I want.  I wonder if I am alone here.  Last weekend, I went to my friend’s place and watched her continue her addiction to a video game that just involved her manipulating her avatar to water plants so she could create a technicolor garden.  SHe had been playing for ten hours straight.  Same thing with all of those people playing Farmville.  Talking with my friend, she just seemed so depressed.  She was chasing to be a doctor but she seemed to want something else.  And maybe that is why she created her garden.  But it just seems crazy we spend so much time doing that in a virtual environment.  Our world is out there and with that same potential.  I guess sometimes it just seems so impossible, that we are stuck chasing something else.

Up until now, when I have thought of my motivations, I have only thought of how dire the situation was.  I have only thought that we need to do something about it.  But then I would question what difference I could make.  I am not going to change a desperate situation alone or all at once.  However, it is more than just a dire situation that attracts me.  My compulsion is more than just a demented hero complex.  Rather I want to chase what is beautiful and meaningful to me.

It just scares me to commit I guess.  Avatar essentially means “incarnation” or the manifestation of your soul.  If you could manifest your spirit, your sweat, your tears, your joys anywhere, would you dedicate it simply to the pursuit of status and profit?

At work this week, my manager told me, “Don’t try to boil the ocean.”  I immediately sidetracked the conversation and the entire marketing department trying to dissecting the meaning of the idiom and whether he had used it correctly.  By the end of the conversation, my manager had wished he had not opened up the kimono because it had also opened Pandora’s box.

That said, I guess I do tend to boil the ocean.  It is just the way I am.  I want to be thorough.  I am curious.  I want to understand extraneous details and the why.  I like to know the process and the repercussions as much as the result.  But what counts in business are results and so I am learning how to generate them.  It is a disorienting process, because it keeps me so busy accomplishing things that I forget to question and think.  And it troubles me, because there are so many things I am interested in but my job is so cushy right now it makes me content to stay a bit.  There is nothing wrong with it, but I do feel like I am lulled into a false sense of contentment.  If I don’t pursue the things I want now, I might not be able to later.  In banking, I felt a panic towards all these issues because the conflict and resulting sacrifice was always so stark: sleep or work, friends or work, life or work.  Now, it is more gray.  It is sleep or sleep a bit less, etc.  I love my job and the environment, but I can also tell it is not what I want to do long term and I just worry about waking one day and realizing it is too late.  Every so often in the job, I just stop and wish I could be having adventures and writing.  I want to write.  But then it all gets squashed in the rush to get things done and the excitement of having a schedule.  And then I wake up in the morning and walk into a Starbucks and see an ad about how they hate when “Grownups forget what it is like to be a kid.”

I had a journalism professor that said he did not believe in journals.  He thought they were counter-effective to what he was doing.  I agree with him.  I think they are counter-effective to polished writing, but this is not polished writing.  This is the thoughts of someone lost.  I need to start keeping a journal to keep logging the warning flares I send out about what I want and who I really am or the enthusiasm, curiosities, and those hungering that stab at me will just sink into my subconscious.  I can’t say why I don’t want that right now, but I know I don’t.  I want to use this to elaborate and share.

So after many times beginning, I begin again with purpose.  Even if it means boiling the ocean.

Beyond Iran, I think the potential of twitter for expanding the instantivity of our connectedness still both inspires and frightens.  I can imagine scenarios where twitter enables more dynamic business opportunities.  In a lecture, Rwandan President Paul Kagame describes how mobile phones are facilitating more fluid communication between farmers allowing more accurate pricing and identification of buyers and sellers.  Twitter could definitely expedite this process.  As real time search engines like scoopler refine their processes, people will be able to mine twitter for up to the second results on whatever they want.  Having real time information will make their decisions that much more precise and aware.  Yet at the same time, it must scare newspapers like the NYT and CNN to realize they are no longer the source for late breaking news.  When the plane fell into the Hudson, people turned to twitter because it got there first and when Iran started bubbling, twitter broke the stories.  Institutions like CNN can no longer afford to rest their reputation on the laurels of being the first (think Tiananmen). Twitter will now be the first on the scene because its “reporters” will be the people actually experiencing the event as it happens; Traditional news outlets cannot afford employ every eye-witness (or maybe it could?  Maybe a system similar to google where the media outlet would pay per click on each tweet that leads a viewer to the media’s website).  In anycase, media giants must realize news has become a commodity, however, opinion has not.  In many ways, it has become the rarest of gems.  Writers like Thomas Friedman and Nicholas Kristof and Malcolm Gladwell are rockstars because they provide opinions and perspective that the public cannot get from a simple tweet.  At the same time, they are dying out because we have not figured out a system to nurture opinion writers as well as we should.

Do you think newspapers should abandon news reporting?  What would be the effect of selling off the news reporting business and focusing on perspectives and more in-depth journalism?  Writers like Friedman and Kristof gained their perspective through years of reporting.  Could similar talents be developed in an organization without the same reporting rat race?  Trimmed down to just investigative journalism and opinion-editorials, could media giants like New York Times and WSJ have the resources and profitability to survive?  I’ll think of this some more.

I have a problem and it involves pork egg buns (pic courtesty of cherrypatter.com/2009/03/momofuko/)

Should I be proud?  Pork buns that food snobs say they can’t live without but at prices that cause my asian frugality to hiss at.  When a friend first dragged me to get one of these storied pork buns, I scoffed at how good a pork bun could be, but they are really good even if its really more peking duck than pork bun.  It is just that for $9, I feel I am betraying some of the memories of 50 cent pork buns from childhood.  I guess I can blame the New York inflation, but I think I am more jealous than anything else.  Chinese restaurant owners have been slave-driving Chinese immigrant labor for years trying to succeed with cheap, greasy food at dirt cheap prices.   For the price of one prix-fix meal at any other type of restaurant, you can feed a whole family at a Chinese restaurant and still have left overs.  On that model, it can’t be easy to make a profit nor very enjoyable.

So I guess its somewhat disingenuous that on one of the rare occassions that a Chinese food becomes a high margin item at a restaurant with no hint of Chinese tradition.  Momofuku, a Japanese ramen house, came up with the idea to sell these amazing pork buns.  When you walk into Momofuku Milk Bar, the only Chinese item is the pork buns and the staff (including the chef) are all friendly caucasian people; the menu is filled with walnute pies, chocolate chip cookies, ice cream, and shakes.  I loved being there, it has a very homey vibe, but it is just striking that it takes a complete repackaging to raise the price on a classic Chinese food.   There is apparently a shack in Flushing that sells peking duck buns (http://www.yelp.com/biz/peking-duck-sandwich-stall-flushing#hrid:hcrQCKFoLG_bYcDrf6zlfw/src:search/query:peking%20duck) but they do it for $1.  I am hating, but I am just annoyed by the thought that passes through my mind that if something is Chinese, it is expected to be cheap.  I guess maybe some of that is based in reality that I reinforce with my own expectations, but its an annoying thought.  That said, I am definitely happy someone found a way to jump these babies into the mainstream!

I was listening to the black eyed peas and I realized they have been around for a long time.  It was a bit startling, because it seems like most hip hop stars or groups have lifespans resembling supernovas.  It seems like most of the time, hip-hop artists get derailed after a year or two of putting out hits.  Whether it is just becoming overwhelmed with the attention (i.e. Britney) or just taking everything too seriously and making every song and rival into some death vendetta (i.e. Nas, 50), hip hop artists just don’t last.  But I guess that is the nice thing about the black eyed peas, even in their latest song, they show a looseness of spirit in the way they dance on screen that maybe gives their group staying power both in the viewing public as well as between the different members.  I just really like that it almost seems like they approach the creation of their songs with the awareness that they are making it to be heard in a club and so there is always a good beat but also an lightness in the lyrics.