Carl Setzer

I've heard this song countless times. Today, Youtube popped this up in the recommended list and I happily listened. Seeing other versions in the sidebar from 1979, 1981, and 1992 made me wonder about how different each one sounded. I enjoyed witnessing the evolution of Robert Smith's personal style as well. Below is the 1979 version, which has a more traditional punk vibe (it says something that I can say "traditional" and "punk" without any sense of irony). This one is from 1981. Not a huge transition, but I notice a less punk style and something that becomes much more recognized as The Cure.   By 1992, we have a clearly distinctive style that is The Cure, and not confusable with anyone else.   Thanks for giving a few minutes of your journey through the vast wasteland that is the internet. Let me know what you think in the comments, and give me a share, if you're so led.

The quest: take my natural talents and use them to make the world a better place. I want to be a positive influence on the world, inspire and grow people to the greatest heights of their talents and passions. I want to continuously grow and learn, to be more useful and inspiring. I want to nurture people, help them grow and become better.  I've organized, coordinated and lead teams with this in mind. Yet I feel there's more I can do, more that I offer. I'm still stretching to wrap my head around this.

I seek balance, balance between career and family, spiritual and earthly. Balance, perhaps the zen of yin and yang. Balance, though, is not a steady state, rather continuous action. Balancing, redistributing; because you can't have it all, only what you prioritize Thus, knowing what's important is critical. Having goals, big overarching ones to guide you, to allow you focus. With that, one of my traps: forgetting that I can shift, adjust to the changing reality. And that's the real goal, to grow, learn and adjust. Its OK for the goals to move. Actually, its critical. If we're growing, we're learning. That new knowledge will open up possibilities we never could consider before. The glorious future unimaginable. 

Recently I've heard Chinese officials (and before that, Vietnamese, Indian, Mexican and others) complain about the US "preaching", particularly about labor and environmental practices. A key piece of that, "why are you denying us the same benefit you had". This one saddens me deeply. We saw the destructive nature of our actions and seek to purge that from our psyche. No, this isn't an attempt to rob you of advantage, it's an attempt to help you avoid our costly mistakes. The US is still healing from the environmental degradations of our history. Still coming to terms the destruction from the dishonest and ill-treatment of our indigenous people, or slavery.  The goal, for me, at least, isn't to maximize our grain. Really, it should be about avoiding the same costly mistakes we made in our development. The available mistakes to make are manifold, probably unknowable. Learn from us. If we're wise, we'll learn how to learn from the rest of the ...