Confidence

So in 28 years of life, I've wanted to be....

• an architect
• a geologist
• a tarot reader / psychic
  
• the owner of a gem and mineral store
  
• a professional musician (tuba or voice)
• a cartographer / GIS technician
  
• an accupuncturist
• a traffic engineer
• a landscape architect
• a Feng Shui consultant
• a transportation planner
  
• a community designer
• a politician (very briefly, thank all the gods)
  
• a developer
• a farmer / urban farmer
  
• a sci-fi fantasy writer
• a graphic designer
• a folk singer
  
• a food activist
• a community organizer
  

.... and I ask myself, "what the hell?" My interests are all over. I wish I could just focus on one thing, but my mind craves doing different things to keep my interests. I enjoy making people happy and smile. I enjoy alone time. I enjoy being outdoors. I enjoy being behind a computer. I enjoy flexibility with my time. I enjoy working with my hands and my body. I enjoy sitting back and thinking. I enjoy writing.

Right now I work for the government, and that is fine. I like my hours, salary, benefits, and coworkers. I'm even allowed to be somewhat creative and progressive. But, like a good friend of mine, I have this feeling that I'm spending my life living for someone else. I want to live for myself.

What is a career anyway? Can "being myself" be a career? I would love to be an independent contractor, but I asking for money is difficult for me. Let me be frank with myself: I mysticize the exchange of funds from client to contractor to disempower myself from facing my fears of inadequecy. I am afraid I'm not good enough to get paid for the work I do. And the catch? There isn't even a "work" that I am doing to be afraid to ask for the money (kudos if you can follow that twisted psycho-logic).

So to empower myself. Starting small seems like good common sense. Pick something to do that gets paid per hour and start doing it informally. Then, as word gets out, make a transition to start doing it formally. The question is, what to do? I don't have enough confidence in anything I do to ask someone to give me money. However, it seems likely that the deficiency isn't in my skills, but moreso my confidence is deficient.

So I have two tasks ahead of me:

1. Become more confident then. I'm open to suggestions on how to do this.
2. Choose something to do as a contractor.
   

Dangerous Suburbs

It's always nice to have confirmation of my rants. In my last post I talked about how there is a greater perception of danger in cities, but the reality is that suburbs are actually more dangerous. I got to this point through reasoning through my points, but I didn't do a study or look for statistics. Well, here is the statistic: You’re 20 percent more likely to die in the suburbs from accidental deaths. (And by accidental deaths, we are referring to cars.) Here's the article. It's largely about how our land use patterns contribute to many chronic health problems. Sounds like a future post to me.....

Fear of the City

The myth: "Cities are dangerous. Suburbs are safe." This is such a common myth and I have no idea why it exists. I can only point my finger to mass media's focus on spectacle to an increasingly anesthetized audience. It's so chilling and mind numbing in its simplicity. The media focuses on gang violence, guns in schools, rape, and other graphic and disturbingly violent crimes. Do these crimes happen more frequently in cities? Well, to be honest, yes. However, where will I be safer: a city or a suburb? The answer is a city. There are three factors that explain why: (1) the density of crime, (2) the propensity of crime and (3) the type of crime.

Density of Crime
This is going to sound crazy but.... there's more crime in the city because there is a higher density of people in the city. Instead of thinking about the sheer number of crimes, think about the crimes per capita. It's surprising how the city-to-suburb field levels out. Another aspect of this is there is greater social friction in cities. People in cities knock elbows with one another, while people in the suburbs have plenty of elbow room. There is a greater chance for interaction, and thereby a greater chance for conflict. However, there is also a greater (I would argue MUCH greater) chance for serendipity to occur when interacting with someone.

Propensity of Crime
This aspect gets into the types of crimes found in a city. The annual list of Safest / Most Dangerous Cities is complied by looking at six types of crime:

1. Murder
2. Rape
3. Robbery
4. Aggravated assault
5. Burglary
6. Motor vehicle theft

As uncomfortable as this is to admit, studies find that murder, rape, and aggravated assault mostly happen between people who know one another. Yes, there is the rare case of the rapist attacking a random person in a park, or of a stranger getting held at gun point (these stories make wonderful fodder for sensationalist media, by the way). However, most often these situations happen between people who know one another. And yes, they happen frequently in impoverished (urban) communities where role models and supportive families are few and far between.

That leaves us with robbery, burglary, and motor vehicle theft. Now these can happen to anyone. But, these are all easy to avoid if people take precautions. Most of these precautions simply involve using common sense and trusting your instincts.

Type of Crime
In my mind, this is the clincher. Yes, we can worry about the six crimes above from happening to us, but do you know what is the biggest cause of accidental deaths? CARS. And it has been for years. One person is killed every five minutes from a car accident. So really, don't live in fear of someone coming along and shooting or raping you. You should live in fear of your car. Bringing this back to the urban / suburban divide... where do people drive more? The suburbs. Where do people taking longer driving trips? The suburbs. No matter what way you cut it, if you're in the suburbs, chances are you'll be driving a heck of a lot more than your urban counterparts. Think about that next time your turn the ignition!

Conclusion
The "Cities are dangerous. Suburbs are safe." myht is completely false. The city is actually safer than the suburbs. Per capita, crime rates are not much different between the two. Urban crimes do not affect most people who use common sense and avoid dangerous situations. And really, the level of danger in your life ultimately comes down to how much you drive.

My first blog

Welcome to the 21st Century.

Blogging always seemed so self indulgent to me. Who would want to read about my self-aware comments? Would the fact that this is being broadcast to the entire world shape what I put on here? I don't have answers to these questions, but I will tell you this: I read my friend's blogs. Moreso, I *like* reading my friend's blogs. So maybe, just maybe people would want to read my blog.

Since this is my first post, I want to record the types of things I expect to discuss here. Let's see how accurate this becomes.

1. Food: Slow Food, food systems, seasonal eating, productive landscapes, urban gardening, cooking and recipes.
2. Books: sci-fi, fantasy, non-fiction, history, politics, and economics.
3. Design: landscape architecture, urban design, public art, and Park(ing) Day
4. Sustainability: Peak Oil, transportation planning, highway infrastructure, urban living, Onondaga Creek, local living / local history, fixing up my house

Let's see how this all pans out.