If You Come to a Fork in the Road, Take It!

Even if you are on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there. WILL ROGERS

There is a certain virtue in patience, but there does come a time to act. If you never change your oil, your car will do fine for a while. But eventually it will stop. If you are anything like me then you have several areas where a little action is in order.

It might be as simple as getting up 15 minutes earlier than your norm, along with going to bed a half hour early, as many of us are not getting enough sleep. I like Jay Leno as much as the next guy, but sleep is better.

What will you do with that 15 minutes? I suggest that instead of hurrying your morning and rushing to Starbucks for a coffee and a pastry on the way to work, or worse a McMuffin, that you make breakfast.

I know you are dying to know what your favorite blogger had for breakfast this morning. I doubt it takes me 5 minutes. I make Senseo coffee, about three cups. I add a little stevia and use a little half and half. The result is a good imitation of a $5 cup of coffee at Starbucks. My coffee does not cost $1. Then I start making the oatmeal. I begin with a scoop of soy powder. (I realize that I just lost a portion of my readers as soy is controversial in some circles, but maybe in another post I will mention the benefits of soy for men with prostate issues.) I add a little stevia, 2 Brazil nuts, and 8 almonds. I then put in 1/4 cup of oatmeal and 1/4 cup of a high fiber cereal called Sensato. I would prefer a product without artificial sweeteners like Sensato has, but right now this works for me. I add one cup of hot water, stir, and let it set for a minute. I then microwave it for 45 seconds. I add the left over half and half (1/2 cup for both) to the oatmeal. Yum.

While it may be, (and is!), somewhat anal to talk about my breakfast, I do so to make two points.

First one can eat oatmeal on a low carb food plan. My breakfast is 23% protein, 22% carbohydrate, and 55% fat, very close to my planned eating of 25, 25, 50 for the day. I know that many of my friends are on various low carb eating plans, (no diets, it has the word die in it) so this idea might help them incorporate more fiber into their diet. This is a big, and valid, criticism of a low carb lifestyle. My breakfast just gave me 9 out of the 22 grams of fiber I am told we need. (I will later eat a Quest bar which will provide most of the rest.)

The second reason is that I am convinced there is great value in thinking about the details of our individual lives. We tend to coast through life, and then wonder where it went. Inertia is the great ally of the system, or as I call it, Babylon. What decisions you make are your decisions, make them. Or as Yogi Berra said, if you come to a fork in the road, take it.

Every day we come to many decision trees. Do not necessarily go along with the crowd—think about your choices and make some changes if you need to. Relatively minor changes add up. Making breakfast for yourself is a lot more important than you think.

Oh, what do I do with that extra ten minutes I gained by getting up a little earlier? Many of my friends have made the commitment to go through the Bible in a year. I have joined them. I have purchased the Bible Experience on CD and listen to it as I eat and drink my coffee. We modern humans have the historically unusual ability to read, or listen, to God's word. If you think the Bible is God's word, are you acting on that belief?

Find out where you need to make changes. Make those changes. Act now. 

Update on Wednesday, July 10, 2013 at 1:56PM by [Positive Dennis]

I wanted to add two points. First my Senseo machine died and I have switched to a different coffee machine, I am not happy. Second I have for the time bine eliminated oatmeal from my diet as I am gluten sensitive. 

Be Happy: Reduce Your Expectations

There were two ways to be happy: improve your reality, or lower your expectations ― Jodi Picoult, Nineteen Minutes.

We are headed toward a period where we all need to lower our expectations. A long, slow, steady decline is the best we can expect. There are several reasons for this.

The main reason I think we are due for a drop in our standard of living is our dependence on oil. Oil has served the US well over the last century. It has provided the US with an unprecedented freedom in mobility. Most of the great human advances have settled around better transportation. Something as basic as the stirrup had a great effect on history. The sociological implications of the car on American mating rituals has been huge. 

But we have been using up oil faster than new oil is being discovered—even if the Russian theory is correct and oil is seeping up from the depths and oil is not dead dinosaurs. I have been reading books about what is called "peak oil." In particular I read Kunstler's book, The Long Emergency. While I accept the basic premise of peak oil, I was not impressed with peak oil advocates’ reasoning, especially Kunstler's. What they overlook is that other sources on energy can be used to make fuel. The process to make liquid coal has been known for a century and was used extensively by Nazi Germany and Apartheid South Africa. The US can do the same. 

However, there are big drawbacks. It will be a lot more expensive than it has been in the past. Tyler Cowen describes this process in his book, The Great Stagflation. It is only natural that the first things that are harvested are the easiest, the "low hanging fruit" as Cowen calls it. That fruit is long gone. In additional it will be less environmental clean than oil.

What does this mean for you and me? 

Two car families will become one-car families. One-car families will become public transportation users. Since the US is built around the car this will be difficult. In the future the first question in looking at a house will not be "How are the schools?" It will be, "Where are the bus lines?" 

The US must live within its means, and that means more busses and fewer cars. But this does not mean the dystopian future predicted in various bad novels, and a few good ones, and by "peak oil" advocates will occur. The US is headed for declining standards of living as the price of fuel goes up, as it must, but not  Mad Max Beyond the Thunderdome.

So if you are looking for a house to buy, look for a house that has a space for a garden and is a short walking distance to a bus line or shopping. Right now few buyers are looking for this combination. This will change. 

There was an old English proverb I read years ago: income £ 20, expenses £ 19 6p, happiness; income £ 20, expenses £ 20 6p, unhappiness. 

Lower your expectations.

Live within your means. 

Be Happy

There were two ways to be happy: improve your reality, or lower your expectations ― Jodi Picoult, Nineteen Minutes.

One of my Pet Peeves is the "Name it and claim it" religious crowd and their New Age compatriots.  The idea that God must do what you say has to be one of the most evil ideas in the pop religion field today. The New Age idea is that by the magic of the mind we can change reality. No we can't. 

This is not to say that I am against prayer or “positive thinking.” I think these are underused techniques. But the point of each is not magic: prayer changes the one who prays, and positive thinking changes the one who thinks positively. Changing one's self is the whole point. If you change, your situation changes

Let me give you a concrete example. 

Plant fruit trees and a garden. I cannot think of a better way to improve your situation.  I wish I could do this, but living at 6700 ft. on a pile of rocks precludes it. But this is my choice. 

A lot of work but worth it. Imagine the back line of your property lined with fruit trees. Yes, it will take years for them to mature, but aren't you a forward looking person? You should be. Even if you sell the property, it will bring more with fruit trees. You should leave your property better than when you acquired it.  Find out what grows in your area. Often the recommendation is to plant them in threes for pollination. 

Concentrate on high value foods like berries; also concentrate on high-producing but easy to grow foods like zucchini and tomatoes. 

Yes you will produce more than you need. But I understand that there are ways to store food. Be creative: one of my fondest memories of my uncle Jake was the zucchini bread he would bring when he came to visit. 

Visualizing food, or a garden, will not cause it to miraculously appear in your yard. I can almost guarantee that a prayer for food will not be answered if you were capable of planting food and did not do so. In addition you can be the answer to prayer for others whose situation is dire as you share the bounty that God has given you. As the Christian song says, "We are His hands and feet." 

Prayer and positive thinking can change your reality, but only as much as these things change you. 

On Monday I will talk about the second half of Picoult's observation, lower expectations. 

Christmas 2013?

I thought I would not bother anyone with this before Christmas. This way you have 364 days to think about it. While I would give more emphase to the consumerism aspects of Christmas, these aspects are true as well. 

Manufacturing Consent

I recently rewatched this documentary Manufacturing Consent.  While I am not an Anarcho-Syndicalist as Noam Chomsky is, I have found many important ideas about how the media controls the way we think in this video. This is called framing.  If you never hear about the massacres in East Timor, you cannot be against the massacres.

 

There is no big conspiracy. It is the world view of the editors that cause them to act this way. I have talked about this in another post.