Snowdoggie

Strange you should mention it. Writing is actually some of what I do for a living and my goal is to make it more of what I can do for a living. In addition to dogs I have also published articles in car magazines. I don't really want to give that up, but I'm not sure I want to get into the disinformational mess that is political journalism. http://www.examiner.com/x-2514-Dallas-Dog-Rescue-Examiner I actually met this guy and follow his blog. He is a former producer for the CBS Morning News and he now lives on a farm and writes books about his Border Collies. I started reading his stuff because I also have a Border Collie and although he doesn't claim to be a Taoist, he is an advocate of simplifying his life and making do with less. Strangely enough, he is highly critical of the media noise that he was once a creator and gatekeeper of. http://www.bedlamfarm.com/

Thanks for all of the good advice. I am still sorting through it all. This board is a great resource. I have been thinking a lot about who's voice I am really hearing. Sometimes it is my dead father's voice. Sometimes the voice of the media. Sometimes the voice of somebody I don't even know who posted something on the internet. I never really thought about this before. The voices I hear that say I have to own the latest car, live in a certain neighborhood, have a certain kind of job and have X amount saved for retirement are enough to drive you insane by themselves given the current economic environment. It didn't help that my father told me on his death bed that prestige and a high paying corporate job are the most important things in life. My layoff from a Fortune 500 company led to much pain before I realized that it was my father's voice and not mine that was causing the pain, and he was just a poor boy from Arkansas who was influenced voices other than his own. This has given me much to think about.

Thanks for the information. I was taking tai-chi classes but had to stop for financial reasons. Any online sources that can be practiced at home will help.

Like the rest of the country, I am suffering from unemployment now. I am not as bad off as a lot of people. With my skills and education I have been able to find temporary work paying around $20 an hour up until recently. I am not in danger of losing my house. The payments are cheap. I drive old beat up cars. I have advanced degrees and both white and blue collar job skills. I have family to help if I need it. Still, I have this negative dialog going on in my head. Fears about unemployment benefits running out. Fears about never being able to find another job because of my age. Fears about losing my health at a time when being sick can be a trip to bankruptcy court. Being surrounded by other people who are not working and hearing endless news reports about layoffs, foreclosures and homeless middle class people isn't helping. Growing up in a dysfunctional family and having a father who was always negative and an alcoholic hasn't really helped either. I need to be able to calm my mind. I am facing interviews and the stress of a jobsearch and may have to get more creative about how I make money in the future. There may be change on the horizon. How can I shut down this endless chattering in my head?

I have a '93 Cherokee and I love the old rat. I have explored mountain trails, hauled my dogs to the dog park and towed other car projects home with it for years. It's a great package for what it is. Just big enough to be a hauler but not quite as big as a full sized pickup. But then again, I am a fairly good backyard mechanic. I don't know where you get the 5K price. They haven't built these in years and I see dozens of them on Craigslist for less than $1,000 every day. One that needs work should go for about $500. Several Jeep magazines have articles about building a budget off roader using a used Cherokee. Gas mileage is about 15 to 17. Not the greatest but not as bad as the bigger trucks. They did make two wheel drive versions so if you don't need to go off pavement, that would be a lighter option with a little better gas mileage. They aren't as reliable as a small Japanese car but parts are cheap at the Local Auto Zone. Find the best one you can for around $1,000 and consider taking an auto repair class at the local Community College so you can learn to keep the old jeep running. Any car that old is going to need work.

This thread reminds me of this famous quote; Buddah might not have been a Christian, but Jesus would have made a good Buddhist.

If you just lost your job, your house or your economic security, you know what needs to be fixed. If you have lost faith in the economic system and you are afraid to buy or invest, you know what needs to be fixed. It took more than 8 years and two political parties to create the problems. I will take more than two weeks, probably more than two years, to solve the problems.

The people who really surprise me are the ones who are saying that Obama is already failing even though he has only been in office for two weeks. They say it very loudly and often with much profanity. It's too early to tell what the new guy is going to do.

The sad thing is that this guy knows every scandal, every affair and every flaw of every politician he is opposed to, but he doesn't know what the real issues are.

I keep hearing in the media about economic destruction and the end to our way of life. But for every big Car Dealer that goes down the tubes because people are no longer buying a new car every three years, there is a backroad auto mechanic who is getting a whole new set of customers because people are no longer buying a new car every three years. There is creation after destruction.

I know somebody who works at home and keeps Fox News on all the time while he is working. Is it any wonder he is angry at the world?

It's nice to know that I am on a path that others have travelled before. My problem is that to a small extent I am actually a part of the medium I critisize. I write a column about pets and dog rescue for examiner.com and I also sell magazine articles from time to time. It isn't my primary source of income, but I do take the work seriously. To a certain extent I have to know what is going on in the world in order to do my job. My last article involved an attack at a local dog park that I frequent. There was a lot of sensationalism and disinformation about the attack. I used my article to try and calm things down and put it all in perspective.

I guess the problem is that you just fall into this stuff because it is out there and easy to access. You just turn on the radio when you drive home from work and the ranting and raving starts on four different stations. It seems like the stations with the strongest signals in my area are the worst. There are also people with agendas that are paying good money to get this crap out there. Television and the internet are worse. You get bored and seek entertainment and pull the switch. Again the loudest voices are usually the worse. It seems like right now the media is trying to sensationalize the economy to make it sound even worse than it its. Every layoff is on the front page and increases in home sales are buried or rationalized. Instead of a true picture of what is going on in the world, you get a heavy dose of fear. I admit to being a bit of a media junkie. But getting buried in this stuff is getting to be depressing. More and more I keep thinking I should turn off the switch or at least be more mindful of what kind of media I am consuming. In fact, the search for less draining media actually led me to this place.

I'm new here so if this has been discussed before or I come off as a rank beginner, please forgive me. I am somewhat addicted to different internet boards. I also from time to time listen to radio talk shows and other media. At one point I even worked in the radio business, but I don't now. There are some internet boards I go to where the negativity gets so strong that I feel physically drained actually reading the posts, much less responding to them. Most of these board are about either politics or business. Some are about humor. Many of the posters sound angry beyond the point of rationality. Some actually go to the point of making comments just to get a violent reaction from somebody else on the board. Trolling, etc. Some radio shows are the same way. Right Wing shows are the worst, but there are some shows from the Left Wing that actually equal the hatred spewed from the right side of the dial. I see the same thing on some of the new Left Wing internet sites. They seem to have decided that being as hateful as their political rivals is the way to win in the forum of politics. In some ways, radio is even worse than the internet, because you can leave it on in the background. It can always be there. And finally, there is humor. Stuff that is supposed to be funny. The Howard Stern type of shock jock radio is set up to make you laugh but it is often at the expense of another person, another race or another sexual preference. A local guy here in Dallas actually ended up in trouble with the police on a domestic violence charge after doing a show for years where part of his schtick involved jokes about 'knocking women around'. Talk about life imitating art. Can this type of media actually be energy draining?

I'm still getting educated, in school and out. I have a Masters in Business specializing in Law Firm Management. Now I take auto repair and computer classes at a Community College. After years of taking what the university told me to, I have the freedom to study what I want, Auto Body repair, digital video, creative writing, whatever captures my interest. Now that I am not working towards any type of degree, I pay more attention.