Starting 2014 Off Right...

Am I making a bunch of resolutions that will last approximately as long as it takes me to write this sentence? Nope.

Am I going to shed a few pounds? Probably a good idea but also probably not going to happen.

So what am I going to do?

I think that this generation and our access to social media and the internet and all that comes with that (to include nonsensical blogs such as this.) has stripped us of one thing that previous generations did have.

We don't actually do much anymore. We don't actually produce much anymore. And this dear friends is a problem. I mean, what I'm writing here is called in internet jargon "content" it is the content of my blog. The shit that you read and comment on and love me for or want to have me castrated with a cattle prod for.

That's content. It doesn't take me much to produce it. Just a few hundred key strokes and there it is. Hell, a lot of the time my best writing is done without having put one iota of thought into it ahead of time. I don't understand, nor could I tell you the mechanics behind the wifi internet that I am currently using. I mean how the hell does this shit get transmitted through the air and come out on the internet?\

Then there's the computer. I have no idea how it actually works, and I mean at a component level. What connects to what exactly to make tetris work on the screen. Then to think there are millions upon millions of lines of code that are present just to make that goofy picture with the quotes appear on the top of the screen.

When I was a kid, my grandfather was a Mr. Fix-it. And he had a radio that he was constantly repairing in the basement. He took it down there, took it apart, found what was wrong with it, fixed it, put it back together and made it work. Then it broke again (normally myself or my brother were responsible for that). He did the same thing with my toy trucks. He did the same thing with the lawnmower, the snowblower, the car, the blender, the furnace and whatever else you could possible think of.

Now if our computer won't download porn at light speed we hit Best Buy for a new one.

You see, my grandfather and to a point my parents generation, and a few notables in my generation actually interacted with this world in a very real, nuts and bolts way. Whereas for the most part, me and mine are just using the shining little tools and flashing light gadgets put into our hands in a very superficial way, and if they don't work we simply throw them out and get a new one.

So that's what I'm going to do this year. I want to dive in and learn how the world around me works, what the components are, what each does, how they fit together and how to fix them. I'm going to have meaningful interactions with the world around me and the people around me, not just 140 character tweets, how about a conversation?

That's how I'm going to start this year off.