I took the day off from work today as I’m as sick as a dog. I hate being sick. I hate that feeling that there’s something living inside me that’s not supposed to be in there. Though I’m sick and stuck in bed, I figured I could still be productive. I don’t see why I can’t lay here with my laptop, a big healthy pile of Kleenex, and all of you to share my thoughts with. Maybe this would be as good a chance as any to tell you a little about what’s on my mind today.

I haven’t been sleeping much. I wish I could tell you that it’s only one thing or another keeping me up at night, but it’s not. It’s everything. I’m one of those guys who worries. No, I don’t fall for the conspiracy bullshit that seems to be scaring a lot more people these days than a few years back, I actually don’t care too much if the government is watching me or if there is some sort of secret society trying to make their robes with my skin. I don’t blame them, It’s warm and soft. No, I don’t worry about any of that stuff. I worry about you and what might or might not be human nature. I still haven’t quite figured that one out yet.

I have an addiction to the news. There isn’t an hour that goes by where I’m not looking at any one of the major news networks online or on my phone. I just have this overwhelming need to know what’s going on in the world. I often find myself following and researching a story about a riot on the other side of the world where people were being killed for protesting because they weren’t getting the food the needed to survive, or like we’ve seen in India where though they have women in leadership roles, the vast majority of women are still seen as secondary citizens. I feel the need to know the victims, almost on a personal level as through media and through our society in general, they have become little more than a statistic.

I also worry about those we don’t hear much about, such as the 1 billion people in the world who are going to bed each and every night with little or nothing to eat, over 3.5 billion people in the world who are making less than $2 per day, and a global population that’s growing 850,000 people per week.

There are nearly 11,000 people killed every year in the United States, our prisons are holding more people than any other on earth, and instead of looking for solutions, we spend billions on building new prisons.

I lay awake and think about these people and try to come up with solutions. I know that I’m only one man, but in my heart, there is nothing more that I would like to do than to save the world from itself.

I have a hard time waking up in the morning knowing that I belong to a society in which is apathetic to the world around it. The solutions to many of the problems are actually quite simple, but it would take sacrifice and compromise. In our culture, these are words which are used often, but practiced with extreme discretion.

I don’t know. I don’t really have any answers today. More of a NyQuil-driven rant than anything. Go ahead and leave me a comment or two. If you have nothing nice to say or something condescending, don’t say anything at all. Ok, I’m out.