After reading Trish’s blog, I realized that one thing I really appreciated was that every movement and spoken word was important. As Trish wrote in her blog, “Everything means something. Everything matters.” [source]

I also liked that they didn’t break character and that they played fun, believable characters. They’re both great at finding the right words to express themselves, and it really heightened the scenes.

Here are a few of my notes about their show and what I as an improviser can take from it. Jill and Trish:

• were low energy except for a few hilarious moments (I enjoyed the contrast in energy levels.)
• had total trust in each other as scene partners (let each other carry the scene without help)
• committed to each scene (they never broke character)
• played fun, believable characters
• were extremely fluent and expressive (probably due to years of experience)

It was a great show!

I created a new method lately to motivate myself; I constantly reminded myself how scarce time really is. It feels like I have millions of days to live, but the truth is that I only have about 20,000 more—if I’m lucky.

This method worked great, yesterday. I worked four times harder than normal, probably about 40 percent of my full potential. Whenever I started to click onto a website that caught my attention, I screamed “No time! No time!” and got back to work.

I haven’t had as much success today because I haven’t been trying as hard. But I will prevail!

I recommend adding the time scarcity realization to your list of mental motivators. It’s helping me and I hope it helps you too! I just recorded an episode in my podcast about time scarcity if you want to hear a little more about my perspective.

Description: John Robison and Nifer Honeycutt performed in the premier of the improvised show Biblioclast. The performance occurred at the Roving Imp Theater on October 11, 2008.

The audio quality if pretty poor; you’ll have to turn up the volume pretty high to hear it!

Download the .flv file here. (you will probably have to download an FLV player to watch it and the quality won’t be any better than what you see here, but if you want it for your own archive, go for it!)

Online job gives flexibility but takes self-discipline to function

Unlike most full-time jobs, I can work pretty much whenever I want. I’m supposed to work specific hours, but I can always take breaks in between tasks or work late if I want.

The problem is that I’m less motivated to get up early and work all day as I would be if I had a non-telecommuting job (one that required me to relocate every day.) I often spend to much time doing what I love and not enough time working my job. My employer was ok with me working 14 hours last week instead of 40, but that won’t be acceptable much longer. I am still trying to force myself to work more frequently for longer periods of time.

Telecommuting allows polyphasic sleep

I’m trying to adopt the everyman sleep schedule, and it would be a lot harder if I had to work a rigid schedule. By working from home I can simply lie down and take a nap according to my schedule.

I’m an independent contractor, not an employee

Although I work 40 hours a week and am paid by the hour, both I and FullQuality consider me to be an independent contractor. That’s the way we both like it, because it allows their accounting operations to remain small (I’m responsible for reporting my own taxes) and because I prefer to say “I’m an independent contractor working for clients” more than “I’m an employee working for my employer.” The independent contractor/client relationship has a value-neutral ring to it; it treats both parties as equals.

Self-sufficiency is still my goal

Once I can make $2,000 a month from my own websites, I’ll stop working for FullQuality. It’s going to be difficult because I don’t think I’m going to show advertisements. I’m going to try to make an income solely off of voluntary payments by individuals who find my content useful.

Until I am making about two grand a month, I need this work—especially since I’m planning on moving out in two weeks. I’ll write more about that later!

There is only one thing we really own in life: ourselves. Most governments grant individuals additional “rights”, such as the right to own land. However, in the case of “intellectual property rights”, governments initiate force against peaceful people, and that is an immoral practice which must end.

Whenever you grant someone a right, you take away someone else’s. When governments grant entities the right to own an idea or a digital abstraction such as software or music, they take away the right of everyone else to use that idea or abstraction without the author’s permission.

The argument is that if we don’t allow authors total control over the distribution of their content, the quality of their content will decrease. However, profit motive is only a small part of content creation. Many authors (myself included) create content to express ourselves, promote our ideas, or provide tools to make life easier. Ideas have always been created, even before intellectual property laws existed.

The “moral” argument for intellectual property is that because using an author’s work without their consent hurts their quality of life, intellectual property rights should be enforced. However, on closer inspection, we discover that using an author’s work without their consent doesn’t negatively affect their quality of life. For example, imagine that you are the only human being on the planet. You are responsible for finding food and shelter, and you write a book and compose some songs in your free time. Without your knowledge, aliens record and distribute your songs amongst their entire colony. Are you negatively affected by that? Does it become harder for you to forage for food? Are you physically afflicted by it? Of course not. You are neither hurt nor helped when someone uses your content without your consent. The argument that you are hurt by it relies on the logic that you deserve to be payed by every user of your content—and to justify intellectual property on that basis is circular reasoning.

A third argument that people use is that authors must support themselves somehow. However, that fact does not justify subsidizing the industry by granting authors special rights. Every industry has its pros and cons. One con of content creation is that in a digital age, your work can be duplicated without your consent and without compensation. On the other hand, nearly every other barrier to entry has been eliminated; songs can be recorded cheaply and distributed freely. Authors should know that when deciding to try to make a living off of content creation. Subsidizing authors by artificially giving them ownership over every instance or copy of their work is not fair to other citizens who also must work for a living.

My argument against intellectual property is that the punishment is not justified by the crime. The enforcement of intellectual property laws result in violence against peaceful people—people who did nothing to hurt the content’s author. The only fair way to enforce intellectual property rights is for authors to ostracize people who use their content without permission. If an author finds out that you are using their content (e.g. listening to their song) without paying them for it, they can peacefully deal with it however they see fit—but to introduce violence or the underlying threat of it (in the case of fines) is unwarranted and on an entirely different level.

In conclusion, authors will always create content; they need no subsidy. The desire to express oneself, promote one’s beliefs, create tools for improvement, or to simply make life more fun are enough to ensure the continued creation of content. Authors, like all members of the human race, are responsible for their own livelihoods. Any field has barriers to entry or advantages and disadvantages. Authors should know entering the field of digital work that their content can be copied and distributed without their knowledge or consent. While the unauthorized distribution of an author’s work doesn’t hurt the author, the enforcement of intellectual property rights results in aggression against peaceful people. Therefore, the enforcement of intellectual property rights is immoral and should be immediately ceased by all governments.

Questions for Rebuttal (if you disagree, answer these!):

• Do you acknowledge that the enforcement of intellectual property rights is in discord with the zero aggression principle (the principle that you should be able to live freely as long as you don’t initiate violence against anyone else)?
• Do you believe it is okay to enforce intellectual property rights through fines or jail?
• If you believe that using an author’s content without authorization actually hurts the author, explain why.
• Do you believe that your opinion on intellectual property is more important than mine? If you are pro-I.P., why do you think that your views should be represented but not mine?

Despite the barriers to the trip—financial (I would have to pay for transportation, housing, and food) and temporal (I would have to schedule it around my job at a college newspaper and improvisation practices and performances)—I found a ride on Craigslist and set my plan into action. I rode up to Minnesota with strangers, made friends and met new people, and rode back with someone I’d met only the day before. The trip was a complete success; I grew more independent and I had the time of my life celebrating freedom with some of the biggest celebrities in the movement.

On the trip up, I met Brad Spangler, the system administrator for agorism.info. Agorism.info features the New Libertarian Manifesto, a book that presents a possible solution for disolving the State and achieving anarchy through counter-establishment economics, and I recommend it to anyone interested in libertarianism.

After camping out Sunday night, we drove into St. Paul Monday morning, September 1. I left my cell phone in the SUV of the people who I rode up with, so I spent the first few hours wandering throughout the city, trying to find them. While walking through the city, I saw the Xcel Energy Center, the site where the Republican National Convention would be held. It was barricaded off.

I also passed a gathering of people who were rallying for housing as a human right. In my opinion, people do not have a right to housing.

If they want to build one for themselves, that’s great—government shouldn’t get in the way—but to say that other people should have to build houses for the homeless is to be out of touch with reality and incongruous with the concept of self-determination.

Then, I took public transportation to the University of Minnesota (in Minneapolis) where I met with other Ron Paul supporters to volunteer to promote Tuesday’s Rally and hand out free tickets. I was saddened to see that only about ten people showed up instead of the thousands I was expecting.

I rode back to St. Paul to pass out the wristbands (which were redeemable at the box office for tickets) to RNC protesters who might be interested in the Rally. Unfortunately, my shyness got the better of me and I only handed out three wristbands (but I did give several to some Free State Project members who offered to help distribute them.)

Without a phone or a place to sleep that night, I didn’t feel very good. I sat down at a street corner with my Ron Paul sign. Luckily, I met some fellow RP supporters and they invited me to come with them to a bar where other supporters where gathering. There, I met a firefighter who had driven up from Kansas City. He let me check my email on his laptop and allowed me to share a campsite with him that night. He also ended up giving me a ride home.

After hanging out with some really cool libertarians at the bar, we all drove to the Ron Paul Nation celebration where we listened to music and watched Ron Paul speak. The next day was the day of the Rally. I was able to stand directly in front of the podium for most of the Rally. I felt neither hunger nor tiredness; the adrenalin kept me going. I loved watching Aimee Allen’s live performance of the Ron Paul anthem. I high-fived her twice on separate occasions when she was high-fiving the audiences like performers often do.

Of course, my favorite part was Ron Paul’s epic speech.

It was the speech of a lifetime, and afterward I got to shake his hand. I had never been so close to my heroes before, and it really made me feel good to actually hold eye contact with Ron Paul (and the other speakers) for a few seconds. It felt like “I was there; I will not be forgotten,” even though that may not be the case.

The entire 3-day trip cost me $100; $55 for transportation there and back, $20 for camping, $5 for inter-city transportation and $20 for food. I gained valuable experience on my own. This is the first trip I’ve taken entirely without my parents, and it was totally worth it.

When I was a junior, I decided to work the system, get the credits, and graduate a year early. Now that I’m out in the business world, I feel like I have to catch up. School never taught me how to program, run a blog, or design websites. It never taught me how to create flash games, compose music, or record a podcast. All of those things were more important than learning about the solar system, but I had to learn them myself.

I’ll admit, I learned some things at school, like English, video editing, and how to write news articles. That doesn’t feel like a decade of studying, though. That seems more like something I could have learn in a few weeks. I learned some other things too, but I’ve either forgotten them or never needed to learn them anyway; most are bits of trivia that I could look up on Google when necessary. That said, I feel like the first 17 years of my life were severely underutilized; I would much rather have gotten business experiences than learn things I’d never end up needing to know.

Out of the nearly 1,000 students that graduated from my high school last year, I was the only one to graduate a year early. According to the KSDE, the statewide dropout rate is about 1.5 percent (that’s 15 students out of 1,000.) The question I’d like to pose is: why? Do students really love school enough to stay in it during your entire youth? If not, why aren’t they protesting it?

Compulsory schooling finds it’s justification in a number of laws. According to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a declaration passed by the United Nations, children have the “right” to compulsory education. The Kansas legislature has a law (K.S.A. § 72-1111) that requires you to attend school from the age of 7 to 18 (16, if your parents will allow it.) I think most students take that law for granted. Though education is great, I don’t think it should be mandatory, and I think voluntary, privatized education would mean higher quality education for those who want it.

Additionally, I think public schools are immoral because they are funded coercively. The truth is that the government robs people of their property and freedoms even if those people have lived peacefully on their own. Pro-government individuals won’t like to admit that enforcement of their laws often takes the form of aggression against peaceful people, but that’s exactly what they do when you don’t pay your property taxes (a portion of which goes to education) or go to school.

Dennis Fermoyle has taught for 31 years. He wrote a book called “In the Trenches: A Teacher’s Defense of Public Education.” Fermoyle is pro-public schools, but we agree on compulsory education. “If some kids are unfortunate enough to have nitwit parents who don’t want them to go to school, we should let the parents have their way,” Fermoyle wrote on his blog. “And I say that because the chances of those children getting any meaningful benefits from public education are either slim or none, and they will only make it more difficult for us to work with kids who we really have a chance to help.”

You can make someone go to school, but you can’t make them learn. Furthermore, apathetic students won’t learn anyway, and they’ll only make it harder for everyone else. I take online classes through Johnson County Community College, and one major difference from high school is that everybody wants to be there. It makes a difference.

In the long run, I believe that public schools should be transformed into schools funded voluntarily and attended by the children of those voluntary taxpayers. Essentially, they should be privatized. The most immediate step, though, is to protest compulsory education. Write to your local newspapers. Proclaim that you are a sovereign individual\and that you don’t accept the government’s authority to tell you how to live. Campaign for representatives who will end coercion against peaceful people. Broadcast your belief that the government should be a voluntary organization by consent of the governed, not tyranny of the majority. It is through activism that we can change the system.

Students’ freedoms need to be fought for. Ask the questions that no one else will. Assume that you, not society or the government, are the owner of your life. If you want help, send me a friend request on facebook or email me at pshields@gmail.com.

Inspired by presidential websites such as BobBarr2008.com and BarackObama.com, Shields overhauled his site in a similar fashion.

“I loved how Bob Barr and Barack Obama’s websites looked,” Shields said. “Minimalism wasn’t cutting it for PShields.Net. We’re in the ratings race, now, and we need to attract viewers in whatever way possible–even if it means deluding decent content with flash images and animations.”

Though the theme was incomplete, Shields switched to it anyway.

“I felt like action was the best choice, in this case,” Shields said. “I’ll be continuing to work on the theme in the coming weeks, but since it’s mostly functional, I wanted to push it out to visitors.”

Shields concluded by mentioning his new ChipIn widget.

“My goal is to support my life through blogging and web development, and I really appreciate any help that comes my way,” Shields said. “I spend very frugally on a predetermined budget, so funds will not be wasted.”

I’d planned to run away for years. When I was in fifth grade, I remember wanting to run away, but afraid of the consequences of abandoning school. My parents convinced me to stay. Over the next few years, I kept planning to run away—and kept putting off my plans for one reason or another.

Earlier this year, I packed up my bags to run away and my parents stole my bags. (They have a history of stealing my things.) However, after I graduated from high school, there was nothing to be afraid of. I could seriously leave home and begin life on my own.

There were two slight complications; I still had a job at a grocery store, and I was taking summer classes online at my local community college. I thought I could handle it. I planned for weeks to run away, because I thought that running away would allow me to achieve my goals in life much faster.

Although I knew what I wanted, I had a long conversation with my parents about it first. I couldn’t help it; even though I knew that every argument for staying home had been exhausted, I felt compelled to try to make peace with them. This time, I didn’t let them talk me out of it. I had recently purchased a bicycle, and I had some minor camping supplies (a tarp, a blanket, and a poncho.) As I walked out of the house, my dad handed me some cash to use in case of an emergency. He’d resigned himself to the conclusion that even if he stopped me, I’d try again the next day until I had my way. He was right.

I rode my bicycle two miles to a nearby church, and camped out the first night as far away from everything as possible. It took several hours to fall asleep. I thought I heard voices, but as far as I know, nobody ever discovered me. It started to rain, and I wrapped the tarp around me while my bike got soaked. I was actually cold, despite having the blanket. The feeling of being free helped me through the night.

I woke up the next morning before 5 a.m., which means I only got about three hours of sleep. I got up and rode my bike about 10 miles to my girlfriend’s apartment. I felt refreshed and free. I was carrying too much weight, though, so my back started to hurt. I made this video while on my way:

At my girlfriend’s house, I discovered that she had been sick for the past few days. We ate breakfast together and she asked me, “Are we just friends, or are we still dating?” I took this as a sign that she was either no longer interested in me or had found someone better. I told her that I wanted to continue dating, but I mentally prepared myself for the breakup (which occurred about two weeks later.)

It was poor timing, but I felt like I could deal with it. “I’ve ruined your day, haven’t I?” she asked me. “Nope!” I said, smiling, but it hadn’t totally sunken in.

From there, I rode a few more miles to my community college. I wanted to check out a locker, but it was the weekend and no one was there to do it. My back was hurting from the two bags I was carrying, which included college books and work clothes.

I went to one of the buildings and set up at a table to work. I created a plan to make money by creating websites for businesses in the area. In addition to providing money for food, it would also give me social experience, walking into businesses like a salesperson and trying to sell them my service.

I got tired and took a nap in the chair. An hour later, my friend Justin called and asked if I wanted to carpool to an improv show in Bonner Springs. He was less keen when I told him that I was at JCCC. I told him I’d meet him there.

The 15-mile trip to Bonner Springs used up my reserve energy. I had to stop and buy a water bottle, and I realized I was running out of money. I didn’t know if I had enough to buy food until I got my next paycheck. My optimism started to fade.

I missed the 7pm improv show, and barely made it back in time for the 9pm show that I was supposed to perform in. I was dripping in sweat and didn’t even realize that I forgot to dress up. Our group, called Red Rubber Ball, did it’s first show that night. We did fairly well.

After the show, I was exhausted. I rode down one dark road and looked for places to camp where I wouldn’t be disturbed. I stopped twice, but each stop ended up being to close to houses or buildings for comfort. I ended up sleeping about 10 feet down the hill where the road turned into a bridge. It was slightly easier to fall asleep this time. I woke up the next morning at 5 a.m. again, feeling tired.

I had work from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Having nothing better to do, I rode to the grocery store. I recorded my final video note, which you can see here:

I felt empty somehow. It wasn’t necessarily a bad feeling; I felt calm, but alone.

After work, I planned to ride my bicycle to the local library where I could work on the computer. I was too tired to do it. I decided to make a quick stop at home.

The stop became a stay, and the next day I realized that I didn’t have it in me to keep going. I adjusted one again to the regular routine of living at home, and my parents returned to their authoritarian ways. It was a regretful end to the adventure.

“In addition to the new theme, I’m also writing my first press release,” Shields said. “Now I can make up quotes and talk about myself in third person.”

Shields said the site redesign will encourage viewers to stay on the site for longer periods of time.

“I’m starting to fall prey to the marketing mentality,” Shields wept. “I just hope I can provide enough value to my readers, so that they stay and donate money.”