My Old Blog

Someone is bombing my website with spam through the “comments” function.

The website will be getting an overhaul this week to prevent this. It may happen that you have to login to post a comment from now on.

Here is an interesting article about one of my favorite subjects: the evolution of the concept of happiness.

Here is the link to the Journal of Happiness Studies, if you have a whole afternoon to waste.

Here is a link to an article by Martin Seligman at www.edge.org. He is a bit of a celebrity in the field of happiness studies.

And actually, edge.org is a great website, though not as great as the Arts and Letters Daily, which is my favorite site on the Internet (that doesn’t have free porn).

While we are on the topic of the edge.org, this article is incredibly interesting.

Before this I always instictively knew that there had to be a good and logical explanation for why the white man rules the world. And I knew it wasn’t because of any inherent superiority. That just never made good sense to me. I knew it was cultural. I just didn’t know how it all started.

Now I can say it was because of cows, weather and the luck of geography.

Some of you might be thinking, “Do I actually read all this crap??” The answer is yes.

But is seems I’m in the minority. Reading is a dying art. That is sad because if it disappears entirely I might actually have to do something, instead of just reading about doing it.

Before I worked, when I was unemployed, I played basketball almost everyday. I did it because there was nothing else to do. It blew off pent up energy.

Since I was unemployed for a long time, I got in pretty good shape….as fit as I’d been since parts of college…..and that was a long time ago when I was a young lad.

I was afraid when I started work I’d get fat. Working makes you fat from inactivity, fat because you eat for entertainment, and fat because you’re too tired to do anything after you finish it.

All those things are pretty true, even now for me. I do sit all day. I do eat because it is fun…at least at dinner. At lunch and breakfast I’m stuffing my funny little face as fast as I can because I have too much to do. That can’t be healthy. And I am unbelievably tired at the end of the day.

But I still get a lot of exercise…not as much as when I was unemployed or in college, but probably 3 or 4 times a week at an hour and a half a pop.

The reason is because, though work is very inactive, it is also very stressful….there is often so much to do that the only sure fire way to get my mind off it is to get crazy exercise, not just a jog….but the sweat till you’re dehydrated kind of exercise. I’ve been playing a lot of tennis.

Additionally, if I don’t go get exercise, I often have to fight off falling asleep from about 6:30 till 9. That makes me feel like shit.

There is one other sure fire way to get your mind off work. It starts with a B and rhymes with “ear”. If you can’t figure out what it is….then you’ve already had too much of it.

Work really saps your energy. I always feel slighty rushed and tired, not always physically tired, but emotionally…..uncreative and apathetic.

I need to find a way to deal with that, otherwise work is going to turn me into my father.

Happy Father’s Day.

I played tennis for 3 hours tonight, got drunk at the Braves game last night, had a good friend visit the night before and have had a light work load this week at the office.

I think tomorrow I’ll go to the music store and buy these two pieces of recording equipment I’ve never had the money to get until now. Maybe next week I’ll post an mp3 of me singing something. Any requests??

If I weren’t eternally wishing for more, I might allow myself to feel good about things at the moment =)

Anne asked me one time what post on the website is my favorite. I never mentioned it to her, but I actually did think about it.

And I have an answer. I guess I have to define “favorite” though. Is it the one that is most personal? No. Is it the one I feel is the most well-written? No. So which one?

Right now I work a lot…probably about 45 hours a week on average although the busy season is coming up so that will likely increase. Needless to say, I spend a great deal of time at the office.

So the same post always comes to mind. It is prophetic, not that being prophetic brings me any great joy….in fact, my ability to predict what I will do next has become increasingly annoying over the years. It is as if I have no say….that my behavior is largely predetermined and academic.

Know thyself!!! Like that gives me any satisfaction. Wisdom is a joke.

So my favorite entry right???…..here it is: How many hours are there in a day?

This entry describes my life, and, I am sure, most of our lives.

The follow up to this entry is actually also one of my favorites….maybe my favorite altogether. It is not so mathematical, thankfully, but it does make the point beautifully: What the fuck are we doing?

So these two posts are my favorites right now, because they are so pertinent. As for which posts are actually my favorites, there is a link in the column on the right called “Favorite Entries“. It is very aptly named.

I haven’t made many posts lately. This is not because I haven’t thought or written anything; actually I have….its just that there is only so much I will allow myself to say.

After all, this is for fun. The website isn’t designed for people to be able to learn anything about me from it. It isn’t an outpouring of my heart…well, maybe sometimes.

I have a diary. No one should post their real diary online. They risk sounding like a lunatic.

You see, you can’t articulate your deepest fears. They affect you too much to make good sense of them. I always ramble when I talk about things I am too passionate about…and I don’t ramble much on this website.

A lot of the time I write about stuff just to keep my mind off other stuff….so in that sense what I write about actually has nothing to do with what I am thinking.

I wrote this the other day. I wasn’t going to post it because I don’t like to scare people…or myself. If something hits close to home it can be funny. If it hits too close to home it isn’t funny anymore.

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I am against conspicuous consumption. I never understood why people spend so much money on stuff they don’t in the least bit need, not even feeling any better after they make the purchase, in fact lamenting that they weren’t able to find a better deal, or flat out regretting the purchase when they see the same useless product on sale the next week for 10 dollars less…which is already after the point at which they have put the product on the back shelf never to use it again.

In fact, I often thought people had lost their fucking minds. Now I realize that they actually have….and I am well on my way to doing the same.

You see, at work you unconciously question why you are there in the first place. I say unconciously because if it were concious you would quickly drive yourself insane with the daily inability to find a satisfactory answer.

In the back of your head is a list of your favorite activities and your most important values….none of which make a lick of difference while you do your job. This creates a constant, mild, irritating itch in your mind….

After a long day of work you are tired and frustrated from the cognitive dissonance that bleeds away your emotional energy.

How then to relax after a day during which people you don’t know who live hundreds of miles away are constantly pressuring you to things you don’t really care about in the first place???

You spend money. Why?? Easy. After toiling away the better hours of your day the only reward for that effort is the money you now have in your pocket. The money had better be useful and gratifying, otherwise what the hell did you just spend your whole day doing??

You see, it has to be useful. Our brains want it to be useful and gratifying. If it weren’t we would come face to face with the fact that we are wasting the largest part of every day. That is an unacceptable cognitive dissonance.

We prefer to lie to ourselves and believe that the next purchase will justify all those hours surrounded by co-workers who are probably really nice people at heart, but because of all the complexity and deadlines heaped upon themselves in a self-invented and self-defeating race to outrun the wreckage of their empty lives…..have become monsters of commerce and mercenaries to the profit motive.

So now I think of ways to spend my money too. After all, I have it….shouldn’t I do something with it?

Sadly, spending simply chains you to the cycle. You work more to support the spending and must spend more to justify the work.

Oh well….at least I understand it now. Knowledge is power right?

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Honestly, I realize that there are people to whom this does not apply. I just don’t know enough of them, and when I wade through that Atlanta traffic everyday on the way home and see all those tired, frantic faces yapping on their cell phones and making appointments in their daily planners……it all smacks of a vicious cycle. And then I wonder if perhaps it really is.

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.

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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)

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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.