A New Approach to Life
May 2012 – This blog grew out of an urgent need. The need to take a radically different approach to a problem that I am convinced cannot be solved by traditional methods. I found myself unemployed in mid 2011. This is a serious situation for me and my family as it is for so many other people in America and around the world . For months I have been doing all of the recommended things to find a job. This includes using Internet job boards, social networking sites like Linked In, and contacting family, old friends, colleagues, and acquaintances. It has not worked so far.
The alternative of looking for work through our small IT and website development firm Odyssey Consulting Corporation is compelling. For many years Odyssey provided us with a solid income and many customers with a great resouce for IT and software development services and consulting. Five years ago I left Odyssey and took my first job in almost 25 years as president of my brother’s construction company at his invitation. Four year later my brother asked me to step down as he wanted to assume the duties of both CEO and President to reduce the company’s overhead costs. Fortunately, my wife Sandra kept Odyssey alive by designing, creating and maintaining websites. Now I believe we must ramp Odyssey back up and we must adjust and build on the business model that she has created. In addition we will be helping my son Aaron with his company Wood Ring Guitars.
When we first started Odyssey we had to dig deep within ourselves and find a way to create something of value for others. We must reexamine what is valuable and what is not and do this again. Fortunately we have some really great communication tools made available through the Internet.
With this in mind, I am going to try something radically different. My plan is to:
- Use this blog as an outlet for exploring and expressing our creative talents and our passions in life.
- With a little luck and a lot of hard work, I feel strongly that this process will give us an avenue for creating something of value for others.
- My hope is that our plan will open up avenues of opportunity and future prospects allowing us to make a descent living doing what we love to do and to be able to come in contact with people who share similar ideals and ways of viewing the world..
My Passions
I have always loved science and art and feel that under the right circumstances the combination of these disciplines contribute a significant amount of value to our society. I cannot think of anything else that I am more passionate about than this.
Art and science have differing approaches to common goals. They both are mechanisms that give us ways to better understand the world, to determine how we relate to this world, and to gain insight into what it is to be human. Both disciplines require immense creative insight in order to be successful in the quest for knowledge and the desire to communicate universal truths. As time marches on, art and science continue to expand the boundaries of understanding and invention by challenging and refining our views of the world.
It could be that the approaches of art and science are different partly because artists are ”Right Brain Oriented” and Scientists are ”Left Brain Oriented”. This model of the human brain is amazingly similar to the concept of yin-yang in eastern philosophy. Wikipedia states:
“This model describes how seemingly contrary forces are interconnected and interdependent in the natural world, and how they give rise to each other in turn. Opposites thus only exist in relation to each other. Yin-yang are complementary opposites that interact within a greater whole, as part of a dynamic system. “
During the many years I spent studying yin-yang as part of my martial arts training I found much real world evidence of the truth in this concept. I find that it very accurately describes the nature of art and science which on the surface seem like polar opposites. It is in their dynamic interface where my interests lie. This is where many amazing things have happened and will continue to happen.
The approach of art and science may be different but the goals are the same. Both artists and scientists desire to find ways to understand, represent and interpret the world in which they live. Artistic and scientific investigations into the phenomena of nature, perception, thought, and emotion have enhanced the lives of billions of people. Artists use some sort of medium to explore and express their artistic expression in a meaningful way. Scientists have defined the nature of their work to include ways of discovering, measuring, and classifying things, finding innovative ways of extending the senses, and the creation, testing, and refinement of concepts and ideas in order to understand the world and predict the future. Both artists and scientists seek to develop ways in which the nature of their discoveries can be made understandable and communicated.
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