9 Things I Think I Know
Aside from a forum to express my thoughts, I write in my blogs to gain perspective about myself and keep it as a journal so I can look down the line and remember how I was or what I was feeling. More importantly, I think when I’m long gone, it might be neat for any future kids I have to read how I really was when I was just getting into life. There are some experiences we all need to go through to learn, but others we can maybe watch someone else fuck up first and then make a logical decision. I hope my kids make logical decisions based on some of my life stories.
High school is a starting ground, and college is a party, but I think from 20-30 is your beginning of your life. You are ultimately the boss.You decide where the rest of your life is going to go from this point, you don’t have parents or teachers to answer to, and while you might have a boss in “the real world,” you DO have control over whether or not you wanted that to happen in the first place. You could have instead gone and been a contractor, which means you have a boss but it really isn’t the same. You could also have chosen to be the boss and open up your own business, so really you started your real “life” making these choices. Either way, now you have a car, your own money, and you have to decide the lifestyle that you are going to live, rather than other people telling you how its going to happen.
For the past 5 years up until 6 months ago I was miserable, depressed, hated my job, my relationship with my wife suffered over it, I had no interest in doing anything, I had no money because my jobs screwed me on salary for the amount of work I did, and I followed the same “working for the weekend” approach that every other dumbass who sits in traffic for an hour and a half for the privelege of working on the 14th floor downtown in a cubicle has. Every day I was so exhausted from traffic and work, not physically, but mentally, that I literally was a zombie at night trying to relax and eek out every minute before bed of time that I wasn’t actually responsible to do something. Due to this, my home life suffered in that I couldn’t take interest in things like cooking that I adored, because it ate up precious relaxation time. Thus my life unfolds much like most other people who have the same suburban lifestyle, who hate their 8-5 job (oh, wait, you wanted to eat lunch with your 9-5? We have to give you the time, but we aren’t paying you for that).
This caused me to get to the point of abusing medication, even over the counter stuff like robotussin, just to try to escape. I hated my life so much that I think I blocked out most of it at this point, and my only regret about that is that I therefore don’t have a truly accurate example of the past to show how much my life has progressed up until this point.
Now, a bad relationship with my wife was the effect rather than the cause. Sure, we had fights, but they almost always sprouted from something else, like stress from work and a lack of communication or money.
The first thing I think I know is that love is not enough in a relationship.
Since I got my new job, money is still an “issue” but one that isn’t as serious as “you have $100 to buy what should normally cost us $175 for household needs and food this week, good luck.” Every week was a fight with me going over even by a few dollars on grocery budgets. It isn’t that I’m bad at budgeting money, but our economy is horrible and prices have gone up on everything.
Love is not going to get you through a horrific work day. Love is not going to walk into your office and have sex with you on the desk immediately after your boss told you he needs you to stay a little later tonight or come in Saturday, thus ruining your plans and making you bitter. Love is not going to hand you the thousand dollars you need when your car breaks down. And quite honestly, even if you are in a pair of star-crossed lovers, these issues will wreak havoc on a relationship that otherwise could be great. Trust me, I know, because my relationship now is not great, but it is infinitely better than a year ago.
This leads me to…
The second thing I think I know is that there are four areas of life: self satisfaction, love/social life, money, and work. Being sad with any of them is not living life fully.
I’m throwing in love and social life together because they kind of touch on the same thing of human interaction. Close friendships of 30 years can sometimes be as important or more important than a wife that maybe you have for 10 years. Overall though, what is important is not that you have these things (you NEED all 4), but rather that you are happy with all 4 as well.
For example, if you love your job and are making a ton of money off of it (thus giving you a bunch of self-indulgences as well), who cares if you don’t have friends, family, or a significant other to share it with? Humans need interaction, you will be lonely, unless you are one of the very few who hate humanity so much you cannot stand to be around others. Let’s be honest, that is a microscopic number out of all of us.
If you have a great husband or wife, and you make a lot of money to support a good style of living, but you hate your job and slave at it all day to maintain that level of living and it consumes so much time that you have no free time for yourself, then that stress is just going to permeate the other areas of your life and cause problems there.
So many people use different phrases like how you aren’t supposed to like your job, or you should “do what makes you happy even if it doesn’t make you a single penny.” I’ve always been so frustrated with the world because they love to say “you can’t have your cake and eat it too.” First of all, if someone gives me a slice of cake, I’m going to eat it, so that is just a nonsensical saying trying to explain “you can’t have it all.” Who says you can’t?
Right now, I love my job. It is easy due to skills I taught myself over the past 10 years on computers (hence helping me land it, and not one single thing I learned in college besides how to construct a bong with a knife and lighter out of a pen with metal pencap, a piece of gum, and a 20 oz. bottle of Pepsi has assisted me in this endeavor or any other time in the real world). The pay immediately raised my quality of life (I can afford medication again!). I get to work on the road, which I have come to love. I enjoy travelling, and even if this is not the area I’d prefer to travel to (I work in the country in a town with 6000 people), the lifestyle of exploring new things can be had if you are willing to try for it. For example, due to my renewed interest in life and my hobbies, I have decided to get into shape, and in the process get to try a handful of new recipes every week that are healthy and generally turn out pretty good without fear of my wife’s limited palette being upset.
As noted, I make pretty decent money. Consider it as going from “how am I going to pay for this car repair?” to “yes, I think we can finally afford to go see movies in theatres again.” I’m not going to get into exact figures, and we have a lot of debt to pay off, but I see that ending relatively soon at this rate and then things should really take off.
From a self standpoint, I’ve already mentioned that I have gotten back into some of my hobbies. I go lighter on video games since I don’t need to “escape” as much, I love cooking again, and I’m finding lifehacking to be right up my alley. I hate conforming just to conform, and nothing made me happier than reading Tim Ferriss (more on this later) say in his book “Why are we doing this like retards?” to his boss when told to cold call a ton of people during a sales job. I’m not a radical hippie, but I believe in doing things with the least amount of effort for maximum results, and have my whole life, and was beginning to wonder if the world was going to defeat me for awhile there. I managed to type a 15 page paper for an honors history class on Vietnam in 6 hours and 25 minutes (started right at midnight, ended 5 minutes before my alarm goes off) that included references to 4 printed media such as books/newspapers/magazines, 4 tv shows/movies/documentaries, 4 websites, and 4 of any other reference. 5 minutes later I had to get ready for school, handed it in that day, and got a 90 on it. We had been given 3 months to do the project.
Mind you, my teacher had published a book on Vietnam. Had I known this, I would not have picked Vietnam. I see this single project during high school as my greatest achievement to this day.
And of course, my love/social life. My relationship with my wife has gotten better now that we aren’t around each other 24/7 (I love my alone time, and I think everyone needs to have that in their lives). I have a pretty fun social life with my coworkers of bars or hanging out playing video games or watching movies at one of our places during the week.
So I’m content, right?
The third thing I think I know is that I never want to be content in that I have no more aspirations.
I am content as I currently stand because I know I’m currently also working for more. Life has just started looking up for me. Why in the hell am I not going to double my effort at living well? I love my wife, I’m still learning new recipes, money as far as surviving goes is not a concern, and my social and work lives are just fine. The only thing I can do now is perfect those things, so why not? With that said, I’m going to develop a new website, I’m going to take a REAL vacation for the first time in 9-10 years (going to visit family on holidays doesn’t count, I’m talking about a few days on an island in the middle of nowhere), and I’m going to learn about marketing and starting up businesses from people who know much more than I do about it. I’m going to start travelling like I always wanted to, and not the “LET’S CRAM EVERY BIT OF FAMILY FUN WE CAN INTO THIS!” tourist variety. Rather the “let’s go for 2-3 days somewhere cool and hang out with some locals and eat some great food off the beaten path.” If I ever walk into a McDonalds in another country aside for the purpose of looking at how weird their menu is in comparison to ours, I want someone to shoot me on the spot.
Moving on…
The fourth thing I think I know is that I know what is right for me.
The song “Angry Young Man” by Billy Joel described me pretty well up until the past few weeks. A great line in it goes something like “I once believed in causes too, and had my pointless point of view, and life went on no matter who was wrong or right.”
Even with things going well, I was still disappointed over Obama doing basically nothing besides a lot of talk. He still isn’t, but I just don’t care as much, because I’m mostly done with politics except on things that are going to directly affect me, and even then on a very minimal basis. For example, if my taxes are going to go up unless I vote against it, then I’m just going to vote against it. Of course, if it makes sense because those taxes mean that schools will have paper, then maybe I’ll be ok with it. What I’m not going to concern myself with is how the government is handling bailing out AIG or GM, beyond reading some news from time to time to see how its going so that I don’t look like a deer in headlights when someone asks me about it. I like to be informed. Knowing and caring are two different things.
Then I sat back and thought about it. This is the same government who believes that throwing me in jail is the right action for smoking weed in the privacy of my own home, yet a drunk driver will get a fine and be allowed to continue driving as long as he can afford the “I fucked up” surcharge. This is the same government who gives all the rich guys a million loopholes that all the poor just don’t know about out of ignorance, that is just as much of a machine for the capitalist organizations that inhabit this country. The FDA allows drugs with side effects such as “death” (what poor test subject helped them figure that one out?) yet we’re all marching against cigarettes because you might get asthma or cancer (I did get asthma, and I still believe in the right to smoke). Left and right you see cases of government corruption, from the highest Congressional officials (like Pelosi who should be crucified for her bitching about torture only to then have it be revealed that she knew) to the lowest police officers.
I know what is best for me. Not the government, not society, not my job, not my wife. I’ll take my own experience, mix it with some scientific research or spiritual beliefs, and see what I can cook up. I’m no longer going to allow an organization as backward as the government tell me how to live my life.
So, I’m breaking the rules then…
The fifth thing I think I know is that you make your own rules, and cheating on others’ rules is alright as long as you don’t get caught.
One of the greatest things my Dad ever said to me was after my Mom found out about porn on my computer when I was a young teenager. The conversation went something like this:
Dad: -insert talk about how I screwed up and that what I did was wrong-
Me: But Dad, didn’t you say you and Uncle Gary used to have Playboys when you were my age?
Dad: Yeah, but we didn’t get caught. That’s the difference.
I don’t know if he’ll even remember this conversation, but the impact that statement had on me and the realization that came along with it was so profound that I forgot about being in trouble. The moral of the story: Don’t ever get caught.
Now, this is an important distinction in that you shouldn’t get caught breaking OTHER PEOPLE’S rules. Don’t break your own rules, otherwise you have no integrity. I don’t cheat on my wife because my own rule on myself is that if I love her, enough to make her my wife, then that isn’t an option. For years though I have had little care for authority or other people telling me how I can or cannot do things, and sometimes have gone out of my way purposely to do the opposite thing as a big “fuck you” back to them. Some jackass politician who is snorting a line off a stripper’s thigh all the way up until his face is buried in her snatch right after the end of the line in his off time is not going to be allowed to tell me anything just because he then turns around during the day in his nice suit, marches up to Capitol Hill talking about how drugs are the biggest evil in our society and finishes with God Bless America so that every dipshit blind GOP supporter can thank Jesus we have such a great man protecting good ol’ American values before having to go work in a factory for 10 hours.
Stereotyping? Yes, absolutely. Not everyone in the GOP is that way, not every politician is that way, not everyone who believes in God is that way, and not every factory worker is that way. I’m just saying, I hate hypocrisy, and I feel in my gut most of these guys are fucking weasels, and I think a lot of America would agree with me given the disdain for government as scandal upon scandal hits the news (and those are only the ones who got caught!), and I’m not going to take it from them anymore. I’m still going to pay taxes so that I’m not harrassed about going to jail or being kicked out of my house, but I see that as risk mitigation. If you don’t pay your taxes, it is kind of obvious, and the hassle is not worth my time. On the other hand, if you have a radar detector and are speeding through an area where you have great vision and there are no spots for cops to hide, well then, hammer down.
The sixth thing I think I know is that it is ok to be self-centered when considering what you want out of life.
So often people care about what others will think of them, and that they need to keep up with the Jones’, and that you are supposed to give to charity or back to your church because it is just the “right thing to do,” and spending any time or energy on yourself is wrong because you are supposed to be miserable because God wants you to be, and only then he’ll let you into Heaven.
I know one thing: If there is a God, and he created all this, including emotions and free will, then he is not an angry God who expects you to kiss his ass all night and day, but rather wants you to enjoy the fruits of his labor. I might go to a church or listen to a preacher to learn some things about life and spirituality, but I’m walking out the minute I hear that I should be indebted to Jesus for him dying for my sins.
Why do we need to be philanthropic? It is nice to do, and I do donate to charity from time to time because it might be something that somehow touched me personally, perhaps I’m donating money to research of an illness of a friend I once had or something like that. I also try to be nice and pleasant and do common courtesy things like opening doors for people, because I think it makes the world a better place that people think “hey, that was nice of that guy” if I do it. I don’t know if they do, but I like to think that maybe one has in my entire life, and I need to open the door anyway, so the extra effort of holding it open for someone for another 10 seconds isn’t going to kill me.
However, when it comes to my desires, why shouldn’t I want to have all I can? I don’t mean this in a materialistic way as I am moving further and further away from “having a bunch of stuff” to “having the best of the essentials that I want or need.” For example, I’ll blow money on a super computer compared to a $399 laptop because I know I need it for work, I play system-intensive video games, computers as a whole are hobbies for me, and it just makes sense to have the right tools for the right job. What I won’t do is buy a new computer every year to have the latest technology. I will buy the best accessories, but only ones I need and both because I want them to be durable and comfortable to use. I will buy some Devils memoribilia for decoration as it increases my mood to see a signed picture of a Stanley Cup-winning Devils team, but I’m not going to buy every piece I can get just so that my room is crowded with junk like bobbleheads.
Ok, that was unfair. Some bobbleheads that are a horrible likeness to the player can be fun sometimes.
I want to travel, I want to cook, I really really want to explore new food and culture, I want to continue to be good with computers, I want to be an entrepreneur, I want to be a consultant and an investor, and I want the success of my life to be solely predicated on my own determination, effort, and intelligence. In other words, I want the work I choose to do, no matter how great or small in amount, to be impactful, worthwhile, and directly correlate to how well my life goes.
I don’t want my life to be made serving others, whether a boss or charitable purpose. I want to live life for myself, and whatever gives me happiness out of it (if that included working temporarily for a “boss” or master, like a master chef, then so be it) is what I should strive for.
I don’t want to do what everyone else does. Everyone else is miserable from my vantage point. Now, there are a few people I know who are blissfully enjoying ignorant suburban lifestyle, and I’m happy for these people because they are happy with their lives. There is one person I found on Facebook that I went to school with that I can tell has the life that they probably always dreamed of having. Married soon after college, honeymoon in the Caribbean, steady job doing something that they enjoy, the cookie-cutterest house I have ever seen, and probably ready to start a family yet still enjoying going to dinner with their neighbors two houses down. I am delighted for this person, to be honest, I just know that isn’t a life I can live. And I don’t think many others can, either, because so many hate their jobs and their lives. I don’t think that is opinion, I think it is fact based on the amount of prescriptions given by psychiatrists. This leads into…
The seventh thing I think I know is that taking drugs is fine when you do it for recreation, and horrible when used to deal with a life you are too busy making excuses about to get up and change.
I did the same thing as many other people for years. Excuses, excuses. There are bills to be paid, we need to eat, I can’t afford to lose my job, its not the right time, maybe soon I’ll get a promotion though if I put in an extra 10 hours a week for free. My mental state was shot so bad I was on about 4 different medications from the same doctor at one point and was milking it for all it was worth. It was at a point that I used my asthma as a crutch to sign up for FMLA (Family Medical Leave Act) where I could take off a certain amount of time without it counting against me, in 15 minute increments. I can’t tell you how many times I left work early or didn’t go in at all for a good 3 months, sometimes I’d leave without anyone knowing and sneak off to a movie theater by myself to get away from the world, and finally I had to go on long-term leave of absense with a doctor’s note for 6 weeks until finally I decided that I needed to change jobs before I literally cracked and was thrown in a mental hospital.
Alcohol, marijuana, shrooms, cigarettes, and vicodin aren’t bad if you are using it appropriately. I’ve popped a pill of methadone while smoking weed in college here and there to increase the fun. I won’t get hooked on it because of the withdrawal issues, nor will I even want to use it regularly. As for alcohol, I can sit at dinner and have a glass of wine, enjoy the taste and the slight relaxation it might bring to my nerves even if I can’t literally feel it doing anything, and then go on with the rest of my night. There is a difference between smoking a joint and watching a movie, and not having a job because you are a stoner who gets high all day and has no money for anything besides a jar of peanut butter and a bag of weed. I’ve been on both sides, those who can do it when appropriate, and those who need it to live, so I speak from experience.
People who do drugs, even just alcohol, are not losers or people who cannot contribute to society. It is the people who ABUSE these medications to compensate for a terrible life that need legitimate help. And to be honest, what is the difference between the stoner who can’t get off his ass compared to the office worker who is a zombie all day in the office on some fucking medication? Honestly, at least the stoner probably laughs more.
We need to stop treating life enhancers (TM as of 5 seconds after writing that) as evil. Everyone is fine with alcohol, yet weed is so horrible, even though I’d say people are more controlled when high, can make better decisions, and there is less of an effect compared to getting drunk. If I HAD to choose that the driver behind me is either stoned or drunk, I’m picking stoned. If I choose to drink a glass of wine or two while I enjoy my leisure time, then all I am doing is heightening the level of enjoyment for myself. I’m not compensating, I’m not using it to cope with anything, I’m just looking for the best time for the most minimal effort. From what I can tell, the easiest thing to do to make a mundane activity seem awesome is to use some kind of drug.
I do think that certain drugs are too much for humans to handle. There is no way our brain or body can logically cope with trying to stop doing heroin once you get on it. For this reason, combined with how devastating it is, I would agree that this needs to remain illegal. I know I myself couldn’t handle it if I tried it, so I don’t. If there is something I know I can handle, I will.
The eigth thing I think I know is that society has been setup to keep people in line.
I’m not a revolutionary, I’m just someone who isn’t going to follow the life plan setup by the rest of the world because “that’s just how you’re supposed to do it.” Anyone who has read the Four Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferriss is undoubtedly seeing many similarities and possibly perceived plagiarism by me at this point, but I don’t think so considering I’ve been screaming about how stupid the rest of the world is for years before that book came out. I just happen to think he beat me to the answer, but in all fairness he started 6 years ago at my age, and now I’m capitalizing on his experience and getting a jump ahead of him if you lineup the birth years. I think if he ever read this, he’d probably grin at that.
Back on topic, let’s be honest. Everything in our society today revolves around control. Specifically, how much other people have over you. We have to invest our money to banks so that they can get rich doing whatever with it, and give you back the initial investment with barely any return compared to what they are making 40 years down the road when you choose (hah) to retire. That of course is after you had to get loans on everything and pay out the ass with interest on top of the initial purchase price. Of course, with inflation, the entire idea of retirement is a pipe dream. You’ll be lucky to enjoy 10 years of the perceived 30 you think you’ll be able to afford, given rising costs of living on everything from food to health care and of course the inflation on how much your lifelong dream trip to Japan cost 15 years after you first started planning on saving enough money to do it when you retire. The worst part is, when I see myself going to Japan, I sure as hell don’t want to be gray-haired and walking with a cane, and I don’t think anyone else wants to either.
In the end, you worked 40 years to enjoy 10 years in Florida with 1 trip to Jamaica before you become too ill, medical costs too much and starts taking a toll on the rest of your family, and then eventually they have to move you in with them or put you in an old folks’ home. Let’s be honest, it isn’t like this is a huge secret that retirement doesn’t work out for most people. So many people can’t afford to save or just don’t save in the first place, and out of those who do, only a small number will have so much money that they will make it until they die living very comfortably.
Recently I heard that Reporters Without Borders ranks us as tied for 36th in 2008 in regards to how free our press is. The year before, 2007, Nicaragua was ahead of us.
Nicaragua?
Really?
Apparently it dropped quickly between 2007 and 2008, perhaps with the Presidential regime change? Either way, it is statistics like these that kind of make you laugh when you hear so many Americans talking as if they know so much from watching both CNN AND Fox News AND MSNBC so that they can “figure out for themselves through all the bias.” Or, the ones who think they know so many conspiracy theories and believe they are ahead of multi-billion dollar companies on information that “we’re not supposed to know.” Right, because they’re so special.
We know that media, including commercials, dictate how we live our lives. You see the news channels all the time talking about how to squeeze an extra .0002% interest on your investments, but overall its all for the same goal in the end. Ultimately, that extra $10,000 you made because you cut out your double mocha latte grande isn’t going to be all that great, but you shouldn’t be paying $6 for a cup of coffee anyway. Look at how many calories are in a cup of Starbucks-brand -insert anything- besides plain coffee with no milk or sugar, and you’ll realize why your diet isn’t working. Either way you wouldn’t need that extreme caffeine rush to get through a miserable work day after getting a bad night’s sleep if you finally took a chance and tried to make your life better. So we can cut out blowing money on shitty coffee that is terrible for you when it no longer becomes a necessity to deal with another shitty part of your life and then you will have saved that money for something else even nicer to compliment your better lifestyle.
Now I realize I’m going against the status quo and that if I really believe that the media controls everything (including the books I read from people who are like-minded, with the aforementioned Four Hour Workweek being one of them), then theoretically there might need to be people like me as part of the master plan. To be honest though, I think most people are just too afraid or it is their religion to do the “go to college, get a degree, go work in a cubicle, rise to middle management, have midlife crisis, buy convertible, crisis averted, work a little longer, retire, go to Japan, get sick, get put in old people home, die alone” thing. Which works perfectly, because if we all had the balls to take risks, then I couldn’t enjoy the lifestyle that I do and intend to in the future.
Not just some, but MOST people in my family thought it was a mistake for me to become a contractor making over double of my past yearly salary while having all expenses paid because I “had a steady job” and contracting “didn’t include health care benefits.” Even when I was visibly happier about life, doing better, able to actually pay my bills (and easily cover my current healthcare expenses, given I did not have a catastrophic event occur), they still thought I should go beg for my job with Verizon again (I burned my bridges there, so it didn’t matter, but I could easily pickup a tech support job at any other company). When I first told my father about the job, he actually said “Dude, what are you doing?!” in the most “I can’t believe you are this fucking stupid” voice I have ever heard. This being the same person who had to help me afford plane tickets previously when flying up to New Jersey because I couldn’t afford them on my own. Now I can fly first class if I was stupid enough to spend the money (and I might be, I have long legs and Continental has terrible seat pitch).
The ninth thing I think I know is that if people subscribe to a different philosophy of life than you do, no matter how much you love them or their relation to you, then their advice will never be good for you.
I know a couple of girls who are in an industry that their mother is not proud of. No parent wants their girls to do porn, but when that is giving them a much better lifestyle, then you have to step back and consider what is best for them rather than your own wishes. Unfortunately for these girls, their mother does not want them doing porn, so one is back to a minimum wage job, the other can’t find work, and they are barely making ends meet. Even though their previous porn work is bringing in a good amount of money, they are using it all on legal fees for an issue in their lives.
If they even got on a web camera for 2 hours a night, 3 times a MONTH, they could be earning $6000/month at a minimum. That means they (both) earn $1000/hour, compared to $8/hour that only one makes now. They have already done it before, and have no personal aversion to doing it, besides their mother hating it.
It should go without saying that I am completely revolted by the idiocy of their mother. I understand hating that they do it with every fiber of her being, but to insist they don’t and instead lead these horribly difficult lives of barely making ends meet just to appease her, when she doesn’t do anything for them at this point besides be their mother, is ridiculous.
Before someone asks, yes, I’m fine with my daughter doing porn if that was her best option. Thusly, it is my mission in life to make sure she always has a better option than porn.
When I was every age before now, I thought I knew how everything worked. So, I say that I think I know these things now because I might be wrong. I just have a good feeling I’m not, because I was never really wrong before either, perhaps just a little uninformed or my emotions got in the way.