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Showing posts from February, 2012

24 Days / More Morocco FAQs

Despite the proximity to a majorly disruptive, completely alien, necessarily life-changing experience, I am calm, focused, in balance. People ask who I am and what I'm doing in Chattanooga, and when they do, the conversation almost invariably transitions into the Oh-the-Peace-Corps?-tell-me-more talk. At some point, most people ask a pretty dumb question. This question is, "Are you excited?" Maybe it's rhetorical. In any case, of course I'm excited - I'm about to go through a majorly disruptive, completely alien, necessarily life-changing experience. So... like, duh. Anyway, I've had the chance to read a lot more about Morocco's politics and history, so here are some more FAQs: Is Morocco dangerous for Americans? Don't they all hate Americans over there? When somebody asks me this question, I assume that they  refers to all Muslims and over there  refers to the entirety of the Arab world , which stretches from Morocco all the way East acr

Produce and Consume

Wake up. Eat breakfast (or not). Check email. Check Facebook. Drive to work (listen to radio). Check work email. Check Facebook. Do whatever you work asks you to do (can we make this more enjoyable with Pandora?). 3:00. Seriously, 2 more hours? Lazily browse Facebook. Respond to a few posts. Drive home (listen to radio). Clean up. Read news/celebrity gossip/blogs/whatever is in your Google Reader list. Read book. Dinner. Watch movie. Sleep. Our cultural norm has turned into a life of relentless consumption punctuated by some possibly creative acts foisted on us by our employers and which we reluctantly perform (one has to make a living, after all.) Around us, we see a society content with simply absorbing content. How does an individual escape the daily cycles of consumption? There are as many answers to this question as there are people who need to ask it, but the overarching solution involves a straightforward if difficult shift in our self-perception. After all, what does