Jacob and Melissa making kissy faces at the 2007 Louisville Balloon Festival.

I have a nervous feeling in my gut.  I am indecisive, and I am a little depressed.  The first time since the Navy, I feel the unsettling feelers of depression settling in.  Why can't I communicate?  Why doesn't she answer my calls or my emails?  I tell her to trust in me and believe in us, but she's at home and distraut and hiding while I am nervous and anxious to see her again.  I need her now more than ever, I hope she knows that.  I love her more than life itself.

Erick R. Legue

Values Assignment

1. God- I firmly believe in Jesus Christ, and my beliefs make me realize that in many ways, the things I perceive to be real in this world are in fact not.
   
2. Family- being away from family for long periods of time has always taught me this lesson. When at college or in the Navy, I always felt a tug on my heart from my family so far away. Having come back to be closer and take care of my family, I feel so much closer to my center than I did when I was away.
   
3. Friends and Love- Friends make the list of things that are real in this world, and I know that people--kindred souls--are the only reason this world exists for me. This world wasn't created for me to buy and drive an escalade or hide in a mansion somewhere.
   
4. Communication- I crave communication, both written and verbal, almost to a fault. I feel poorly when there is a lack of communication or I perceive that I am being shut out by someone. I enjoy writing, and I like to share fiction stories and rants on my website, and I enjoy the thought that someone might read what I write and connect with it in some way.
5. Word- Keeping your word is important, as we know God from the word, so are we known from our word.
   
6. Balance- I don't like extremes; I enjoy having balance and living a 'centered' life. I don't want too much, but I enjoy a balance between comforting tradition and exciting change.
   
7. Freedom- I found from being in submarines that I'm not claustrophobic when it comes to being in small, confining spaces, but I am claustrophobic when it comes to feeling trapped or stuck. I hated my job and I sometimes felt I showed up to work just to avoid punishment, but there was nothing I could do about it; I had no way of seeking better employment or more interesting, gratifying work, I had a contract that held me to continue to do things I hate.
   
8. Self-determination- No matter what I'm doing, whether it's living out of a car being a dishwasher or playing golf at Hawaii's Barber's Point, I want to know that I have the reigns of my life, and that my future is not in the hands of someone else who may or may not have my best interest in mind.
   
9. Contentment- It's not about having what you want, it's about wanting what you've got. Live simply that others may simply live. The things you own end up owning you. I avoid being overly committed to property and this in part leads to a measure of reduced ambition; I was not born with a dream of becoming a CEO, I tend to take things pretty easy.
   
10. Justice- I feel for people who are being abused or unfairly treated, and I speak up when I think my voice may influence positively. This craving for justice provides an impetus for my interest in politics (below).
    
11. Positivity- I can take constructive criticism, but mean-spirited negativity is a big demotivator for me. I hate the idea that I am influenced by the clouds in the sky, but I have come to understand that I am affected by these outside factors. I'm not an island capable of generating my own mood spontaneously.
12. Politics- I spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about and discussing politics. I am no longer a member of either party, and I often explore both sides of many issues across the board. I am interested in politics from a macro level, how sweeping policies and government models affect the average person.
    
13. Food- I enjoy eating, and I enjoy new tastes and flavors of exotic foods. It's probably gluttonous to put food on a list of values, but I would be lying to myself to not include it when I am willing to travel to try interesting restaurants.
14. Weather- bad weather is depressing. Good weather is uplifting. I enjoyed visiting, but I could never live in Seattle or London without jumping off a building. I could live homeless and happy in Hawaii.
15. Mobility- I like to have the option of packing up and moving with minimal fuss, not to avoid things, but more to explore new things. I got this idea from reading Walden, where Thoreau talks about not keeping to many things to tie you down if you must leave.
    
16. Procrastination- part of my contentment-lack-of-ambition, I work best during a time crunch.
17. Sleep- I love sleep, and will pass up on exciting things to get my eight hours.
18. Literature and Philosophy.
    
19. Cycling- I enjoy mountain biking.
20. Camping- I live in places where I can camp and enjoy nature.

Recently my wife read a posting by a frightened young girl who posted that she might be pregnant and was overcome by worry as to what to do, how to handle it all. So, my wife posted information about state resources available to help low-income mothers with the expense of bearing children, and subsequently, a dearth of posters wrote critical statements about the tax-burdens created by these low-income mothers and what leaches they are on the state.

Part of the reason for these state programs is to prevent young mothers who can often not afford delivery from turning to less costly abortions. If you can really claim to be against abortion, can you also claim that low-income birth expenses are really not a reasonable burden for the state?

If subsidizing the costs of the miracle of birth is not high enough on your priority list for government spending, what is? The amount of tax burden generated by these programs pales in comparison to the cost of our current military actions. And, before any one accuse me of being unpatriotic, I have served in the US Navy.

Conservative policy has set up a hostile environment for most young Americans who do not come from old money. Good paying manufacturing jobs have been exported and the large firms with the promise of advancement and retirement have given way to temporarily hired subcontractors with management that plans to cash out when the jobs are about to dry up. We are fighting wars we can ill afford to continue to wage for little gain (our national debt is evidence of this), so in short, for the simple-minded out there, no, the state is not wrong to subsidize low-income birth costs and no one should be ashamed to take them up on it.

I'M WORKING TWO JOBS NOW, so it seems that every moment I'm at work, or getting ready for work, or going home from work. It's hard on both of us, but I know that it'll pay off in the end when we live the life we've wanted for so long. Having two jobs is interesting, and as Jesus said, "you will love one and hate the other." I make almost twice as much at my full time job as I do at my weekend job, and my part time job is retail while my full time isn't. This has resulted in a marked increase in my bullshit-tolerance level for customers. Where I used to placate the irrationally angry and morbidly befuddled customer, I now just shrug my shoulders and deliver glib lines because I really, REALLY DON'T CARE. This isn't slackerism, this is an attitude-check for the whiny well-to-dos that come in and expect the midas touch from people who find only copper in their pockets at the end of the month.

Melissa and I talked about what to name our progeny. For a boy, I suggested Jake (Jacob), Michael, Gideon, and Simon. These names are all from the bible, but for each she countered with a pop-culture reference. "Gideon, like Gideon Yago from MTV news?", and "Simon?? Like American Idol? Yuck!". We settled for Jake (which is what I would call him), and Jacob (which is what she would call him). I think it's a good compromise. Jake is a solid boy's name. You can trust a Jake (even though the biblical Jacob was known for his deceptiveness).

For a girl, we finally settled on Enid, which means 'full of spirit'. Enid is the snarky protagonist in the Ghostworld comic books and movie. We're really hoping for a little girl, I think it would be wonderful to raise a little girl. I love Melissa so much and I'm so happy we're going to have a baby together.

I see the GTD stuff and the Hipster PDA stuff spread like wildfire through various internet communities, but what happens when our hipster index cards don't look like this:

o 0930-1030: Board meeting, present notes on Jones project.
o 1030-1100: Finish spreadsheet on Newman accounts and forward to Dinkins.
o 1130-1230: Have lunch with CEO

What if instead, our cards, after we shuffle through several, yield sporadic entries like the following:

o 0900-1700: Work
o 1700-0900: Not work

If I tried really hard, I could preplan my lunchbreaks and shiftbreaks ahead of time, but that seems a bit silly, don't you think? I mean, really, with average joes whose jobs aren't project oriented, but are more, well...attendance oriented, is the hipster instant capture and GTD really necessary?  Average joes often find themselves working an assembly line or picking at warehouses; a giant Franklin Covey planner with big rocks notepad isn't funny when your job really is breaking big rocks into small ones.

I stopped using the index cards and started using the pocketmod, a foldable planner that you print out on a single 8.5x11 sheet and fold into a mini-notebook. I find the pocketmod more suited to real world application, the weekly calendar is perfect for writing in when I should go to work and when I should come home every day, there's a few pages of tiny grid graph paper for me to write down important things (as rare as that may be) and, the very best part, there are three pages of randomly generated Sudoku puzzles in the back! The hipster replaced the palm PDA, but the pocketmod replaced my gameboy advance.

The noguchi filing system is another hot trend, the idea of using subject-labeled 9x12 envelopes on a bookshelf--use a file, move it to the left, and all the unused files stay on the right. I've constructed a Noguchi filing system, and I admit 90% of it is things like manuals for old VCRs and microwaves, essentially, my entire Noguchi is a giant, static, unused, 'right side'.  The other 10% are what I call 'mission folders', in which I put maps, concert tours, and travel destinations in separate envelopes...just in case I ever run into some vacation time and some ducats to blow, I can grab the "Vegas, baby" envelope with the disturbing Alan Thicke photo on the front.

The one resounding success I've culled from the world of lifehacking is the oragami CD envelope, I turn my scrap paper into CD envelopes with a clean, zen look and the simplicity of the Noguchi. I write the name of the disc or artist at the top, and I stack them on their sides so you can see the titles from the front of the book shelf. Granted, a pack of premade paper envelopes is $7 a box, but scrap paper is ubiquitous and this method solves both problems.

Over the next few weeks, I'll be pondering the average joe's GTD system.

I want to earn your trust. I want to build you a house and I hope you'll step inside without fearing the ceiling will cave or the foundation will crack. I want to hold you in my arms and know you don't fear the weather outside or the taunts and evil eyes of others. I want to look in your eyes and have you know that you're the only one I want in the whole world. I can only hope, brick by brick, that I will someday earn your trust, deserve your respect, when we can love one another as equal friends.