Life, in general

[forsyth]

"The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist: a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain. If you can't lick 'em, join 'em. If it hurts, repeat it. But to praise despair is to condemn delight, to embrace violence is to lose hold of everything else." - Ursula K. LeGuin, "Those Who Walk Away from Omelas"

Read the whole story. It's short.

And... I dunno. I'm just not satisfied with life right now. I'm definitely going to have to find a new job after Christmas, I'm only still there right now because I'm not going to abandon the store right before Christmas. I feel the need to DO something. Especially after the election. I'm just not sure what, right now. I need to figure out what would be the best use of my skills, I guess. I'm just not sure right now. I want to do something direct to help people and make the world a better place, but I'm not sure how much difference it'd make. I don't know. I looked at the Peace Corps site the other day, but I don't have any of the training they want for anything, and I have enough trouble fitting in here, well, here being not-Internet, so I dunno how great an idea that'd be. And I'm not sure that'd be the best thing to do... I really don't know right now. But I know I need to do something besides what I'm doing now. And I'm open to suggestions as to what.

Comments

[evilcarp.livejournal.com]

http://www.americorps.org/

I looked into Americorps at one time. In my area, there were a lot of opportunities to do good things that while learning some really useful skills. Some of what they do is purely volunteer work but they also have paid positions.

Everybody has to help the world be better in different ways, depending on what kind of resources they have. Sometimes you have to be content with a lot less than you really wish you could do. I never got to go into a line of work in which I could affect people's lives every day like I wanted. It turned out my dad was right about one thing; I gotta pay the bills and there are only so many jobs out there that let you save the world and pay rent at the same time. In college, my way of helping was to volunteer; helping gay rights organizations, collecting signatures for initiatives, participating in AIDS walks, etc. Now that I have less time and a higher disposable income I'm all about donating to organizations that I like, mostly local groups that help homeless people. I'm also very fond of boycotting things and trying to get other people to boycott them. Like WalMart, diamonds, meat from factory farms. I had a point...I forget what it was. Oh wait, got it. Point is, you don't do yourself much good worrying about what you aren't doing. Each person just has to figure out what they can do to help make their world a better place and do those things, and stick by them and be happy knowing that they're doing what they can.

This is what happens when I miss my bus and get stuck at work. I have too much time to think and can write long reply's to unsupsecting LJ posters.