Idea #11: Hire released convicts when I own a business

Description
With the increasing consolidation of criminal history data throughout the United States, in the future it will become more and more difficult for people who have made mistakes in the past, mistakes for which they have been punished through the criminal or civil law system, to move past those mistakes. If I owned a business, and someday I may do so, I would give people a second chance with a decent job.

I swear I thought I heard an NPR story on how the consolidation of past records limits second chances, but I have been unable to find it. In any case, the increasingly evident truth is that the government - or rather, governments, since many libertarians tend to forget we live in a federalist system with many layers of government - will have the ability to consolidate all those records that people acquire over the years of, you know, living.

In general, this is a good thing. People can't skip around committing felonies and then committing some more because no one was tracking where they were and what they did in a previous locale. Seems like nowadays that's the horror story - some child molester was never formally charged in one county, so he moves to another - or another state - and gets hired by another school.

But let me get back to my point. I happen to know that the State Department is considering a "blacklist" of families who should never be considered host parents for exchange students. This will undoubtedly be supported by findings from criminal background checks. Yet, the question is: what kinds of crimes land a family on that blacklist? How many, and how long ago? All excellent questions for wondering where any teenager should live, but what if you put your own name in those crosshairs? Is a DUI when you were 23, when you are now 33, an offense that should disqualify you from ever hosting an exchange student?

To be clear, there are no guidelines published, but should some sort of "blacklist" be created, some will (or should) be published. The point I'm trying to make is that there will very soon be no such thing as a "second chance." No one with any sort of criminal past will be considered for a job, unless the employer is willing to overlook the criminal past of the applicant. And isn't under the pressure of some government authority to factor in that criminal history.

So anyone who runs a business, who respects the possibility that people can come back from a mistake, should be willing to employ someone who already made a mistake. I mean ex-convicts.

If you haven't heard or Dave's Killer Bread, I advise you to go out and buy some. Not only because it's amazingly good (and it is), but because Dave himself has an amazing story about personal redemption. Moreover, his company employs ex-convicts. Now there's always the risk of recidivism with ex-convicts, but I'm sure Dave, with his ex-convict backstory, has figured out a way to manage the risk of recidivism affecting his company (i.e., theft, robbery, or embezzlement by current or former employees).

The biggest risk of recidivism is hopelessness. Not having a future, not having a stable life, not having a decent job. Provide these things, and studies show the rate of recidivism declines. If Dave's Killer Bread can do it, I'm sure many other employers could, as well.


Steps
1) Own a business, one capable of hiring others.
2) Establish a plan for hiring ex-convicts. How much will they be paid? Will I assist with housing?
3) Develop a risk assessment: in what positions will I employ ex-convicts? Will they be a risk to the stability of the company? How will they be screened? What are the criteria for disqualification?
4) Hire some ex-convicts.
5) Monitor their performance. Not just for negative performance - if they do a good job, they should also be praised.

Enthusiam:  First I need to own a business. Then we'll see how enthusiastic I am - but it's a good idea.
Practicality: See the response for Enthusiasm.
Difficulty: Unknown. I would have to look at other businesses who do the same.

Idea #10: Re-learn Russian

Description
Learning a language is either a commitment to re-learning for the rest of your life, or it's a continuous source of guilt for the rest of your life. Or in my case, it's both. I put the work in, so I have to keep up on it periodically to keep from feeling like the all the time I spent in classes isn't wasted. And when I let it slip, I feel guilty for not keeping up on it and letting the investment in learning the language go to waste.

I studied Russian for three years in college, spent a semester studying in Moscow. I've studied it off and on over the years, but after a while it's nice to let it go for a bit and study other things, even other languages. I tried reviewing my Russian while studying Spanish once, trading off days (Monday is Spanish day, Tuesday is Russian day, etc.) but that really doesn't work very well. And it's exhausting. So I let my Russian slip into disuse. I could always come back to it, I told myself.

Knowledge is like muscle power. Time spent building muscle up is never wasted, because the muscle mass never completely fades away, and it comes back with a little time spent lifting weights again. Same with languages - the base vocabulary is always there, or can be refreshed fairly quickly.

So I'm going to refresh and re-learn Russian. Except I'm going to start with building up my basic vocabulary again. Use new apps (which didn't exist when I was in college) to learn all the words I need to learn. Or rather, should have learned - it's amazing how many basic words I never really learned. I think I always needed to study more vocabulary, but when you're in class you just jump through the grammar and never really invest in building up a huge vocabulary.

Steps
1) Learn common, necessary words.
2) Refresh my knowledge of grammar. (Ugh, six cases).
3) Learn more words.
4) Read Russian Twitter feeds. Get used to common usage.
5) Listen to Russian language podcasts.
6) Watch Russian movies.
7) Surf Russian websites.
8) Read more Russian literature. Start with simple stories. Maybe even get my hands on kid's books instead of jumping straight to Gogol and Chekhov.

And further down the road, when I get more comfortable with it:
9) Join some Russian conversational Meet-up groups in the area, and actually practice speaking.
10) Post some replies to online posts by Russian-speakers, another way to practice using it, instead of just reading it.

Enthusiam: Temporary. Enthusiasm for languages usually fades, so I'm going to try to ride this one for as long as I can.
Practicality: Can I study Russian while I read other books in English? I think my enthusiasm would last longer if I don't start longing for something easy to read on the Metro.
Difficulty: Is learning a language ever easy?

Idea #8: Create a log of story ideas

Description
Recently, I flipped through my journal and stumbled across an idea I had come up with for a story. Nothing crazy or detailed, just a quick blurb that could be fleshed out in the future into a complete plotline. I had jotted it down quickly, the handwriting a scribble, thinking that it would make for a good story and I didn't want to lose it. Then I promptly forgot about all about it.

But this is the point of keeping a journal, right? To capture those ideas that drift out of the smoke in our pre-frontal cortex, before the wisps drift off again into the ether. Our minds are always changing - fail to record an idea, and it might never come back from the hidden lands of inspiration. The problem is, these story ideas are buried in amongst the pages of sketches, grocery lists, designs for furniture or other items to build, dream logs (a future blog post on that shortly), and other mishmash. With no key word or date search capability.

So I just have to go back through my journals, one page at a time, and type them up.

Steps
1) Dig up old journals from the basement.
2) Find the story ideas and type them up.
3) Select the most promising and flesh them out into a complete story.
4) Get them published.

Enthusiam: Moderate. Much like the jotting down of story ideas, enthusiasm for reading through these ideas fades as soon as I get them typed. But at least I have them for the future, right?
Practicality: I'd forgotten how many journals I've kept over the years. And that's not counting the ones from high school (dare I step back into that mindset?)
Difficulty: I had to flip back through years and years of notebooks and journals. And sit down and actually type them up. And I'm still haunted by the feeling that I've missed a few.

And I did. I went back and dug out my journals, flipped through them, and typed them into a Word doc. I now have a list, a sampling of which includes:
- A man with Alzheimers in a nursing home who sends postcards about places he had been to with his wife when she was still alive. His granddaughter puts them together into a story of his life, a biography she would have never known had she not read the postcards.
- A boy who is a thief and punk, but wears a Boy Scout uniform to look wholesome.
- A short short about a lottery winner who sets fire to his own house to fake his death so he can finally shake all the people asking him for money.
- A future in which the government has mandated public servants to have electrodes implanted in their brains to force them to make policies according to laws and regulations, removing emotional thought from policy decisions. Based on a new technology using nanofiber cables implanted in mice's brains, successfully making them turn in certain directions when the light in the cables turns on.
- Based on a man I met in the Philippines, who long since went "off the grid," who is now dying and teaching his lessons to an American who happened by chance to meet him while on vacation.

And that's just a quarter of the story ideas I dug up out of these journals. Someday I'll type them up and get them published.

Idea #3: Roomates: A Saga of Intrigue and Despair and Beer Cans and Dick Jokes

Standard sink condition
if it were set in the kitchen

Description
A play about living in a house full of roommates. The setting would be entirely within the living room, so it would be ideal for a play because scenery changes would be unnecessary. Set the stage so that the couches of the living room would face the audience, as though the people in the play were looking at the TV, and the audience would be looking at the actors as though through the television screen. The actors could enter and exit through the sides of the stages as though they were entering and exiting through the front door, bathroom door, bedroom door, kitchen door, etc. The play would focus on the various stories behind each roommate, some that would include the other roommates, while others would be secret from the roommates altogether.

Steps
1) Outline the story.
2) Learn how to write in the format of a play.
3) Dedicate time to writing and bang out the scenes.

Originality: This would be like the stage version of Australian author John Birmingham's non-fiction book of the best stories from his years living with dozens of roommates, He Died with a Felafal in His Hand, except set in one living room. Although it would be really tough to compete with Birmingham's stories.

Enthusiam: Medium. I've had this idea before. But I have yet to dedicate any time to thinking about the stories that would drive the play.

Practicality: Not very, considering I consistently dedicate my time to other pursuits. But something to keep in mind for the future.

Difficulty: Very. Have you ever tried to write a play? I really don't know how Shakespeare banged out so many in his lifetime.