Hassig

I know it comes nat­u­rally for a select few, but I find new envi­ron­ments and meet­ing new peo­ple chal­leng­ing. Don’t get me wrong, I love new things and enjoy meet­ing new peo­ple, but it’s dif­fer­ent when you do it alone. Nor­mally when I go some­where new or am intro­duced to new peo­ple, I was with some close friends. If not with friends then I was at least in some way “in my element”.

Also, on trips you are sur­rounded by the same peo­ple for extended peri­ods of time and you’re all in a sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tion. I like those envi­ron­ments. I do well when I have time. I don’t feel like any­one who knows me will be shocked to hear that I tend to move slowly.

I think that has been one of the more chal­leng­ing things of mov­ing. None of my close con­nec­tions are here, and the friends I do have here are not around that often. I want to be involved. I want to make friends. But unlike tak­ing a trip, we’re not all in the same sit­u­a­tion. Peo­ple here already have friends, lives, sched­ules, rou­tines, and now here I am knock­ing on their metaphor­i­cal door.

None of this is aided by the fact that I don’t ter­ri­bly mind not being around peo­ple. I grew up as an only child and had two work­ing par­ents. The prob­lem is that while I would be fine with­out it, I know that I need it. I need peo­ple, friends, things to get me out of the house even when I don’t quite feel like it, and a place to belong. I need to start to feel at home. I’m not trav­el­ing, tak­ing a trip, or vis­it­ing. I’ve moved.

It’s still a lot to take in and a lot of adjust­ments, but I’ll get there. I sup­pose I just need time.

How do you do with new places or mak­ing new friends?

Well, I cer­tainly haven’t blogged in a long time, and more than that I don’t pub­lish many life details. Well, per­haps I do the details but not the over­ar­ch­ing life hap­pen­ings. For the few of you who may not know much at all, I grad­u­ated LeTourneau Uni­ver­sity well over a year ago with a degree in Chris­t­ian Min­istry. I looked around for jobs loosely but never really found any­thing, dur­ing which I con­tin­ued to oper­ate a small but prof­itable vend­ing machine busi­ness and doing free­lance graphic and web design.

Sold the vend­ing around Decem­ber and con­tin­ued to free­lance, while liv­ing with the par­ents. Started dat­ing Natalie on Thanks­giv­ing, and I still am. Had sev­eral good friends move away like Gar­rett and Tim, and a few moved back to Longview, like Ryan and Chris­ten (shame we couldn’t have both been in Dal­las at the same time). Took a job at Trin­ity Church of Cedar Hill about 3–4 weeks ago man­ag­ing their web­site and graphic design. Stay­ing with a friend in Wax­a­hachie until I can move in some­where else. Sup­pos­edly rent­ing a room from another guy, but the house isn’t ready yet… oh the joys of limbo.

Things with the new job have been good. Trin­ity is a great church and I’m glad to be here. A lot of adjust­ments, envi­ron­ment, per­son­al­i­ties, rhythms, and largely work­ing for myself for close to 5 years to work­ing spe­cific times in a larger orga­ni­za­tion… It’s good, just quite dif­fer­ent. Though I don’t think I’ll ever be a fan of early mornings.

Well that’s the gen­eral overview. Some­times I won­der about the pur­pose of writ­ing these things out, but as I do it makes me real­ize that it helps me put things into per­spec­tive, makes me think, and I enjoy it for the most part. Not to men­tion that as my friends con­tinue to spread across the coun­try, I’d like to keep con­nected at least on some level.

What’s going on in your life? Leave a com­ment or send me an email and let me know.

My new cre­ative exer­cise book instructed me to come up with a sur­vival guide for when the inevitable zom­bie infec­tion strikes. I fig­ured as long as I am com­ing up with it, I may as well share it just in case…

The Ulti­mate Zom­bie Sur­vival Guide:

First off, this is not a guide on how to be well liked or how to save the largest num­ber of peo­ple. This is a straight, self-survival guide. Select agile, intel­li­gent peo­ple to aid you in your sur­vival. Now is no time for com­pas­sion. If you and a few other peo­ple sur­vive then you can make more babies and you will even­tu­ally become the elderly.

Sec­ond, time is of the essence. At the very first signs of an out­break it is time to set the sur­vival plan in motion. Any time wasted greatly decreases your chance of your sur­vival. Quickly gather what­ever weapons you can muster. Guns are best. Shot­guns are the best choice if you’re not a marks­man. Semi-automatic guns are an excel­lent choice also. Blunt objects are a fair sub­sti­tu­tion. Sharp objects are bet­ter than noth­ing, but they have a ten­dency to get stuck… so keep that in mind.

Third, secure a vehi­cle. A large, pow­er­ful vehi­cle like a truck or an SUV would be handy in case you have to break through things or off-road. But if those are not avail­able, any vehi­cle will do.

Alright, now that you have secured weapons, a vehi­cle, and pos­si­ble a team to aid you, it is time to start the next phase of the plan. There is a bit of flex­i­bil­ity from here on out, but be sure and mind the main concepts.

If time allows, head to your near­est hard­ware store. You’re going to want to get ply­wood, 4x4’s, con­crete, rebar (if pos­si­ble), ect. Basi­cally, you need to gather sup­plies to prop­erly for­tify entrances. Nails, screws, tools, ect… as long as time allows you need to get as much as pos­si­ble. This is your one and only chance to gather most of these sup­plies. (as stated sev­eral times before… if you are run­ning low on time then move on, you do not want to be stuck in hard­ware store)

Now, head to the near­est Wal-Mart. If you find that you can not make it due to lack of time, over­run with zom­bies, or already over­run with peo­ple, a Sam’s / Costco will work. If those are not avail­able, a large gro­cery store or super­mar­ket will be your next choice. You want some­where that is easy to for­tify and full of sup­plies. Wal-mart is your best choice because it is full of food, weapons and ammo, med­i­cine, other sup­plies, and does not have many entrances. If you find your­self there late at night or after most peo­ple have evac­u­ated to their homes, con­sider your­self in luck. Few peo­ple in the store means your sup­plies will last sig­nif­i­cantly longer. Dri­ving a truck into the store can be help­ful incase you have to make a hasty exit.

Once you are in the store, begin to for­tify the entrances imme­di­ately. If peo­ple are there and want to leave, do not stop them. Fewer peo­ple, longer last­ing sup­plies. Begin assign­ing peo­ple to gather mate­ri­als and bar­ri­cade entrances. Use any mate­ri­als you hope­fully secured from a hard­ware store, shop­ping carts, shelv­ing, and any­thing else you can find. You need to make sure there is no gaps and that it will hold for a long time. You do not want any­one get­ting in or out. Dou­ble and triple, and even go around a 4^th time to make sure every entrance is bar­ri­caded. Check other peo­ples work and make sure every­thing is secure. On every entrance is secured, go ahead and add to the bar­ri­cades. Mak­ing sure noth­ing gets in is the high­est priority.

When you are finally sat­is­fied with the bar­ri­cades it is time to move on to set­ting up the store. Divide peo­ple into teams. First, gather ziplock bags and put all fresh fruits and veg­eta­bles into them and then into freez­ers. Use the camp­ing sup­plies to get up liv­ing and cook­ing areas (even if your store has a kitchen, set­ting up propane grills / cook tops will help if you lose power). Gather all the bat­ter­ies, flash­lights and other sim­i­lar items in a cen­tral loca­tion so you can find them quickly if you lose power. Also gather up all the weapons and ammo and have that ready to use.

Try to find safe access to the roof. This will give you a look at what is going on in the out­side world, fresh water, fresh sun­light and air, and a chance at being res­cued. Put out cups, tubs and basi­cally any­thing that can hold water out all over the roof. This is for if and when you loose run­ning water. Also, set up some writ­ing on the roof so air­planes or heli­copters will know that you are there.

If you were lucky enough to have a store that sells plants, take the plants and spread them all around the store. If you don’t have many peo­ple with you then you can be fairly relaxed about food. How­ever, if you have more than a very small num­ber of peo­ple you will need to ration food. You could be here a long time so there is no rea­son to run out of food. Eat items that will go bad first. Use fresh food and items with short expi­ra­tion dates. Save food that will stay pre­served a long time till you’re out of every­thing else.

Now comes the wait… see­ing as how this has never hap­pened before, there is no real way to know how long it will last. Peo­ple will get impa­tient. As their impa­tiences grows, so will there stu­pid­ity and des­per­a­tion. Try to head this off before it’s to late and you find some des­per­ate per­son tear­ing apart your block­ades from the inside in an attempt to get out at 3 in the morn­ing.  Try to keep spir­its up with music, games, and a gen­eral sense of good leadership.

Well good luck, and if any­thing ridicu­lously unlikely and bor­der­line impos­si­ble should hap­pen, you know where to find me.

- Jason

Have your own thoughts, tips, or more? Leave a comment!

Here’s some recent design work I’ve been doing for Trinity.

The Vis­i­ta­tion — New Series

Some 36“x55” Posters

Plunge logo pre-made, col­ors changed. One Day cre­ated in illus­tra­tor.
(side­note: pho­to­shop smart objects are amazing!)

Thanks for the tech­niques on the one­day poster Fabio. (Tuto­r­ial)

I like night. I always have. The night time has always felt peace­ful. It has a ten­dency to be much qui­eter. My aunts and uncles are no longer call­ing the house ask­ing for my par­ents. The calls from solic­i­tors cease, and fewer cars travel the roads. Every­thing about it whis­pers a quiet, serene story that does not seem to care whether it is heard. The dark­ness drapes the land­scape and all things bright­ened by the harsh day­light. Things that were once clear and easy to see are hid­den by a shroud of black, occa­sion­ally high­lighted by moon­light or harshly brought to sight by our man made lights. For some rea­son, this lim­ited vision and lack of abil­ity to see into this dis­tance brings peace. What is strange is how dark­ness lim­its what we can see around us, but it is the only time we can see into the cos­mos, places far beyond our world. The light retreats to rest for the evening and dark­ness quickly fills it’s gap. It drapes every­thing and pro­vides the oppor­tu­nity to look up to a world the light hides so crassly as if the sun is afraid we will cheat on her with other stars and novas.

It never ceases to amuse me how we inter­act with one another as humans. We con­stantly have things we would love to say to cer­tain peo­ple, but for a myr­iad of rea­sons we hold back. We bite our tongues, devis­ing a strat­egy to deliver our mes­sage. This is not directed solely at con­fronting peo­ple with words; it is a much larger scale. We are dri­ven by needs to con­nect, to be loved, to be accepted, and we are more often than not will­ing to sac­ri­fice who we are and who we would like to be to obtain those needs. And while we all seem to be in the same boat, we fre­quently estab­lish walls between our inter­ac­tions, only to be opened with time and com­mit­ment like a small stream carv­ing a canyon. Although I don’t believe we could han­dle it oth­er­wise. It seems as if we will always live with this strange dichotomy. No mat­ter how much we talk about or long for authen­tic­ity, we will never be com­pletely free and direct in all of our inter­ac­tions. Oh well, we learn and we adapt — some bet­ter than oth­ers. Despite it’s com­plex­ity, our inter­ac­tions oper­ate on a sys­tem and always will.