My Old Blog

Yesterday one of my favorite people at work got fired. He wasn’t great at his job maybe, but he wasn’t terrible either. Besides the particulars of his work, he was a pleasure to be around and always willing to help out if you needed. I figure that counts for something.

But he got fired anyway, and out of the blue as he tells it. He said my boss cried when she had the meeting, which isn’t surprising since she is a girl/woman, but crying doesn’t make it any more heartless to send a hard worker packing.

Firing affects my morale. It makes me more apprehensive about my job. I’m sure others are thinking the same.

They said things like, “He left to pursue other opportunities,” or “He felt his best talents weren’t being utilitzed.” That is just garbage.

And while we are on topic of corpra-speak, do you know how many times a day someone “touches base” with me? I feel a little violated. I used to try to “touchbase” with girls at bars and it usually got me a slap in the face.

And keeping with the baseball theme, it seems people are always “knocking it out”. “Sure, I’ll knock that issue right out and we’ll touchbase about it in the afternoon.” I never was very good at baseball. It is a silly sport where people stand around most of the time and there is very little action. Actually, I guess it does sort of resemble work…

Yesterday at the weekly status meeting I caught myself saying that the issue was in “in my court”. “Yeah, I think the ball is in my court on that one. I’ll be finishing up my initial analysis today (meaning I haven’t even looked at it yet) and I’ll update the status memo before we touchbase again.” See….I prefer the tennis analogy since I am much better at that than I am at baseball.

Of course I actually like Basketball best, but I never really do an overwhelming job at anything so I haven’t had an opportunity to make a “slamdunk” on a particular issue yet. I might be a bit closer to “dropping the ball.”

Why all the sports analogies anyway? Everyone sits in front of a computer all day. The most excercise we get is walking to the bathroom.

The title just popped into my head while sitting here drinking alone in my apartment. Usually when I just write about something with no direction it turns out shitty.

But this is worth thinking about….not that I can solve or even make any real progress on such a question in the next 30 or 45 minutes. Actually, maybe it isn’t even worth thinking about? Oh well, I’ve already started.

Let me ask this: If you achieved what you wanted, would you be happy? Is happy even a realistic goal?

Happiness, however you wish to define it, is a feeling. Is it realistic to make the goal of your life to be forever chasing a fleeting emotional state??? It sounds like a recipe for disappointment.

And happiness is relative anyway. Success will certainly not guarantee any sort of happiness, especially if you have a history of success. In that case, it would simply be normal and expected. Failure would be bad, success (defined as achievement of what you wanted) would be uneventful.

So you would have to trump your last success for it to make you happy. After that you would have to trump it again. One can easily see how this kind of one-upmanship will quickly lead to unrealistic expectations.

I wrote this probably 4 or 5 years ago in one of my personal journals: “And then you take the last great step: Failure becomes the only viable option, because if you succeed it means you didn’t risk enough, and set your goals too low. Failure is your only consolation, the only time you can be sure the stakes were high enough. You race so hard life becomes too short for anything.”

I used to place a great deal of emphasis on whether or not I was happy. Now I largely ignore it. I’m not that kind of person. I’m not negative, nor am I a pessimist….I am just chronically underwhelmed…always a little dissatified no matter what I achieve. Nothing will ever be enough. I know that…..unless maybe I have a kid and my outlook changes.

Hmm….success and happiness do not appear to be all that related, at least for me. While constant failure is sure to make you unhappy, I don’t think success will make you the opposite.

I believe in goals anyway. They make life more interesting, provide a focus, but achieving them is a temporary high at best. That is nothing to brag about. I can spend a few bucks on some drugs and get a temporary high.

There is a vast amount of information on the study of happiness on the Internet. I have much of it saved on my computer. If anyone is interested maybe I’ll put up some links, but here are a few things I have learned:

• Being married makes you happier. So do kids (though they don’t help your marriage). So do pets.
• Money makes you happier up to about 15,000 bucks a year (the point at which you are no longer starving and cold), after that there is very little correlation.
• Religion makes you happier.
• Old people are generally happier than the young. This is especially true in industrial countries.
• Being disabled does not make you unhappier in the long run.
• Inequality makes you unhappy. It seems to be true that if everyone is poor, you aren’t really poor. Alternatively, no matter how much you have, you will always be dissatisfied if there are others with more.
• Self-reported happiness in the US is decreasing and has been for 50 years. This is also true in most industrialized, Western countries….except for the Scandinavian states, where people are getting happier. Iceland is consider the happiest, most content nation on the planet.

I studied microbiology in college and, while I remember little specifics, the general knowledge that we are all little food-seeking procreators sticks with me.

This leads me back a bit to what the hell we’re all doing on this planet in the first place. To survive and reproduce is pretty much all we owe nature. This is our immediate purpose.

And I never could find any need for her to grant us a clear notion of success, nor any inner contentment. The urge to procreate is strong and unspoken. It is obvious.

Contentment can actually be counterproductive. The content are lazy. The conflicted are driven, creative and anxious. The latter sounds much more likely to survive……so they can produce more anxious, neurotic, driven offspring.

Nature hasn’t hardwired us to be happy, or content. I believe we can trick ourselves into both of those states with a lof of hard work, but the particulars of life remain the same: We are born. We live a little, and then we die. Pour as much sugar as you like on that statement; it will remain equally true.

All is not so dreary though. If I wrote the statement above about failure 5 years ago, I’ve had a while to think of how to get out of the neat intellectual loop I’d created.

That, however, is not the topic of this post. I don’t believe much in preaching. Opinions are overrated and cheap. Advice is nothing more than a form of self-flattery.

I was thinking about all this tonight because I saw a bunch of people at church this morning and at the Mother’s Day lunch this afternoon.

They kept asking me whether or not I liked my job, whether I was happy in Atlanta. I said some shit because they are nice people, but the more I thought about it, the more I wondered: You know, I am exactly where I said I wanted to be, but so what?? Aren’t I always? What does achieving my goals have to do with being happy?

What is success to you?

One of my bosses asked me to make an appointment to meet with her about my career development and any questions I have regarding my workload/job satisfaction.

---

Here is my reply:

To: Xxxxxx Xxxxxx/Xxxxxxx
Subject: Re: touchbase meetings

(My boss’s name),

I would love to!! I think I’ve been here long enough now to have some areas where I can improve.

I’ll send you an invite right now!

Have a great weekend!

Elliott

Here is her reply:

To: Elliott Dykes/Xxxxxxx/Xxxxxx@
Subject: Re: touchbase meetings

Great – looking forward to it!!!

Thanks!

(My boss’s name)

---

I don’t think I ever used exclamation points in my writing before I started work, but “Thanks!!” just seems so much more effective than another empty, deadpanned “Thanks.”

Let’s face it: Plain ol’ “Thanks” has been done too many times. “Thanks!!” is the new “Thanks.” And after “Thanks!!” gets played out I am going with the super emphatic “Fucking Thanks!!” I don’t know what I’ll do after that…..rent a stripper maybe??

I get really tired at the end of the day. It is all those damn exclamation points. It is exhausting to keep up that faux level of excitement.

Periods ‘.’ require one keystroke while exclamation points ‘!’ require a keystroke plus the extra effort of the [shift] button. That’s probably what it is!!!!! (whew….that one was tiring.)

Other than that I sit in front of a computer most of the day thinking. My job certainly isn’t repetitive. It is just all thinking, researching, and problem solving.

Your brain weight accounts for about 2 percent of your body weight but uses 20 percent of your body’s oxygen supply and 20 to 30 percent of its energy.

That’s awful selfish I think. I mean, can’t it spare enough extra energy to keep my eyelids from shutting during meetings?? How many calories could that possibly require?

I shouldn’t poke fun. I mean, just having a meeting to discuss my career goals is far better than most companies do. It just makes me laugh.

I had a great day. I woke up at noon and read Scientific American over a lunch of turkey and dressing at a local restaurant. Then I rode around town aimlessly for while in my Caprice Classic just seeing what there was to see.

That took up some time….I probably got back home around three. Then I watched some of the Rockets/Lakers game until I got sleepy around 4. Because I was sleepy I decided to take a nap…..so I did that and it turned out to be a good idea. I was very happy when I woke up around 6….but I was a little hungry.

So I went to get some more food. This time I ate a Triple Lindy Burrito from Moe’s and read this month’s issue of Fortune magazine. Scientific American was more interesting. Did you know the Universe may not have started at the big bang? Did you know that everything might be made of massless one dimensional strings vibrating at different frequencies? We’re all made of strings. Crazy.

After that I purposely got lost on the way home so I could see something new and then I watched Star Trek Andromeda, with captain Dylan Hunt. Anne thinks I have a man crush on him, but that isn’t true. We’re just friends. I don’t like him like that. I do, however, have an crush on the alien chick with red hair. The android is pretty hot too.

As I was just sitting here thinking about what a nice day it was I remembered that Sunday is the day on which most suicides occur. I learned this curious fact in Chile from my psychologist roommate who also happened to be a great drummer.

Anyway, the theory goes that during the week you are busy and, though your life may suck, you are distracted from that fact by all your busyness. Then on Saturday you are likely hungover from the drinking you do on Friday to celebrate the fact you’ve made it through another useless, mind numbing week.

But on Sunday, after things quiet down from the activities of Saturday, you are allowed some time to contemplate your state of affairs and mentally prepare for another blisteringly average week. It is at this point that the suicides occur, when one takes stock and realizes they can’t bear another week.

Well, it is Sunday and this was by far the best day of my week. Things are pretty good I guess.

I am too tired.

Last night on the way back from the wedding in Charleston after three straight days of drinking and 7 hours on the road, my car had a blowout at 10 o’clock on a lonely stretch of highway an hour north of Atlanta.

I changed the tire on the side of the highway without a flashlight in pitch black with cars whizzing by. Then the spare went flat. And that was just the beginning. I got to bed at 3 and woke up at 7.

Needless to say, today sucked….or at least what I remember of it. Its all a little hazy. Its embarrassing to sit in meetings when you can’t hold your eyes open. You can’t look at people without squinting cause they burn so bad. That is besides the pain of actually having to sit through the meetings on their own merit.

Oh well, I’m not fishing for pity. I’m just too tired to write about anything else.

FYI:

When I moved to Atlanta I decided not to have a TV because I didn’t feel like paying for cable….too expensive.

Guess what?? I didn’t think I would really miss TV and I found out I didn’t.

I got a cable internet connection instead. Its only 30 bucks a month. I read stuff and learn stuff…its much more stimulating and interactive. I can download movies and listen to CD quality radio. I love it.

Then I got to thinking about how cable works. Basic cable is broadcast to everyone with a live cable jack.

In essence, cable doesn’t send you the channels you order….it just sends all the channels to everyone and uses filters to restrict access. The filters are extra work.

Oversimplifying, cable internet uses empty channels to surf the web. My cable modem is sort of permanently set to watch the “internet channel”.

So I plugged in a TV to watch the other channels. And now I get free cable.

I’m thinking about giving the TV back. It is a time vacuum.

Not that I have anything else to do.

I’ve been asked this question a thousand times.

And I’ve given a thousand different answers….usually something inspiring, because that is what people want. The draw is the romance…a life you don’t have, something safe to desire because you will never get it. People dream of far off places simply because they are far off.

What would be left to dream of if one day you went there?

The danger is when you desire something attainable. Then it has the chance of becoming real.

I got this email a few day ago, and was going to give him an answer, but I’ll post it here instead. I assume he stumbled across my travel journal somehow. It happens sometimes.

— oris0n@netzero.com wrote:
> Date: Tue, 30 Mar 2004 01:39:29 GMT
> To: kelliottdykes@yahoo.com
> Subject: hello….
> From: oris0n@netzero.com
>
>
> i was wondering what you do for a living and how you
> are able to travel the world? I’m 18 and would love
> to have such a job and explore and see what lies
> outside of this piece of crap known as Oklahoma
> haha. thanks!
>
> Joel

Dear Joel,

What do I do for a living? Hmm…..I thought you were asking about travel? The two are mostly unrelated.

I’ve met some people that made a living traveling. I met a guy in Morocco who was a “movie set locator” and part time asteroid hunter. I met a girl in Turkey who wrote for Lonely Planet…but only in that region. I don’t think she traveled very much.

I met some other folks too…most of them weren’t making a living traveling, but were simply travelers who got stuck somewhere and had forgotten how to go home.

Most of these people were either a) wacked in the head or b) gone for so long they didn’t care anymore that they were wacked in the head.

So…back on topic: What do I do for a living?

If you ever decide to really make a go at traveling then that is exactly what you will be doing for a living: Traveling.

When I tell the story of what I did for the 5 years between college and graduate school (something I rarely do) I say I was a professional traveler…because that is all I really did.

If I were to measure those years any other way they would be considered an unequivocal failure. I certainly have no material possesions to show nor any career advancement to put on a resume. How do you measure a life?

So….I don’t really see that there is a link between what you do for a living (careerwise) and travel. The few people who have linked the two have simply succeeded in taking the magic out of travel. Never turn it into a task.

Next question: How did I do it? This may be the more practical part for Joel and anyone else wishing to spend some years on the road.

Most people, when they ask “how I did it”, are asking about money. The short answer, from a financial standpoint, is that it is easy.

Travel is not the same as vacation. Vacations are expensive. One pays rent and car payments…insurance, phone and cable bills while they vacation. Vacations are pre-arranged for limited periods of time at specific locations. It eliminates hassles. I admit it.

Travel maximizes hassles. Travel is not a vacation. It is a lifestyle. One pays nothing while they travel but the night’s lodging, food and whatever it costs to get drunk. Travel is spur of the moment, for an undetermined amount of time in any direction that seems appropriate. It is immediate and visceral.

I remember I lived in Israel on the Dead Sea and traveled the Middle East for 6 months for 3500 dollars. How much money will you spend in the US over the next 6 months???

The fact is that it is cheaper to live abroad than it is to order Dominos Pizza and watch cable TV every night on your broke ass sofa back home.

I paid 10 cents a night one time for a “hotel” in Nepal. I paid 50 cents a night and 13 cents a meal in Jordan. That shit don’t add up very fast. You can stay gone for a long time on next to nothing. Of course I also paid 5 dollars for a crepe one time in France and 3 dollars for a Coke in Venice. It depends on where you go.

The question isn’t the money. We all run across the money eventually and it can be made on the road if you wish. I taught English for a year in Taiwan. I made a boatload of cash…at least from a travel perspective.

It is the desire, the compulsion to go that is in question. Remember travel isn’t a vacation, or even a very long vacation. It is a lifestyle. It is a drug.

The question is why to go in the first place. What is it about your present life that is dissatisfying? What do you hope to find on the road?

I will tell you: in the end all you will find is undiscovered corners of yourself. All destinations, however exotic, tend to look the same after a while. Whatever dissatisfaction you sought to alleviate on the road will only be magnified once you return home. The change you create in yourself will be a permanent reminder that nothing else changed in your absence.

And now we diverge into the mysticism of travel. Where do we find our religion? We all have to believe in something. It all becomes more than rational sooner or later.

So do I suggest leaving Oklahoma and taking up the travel lifestyle??? I don’t know. Actually, yeah. I suggest it. I’ll tell you why in a minute.

Am I just a bitter old curmudgeon who doesn’t appreciate the fact he has lived what other people only dream of? Uhh…sometimes I guess I am. But I refer you to the second paragraph of this post: “The draw is the romance…a life you don’t have, something safe to desire because you will never get it”.

What happens when you get it? I admit regular life is sometimes a little underwhelming after years of travel. You will have changed. Your former life will seem even smaller than it did before and it will be years before you are able to make peace with that.

So why do I suggest it? The name of my website is Chasing Eden. Notice I didn’t name it Finding Eden…cause that sure as hell ain’t any fun. But I promise you the time of your life chasing it.

Actually work isn’t really hard, it is just long (no sexual reference intended). As explained more scientifically here, it is difficult to write nice long, well thought-out posts when I don’t have time to think anymore.

All my useless opinons, which are very important to me, are harder to formulate when I don’t have the time to dwell on them. On the other hand, time to think isn’t always a good thing.

What all this has to do with my website is that I have noticed the frequency of my posts have increased, while the quality of writing has deteriorated. The entries have gotten shorter too.

And I always thought I was such a good writer?? Maybe its just that I had more time to put into it.

Additionally, as outlined here, thinking is something done by the idle. Labor is concerned with bread and water, not its cosmic significance. I have yet to decide whether or not a J-O-B is a good thing or not in the philosophical sense, but I am sure of one thing:

It makes you a hell of a lot more boring.

Perhaps that is because you must be interesting to be useful if you are not working. If you are jobless and interesting, you’re an idealistic dreamer trying to beat the system. If you are jobless and boring you’re just a loser.

If you are working you don’t have to care whether or not you are boring…you’re still getting your shit done.

Still, I hope to have the leisure to consider a few twisted, useless and unrealistic thoughts every once in a while. Otherwise I may just have to go rob a bank or something….

I couldn’t resist. The company where I am working has a huge client database with names and contact information for each client.

Microsoft is one of the clients and it lists Bill Gate’s phone number (425 882-8080). I didn’t figure it was a direct line, but the temptation was too great so I called it today.

Unfortunately it was just a general number. A secretary answered.

I wish it had been his voice mailbox or something. I wanted to ask if he had an extra billion dollars lying around.

Right now I am in training for 8 hours a day.

Classes in college lasted, at the most, an hour and a half. I couldn’t stay awake even then. 8 hours is an eternity.

We’re learning something about a database and using a bunch of acronyms that I’d rather not remember.

It isn’t exactly unbearable though. Coffee, Cokes, and food are free. I’ve had two cups of coffee and a Coke, so far this morning….at least I’m awake, if a bit jumpy.

Ok….now its hours later: 6pm. I’m freaking tired and need some food. I think I’m gonna go home and watch a movie or something. Good thing I only live 10 minutes from work. Otherwise I’d have to fight the mindbending Altanta rush hour traffic.