Behavior change

It's strange how difficult it can be to change a behavior, even when it comes to changing a good behavior to a bad one. I work in behavior change, and supposedly understand some ways to make people adopt new behaviors. Yet, I still have a time of it trying to change myself.

Here I stand, post-birthday gifts, with a lovely ipod touch. It's real nice and perdy, and in theory, I think it could be useful if used sparingly. But I just can't get myself to use it. Perhaps it's because I resisted it and felt a strong moral opposition to it, and then finally caved. Perhaps it's a feeling of guilt. I don't know, but it's like a sense of awkwardness creeps over me, like I don't know how to use it, and I just put it aside. It's like I have to alter my whole world view to start making an ipod part of it. I have to make room for the ipod, but I feel ambivalent toward it. It has to be something you consciously think about, and I just don't. I forget completely that I even own it, and it sits on my bedside table. I see it when I go to bed and wonder, what is it I'm supposed to do with this here thing? Strange, isn't it?

Office dweller

I am not made for the office. The office breaks me. Breaks me slowly, but breaks me the same. It shows, perhaps not to the outside world, but to me. Things that used to astonish and grate at integrity become part of the accepted undertone of the office . Things I swore I'd always do, no matter what the circumstance, well. Immune to weather, hands smooth - not calloused, conversations removed from the converser, eyes glazed with computer, limbs unused and wasting, parceled work and play, sunshineless cells, world revolving around a world.

Really, I cannot accept that I am the only one who feels this way. I don't think man is made for the office. Man wants to create, to use hands, to connect with the land, to be part of something larger. And yet so many of us are caught in this fabricated world that is office life. I don't want to find myself old and softened by office living. But what to do?

"I'm off to the subway
I must not be late.
Going to work in tall buildings.

Now when I retire
and my life is my own
I made all the payments
it's time to go home
and wonder what happened
betwixt and between
when I went to work in tall buildings"

-Tall Buildings, John Hartford