Time to think... in jail

Two weeks ago tomorrow, I managed to get myself arrested for the first time ever in my 51 years on Earth.  I landed in a holding cell once, because of a traffic warrant back in about 1989.  But that's it.  I was homeless when I was arrested, and got into the kind of trouble homeless people tend to get into.  I won't go into any details about that, since the court date is coming up.

I was basically deaf in my left ear due to the half a bug stuck in it that I wrote about in the last post.  So I had a hard time understanding some of the questions I was asked.  When I was offered a phone call, I blanked out, and didn't call anyone.  I wound up spending three days in county jail.

That gave me a lot of time to think about my artwork and writing.  I'm making progress with my artwork, and I'm really stoked on that.  I really want to get a camera so I can start shooting my own photos to make drawings of. 

But my writing and blogging have been bouncing around all over the place.  I'm an amateur futurist at heart, I read big books most people don't read, and listen to a lot of online lectures most people don't listen to.  That gives me a better idea of some of the big problems lurking in our future. 

I'm also a guy who likes to brainstorm ideas and possible solutions for problems we'll have to deal with in the future.  So I've written a bunch of blog posts about things that people in this area could do that I think would help build the art, music, and other creative scenes, and create more jobs.  I use this area as an example of the smaller cities and towns around the country that don't have huge tech companies drawing money and talent into their region. 

But I realized that the people actually running things around here don't want to hear my ideas.  I don't have a PhD in economic development.  I've never taken a single college course.  And, I was homeless all summer, and for several of the last 15 years, even though I was working most of that time.  Nobody in a position of power really wants a homeless guy publishing ideas about the city or town they're running. 

So I've decided to stop writing about this specific area as an example of both good and bad things happening in our world today.  I'm going to focus more on the ideas themselves, and getting my ideas out to the people who are more likely to be open to those ideas. 

As Americans, we have a lot of big challenges to deal with in the coming years.  In addition to issues like climate change, a slow growing economy, and social issues like crime and the growing opioid epidemic, we have the "retail apocalypse" wiping out hundreds of thousands of jobs.  We have 400 malls expected to close in the next few years, along with the 5,000 + stores closed this year alone.  Our country has a recession about once a decade, and it's been 9 years since the Great Recession.  We have major fractures in BOTH major political parties, and yet another "get nothing done" Congress.  We also have a serious study projecting that 47% of all jobs could be taken over by technology in the next 20 years.  The top tech people are really freaked out about that issue, but few others think about it. 

There are a ton of big issues looming, and happening right now.  These are some of the ones I'm thinking about and looking for solutions to.  So I'm going to keep writing about these topics, along with old school BMX, skateboarding, and other stuff I'm interested in.  But I'm not going to talk about the area I now live in, and how it stacks up against this region or that region.  I'll look at these issues as things that are happening many places, and write about ideas any of these areas could think about to deal with future issues as they arise.