Just for fun, and with thanks to Tsemrinpoche.

Fire Dragon

The fire element strengthens the naturally fiery dragon. They breathe power and ambition, and are unsurprisingly the most competitive of all dragons. They have intense energy and place high expectations in all areas of their life: love, career, self-development etc.

As self-cultivated perfectionists, they become an unstoppable force due to their high intelligence. They have the midas touch and will succeed in whatever they do. If they choose to be, they have the potential to become great leaders. This is especially so if they are able to subdue their temper and energy-exhausting pace. Others may mistake their overzealous and powerful approach towards leadership to be dictator-like! The fire dragon demands as much from others as he demands from himself. Their emotions have a tendency to control their actions, and at times they may react recklessly causing them to accumulate plenty to regret.

However, although they may shoot fire at others, they in actual fact place great care towards others’ well-being. They will be the first to donate towards a charitable cause and the first to uncover the truth on behalf of the wrongly accused.

With their vibrant charisma and larger-than-life personality, fire dragons have a natural tendency to become celebrities.

Earth Sheep

The earth sheep is extremely honest but can be brutally blunt at times. However, although she is good at dishing out her opinion of others, she is not very receptive to feedback and can become very defensive when criticized.

Nevertheless, she tends to look at the bright side of things. She is loyal to her friends and family and is willing to make sacrifices for them. She is someone you can definitely call upon if you are in trouble or need help, and can be sure of a lifelong loyalty.

The earth sheep is industrious and works well under pressure. She is a responsible worker and seldom encounters difficulties in her career. She is also more independent, able to hold her own ground and not likely to be as easily influenced as other sheep.

The earth element in her makes her more conservative and cautious than other sheep where money is concerned. Although still indulgent in nature, she is more controlled in her spending.

Metal Tiger

Be prepared to steer clear of the metal tiger once she’s got her mind set on something. This very independent character isn’t likely to listen to what you have to say and will charge headfirst into her passions and goals. She is highly competitive and very confident (perhaps too much) and can tend to overstretch her expectations, becoming easily impatient if they aren’t fulfilled as she wants them to be. That said, they can also be very hard workers who are able to maintain a high level of energy to get the job done… so long as and only if it’s something they believe in.

The metal element also makes her quite inflexible—once she’s set her mind on something, it’ll be a challenge to get her to think otherwise or accept another point of view. She might also be prone to acting impulsively and unconventionally—she’ll need to be careful she doesn’t also offend people along the way.

She has a great deal of ambition, but quite unlike the other tigers, this one is focused more on her own interests and less on the interests of the greater good. She’s much more into herself and accomplishing what she wants (or thinks she wants), whether it upsets others or not.

Water Dragon

The calmness and coolness of water pacifies the naturally aggressive dragon. This attribute will provide the dragon with clarity and balance making them good negotiators and diplomats. Unlike the fire dragon, water dragons are able to take time out to think and plan their next move wisely.

The secret to their success lays in their ability to be humorous when necessary, hardworking when necessary, and to bite their tongue when necessary. They are able to control their emotions and thoughts providing them the composure and stability the other dragons lack.

Passionate, opportunistic and progressive, they will not feel defeated even when they fall flat on the ground or if a door is slammed in their face. To them, it’s part of the growing process that everyone must go through—they are no different so there is nothing to be ashamed of!

They believe in a slow-and-steady approach, as opposed to the metal dragon who charges towards a goal. They are patient enough to know that good things come to those who wait. Don’t mistake their patience for inertness or passiveness. Just remember, who won the race: the rabbit or the tortoise?

The water element will also make him expansive, open and gentle with others. The water dragon enjoys company, cooperativeness and sharing.

— § —

Important caveat: Chinese culture has a different structure than U.S. culture, so some of these characteristics (loyalty, industriousness, family, independence, competitiveness) don’t have the same timbre in that milieu that they do here. The translation of the concepts isn’t perfect, and some traits appear more positively or more negatively in that culture than they do in this one.

But it’s fun nonetheless.

I am exhausted.

And behind. Behind, behind, behind.

Weekdays are nonstop sprints. I haven’t stopped running since first thing this morning. Much more to be done after the kids are asleep (we’re doing the bedtime routine in five minutes).

Tomorrow I will run, too.

All anyone ever asks when they hear this is would I like to have the kids taken off my hands for a while.

Howcome the answer to everything in this godforsaken society involves spending less time with your family?

How about asking if I’d like to have work taken off my hands for a while, if I’d like to have my bills paid for me for a while?

No, I wouldn’t like to have my kids taken off my hands for a while, and no I wouldn’t like to see less of my wife and my family.

I’d like the same economic system that was in place two generations ago, thanks very much, with dirt-cheap higher education, high wages, and easily affordable homes.

How about that?

And please don’t femsplain to me that at least I’m a man so I don’t have to cook and clean and take care of the kids all the time. That makes me want to give you a big, tall talking-to about your gendered preconceptions and the way in which nobody appreciates men’s work either. Work like, let’s see—doing the dishes, doing the laundry, vacuuming the house, feeding the kids, trying to keep a tidy appearance (in fact, this one is harder on men, since an unshowered woman in sweats is a “poor thing, hang in there, you’re a mom and a saint” while an unshowered man in sweats is a “disgusting loser, full stop”), somehow still being a professional, and generally trying to have it all while seeming not to have to work at it.

Yeah, I’ve been doing this stuff for few years, too. Gosh, surprise!

Sound familiar?

Only nobody praises a dad for it. Not on Facebook, not in everyday interaction, not in song. Everyone just assumes a man is never pulling his weight and has it easy.

The cause of American decline isn’t “gridlock,” it isn’t catastrophic trade or economic policy, it isn’t the end of the Cold War, and it isn’t military adventurism.

All of these have their roots in a deeper problem.

The American academy is dead.
The American church is dead.
The American statesman is dead.

These are the three civic pillars of the American superego, the reservoir of grown-ups able to propose grown-up solutions to serious problems, to guide ethical reflection, and to carry and perpetuate cultural knowledge and identity across generations.

They are all dead. Some will claim that they’re alive, but I call bullshit. They’re not living, they’re tottering zombies, un-dead, with insatiable drives for consumption, but with hollow, glazed-over eyes, marked by vacuums of self-awareness, with no hint of their former selves on display. Decades of moral activist criticism have undermined and eviscerated them, but without leaving anything in their place. There isn’t an American superego any longer; what remains are the American ego and the American id, running (instrumentally and irrationally, respectively) amok.

“Where have all the grown-ups gone?” goes the common cry. The fact is that we’ve killed them, one by one, and been left with no one to lead, to sacrifice and persevere, or to teach us to sacrifice and persevere in our own best interests.

Our Very Serious People are no longer the adults in the room, they are boomer and post-boomer rock stars. And inevitably, we have thus also come to see our rock stars as Very Serious People. What’s missing are the stodgy and wise. In their place, we have Keith Richards, Hillary Clinton, Richard Dawkins, and Lee Corso.

That’s not to say that there’s anything wrong with these people. Only that they aren’t grown-ups. They’re not caretaking or contributing in order to moderate, nurture, and preserve. They’re teenagers or twenty-somethings trapped in failing bodies. Their “big picture” remains forever centered around themselves.

And the same is true across society at this point, from the bottom to the top. The grown-ups have gone, like the Jedi of lore, out of our universe.

So I am sitting here just after midnight writing a post.

The thrust of the post is to be this: I am not productive right now.

This is a terrible, terrible thing. By the time 10:00 am arrives every day, I already feel as though the day is over, as though the rest of the day is spoken for, hour-by-hour, and any freedom that I had to innovate or to act or to produce or to deviate from habit is gone. My days are over almost literally before they have begun, and the course of each day bears this terrible premonition out; starting well before noon, I begin to race to hit each necessary benchmark and, just managing to hit each one along the way, I stumble at the end of the day into evening, exhausted, with a full complement of evening tasks and events ahead of me.

My life is “full” but not in a healthy way, at least not for my self, my identity, or my future. Because very little that I care about is getting done. One thing is—there is repair work being done in my family life, and this is good, very, very good.

But a self needs to exist in order to exist, if I can frame things in such a stupidly tautological way. Right now I have no self. There is no space for a self. Between work, kids, wife, house, and recuperation, there is nothing left. No moments, and no energy.

And yet I am not ready to die. I am not ready for this to be the person that I am to be at the end of the day.

I am off the path. For so long, I felt as though I were on the path, as though I were “getting there” and what remained ahead was hard work. Now, I cannot see a path to where I want to go. I’m not even sure where I want to go, and I can’t see a path to getting to knowledge of where I want to go so that I can begin to look for the path that will take me there.

— § —

It is easy to say that this is a psychological problem, something that requires a therapist or a change in attitude or perspective, but it is also a time management problem. There simply aren’t enough minutes in the day to do the things that are already outlined, and none of them are things that I either:

a) Can change, or
b) Want to change

Asked what I would cut, my answer is “nothing, I have already cut back to the bare minimum in every facet of my life and already critical plates feel as though they will stop spinning and crash.”

How is it possible for life to be so overwhelmingly full with just work, kids, wife, house, and recuperation that none of them are getting the attention that they deserve and there is no time for anything else left?

I mean, none of these things can be cut. None of them!

— § —

I feel tremendously helpless or, put another way, in serious need of help (that is not, as of yet, forthcoming).

I hate the feeling that I am standing by and waiting for something to change or for something to give or for something to get better of its own account. I have been around long enough to know that this will not happen; nothing changes unless you change it.

The problem is that I have absolutely no idea what to change. I am at a loss.

And so, without meaning to, day by day I wait. Which is to say, I keep spinning the plates and trying to keep up with doing my stuff and trying to hit every benchmark of the day, evening, and night while also managing to stay alive and to stay healthy, and meanwhile I am watching life pass me by.

This is what it feels like.

Watching life pass me by.

It is not a good feeling.