Rhianna and domestic violence

The incident between Chris Brown and Rhianna has shocked and appalled me to no end. I fell in love with her after seeing 'Umbrella' and it's frightening that her life has taken such a crazy turn despite having what many consider 'it all' – beauty, talent, money, and the successful handsome boyfriend. 

It's depressing familiar to millions of women throughout the world. I have shied away from getting too personal on this blog but domestic violence is something that I have seen first-hand. It was present at the start of my parents' marriage. My brothers and I compared notes and realized that we all have some violent episode as our 'first memories.' Fortunately it stopped but not before the damage was done – to my Mom's psyche and to us as witnesses.

Domestic violence is a coward's crime and I see Chris Brown as a coward. Unable to control his emotions. Insecure enough in his own self that to feel better about himself, he uses his power to subjugate someone weaker. In many respects, it was similar to the situation between my parents. The overachiever marries a beautiful woman and proceeds to put in her a gilded cage, with violence and intimidation used to 'keep her there.'

A friend of mine specializes in domestic violence as a disease – due to the fact that each generation sees it and mimics it – and I will be interviewing her for this blog. The one good thing that will come from this is that hopefully women out there will see that even the ones we admire can be in their own personal hell. It is incredibly difficult to extract oneself from a violent situation but maybe hundreds if not thousands will muster up the strength and break free. 

Quantifying myself

The original source escapes me but I have run across a website where the author captures data about himself and has set up a little community of people who do similar things. It's a Wiki called Quantified Selves and there are a few people on there who track different things. 

One woman tracks 40 things about herself – from how she feels, to her mood, to her childcare and even the quality and quantity of sex. Talk about performance pressure for her husband! "Uh, honey, last night was a 2. I'm going to have to see some improvement or I'll be taking matters into my own hands."

In the spirit of the New Year, I'm thinking of doing something similar – tracking different elements about myself. I'll share what I'll be tracking in the days to come. Much of the heavy lifting will be done by the Jott iPhone app [iTunes Store Link] an amazing program that captures what you say and transcribes it into notes/to do's. I've started to capture my diet, mood, and an ever-growing inbox of stuff to do. Check out the Wiki because there are some great thought starters on what one could track about oneself. A filmmaker tracks media consumption, which is helpful for those in the industry. 

What would our society be like if we all tracked ourselves so rigourously as a matter of course? What would you track about yourself? If more of us did this, or could be encouraged to do this, would you sell this information if offered? For example, how much would P&G pay their eternal target – the Mom – to get access to her tracking data? What kind of product innovation would result from such efforts? 

Would we be more like Warren Buffett? I'm in the middle – a stationary middle at the moment – of Buffet's recent autobiography The Snowball. I did not know much about him prior to reading the book. He's a fascinating guy. One of the most interesting things about him is his childhood obsession with numbers and tracking things, which obviously foretold his success. At the age of 6, he used to track how fast his marbles swirled around the sink. I'm sure Buffett has a ton of things he tracks about himself and the areas he is involved. I'd love to see that data.

Phew, this blogging thing

Just a pause in the action but I'm working on a few articles, once of which I will post shortly. I'm finding blogging to be an interesting experience and one that I just want to talk about for a few minutes. 

It's amazing the transformation that takes place within oneself from just yapping about whatever comes to mind to actually selecting things to write about, researching it and developing a point-of-view. I'm finding it enlightening.

I oscillate between wanting to make this more about fluff and wanting it to be a serious discussion with my peers on different topics of import. Another question is how personal should this blog should be? 

I don't have the answer to either of these issues but you'll be seeing the answer formulate over time, I'm sure.