Chris Hayden’s Blog

With the subprime mortgage mess that has pushed our economy to the brink of collapse, there has come some discussion about the federal governments role in regulating the financial industry. As time wore on since the Great Depression, regulation slowly eroded and now is at the lowest level that is has been in two generations or more. The apparent connection between this fact and the subprime mess is causing an outcry from many for tighter government regulation. They see the lack of regulation as causal in relation to the problems we now face rather than just correlated with them. Others would like to see continued deregulation of the industry in a manner similar to that in Great Britain.

To be fair, there are some decent arguments against regulation. It is expensive for businesses to comply with heavy regulation, and as a result they tend to migrate to areas with less regulation. If you want to attract businesses, and the jobs and money that they bring with them, then common sense says deregulate. In the era of globalization, the effects of overzealous regulation are more apparent than ever.

The problem with that argument, though, is that it does not consider the existential reality that is the human condition. If history should teach us anything, it’s that our more base and primitive urges almost always eventually conquer our rational minds. The financial crisis we now face is a perfect example. Did anyone really think that giving enormous mortgages to people with no or poor credit without proof of income was a good idea? After all, if it is a good idea, then why weren’t people making money off of it twenty years ago? The reason is because it isn’t a good idea, but investors, in their lust for money, ignored the lessons of the past that their rational minds told them they should head and instead embarked on a path of wrecklessness that put us in the situation we are in today. The bottom line is that, until human nature evolves to a state of monetary transcendence, any industry whose primary task trying to make as much money as possible must be regulated by an entity whose primary task is not too make as much money as possible. I don’t see human nature changing any time soon….

Lately I’ve been feeling that there just isn’t enough time in the day. I find that I’m just not able to get done the things that I need to get to done, much less the things that I want to get done. Since I started living away from home, it’s become clear to me that keeping up with daily chores is no simple task. Cleaning dishes, doing laundry, vacuuming, taking a shower, cooking dinner, keeping up with the finances, making the bed, even flossing - they all take time, and they have to be done each and every day on top of working 8 hours and a 1 hour commute. That’s just the stuff that needs to be done; I haven’t even rattled off the things I would like to do - spend more time with my wife, play chess, play billiards, work out, keep up with friends, blog, volunteer, and read. Even divided over the week, those things could easily account for two to four hours a day. I really can’t imagine how a working couple with children is able to get anything done!

To be fair, I do try to retain some perspective here. I understand that I live quite a good life and that the problem I rattled off above is minor in comparison to the dilemmas that many people face. Nevertheless, it is a problem that I face every day and so trying to something about is important to my life. In that spirit, I am striving to make a few changes:

Get get to bed by 9:30; start preparing at 9:15. I have a habit of staying up late nights in order to get stuff done. All this does is make me unproductive for the next several days as I feel the effects of the lost sleep. Going to bed earlier should help. Also, getting ready at 9:15 should give me time to perform personal care tasks that sometimes fall to the wayside.

Make a list. Research indicates that we tend to accomplish more tasks when we list them out and cross them off as we complete them. I suspect this is related to the psychological aspect of observing the completion of the task as it is crossed off, but whatever the cause may be I am going to at the very least give it a try.

Get more done in the morning. Weekend mornings are by far the best times to get errands done. You can beat the mad rush and get all of your errands done in one swoop. I am making it more of a priority to get up and get stuff done on the weekends.

Cut back where there are excesses. I play billiards two nights a week. Not only does this interfere with my goal of getting to sleep by 9:30 every night, but the matches can take up to 5 hours. Consequently, I will be giving up my Wednesday night league next session and cutting back to one night a week.

Eliminate (or minimize) television. I really watch very little television. Except for the occasional show on the discovery channel, documentary on PBS, or commentary on the economy, I would say I hardly watch TV at all. (Oh, except for House). Plus, with the advent of online broadcasting, it is possible to watch what takes an hour on TV in 45 minutes online. I can’t kill TV entirely since Terumi and I like to watch movies on the weekends, but I consider that part of task one under things I would like to do.

That’s about it for now. I will let you know how it goes as I progress.

OK, so my last attempt to kick start my born again again blog writing career failed miserably. I think this is the result of several factors. The first is time - I simply have a lot to do and not enough time to do it all. At least that’s how it feels anyway. Between work, pool, chess, making food, reading, friends, and Terumi, well, frankly I just have a hard time getting more done. The second is the lack of feedback. I think I am partly driven to write in the hopes that some random people will stop by the site, leave a comment, bookmark it, and come back later to read another post or leave another comment. In other words, I would like to have a few regular readers. The problem with this theory of mine is that I can’t get regular readers if I don’t write, and I don’t want to write long enough to acquire regular readers. Quite a catch 22.

The third is the length of my posts. They tend to be quite long and detailed, which means they take a long time for me to write and a long time for visitors to read. Both are negative because, as I said, I don’t have much time, and because long posts tend to scare away potential readers in my experience. What can I say - I was a philosophy minor. Covering every painful detail is a habit.

Lastly, and most importantly, is my lack of motivation. I’m a bum when it comes to writing. Give me a political magazine or a pool table and I can go all day. Writing, though, just doesn’t strike my fancy. This isn’t an excuse; it’s a fact. I consider writing extremely important, yet I don’t do it. What reason for this could there be other than a total lack of willpower?

In any case, I hope to add a little something to the blog from time to time in the future. Posts may not show up that often, but I will try to make time, get some regular readers, shorten my posts, and motivate myself!