Background: I started. Below was unpublished from September 20th.
So my theme in 2013 has been the end of my liberal arts education and the beginning of my martial (arts) education. To those latter ends I have enrolled in a CERT class.
Aside. The point of my martial education is to re-educate myself as to what I should be doing with my body, in every way. And my perception is that our society has decided, and I have defaulted through my social success, that I should be a very different kind of masculine physical presence than that of the ideals I was raised on. For one example, hairy chests. But most importantly, I think intelligent fools like Steven Pinker have ruled the day and suggest that mankind is done with war and therefore martial skills are superfluous as well as odious. I'm investing the rest of my life to avoid the Gordian knots of this world's Pinkers.
Immediately that means understanding how to take care of myself. CERT is a step.
So last night I learned CPR. I was one of the few people in my class who had never done it before. It was very exciting. But there were three extraordinary moments in the class for me.
The first was that I really am the kind of person that wants to charge in and fix things. I am comfortable taking risks, but I don't really understand the kinds of risks associated with medical emergencies.
The second is that I do loud talk my way through things. I am immediately, in any foreign situation, starting to socialize the lesson when there are people around me. I observe, I come up with an assessment, I ask if anybody agrees or knows better. I voice my assumptions, and I come to a decision quickly. Even if I don't act, I reckon about what should be done, what hasn't been done, what might have happened before. This stuff is automatic with me.
The third thing is that I impress people as being strong and healthy. I am, but I compare me to the me of my peak, and I feel my own pain. So it's kind of weird being 5 10 (that I think is short) and over 200 pounds and having people say I look good. I am kinda powerful and I think I'm pretty rugged, but it just feels weird for me to say so, because of the context of what I think a real atheletic performance is.
Today I mark the successful end of the first practial phase (as if I had it planned or something). But the news is that I successfully graduated from the Redondo Beach CERT training class #49. I got my green helmet and my certificates, and some really great hands on experiences.
CERT stands for community emergency response team. We are basically volunteers who have climbed up a couple steps on the Ziggurat of Skill when it comes to, in California, earthquake disaster response. We put in about 30 hours over the past two months covering subjects like First Aid, Disaster Psychology, CPR, Terrorism and Searh & Rescue. Moreover we had to run self-study and pass two FEMA certification exams on the rules of engagement for ICS 100 and the NIMS framework. This was very fresh in my mind Saturday morning as I went to the final drill at Station 2, (because I crammed at the last minute).
In addition, I have taken about 8 hours of the FCC Technician prep course for Ham Radio from a damn fine operator named Ordway. I haven't taken the FCC test and probably wont for some time, but that's a part of this arc in my life as well.
I have been invited to get involved with the next junior police academy, but that won't happen for me until the spring. At that time, I'll probably retake the entire FCC prep. My head is just too full right now for anything else, and I do have my day job to keep. But I have to say that this has been a much more exhilirating and exciting experience than I expected. In some ways I feel as if I have been living under a rock. But as I look around I'm starting to see this as part of the legacy of my family. More on that later.
Cobb readers know that I'm done with politics and what has shifted me in this direction are several factors. The first, of course, was the downturn and my unwillingess to be the slick dude. Speaking of which, let me tell you a story that I haven't put down.
About eight years ago I had an assignment out in the City of Industry. Working in a warehouse that was cooly kitted out I sampled all the energy drinks they had on sale in the cafeteria and settled on Red Bull. I signalled a bit too much that I was going to get the China Deal and left that contract too early, but it was the last time I actually loved Visual Basic. One day I'm sitting next to another contractor and he's shouting on the phone just a little bit too loud. One of the first rules of being a good contractor is that you shouldn't draw too much attention to yourself for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is that your presense in a company is an admission that the people around you are incapable of doing what you are doing. Not to mention that you're definitely making way more money. Well this asshat is pacing back and forth on the phone cursing out loud... wait for it.. cursing out his Porsche mechanic. I was mortified for the guy as I watched people's reactions around the room. Well, that sucked.
It's funny that now that I think of it, I was in the market for a BMW 540. I ended up getting the 740iL, because, you know, I got kids. But only a couple years later I was looking to get a big old Hummer. Hummer is a different kind of slick, I suppose, but not so slick as ruggedly competent.
Not long after, a couple of my gamer buddies died. One of cancer, the other in a motorcycle accident, and I had to admit, being around 50 years old, that I would have to start dealing very practically, not just abstractly with matters of death. So I had to squeeze a lot of frivolity out of my system and start taking seriously that old Danny Glover quip "I'm getting too old for this shit". Moreover, bullshit. So when I came out of the funk that the death of friends puts you in, I had to deal with the fact that I wasn't dealing with that fact. When the downturn turned down and I started hearing out Nouriel Roubini.. yeah you know the rest.
Bottom line, I had to figure out how somebody like me then gets to be more like somebody like me now, and nothing really clicked until late last year, early this year when I discovered the Nutnfancy Project.
And then there's my New Years Resolutions, let's see.
- New refrigerator (check)
- New Couch (picked out)
- New XBox (meh)
- Calesthenics - (not)
- Tai Chi (on the way)
- New Bike (not)
- Integrate Cubegeek & Cobb (nevermind)
- Move static websites to Amazon (whatever)
- Move Limbo to Evernote (check)
- Mac Mini (check)
- Start Men's Meetup in SouthBay (check)
- Find a Bar (check)
- 35 Year Reunion (check)
- Finish First Draft of Borky's Beach (half way)
- Read Classics {Middlemarch, Don Quixote, Finnegan's Wake} (no)
It turns out that I've gotten a lot better technically, focused on my job and a lot better strategically gathering my interests and disciplines into a consistent direction. I've also shifted my style of being a father but that's a whole other story. So my Peasant Theory is panning out. My commitment to Stoicism is working. My reading of Taleb went way better than expected, and I managed this opportunity to get a genuine, certified sheepdog position and responsibility. This is turning out to be a very interesting year way to the plus side.
And the whole thing is at this stage in my life, I want to hear the gritty stories and I want to be engaged at the level younger people don't want to hear about. Could say a lot more but, Ill save it for the comments if any...
Recent Comments