Altered Goals

I thought I would be posting a lot this month with an in-depth discussion about my goals for 2014.  As I've struggled to get almost anything done this moth I've realized that I need to make my goals very, very limited.

Things that are important to me include a lot of things, but I just can't do everything.  In fact, I can't really do very much since I am pretty slow in developing skills / learning and reading.  I also do not have very much time to myself.

I'm interested in (in no particular order):

• Archaeology
• Anthropology
• Sports (watching)
• Hockey
• Rugby
• Football
• Sports (participating)
• Swimming
• In-line skating
• Rugby
• Hockey (wish I could)
• Joining some sort of team
• Sailing
• Short fiction writing
• Horror
• Fantasy
• Mystery
• Sci-Fi
• Comedy
• Audio Drama
• Novel writing (same genres as my short fiction)
• Bike commuting
• Podcasting
• Old Time Radio
• Pets
• Getting another Bearded Dragon
• Getting a dog
• Pond fish
• Gardening
• Camping
• Boy Scouts, specifically Commissioning
• Girl Scouting
• Deism
• Forestry
• Staying healthy and doing things that will help me prolong my life
• Romance
• Family
• Music
• Ukulele
• Bass (wish I could play)
• Sax
• Wish I could join a band
• History
• Military in general
• WWII era
• Chicago
• Greece
• Astronomy and star gazing
• Greek and Greece
• Family vacation
• Reading

So you can see that there are a lot of things.  A lot of these things have additional expansions below them.  A lot either need a huge investment of time, money or both.  Some of these things are very personal, some are charitable and some are involved with others in a mutual nature.

Even when I start to narrow down the list or prioritize it so that I can develop goals I end up adding more and more.

Previously I listed five areas for goals:

1. Greek
2. Archaeology
3. Writing
4. New Job
5. Commissioning

I left off a health oriented goal, but two weeks ago I weighed myself and clearly I need to exercise on a regular basis.  You can see that the goals keep getting scope creep. If I want to change these six to areas of importance rather than goals it might help, but I'm not completely convinced.

I think I need to tighten this very much, man up and focus.

My will make just two goals:

1. Learn Greek
2. Get published

However I will measure everything I do against 7 priority levels:

1. Staying healthy
2. Learning Greek
3. Staying employed
4. Family support (things my family needs me to do)
5. Commissioning
6. Getting published
7. Archaeology

I'm going to talk about my priorities more on Flowers of Mundelein.  I'll track my Greek goal on Flowers and my publishing goals here.

Happy BirthdayYou Two!

200 Years ago today two of the most influential men in history were born. Happy Birthday Gentlemen. We are forever in your debt.

I would be remiss if I did not make a post today.

I must say that as someone who holds a degree in Anthropology I agree with the Theory of Evolution and applaud the work that Charles Darwin did to advance it.

Also, as a man who holds a degree from the University of Illinois, I am proud that we have adopted Mr. Lincoln as our own and that he made our state his final resting place (though the events of the last two months have most likely had him spinning endlessly, for joy and then in embarrassment).

For a very long time I was in units of the Illinois Army National Guard (in which Lincoln could be said to have served as a young man while a member of the Illinois Militia) that had as a unit patch a shield with the silhouette of Mr. Lincoln. I was very proud to wear that patch and upset when people did not recognize the same image that adorns our pennies (one person actually thought it was Jay Leno). Today is also the 100th anniversary of the Lincoln penny (to mark his 100th birthday).

Also for a very long time I carried a copy of the Gettysburg Address in my wallet. I now carry it in electrons in my Palm PDA. I cannot fathom or conceive of a greater speech ever made in the history of men, because if it's message and its brevity.

Please take some time today to think about, read or watch information about the works and thoughts of these two men. You will be enlightened and uplifted.

The images are of Mr. Lincoln in Chicago in 1858 and Mr. Darwin as he appeared while on the HMS Beagle. I'm sure they need no further introductions.

Reading vs Doing

I realized today that I have certain things that I just can't stand reading about but I love. There are other things that I love to read about but don't like doing, and there are things that I like reading about AND doing.

I like camping and I would read about it or do it, but too much reading with no doing would be frustrating.

I like reading about history. I also like reading about strange and sometimes frightening people that I don't care if I never meet. The list of things I like to read about and not do is pretty short though.

But the list of things that I can't stand to read about and not do is, if not longer, much stronger. Archaeology, swimming and Rugby are things that I can't stand to read about if I can't do them. I've tried. I have books on Rugby, I've taken books out of the library about swimming and Archaeology (and Anthropology) but I just can't read them. I'm trying to get back into the swing of Anthropology, I'd LOVE to go back to school to get my doctorate in it, but I just can't stand to read it.

Maybe there is some other way to interest myself in reading about it. I do like to WATCH shows about it, but shows tend not to have the cutting edge information and are not detailed enough to make me satisfied.

I'm like that with learning Greek. I really can't sit there and try to learn it from a book. I want a class and tests and teachers being disappointed in me for not doing well. I want to earn a good grade.

Do you think there is a correlation?

Joining Archaeology Fieldwork.com

I'm joining a forum called Archaeologyfieldwork.com. I want to get my hand back into the Anthopological game again.

Mrs. Prop and I decided when we decided to get married, that I could continue my education and work on my doctorate in Anthropology when we retire.

I want to keep Anthropology very much alive in our thoughts plus there have been quite a few "developments" in Paleoarchaeology since I left school (good God!) eighteen years ago.

Which image do you think I should use as my avatar on that forum? I posted a couple of choices I like.

Poll #1 Results - What You Want Illini6 to Be

The results are in. I have a few points I want to make after I give you the raw data.

Here it is in popularity order:

Military and Deployment Issues = 9 (69%)
Inner Prop's Inner Thoughts = 6 (46%)
Inner Prop's Family Life = 6 (46%)
Anthropology = 6 (46%)
Inner Prop Writing Exclusively = 5 (38%)
Rugby = 5 (38%)
Scouting = 5 (38%)
ConCultures and ConLangs = 4 (30%)
Exercise Log and Discussion = 4 (30%)

Thirteen people voted, with the last one sneaking in a vote for Anthropology on the last day. Not one topic got no votes at all.

I need to say that I have created a blog specifically for family issues of the Inner Prop. It is called Flowers of Mundelein. So that is out of the running.

I reserve the right, as the blog owner to lock in a subject. Since the original purpose of this blog was and is to share my writing I am going to continue to do that. I think it didn't get more votes because it said "Exclusively." Next time I will watch my wording better.

Clearly the voters want Military and Deployment issues discussed here. I will certainly do that.

The next top vote-getters were Anthropology and Inner Prop's Inner Thoughts. I will keep those and try to expand my Anthropology and Archaeology discussions.

I will also keep Rugby and Scouting in, but limit the discussion of them.

I will go ahead and drop Exercise discussion (never really started that) and Conlang / ConCultures off the blog for the most part. I'll keep ConLang / ConCulture in if it partains to a specific story, but not on its own.

With this list in mind I propose a new schedule (that I will try to stick with):

Monday is Fiction Day
Tuesday is Guest Star Day
Wednesday is Anything Can Happen Day
Thursday is Anthropology Day
Friday is Military / Deployement Day.

What Makes an Expert?

My Dad used to always say, “This is what an expert is: ex is the unknown factor and a spert is a drip under pressure.”

I’ve been doing research to improve this blog and I’ve been looking at other people’s blogs. They all seem to know so much.

I give a run down on the topics I put on the poll to see how I stack up as an “expert” in these topics:


· WRITING FICTION - While I have been studying this topic more fervently in the last twenty years than any other (except maybe Excel) I hesitate to claim to be an expert since I have made a grand total of $10 on my writing. It’s all about the art though, right.

· DEPLOYMENT – I am an expert on Illinois Army National Guard Deployment to Afghanistan 2004-2005. That is a fairly limited topic (understatement). I don’t know how many people would really be interested or how many articles I could really get out of that. However I am currently the Family Readiness Group leader for the 108th Sustainment Brigade who are being deployed to Iraq soon. I will have a pretty good insight to what those soldiers and their families are going through.

· RUGBY - I do consider myself to be one of the most knowledgeable people that I know in this topic. I could easily become THE font of knowledge about the subject in the Chicago Area Rugby Football Union (CARFU), but first I want to watch the DVDs I have of the recent RWC. I want to watch them as if they are live and I don’t want the end to be spoiled. Give me a couple of months and I am right there.

· SCOUTING - I am an Eagle Scout and I was a District Executive for four years in the Chicago Area Council of the Boy Scouts of America. I was an active scouter from age eight until age twenty eight. Trouble is, I’ve been out of the BSA all those years. I’ve been involved with the Girl Scouts of the USA (GSUSA) for the past six years, but I’m no expert there.

· ANTHROPOLOGY - I thought, “I have a BA in Anthropology, maybe I can write about Anthropology” but there are some really intense Anthropology and Archaeology blogs out there, and some of them are amateurs. I don’t know if I could add anything useful.

Then I remembered that part of the reason I wanted to study Anthropology is because I wanted to be an expert on Native Americans for our Boy Scout troop. I wanted to make the costumes we used in ceremonies and the actions of the actors more authentic. But I recently found out that there is already a blog about Scouting and Native Americans. It may be all anyone needs on the subject. Maybe I’m a little too late on this topic.

· CONCULTURES AND CONLANGS – ConCultures means Constructed Cultures. These are made up cultures and peoples. They are a combination of anthropology and fiction and I feel I have at least a good background in both of these. ConLang means Constructed Languages. I wrote a previous post on this subject. It goes hand in hand with ConCultures, but I have had less training in linguistics.

· MICROSOFT EXCEL. This wasn’t one of the choices in the poll, but I am definitely at expert level on Excel. In fact I would go so far as to say, if there is anyone out there reading this that is having a problem with Excel they can send me an email at innerprop@sbcglobal.net and I will help them.


So I guess I do have some expertise in some subjects. I’ve been thinking of taking the approach of the original Mickey Mouse Club and have a different theme each day. The MMC had the following schedule:

· Monday is Fun with Music
· Tuesday is Guest Star Day
· Wednesday is Anything Can Happen Day
· Thursday is Circus
· Friday is Talent Round-up

I could go with:

· Monday is Fiction Day
· Tuesday is Guest Star Day
· Wednesday is Anything Can Happen Day
· Thursday is Rugby Day
· Friday is ConCulture Day.

What do you think?

Goodbye Washoe

Tuesday the chimp, Washoe died. She was born in 1965 so she was about a year older than me. She was the first non-human to learn a human language (American Sign Language).

I have known about her for years and as an Anthropology major I knew that she (and the research done with her) was very influential.

She not only had a vocabulary of about 250 words, she taught other chimps to "speak" ASL. She also showed that non-humans can lie.

Since I had first heard of her so long ago I had assumed that she was long dead, but I am saddened to hear that she was alive and died of natural causes. I thought she was very cool.

Now that Cthulhu month (October) is over you are probably wondering if I will keep up with the regular posting here on Illini6. Well, I'm going to try. I am going to go back to posting a quote daily (or maybe nearly daily).