We are all at such a revolutionary point in our teen-to-adult transition where we question what we want to do with our lives, especially now with this unique perspective on education. Now, I’m starting to think about why I want to work as well. As in, what will I be working for? What will be my ultimate aspiration in pursuing a career?

During the training institute, we heard a great story about development. There is a fisherman who lives by the ocean with his family and every day he goes out, catches fish, and sells them at the market. One day after the fisherman had come back from work and was sitting on the beach with his family, an American economist happened to see him, and asked him why he didn’t catch more fish.

“Why?” the fisherman says.

“Well, because then you could buy a bigger boat, and make more money.”

“Why would I want to do that?

“So you could pay other people to work for you, and delegate the labor so that you can have even more boats and eventually monopolize the market so you can set your prices how you want.”

“Then what?”  Said the fisherman.

“Then you’ll have enough money that you won’t have to work anymore and you can sit on the beach all day and spend more time with your family and….” The economist stopped.

“Like I’m doing now?”

Whooshkaputzecrinklezap (the sound of my mind being blown).

Oh well. At least I can stick to something. The sun is rising and I need to go to sleep. I will write more tomorrow!

xox
a

Sorry I have been a bit disconnected lately. I have lots changing and shifting in my life right now and as an effect everything seems a little up in the air and out of it. I am working on finding my footing and all will be right soon. I look forward to reconnecting with the community!

xoxo
a

As I began posting every day, I saw, thanks to the handy google analytics, that the amount of people coming through daily increased steadily as I increased my blog postings. This was super cool! Then they started to level off. So I thought to myself “ok, what now?”

This is when I decided that maybe making a poll and seeing more details about the people that come to my site might help. This would give me the information I need to see what direction people are coming from so I can see which way best to go. Ultimately, I am striving to create a community of diverse people who come together to express themselves. To explore, ask why, and share the conclusions they come to.

My interest in expanding the group is simply to create more diversity, more opinions, go deeper and seek farther. I recognize that I have an advantage when it comes to gathering people in one place and I want to take advantage of that advantage.

I want to encourage myself to sit daily and contemplate and share.
I want to encourage myself to appreciate small things, to make art out of every day, and I hope that the ripple of me doing this in a more public and community oriented forum will do this.

I feel as though I have something started, but now I want to go to the next step.

The Internet is a beautiful tool of globalization. It is an amazing invention we as people have designed and expanded upon, and rather than use this as a weapon to destroy and separate I would like to use it as a tool build and evolve. So this is why the interest in expanding and branching out. This is why the desire to reach more.

Not because I want to be rid of the intimacy, but simply because I want to extend the intimacy; ultimately see what sort of emergent property can come of this experiment.

I have loads of ideas of off shoots of something like this community and all my time off I spend building communities of people who want to build and create together.

So there it is. Why I am doing this.

Every morning I feel a questioning sense of panic, “What is the point?” I ask myself. “Why am I doing this?”

Usually I glaze over these questions, busying myself with the day to day so as not to focus on thinking and finding answers, until today.

So thank you all for the replies, and thanks to those who questioned why I am doing what I am doing. Funny thing is the questions are never really answered, and the thoughts I put out there are never fully solved.

I find panic in this because answers feel so good, but really, the curiosity of life is what I seek to uphold. A reminder of this is so important.

I feel like a big fat tattoo of CURIOSITY might be helpful… ha… too bad I am an actress and this would certainly type cast me.

Thanks for the interest.

Why do you do what you do? Do you spend most of your time distracting yourself from answering this question? Tell me? Why are you doing the things you are doing in your life?

It’s a really interesting question to ponder… sort of one step further from the “beliefs” post we have been doing.

Ciao for now.
xo
allison

A few weeks ago I spent some time with my 16 year old sister and I kept asking her what she wanted to do with her life. The question was “If you could do anything in the word that you wanted to do in 5 years, what would it be? And why?” After she got a little sick of being asked the same question over and over again she finally turned the tables and asked me, “What is your answer to that question?”

I thought about it for quite some time and I have continued to think about it over these last few weeks and ultimately, the answer I have come up with thus far is as follows: I want to make art and build communities of people who are interested in expressing genuine thoughts about their own experience of existence that seek to build humanity and help us to evolve.

After reading the more recent posts in my trailer I had this total “holy shit” moment. There I was on the set of a television show that I was acting in, reading responses about some of the most profound and personal things regarding human existence and purpose, and I was like, “how the hell did I get this lucky?”

Honor and Amazement is what I feel right now! So, thank you to my newly developed Dead Poets Society. Let’s keep going with this.

Oh and by the way, Rumi is one of my absolute favorite poets. He once said “Let the Beauty you love be what you do. There are thousands of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.” This rings so true to me, especially right now. Thank you again.

And continuing down the philosophical path… What is judgment? Is it always a bad thing? I have been recognizing all my judgments and prejudices and even had an intense conversation recently with someone where we began to discuss the concept of intolerance due to intolerance. So, “you are violent, therefore, I must destroy you.” Doesn’t make much sense when you juxtapose them in that way, and yet, that is what I catch myself doing constantly. It totally gives new meaning to Gandhi’s most famous quote “You must be the change.” How can I expect to see a world with no prejudice when I refuse to take ownership of my prejudice against the people i deem as “myopic”. Isn’t that, in-turn, just being the same thing, under a different title?

Interesting places for growing. God, this rabbit hole goes deep!

xoxo
Allison