Haiti Day One: Airports and Bad Investments

So I'm on my way to Port-Au-Prince!!

Just touched down in Miami and have a few hours to kill

waiting for my flight out of this country.

Enter the bad investment

I actually just paid $5 for a half hour of internet access.

The shame is overwhelming.

If I paid that much for a straight month, it would cost almost $7500.

Side Note: I'm slow at this and totally failed to get this finished in a half hour.

I am now writing from the camp.

I'm so excited about this new journey in my life, I have spent a little bit of time reading up and getting myself prepared for what I will face when I get down there. The problem is that I have no grid to really prepare for the type of destruction that I'm going to see.

I will be helping facilitate a camp that houses 55K people on what used to be a 9 hole golf course. I don't really know how that is even possible.

I think that one of the most exciting elements of this is the unknown. People have asked what I will be doing and the answer that I give is that I've been told I will be an Information Officer but that I have no idea what that means in the way of day to day responsibilities. I don't know who I will be sharing a tent with. I don't know what I will eat. I don't know creole. I don't know what the hours will be like.

And I'm really excited about all of that.

Some kind of extreme blank slate experience.

I hope to keep this updated while I'm down there and provide clarification, but we will see as I am presently unsure about the hour situation....

New Absurd Project

Ok, so my last project ended up being a gigantic mistake.

Why I thought that I would take

time to write a whole book

whilst in the midst of application

review season and Christmas,

I am unsure.

So now I'm past it and I'm on to

some new silliness.

The goal is to translate a book that is written in a language that

I have never learnt.

I recently bought a copy of Les Miserables in Frnech and will soon start the process of translating it. I am expecting a solid amount of frustration and some really funny mistakes along the way but hopefully I come away with some ability in French and having read one of the great novels of the 19th century.

After finishing War

and

Peace,

I feel Invincible.

John Adams and John Quincy worked on their French while they were crossing

the Atlantic by reading Moliere, and John still sucked at it when he got there.

It will be interesting to see

if I can be any more successful than

this man who clearly towers over me intellectually

simply because I have access to the internet and the ability to

instantly ascertain the information I need both in written and sonic form.

Woot.

Prince Andrey's Sky

I'm reading War and Peace and what started as some truly obnoxious exhibition in erudition (for a definition of the previously used term, one need look no further than the sentence in which it is included) has become a really exciting read.

There's a reason

that

this book is famous

One of the main characters continues to have these epiphanies after doing nothing more than looking at the sky. I'm not done yet and I have to imagine that Tolstoy is going to keep coming back to this idea but he has only done it twice so far.

I guess for me, the individual revelations that the

character experiences aren't that important but I'm really interested in the way that the sky can change someone.

This infinite umbrella that never leaves us can go from the most inconsequential, and unimportant piece of our lives and then, the minute we remember it, it somehow becomes the most profound thing we have ever encountered.

Whether is it hiding behind the roof of a market in Jerusalem.

Or it's riding along with us to where ever it is that we are going. This same sky forces us outside of ourselves and demands that we consider things beyond our own concerns. It's a trite consideration but that same infinite sky sustains us and shrinks us.

Gives us life.

and more importantly,

Perspective.

Plus, it's February in Michigan. Most of us have forgotten that the sky even exists at this point so I figured some pictures would be pretty helpful.

Ok, so I'm all kinds of bad at this

I had a pretty serious feeling when I started this thing that it would not work out. That type of attitude upon entry into this little plan to write a book in a month probably had a ton to do with its failure, but that's ok.

I spend all day reading the essays of college applicants.

These kids are given the option to discuss a setback they have experienced. I read one somewhile back to which i relate pretty easily. The student said that his setback was that he procrastinated. That's why his grades weren't good.

That is not actually a setback.

You are just Lazy.

I'm just lazy.

I don't like doing things when

I get home from work.

So with this kid in mind and the fact that like him - the kid who has nothing to blame for his academic shortcomings but himself - I have thus far found reasons to not do the things that matter, I intend to buckle down soon.

I wish I could say that

with more conviction.

I will keep you posted. Promise.

And now, I shall write about writing

So, November is National Write a Novel Month.

No one told me.

So I'm making December into Lincoln Moore Writes a Book Month. I decided to do this almost 24 hours ago, so that would officially make this day 2 of my month long journey and I will be tracking my progress for the whole world to see.

The truth is, I don't really publicize this little thing

and I'm really writing to have a record of what I was

doing, so that I can take a look back on it in a few

years.

I already have an idea and an outline figured out, so at this point I have a simple goal to write ten pages a day until I am finished. I'm on day two in the journey and I am sitting at the Caribou at Sheldon and Five Mile at 8 pm.

I have not started yet.

I thought caribou would be ideal for its calm air and comfy seating. Not true. It turns out that all the good chairs are taken and the 'air' I expected is being seriously dampened by the wonderfully patient man who is tutoring an absolute tool directly to my left.

"And why is there a halo around the moon

as opposed to the rainbow we see with the

sun? Do you understa-"

"You know what? I need to make a phone call

really quick."

"I don't understand why that couldn't wait

until after we are done. This is the last

question."

And then I flip my table over and demand a bit more respect for that wonderful wizened old man. Now, I'm out one coke and have accomplished nothing towards this book.

Yes, I got a coke at Caribou.

On to writing. Maybe I will go somewhere else tomorrow.

When I become employed, I boogie

Last time around, I made certain promises. Promises regarding comical videos. Do not be afraid friends. I won't disappoint.

I recently found out that I will become an employee of the University of Michigan and after hearing about the employment opportunity, I immediately decided to go the library to get a DVD, do an homage to Heath Ledger, and do a cartwheel at a fountain. This all happened whilst I was getting down, shaking my tailfeather, backing that thang up and committing general acts of boogying. This is the story of me completing said tasks.

I hope that watching this video brings as much joy as making it brought to my friend Daniel and me in the production.

Daniel

He came from England

to thrill our senses, filming

the wonders he sees.

We made this in about two hours after we both got done with our current jobs as an exponential babysitter and culinary delivery operator. Thanks for watching and again, we hope that you enjoy it.

Sitting on the edge of a job

So my life has been full of sitting about for the past year and moping about employment. I spent an atrocious amount of time looking for work and submitting resumes and applications everywhere that I could find one.

No bites.

My final tally puts me at over 100 attempts to work and no one was interested. I have applied to be a janitor, a barrista, a tree cutter (which given my lankiness and vertical dexterity, I have to assume I would have excelled at) a temp, various secretarial jobs, an English Tutor, and an English Teacher. The company I interviewed with to teach English in Japan was shady.

Caribou Coffee interviewed me twice and then wasn't interested.

Brutal.

One day my dad saw that I was looking particularly dejected in the car. 'Lincoln, you know this has nothing to do with you. You are talented and there is work out there for you. No one can get a job now, especially in Michigan.' I will spare you the rest of the conversation.

The truth was that I had been buying into valuing myself based on my employment status, which meant that I was taking a year long dump on myself. I didn't even know it was happening until that moment.

At the beginning of May I landed a part time job at The Home Depot which helped out some and then mid-June I started working at a day care facility. I'm pulling down about 65 hours right now. So far, I'm managing it. I'm sleepier than usual, I don't last much past midnight these days but that's ok.

Whilst all this is going on, I have gone through the interview process with UMICH for a position in the Admissions Dept and I am waiting to hear back from them. The job would be really great, I would get to brag on my alma mater all day and welcome a whole new class of Wolverines to the Greatest University out there. I WILL do this if I get the job:

Guaranteed. I will tape it and repost the new video.

Remember kid from

10 things I hate about you

watch his film called Brick.

Now I'm going to read The Abolition of Man. Who doesn't need a little CS Lewis on a warm Sunday.