life – Page 2 – The Rogers News

Places to Live

I found a good list of places to live somewhere online this morning. It was the personal list of a woman who was growing weary of the small-town-ness of her current location. It seemed like a solid list, so I’m reproducing it here.

(1) Nashville, TN — I’ve been in the area briefly. Not bad.
(2) Denver, CO — All I can think is skiing and sun, but no water.
(3) Wilmington, NC — Supposed to be beautiful. I liked what I saw of NC on my drive through.
(4) Chicago, IL — Close to “home” and a great city regardless of cold weather in the winter. Familiar.
(5) Austin, TX — Never been but I always hear great things.
(6) Boston, MA — I like what I know of the town, and it’s close to where I am now.
(7) Indianapolis, IN — Nah.
(8) San Diego, CA — Great place, but I don’t want to take the CA bar. So, no.

I would add the following to the list, although they are not completely compliant with the avoidance of small-town-ness.

(1) Ann Arbor, MI — I love being there. It’s rejuvenating, but may lose it’s luster if I lived there.
(2) Traverse City, MI — Home. Beautiful and familiar. Family.
(3) Washington D.C. — See #4.
(4) Northern Virginia — I like this area. Close to airport, good weather, lots to do.
(5) Oklahoma City, OK — Perhaps.

Where to live is something that crosses my mind daily. Where to live is easy, but there’s so much more that is riding on it. Choosing a place to live will determine where I take the bar, spend (at least) the first three to five years of my career, and the next three to five years of my life.

I need to better research what I want to do. That should educate my choice. Too much work for now. I’ll begin to tackle it over the upcoming holiday break. Yeesh! Life.

Progress and Life

“To progress in life you must give up the things you do not like. Give up doing the things that you do not like to do. You must find the things that you do like. The things that are acceptable to your mind.”

~ Agnes Martin

The Timing of Childbirth

From an article about when to have a child, if ever and how it impacts a woman later in life:

Early mothers were the least satisfied and most depressed of all four groups, while delayed or late mothers were the most satisfied with their lives and the happiest.

All other things being equal, the childless women were about as satisfied and happy with their lives as the on-time mothers.

“In mid-life, being married or having a partner has a greater impact on a woman’s well-being than whether or not she has children,” Pienta said.

Early mothers were the most likely to be single and to have lower incomes—factors that largely explained their lower psychological well-being. Delayed mothers tended to have more education and higher economic status than other groups, and were much more likely than early mothers to be married.

The monetary committment necessary to obtain a post-secondary degree necessitates a delay in marriage and childbirth. Time management may be an issue, but I don’t see how anyone can be less busy with a full time job than they are while in school. Maybe it is a matter of the flexibility of a school day schedule versus the containment of a job.

There is also the assumption that most people default to, which is that you aren’t supposed to get married or have children while in school. A few people buck this, and they are the reason for graduate housing. However, getting married while in school could be easier if done correctly. No time off work, a common destination upon marriage, being with someone you love, etc…

It’s to be expected that younger mother’s would be less satisfied later in life. After all they have less to offer their children and are less developed personally. Kids grow up and move on, and while I am only 25, I would imagine that having personal interests, knowledge, and skills is critical to being personally happy.

More on Personal Timelines

Mark Cuban wrote (link):

Our past, and really our profile was defined by the contents of shoeboxes and milkcrates. The places where we kept old papers, pictures, grades, notes we passed to the girl we had a crush on.

Over the last few years, its evolved to the equivalent digital placeholder. Its on Flickr, photobucket, Myspace, Facebook, wherever we host and store all the digital pictures, videos,blog entries , comments and discussions we participate in that we share publicly. Or its in an email database that is hosted or backedup online that we may or may not choose to make public.. And these are just the elements we self maintain.

Our lives are being documented , cataloged and indexed whether we like it or not. But since its a relatively new phenomena, there really isnt much history out there . Our pasts, even of high school kids has far more offline and out of the reach of search engine spiders, than online.

All of this is very true and there is very little we can do to stop it. Information is power, and it flows more freely than ever today.

Big Decisions

Most of the last eight years of my life have been trying to figure out what I want to do with it. Getting an education was always a driving force in my decision making. At the end of high school the persistent question was where to go to college. For half of college the big question was what to major in. And after deciding that, where to work when I graduated. Working after graduating was interesting, however it wasn’t settling because it reminded me I had a lot more to learn, and kept me eager to go to grad school. So, during the two years I was working I was also focusing on where to go to law school. Now that I’m in law school, I’ll be looking for a job soon – a continuation of the two-year cycle. And I’m sure it will continue well into my life.

The clip below is from an essay titled “The Power of the Marginal” by Paul Graham. It’s interesting with regard to how to select a major. I think the general principles of the excerpt can be extracted and applied beyond the university setting.

One way to tell whether a field has consistent standards is the overlap between the leading practitioners and the people who teach the subject in universities. At one end of the scale you have fields like math and physics, where nearly all the teachers are among the best practitioners. In the middle are medicine, law, history, architecture, and computer science, where many are. At the bottom are business, literature, and the visual arts, where there’s almost no overlap between the teachers and the leading practitioners. It’s this end that gives rise to phrases like “those who can’t do, teach.”

Incidentally, this scale might be helpful in deciding what to study in college. When I was in college the rule seemed to be that you should study whatever you were most interested in. But in retrospect you’re probably better off studying something moderately interesting with someone who’s good at it than something very interesting with someone who isn’t. You often hear people say that you shouldn’t major in business in college, but this is actually an instance of a more general rule: don’t learn things from teachers who are bad at them.

Writing

My goal in life is to become a writer. An author. A poet, even. It doesn’t matter as long as what I do involves writing and telling stories. Not sure how to get there, or what to do on the way, but I’ll figure it out one way or another. I think I need to read more. I need some stories to tell. I need some characters to fill my head and to take over my conscious until all I can do – all I want to do – is sit in the dark alone, or maybe near other people, and share stories. Other stories. Stories about people I know and don’t know. About people I make up. If I mix them all together what does it matter who’s real and who’s fiction?

I just want to write. That’s it.