Jason is a curious wanderer and good human. I enjoyed this podcast as he talks about his travels around the country.
“I’m too curious to let things be as they are. So I have to probe, I have to explore, I have to ask why of everything that comes my way in order to determine that it’s what I should be doing, or where I should be going, or somebody I should be involved with.”
Listen to Episode 53 – Enjoying the Journey and the Destination with Jason Rehmus
I came across this well-written, reasoned piece explaining why someone would own an AR-15. The part that really hit me was this:
The AR-15 is less a model of rifle than it is an open-source, modular weapons platform that can be customized for a whole range of applications, from small pest control to taking out 500-pound feral hogs to urban combat. Everything about an individual AR-15 can be changed with aftermarket parts — the caliber of ammunition, recoil, range, weight, length, hold and grip, and on and on.
It’s less a gun and more a framework for a gun. That made a lot of sense to me. It’s a firearm that can be configured and used in a number of different ways.
So cops and civilians “need” an AR-15 because that one gun can be adapted to an infinite variety of sporting, hunting, and use-of-force scenarios by an amateur with a few simple tools. An AR-15 owner doesn’t have to buy and maintain a separate gun for each application, nor does she need a professional gunsmith to make modifications and customizations. In this respect, the AR-15 is basically a giant lego kit for grownups.
I still don’t agree with it. But I can see the reasoning behind owning them. Why I need an AR-15 is worth a read. Even if you don’t agree with the position. It explains why the weapon is so popular.
Barely a day goes by without a mass shooting.
It’s terrifying. It’s exhausting. It’s a problem native to the United States. It’s a mentally unhealthy population that knows no way to express their feelings other than violence.
It’s a country where you can buy an AR-15 in 7 minutes. With that kind of speed, any impulse to murder can be acted on and carried out without any time to cool off and have your cooler head appeal to your better self.
Guns are accessible. That’s a fact that won’t quickly change. Most guns used in mass shootings are purchased legally. It’s so easy to buy them legally, why go through the extra trouble of illegal sales?
But why are so many people purchasing them and acting on their emotions in mass violence? What makes someone wake up and decide to shoot up a school, night club, movie theater or church?
I wish more of these shooters were captured alive so we could ask them.
Men are unable to deal with their emotions. We’re taught from an early age to man up and be tough. No one is going to see you cry.
And it’s garbage. Men are emotional people too. We cry. We hurt. We have emotions but it’s not allowed for us to display them.
So we pick up guns.
We go online and scream at people to make ourselves feel better. We form hate groups. We harass women and minorities. We act out violently towards anything we don’t understand or disagree with.
We don’t know any better. We were never taught any better.
Chuck Wendig wrote what I wanted to say so go read his words.
As I may have mentioned before, books are hard. They’re hard because not only are they putting a part of yourself out into the world and saying it is worth something. But it takes a lot of work to make a book. I spent years on what would become this book. Much of it procrastinating. Self-doubting. Worrying. Second-guessing.
I could have done this years ago, but I didn’t. I wasn’t ready. I was not ready to make this book a reality. Now I am. So it’s a book now. It exists in the world. It’s out in the world and now I need people to find it and care about it enough to want it.
There’s no secret to this. I have some good friend who have tweeted about it. I sent copies to my parents, because it’s exciting to have made something with my name on the cover.
At the same time, my wife and one of her sisters launched a blog at SmartandPowerful.com. Much to my surprise, the domain name was available in 2016. But it’s shaping up to be a great project about their experiences and what they’re learned in running their own business, gardening and reinforcing women are not just pretty things. They’re Smart and Powerful!
The talk around my house this week has been about launching things into the world. I got my book done and out there. My wife got their blog up and running. Did I mention she is a self-employed art therapist, specializing in serving Seniors with dementia and an accomplished artist. Seriously, the woman puts me to shame.
As we’ve launched things, we talk about how to get people to notice them. How to get readers and customers and the only secret that keeps coming up is consistency.
Be out there. Be out there a lot and be something people can depend on. CJ Chilvers just ran a series of posts about this very topic that Seth Godin, who’s been blogging daily for years, has talked about.
That third one refutes the idea of not writing consistently. It’s the procrastination and self-doubt talking. Don’t listen to it.
The real secret isn’t so secret at all…
As James Gowans puts it:
Have you ever noticed that the secret to all the secrets is that it’s never the easy path?
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