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The increasingly inaccurately-named blog of journalist and futurist Chris Taylor. Either the most sporadically brilliant amateur blog, the most brilliantly amateur sporadic blog, or the most amateur sporadic brilliance on the Web since 2001.
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Daily Blah FAQ
Who are you?
I'm the newly-appointed Future editor at Business 2.0 and the former San Francisco correspondent for Time Magazine.
Wow, so does this mean everything you write reflects Time Inc's opinion? Or do you perhaps have some sort of standard disclaimer to the effect that it doesn't?
Naturally, the opinions contained in this blog are not those of my employers. In fact, some opinions may be the polar opposite of my employers. Some may be the same, for all I know. Hey, it's not like I ask my employers their opinions about everything in the news, okay? Let's just say that if this were a Venn diagram with one circle marked "my opinions" and the other one marked "my employers' opinions", there would doubtless be some overlap. But neither I nor my employers are able to pinpoint exactly where that overlap is.
What is this Daily Blah thing?
An experiment for a column I wrote about blogging back in December 2001. All these years later, I haven't been able to kick the habit.
Do you write any other blogs, by chance? Could that have something to do with the fact that Daily Blah isn't always Daily?
Yes -- the Future Boy blog for Business 2.0. And yes. If you want true, editorially-mandated daily coverage from me, that's probably the best place to look.
Mister, you talk funny. Are you one of them furrners?
Why yes I am, as it happens. I was born, raised and educated in Great Britain. I've been living in the U.S. since 1996 and identify as British.
I say, old chap, you forgot the "u" in "colour."
No I didn't. I may identify as British, but I am also an American journalist writing for an American audience about mostly American issues. These two different sides of me are a constant source of tension. Nevertheless, Daily Blah will adhere to American English grammar and spelling.
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Daily Blah for... Monday, September 23, 2002
Zen and Taxes
I ought to take week-long vacations from blog-writing more often. Write a long anti-American screed, exit stage left, and watch the fun begin. When I return, the comments are piled up to the ceiling. I've got people wanting to elect me President and I've got people wanting to ship me back to England ("the land of 56% income tax", apparently. Sorry to disappoint the anonymous Americanista who said that, but it's not nearly that high -- not even under a Labor government. To be honest, I've never had as much of my paycheck removed as when I've been working in the U.S., and I've certainly not had to suffer under the knowledge that half of my taxes were being funneled directly to the Pentagon.)
So what have I been up to? Well, I spent a long weekend in Tassajara, the first Buddhist monastery ever founded outside Asia, nestled in a beautiful canyon in the mountains south of Santa Cruz. It's also the home of the apparently world-famous Tassajara bread book. But I knew none of that when I showed up. I went because I can't say no to a little daily Zen in my daily blah. And because Petra, my girlfriend of two months, had been there four times before, and since I took her to Burning Man -- a place I'd been four times before -- it seemed only right and proper for us to do something similar where I was the newbie.
We were there in work season, the bit in between the summer (when it's a resort for paying guests) and winter (when it becomes a proper practicing monastery for monks, nuns and proteges only). Work season means you get free room and board -- surprisingly good vegetarian meals three times a day -- in exchange for six and a half hours of manual labor every day. This may not sound like a lot to you, but it's a hell of a lot to me. Let's get this straight -- I'm a writer. I don't do manual labor. I have not done manual labor for more than ten years now, and even then it was just a summer job. Look at my hands. I've never really worked a day in my life, have I? If I found myself in a Schindler's List situation -- and I do sometimes have nightmares to that effect -- I would be one of the first on the trains. The only part of manual labor I enjoy is moaning about it.
The work at Tassajara was different, however. Once I got the moaning out of my system, I was able to look around and see the way they treat work there -- as Zen practice. Chopping potatoes, cleaning bathrooms and cabins, sweeping twigs out of the garden, swinging a pick axe at a hill where they want to build a retaining wall; it's all meditation, just as much as squatting on a pile of cushions in the Zendo and staring at the blank Japanese-style walls (a practice we had the option to join in twice a day). You work because you are working; you garden because, in that moment, you are a gardener, and while you can make up all sorts of other reasons, none are really required. It's good to remind ourselves of that every now and then. Why do I do what I do? Because that's what I am. Why am I writing this? Because I'm a writer.
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