Lies (This post isn't one though)

Nov 21, 2006 19:16

I don't like venting - I tend not to feel any better and I'm no very good at it to begin with. Instead I think I'll try a segue from one topic to another.

I found, to my disappointment, that I was immediately eliminated from a competition to a job I have the perfect qualifications for. I was far from a sure thing - it included a rigorous bilingual check, with a high level of French writing, and I might have failed - I just wish I had the chance. It would have meant a solid paycheck - and while I know I'll find the right thing for me at some point, I feel like I am incapable of selling myself. I have not seen a job I was more appropriate for, and I could not get past the first round of competition. I have only myself to blame, as my resume didn't pop the way it needed to. 600 people applied for 1 spot.

So the confidence, it comes and goes. My belief that I am capable and hard working slips in and out - some things get all my energy and others, I give up on far too easily. I'd like to know what the hell is wrong with me. My band, Kingston Fog, played a show last month that had people dancing, cheering and jumping around - we've gotten better. And while I'm happy about success anywhere, our lead singer/lyric writer and his wife, our violinist, are part of another band. That band is making very big headlines in very little time. They are, by some accounts, the toast of the town. Our sound has evolved enough that I think we can go out there and make a splash - but it hasn't happened and I don't know how we do it. I don't know how they did it and I'm scared (even if it isn't all that likely) that we might lose them to this new project. I can't be mad though, I love the music of this new band. I just wish we could do more, write more, make a name for ourselves. I don't know how to do it - the same way I don't really know how to apply for a big job, write a book, take care of my house, take care of my fiancee, take care of a wedding, really apply myself in my classes.

I don't know and it scares me a lot. The funny thing is - I feel close, on all those things, like there is just some tiny spark and I could write a book, install hardwood floors and fix the heating, get a huge crowd going for KFog and have everything in this wedding down pat.

I'm 27, so I'm actually starting to feel like I must figure this out soon. Sad as that might be.

I don't have the confidence to support people around me either. Between Anna, my father (and the many little medical issues he semi-hides from me) and my birth-father (whose wife still has a brain tumor that won't go away and is impeding her vision) I just feel like I am letting them down because of a lack of energy and of confidence. Sometime I do alright, but I cannot be very reliable these days. I need to get my shit together before I can really help.

Aside from that, I've talked about writing here before, but have little to show for it. I can post the 10 or 15 pages of projects I have left by the wayside, but that is the whole kit and kaboodle. I lost a certain amount of it on a busted harddrive anyhow, and it wasn't stellar.

So now I am trying again. While I keep failing at a nice little adventure involving puzzles, geared towards a younger set - I'm off on another tangent. Simply for the fact that anyone reading this could have a brainstorm of some kind, I'll throw it out there. (I'm almost worried about doing that - it seems like as soon as I really make an idea public is when it dies for me)

Thesis: The single most important catalyst in the development of society is the lie. The ability to lie effectively, as well as the ability to detect such lies, are the two most important skills we have, in terms of social structure and development. Lying is not an exclusively negative action here - for example, our ability to tell stories (a lie that contains truths that are applicable to living) is one that made a huge difference in our development.

So I want to trace that - how our mechanism for creating and dispelling lies works, how it has altered history (big lies like propaganda and politics) and how we have disciplines devoted to creating effective lies (PR, politics, media) and effectively detecting lies (science, judiciary etc) - I think I will need to do a lot of research. I'd love to end with a section on lie detection and on understanding grey-area answers. Avoiding absolutes is important because, well, essentially nothing is absolute. Most generalizations and absolutes we live by have no real value.

So to you - can this work?

Here is the trick - in telling me, please don't lie. :)

I need to figure that out, a long with everything else. If anyone has a suggestion, pass it on.

OK - looks like my committee is about to start. All the best folks!

It is a controlling factor in democracy, war, science, politics and the arts - essentially the components of civilization.
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