Illusory Follies

Today was not a good day. I did not get enough sleep last night and was out of the house by 4:30am. I then proceeded to get blamed for a major “incident” at work which was actually something that I had been assigned to do by another manager. Then I got raked over the coals for a report that apparently didn’t meet snuff (although, evidently it wasn’t read very clearly since all the things they said to correct were in fact already in the report I had given them). I was unable to solve the one trivial and unimportant problem that I had hoped to tackle today and got tied up at work so I had to leave a little late. Traffic was absolutely the worst I have ever seen and it took me 2.5 hours to get home. I went out shopping with my 2-year old son who proceeded to steal some butter from Safeway and smear it all over himself and the cart when I wasn’t looking. On the way out the door, I got the largest paper-cut I’ve ever seen from the receipt.

Oh, and it’s pouring outside.

I was talking with a friend recently about “vision statements”. I’ve never liked the sound of them and I always thought that it sounded a little silly. It’s all the rage now for businesses to write up their vision statements (which they promptly rewrite at least once every year). However, upon further discussion, we came to the realization that everyone really does have a “vision statement” — a goal, an objective — some “destination” that they use to evaluate issues and make decisions. Everyone has one but few people I think actually really think about what their vision is. If your vision is “to make a lot of money” it’s a vision statement — but not one to be proud of. I think that if nothing else, having to write down a vision statement lets you have a concise and concrete evaluation method that’s much more honest. We stop making decisions from our intution (which is really just basing them on our unstated vision statement) and we have to look at situations in a more rational way.

Good stuff…

It’s just a little past 10:00pm… Tonight was rather uneventful. I’m out on the East Coast this week for work plugging away at some stubborn software bugs and trying to make some sense of our development methodology in the process. We’re not terribly organized and it’s been a pain trying to figure out where we are.

I picked up a pack of Franziskaner beer — tasty (but a wee bit strong). Let’s hope the rest of this post makes sense.

At church, the Sunday School I’ve been going to for the last few weeks has been on “Christian Art and Creativity”. I’m not a huge fan of the class and I feel that something is missing. In general it seems that so few Christians have any understanding of what art is or what it’s all about. We’ve basically learned that forms (like certain geometrically pleasing shapes and proportions) make “good” art. I personally find this totally hokey. I know want to know, what is art and what makes it good or bad. I was rather annoyed that the lecturer completely wrote off Picasso as being a modern idiot who scribbled down way too many silly “paintings”. Now granted, his style seems odd to me (and just about everyone else I know) but he DOES convey useful and good things through his art (and yes, I believe it is art). Gordon Clark in this article says that the purpose of art is expression and as Christians we should express truth. Art that’s chaotic and purposefully random seems to be in defiance to this. But is Pablo random or without form? No! He has form and in fact uses this form to make some interesting art. Even the “blank canvass” variety of modern art is surely of some value if the artist attaches a meaningful statement that reflects some truth or meaning (in this case the art is both the picture and the description).

Anyway — it’s getting late — better get some sleep.