My Life as an Orange

Why, pray tell?

It’s all about the duality of man.
We’re all oranges, in one way or another. Except, perhaps, for a precious few who live a life true to what they stand for.

Oh, lame.

It is I, Joshua Welsh, Mechanical Service Technician by day, Philosopher by night. Full time lover…
(hehehe GROSS)

Ok.
Preach peace but only as an outcome of war.
Fill your car with biofuel to save the planet, but starve half of Africa as a result.
Devote your life to a ‘religion’ of nonviolent outcomes, but play football.

Aggressive like the tiger, gentle like the lamb.

Assertive, but passive.

My life as an orange was suggested by my ex-girlfriend.

“There’s two Josh’s,” she said.
“There’s the one that has fun at parties and the one that goes for church.”

Fortunate for both of us, really. We were completely wrong for each other.
But was she onto something?

I’d never had the thought that I could be double minded. I’d go out, albeit very occasionally, have too much to drink, then some random would come up to me and start asking me questions which would inavertantly lead to me explaining christianity. It was the perfect mix! how could I go wrong? Some of my best preaching was getting done with a wiskey in my hand! (very occasionally, of course!)
So why double mindedness? It’s kinda plaguing my brain right now. I didn’t quite have it all sorted out.

I DID have the understanding of me becoming like the Romans to win the Romans, something which is a powerful tool in Christian and secular circles. It’s probably the most powerful advertising tool you can use.
(Cue Homer: “I’m a guy like me!”)
But I DIDN’T have the understanding of living a life of purity. I mean, I wasn’t a violent drunk or anything, my demeanor didn’t actually change that much. But I wasn’t doing things the right way. I was acting upon my own wisdom, and probably out of some rebellion issues, some hurt of never being part of my friends drunken parties (which is ridiculous, but it all had an effect to some point), and a few other insecurities.

In primary school I never thought I had many friends.
The older I get, the more I see that there was plenty of people who would’ve happily called me their friend, if only I’d talked to them. I was incredibly nervous around people that I didn’t know well.
Walking past, say, a couple of random girls, was somewhat traumatic. I’d never know where to look! Should I smile? Should I say hi? Should I pretend to be preoccupied? What if I did something wrong? What if they laughed? It doesn’t take much teasing or rejection to validate any of these thoughts. Hang out with a few jerks (football clubs tend to attract fairly exclusive types when you’re young. So does school, actually) who’ll shut you down in front of people to validate themselves, and before you know it you’ll be so backwards in coming forward to people that you’ll need rear view mirrors to walk to the shops.

But it’s not reality. Well, it might be at the time, but things change, and primary school isn’t a dictation of how your life is going to turn out.
Praise God for that. Because insecurities can make you downright nasty.
Before you know it, you’re second guessing everyone, and assuming that everyone who wants to do something for you is just setting you up. So you very quickly trust no-one: it’s one of those nice habits you learn from living in the jungle.

Like a pencil that reaches the bottom of the page, I seem to have lost my point.

Oh yes. All of these things can lead to dualities within yourself.
I was effectively a very nice young lad, who was known by most as that, while I had anger problem almost no-one knew about. My best friend at the time new of it well. He’d use it from time to time, just to see what I’d do.
All he needed to do was take something that i wanted (like my bicycle or those little plastic raquets we used to play with at lunch time) and I would, full on EXPLODE. It was so ridiculous! He was just mucking around! Anyone except for me could see that.

So. The oddest little things in my childhood had begun to dictate my adulthood. I still, deep down, wanted to be cool. And accepted. Even though, as I’ve since found out, I was.
Accepted, anyway. The amount of people who’ve come out of the woodwork that know me (and like me, surprisingly) is utterly ridiculous, considering I didn’t even go to secondary school.
So the main fear in my life, which was that of not being accepted, turned out to be a complete farce.
And my problem with things being taken from me (or missing out on things) turned out to be irrelevant.

And yet, even though I knew that, it dictated my life.

So. Duality is bad. You can’t serve two masters, or influences, if you like. One has to win.

And I’ve found serving one can be rather adventageous. Two reasons spring to mind:

1: It makes things a bit simpler.
You don’t have to please everyone anymore!

2: Everyone else can get stuffed.
If what you do upsets someone, and doesn’t upset your master, you don’t have to care.
So relax. The only time I ever see what’s wrong with my life is when I pull back, rest, and have a good look around. And then all of my problems seem obvious, and quite fixable.

That’s all for now.

Thoughts and musings

It’s late.
I don’t write  much, and whenever I get  the urge, it’s late, I’m tired, it’ll be monday tomorrow and I really should go to bed. Some things don’t change.

I decided I lack motivation. I have a ute in my shed, which is in a later stage of re-assembly. It’s by no means a particularly challenging project, or rather, for someone who has made their living by working on cars it’s not insanely difficult.
But it’s not finished.
I have the parts. I have the tools. I have the ability to finish it, and I should have the motivation: I have no working car, I like utes, especially ones with V8’s in em (just like the one in the shed)  and yet?

I’m working in a small business. There are certain things that I could do to earn more money for myself and also for the business. Good for the business is good for me, and if I got into gear I could make some real money for me and my business running friend. But I already make good money. I get home, at midday, and sit around for a while, relax, potter about the house… I actually did housework the other day. My wife was stoked.

It’s situational, I told myself. I’m very happy with my life.

It’s mostly true. I like being married. I don’t feel awkward anymore; it’s done wonders for my actual self confidence. Not just how much confidence I pretend to have. But being happy in a relationship is actually de-motivating. If she’s happy, I’m normally happy, and I don’t need to go out of my way to change anything.
And she’s mostly happy.

And my job? Well, I’ve never confessed  to being especially motivated by money.
Which is just as well, really. My mechanic job didn’t pay much, but I wanted to finish my apprenticeship, so I stayed at it. Then I switched job locations. I was possibly motivated by working around the corner from my house, so when I moved houses, the job was never going to last very long.
My new job makes (comparatively) lots of money. But I think I’m actually more motivated to work with my friends… which I am. When I work, I’m motivated to finish, so I can go home and work on my car/walk the dog/practice bass/clean the house, maybe make an early dinner… none of which seems to happen.

And my car?
I have recently bought a mountain bike, all shiny and new, and I love riding it. But bikes are probably 50/50 on practical/totally impractical, so surely that can’t be all there is to it.

I have always been a tad lazy… no, surely not just laziness.

Although I did recently pay my sister to prune a lavender bush in my backyard that I meant to trim nine months ago. And if she had’ve stayed longer I had the mower set up and ready to go…

So lazy or just content?

Hmmm…
I guess some things do change.
Because now I’m going to bed…

just as well it’s a slow moving bandwagon

because I’m a bit late to the party.
And James just told me my uni friends all write on greylead. (who cares? student hippies…)

Better late than never tho, right?

I like writing. I think a lot, writing helps me expand on thoughts and clarify things. My main problem is what to write about.

Politics is too frustrating. I’d never sleep. The whole thing is just so corrupt… and frustrations don’t improve when you think that the voting public doesn’t actually know what’s good for them.

Consider this. 20 million people with their own lives, ideas, world view, motives, fears, and insecurities are asked to pick one person in the faith that he or she will know what’s best for not only the economy, but also for the people in all their mostly selfish ways, backed by a team of advisers that no-one actually knows, without any form of public accountability(excepting, of course, the ballot box).

Consider also that a politician’s No.1 priority is actually employment, and not the good of the country.
After all, you gotta eat.

I like what Agent K said on the people thing. “A person is smart; people are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it.”
Now let’s think of the likelihood of one person in 20 million figuring that out, and working it to their advantage.

See? You can be a christian and still be a skeptic!

I’m sure some politicians have good intentions, but they’re in somewhat of an unworkable system.
And there’s just so much that defies logic. For example: Nearly everyone runs their cars on petrol. To do this without permanent and irreversible damage to the ozone layer, and to prevent the release of wonderful things like carbon monoxide and benzine and all those other goodies that make your skin turn grey and your lungs grow cancer, the exhaust fumes are forced through a catalyst, which looks a bit like honeycomb. It probably doesn’t taste like it, however, though it might just taste like burning because it’s full of nasty heavy metals that turn poison into water. Great stuff, not good for efficient fuel use, as it’s a bit like breathing through a sock whilst you’re running. Yet- it’s pretty neat, really.
With the technologies we employ, we can now produce cars that emit less fumes when idling than a seventies or even eighties car puts out when switched off.

This is great, but:

Problem one: we’re apparently running out of oil.
I mean, even if we’re not all the oil companies just LOVE us thinking that we are, because it means we don’t mind that much when they push up prices. I doubt we’ll ever run out of oil, it’s just that one day no-one will be able to justify filling their tank for eight hundred dollars. Don’t worry, it’ll come.
Face it: we’re at the mercy of fat company executives who can pretty much do what they want. Just cos last time I checked, I didn’t have an oil well in my backyard. Pity.

Problem two: The cleaner (and nicer, for that matter) we make our cars, the more fuel they’ll inevitably use.
Our catalyst friend only works in one temperature range, so how do we heat it in a hurry? Easy! Inject fuel into it! What if our low-grade petrol makes the motor too hot, risking an internal meltdown? Inject more fuel in it! Want the aircon to work? More fuel! Nice Territory! But weighs heaps more than a Falcon, so it uses more fuel. The more we plug up our cars, be it to lower the emissions or make it quieter, the more petrol it will use. It’s that simple.

Blow them up I say! I hate cars anyway, but there is a point to be found here.

Without the use of catalytic converters, an LPG powered car releases around ten percent of the carbon emissions of an otherwise identical petrol powered vehicle. Sure, a good (and by good I mean as good as petrol) LPG injection system costs somewhere under $5000, but if they were built at the same rate Holden builds Commodores then the price would drop enormously.

So anyway. You might not be a greenie. You might like the thought of scorching the earth every time you plant that foot… Why bother?

Because LPG is 100% home grown, no nasty internationals involved, thankyou very much. So the government can control the prices.
The massive saving to the average householder in their stupid 4WD then goes back into the economy, creating growth, more jobs, less debt, less emissions, more birdies and the like. All good stuff. And all moral requirements, really, when you consider how much we drive our stupid cars across the sparsely populated brown land.

Plus it’s basically a waste product, that costs comparatively nothing to refine.

And the low carbon production causes less engine wear in a properly tuned engine.

And did I mention we can run big set-route diesels (that’d be mostly buses) viably on compressed natural gas? That gets pulled out of Bass Straight? Without the choke-smoke fest? Removing some more of the reliance on imported diesel?

Great stuff!

So why isn’t all of this commonplace?
And why is there legislation in place (thanks John!) to tax LPG at a rising percentage over the next 10 years to bring it to the same price as petrol, thus making it (due to a lower kilojoule rating than petrol ie. less efficient) economically inviable for anything but BBQ fuel?

And why isn’t Kevin 07 taking up this opportunity to separate us economically from the somewhat unstable world market?

And why on earth do our governing friends sell one million tonnes of LPG a year (a quarter of our current production) to Japan for 5 cents a litre?

So it’s good thing I’m not blogging about politics. I’d be in a bad mood all the time…