Whatever-Because | words, photographs, art, concepts… property of KJStarace (since 1997)

 

I always did want to be a full time creative. Maybe it was attention issues or the safety of a straightforward career that kept me a spare-time ‘writer’. Outside of raising a family and writing in a vacuum, my focus has been on global development, sales, innovation, and building cross sector partnerships that drive social impact. Interests include faith, the future and change.

Between 1992-2001 I learned to write speeches and commercials for the US Presidential campaign, and policy in the House of Commons, and then TV and print campaigns. On the side I generated unsold children’s fiction, almost-bought television programs and random industry articles. Once I figured out how to write business plans in 1997 it was about starting them, and a novel. From 2002- 2015, consumed with the UN’s Millennium Development Goals, I still wrote but with less time, took photos and drew again, basically dreaming up social enterprises.

My father is a detective and my mother a spiritual explorer, both gave me intuit, social concern and curiosity that I fine-tune regularly. I’m out on the perimeter, kind of looking for trouble. Honestly I’d choose truth over comfort. Being a husband and a father I’m closer to the future and it makes me even more urgent.

For some reason, Where We’re Heading has been my chief concern; what I write and think about anyway. Following lines from here out to when my kids are me and their children are them and then back to here – that future. The one you can’t worry about, I do.

What will happen will happen, we cannot change that, or can we?

This question drives me intellectually like nothing else.

My pet peeve (aka, what I ‘write’ about most) is the poverty of politics which has us pissing away so much opportunity. Living in DC for 15 years, I’m still aghast. The opportunity costs, the dropped balls, wasted time and progress. Across Africa, the Middle East where there’s social unrest there’s social inequity, predicated and propagated by poor leadership across generations. From the USA to Cameroon to Russia, those who lead are leading us with self & short term interest – ego – in mind, not serving us now or in the future – just stuffing themselves (–Fix this and the future’s fine)

Whatev’s, right? Chillax. It is what it is.

Live in the moment. Life is good. Be grateful.

Yea but…

 

All the writing I’ve done is shit. But doing it has been therapy and turned me into an idea factory. That’s not really a job and even though it is all shit, the process of forming an opinion, being critical and constructive about the sort of future you want to have – this is ingrained in all of us. We can’t shut it off.

It’s philosophy we miss. What is survival of the species? We grapple with it, without touching it. Who are we? This is why we write, philosophize, have discourse: to explore the world within our heart and mind…

We may not want to face the future but we care. It’s our instinct to improve, ourselves and the world around us. It could be the deepest thing we know.

My 8-year old son said to me the other day, out of nowhere: ‘the only reason I wouldn’t mind dying is because this amazing world seems unhealthy….and I don’t want to see it end.’

Gulp.

Is the instinct to survive somehow being muted, covering us like fog so we’re seeing right in front, just so far?

No, it’s not. Its right there.

 

/ / KJS. 11.17