The video revolution continued through the night. Lost all the video I shot yesterday,but got things working this morning, the Panasonic is talking to Imovie again, after the odd and destructive spat. Technology, like life, is not a straight line. I am re-shooting some of the video I took yesterday, talking to Lenore about the children’s book “Meet The Dogs Of Bedlam Farm.”

I hope to have it done today. Lots of questions ringing in my head after my lessons with Dave Bigler Productions in Saratoga yesterday. How many videos should I take? How do cutaway, and break up motion. I told Dave and Terry that I wished to keep myself and Maria out of the videos as much as possible. The celebrity thing can get strange sometimes, and I want to keep some space around our lives. I story-boarded the Lenore video and am shooting different angles and in different ways. We’ll see.

I am coming to see that as I have dealt with some issues and change, part of my work is owning up to what I have decided and how I want to live. I am sorting through the Fear Machine that is part of American life and making some choices. I have reconstructed my own health care system. Health care is not, for me, an argument about whether doctors or medical technology is wonderful or not. It is a question of how I wish to live, (or not live)  not how I wish to argue.

I will not have large amounts of money with which to retire. I hope never to retire, but I also understand that given the choices I have made in life, I will not be sitting on large amounts of money with wish to relax and give up worries about the world. Not my life.

I am also considering this in regard to the news. I used to work in the news business, and I understand that modern media is not about presented a balanced or genuine view of the world. It is, like Storm Center, largely a fear, controversy and tragedy machine. People are addicted to the things that disturb and frighten them, and this addiction is a superhighway to living an unconscious life. I am well aware of the tragedy in Japan and think about it, but I will not watch the news all day for updates on tragedy. It is just not good for me, and I don’t choose to do it.

A neighbor told me that if people don’t vote, they have no right to talk about the civic life of their communities. I said I thought voting was a choice, and people had the right to decide whatever they wished about voting. People tell me all the time that is wrong to buy dogs when there are dogs in shelters, and I always wonder about that. Why shouldn’t they get the dogs they want, not the dogs other people tell them to get?

Life is a series of choices. I want to make my own decisions in life, and own them. I am responsible for them. Not the people who are always telling other people what they must do or need to to. A good way to get caught in the Fear Machine.