My Old Blog

Its been two weeks since I last wrote. I’m back to working 50+ gruelling hours a week. That puts a damper on my free thoughts.

I’ve started dreaming about work again…..not the kind where I’m always missing deadlines and I get fired or anything like that….but the kind where no matter what I’m dreaming about people from work are in the scene and issues from work are incorporated into the loose storyline.

I had a bad week last week overall. I need to write about that separately….but my dog was put to sleep. She was 20 years old. I don’t remember a time when I didn’t have her. That was actually very sad for me, and even if I didn’t always see her, since I live in Atlanta…..I did often think about her holding down the fort in Easley….sleeping in various rooms, licking people, playing with her food, wandering around like she was lost. I loved that dog, and I often said she was the only member of the family who had never said a cross word to anyone. How true!! I’ll miss you giz/gizzer/wizzer/wizard/blizzard/lickmo.

I am almost 32 years old and this is the first time I have ever lived a year that is largely a repeat of another one. Bizarre.

It is the front end of the busiest time of year at work for me. It will last at least 4 months. I wrote about it when I first moved to Atlanta three years ago and wasn’t all that pleased (although at the time I had declared a one year moratorium on questionging myself, so I was unable to fully experience the mood). Last year though I escaped it because I was in India…..now its back, and I’m working weekends, and something feels very familiar about it all.

I start feeling guilty about stuff…like not calling people back, being grumpy alot, eating too much at dinner because I work late and by the time I get off at 7 or so I’m starving from lunch at noon. I don’t sleep as well because I’m always thinking about what I need to do or trying to figure out what I wasn’t able to that day.

I’m not complaining about work really. The rest of the year ain’t that bad, so working hard a few months is……well, pretty much life. What decent job isn’t a little hard? Its pretty interesting….like solving brain teasers everyday and getting paid. The problem is that with brain teasers you know they have a solution…at work sometimes we just can’t do it no matter how clever we are. Its hard to draw the line between “not clever enough” and “not possible”.

So this year is a repeat. I still can’t believe that. I’ve lived 31 unique years. I guess it depends on how you define repeat…but still it is the first one that I identify as the same as a previous one. I admit I’m getting antsy.

Its strange though, sitting here identifying this year as so noteworthy for its sameness, when I think repeat years are pretty much the norm by the time you are 30.

Not that I think repeat years are bad, although they can be. That book I just read Stumbling on Happiness said that often people mistakenly think that variety is the spice of life, when studies show they are happier most of the time sticking with what they already know they like.

So do I like it? Well….that is one of my talents. I can make myself believe just about anything if I need to. It is a scary talent at times and it makes it hard for me to know if I like it, or if I have made myself accept it because these are the circumstances of my life, and until I really decide I want to change them…..it does no good to dislike them.

Perhaps I will look back and hate this repeat year. Perhaps I will look back and smile. I guess it depends on what I need to believe to get myself to do whatever I fancy to do next.

Everyone knows I am addicted to this stuff. What a great read. I wish we were all more aware that we are one step away from being stars if we just pick our spot and work hard. I’ll include an excerpt below. Here is the link to the article.

Ericsson has spent the last 30 years probing the implications of the first experiment he ever conducted as a professional. The year was 1976, and he was studying the limits of memory. At the time, it was believed that the brain could only remember about seven random numbers at a particular moment. Ericsson thought he’d try to increase this capacity through rigorous training. “I was really surprised when, after about 20 hours of training, we could expand the short term memory for digits from seven to 20,” Ericsson recalls. “Then [the experimental subject] just kept on improving. After about 200 hours of training, he could remember over 80 numbers. It was very surprising.”

Ericsson wondered what other human talents were malleable. After all, if memory ability wasn’t innate, then it seemed hard to imagine what was. What else could people learn to do better?

Ericsson started studying a range of “expert performers.” He investigated chess grandmasters and the stars of the PGA tour, Scrabble champions and brain surgeons, concert pianists and circus acrobats. After putting these peak performers through a battery of cognitive tests, Ericsson realized that their talent wasn’t genetic. They weren’t born with better brains. In fact, the average IQ of people at the top of their field, no matter what it is, equaled that of the average college student.

But if talent isn’t innate, then where does it come from? Ericsson’s answer was so simple it was shocking: Practice makes perfect. Talent comes from learning by doing. For example, when Ericsson studied classical pianists, he found that the winners of competitions had practiced over 10,000 hours by the age of 20, while less accomplished performers only practiced between 2,000 and 5,000 hours. This same effect was apparent across a range of fields. “From the outside, it seems like talented people don’t have to put in a lot of effort,” Ericsson says. “They make it look so easy. But when you look closely, the opposite is actually true. The best performers are almost always the ones who practice the most. I have yet to find a talented person who didn’t earn their talent through hard work and thousands of hours
of practice.”

I remember when I first moved to Atlanta I spent many weekends in complete anonymity. I didn’t really know many people and I would drink coffee and read magazines and watch people like they couldn’t see me. I would go to bars alone and drink, or go to the mall occasionally and just walk through it, never buying anything.

I am a nostalgic person and so those days seem peaceful to me now. I guess they were in a lonely sort of way. Of course those were also the days of 60 hour work weeks, which I positively hated.

I don’t think I am able to accurately judge how happy I was in the past. That book I just read (Stumbling on Happiness) says none of us are. I have such fond memories of travel, and alot of times it was the best thing ever for sure….but I guess the best times were actually living abroad doing something.

The physical act of traveling was so often not “happy”. It involved waiting, and being hot (or cold) and uncomfortable. It involved the stress of never knowing where you are and what you’re about to get into. When things went bad there was little comfort as you were by yourself and doing it all voluntarily. Did I mention it involved alot of waiting and/or sitting on moving vehicles/boat/planes/whatever.

I just guess I am really nostalgic. So the point, if there is one, is that I did “stuff” all weekend and never really sat down for a minute alone with my thoughts….except for right now for an hour before bed.

One hour. That ain’t shit….not that being alone with your thoughts is all its cracked up to be.

I should’ve ironed clothes or played video games….then I could’ve avoided the sad nostalgic reflection altogether.

I think I’ll go get a beer and remind myself that we are all incapable of comparing our present happiness with the past.

I sort of already know this stuff, but it always strikes me just how many people have these issues and how little we talk about it.

According to Day-Timers Inc., a maker of organizational products based in Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley, people are unhappier and more stressed out at work than ever before. The company found that 18 percent of 1,000 working Americans acknowledge being diagnosed or treated for depression within the past five years, with 13 percent saying they’ve been treated for anxiety disorders during the same time period. Less than half of all workers (47 percent) report being happy, compared with 54 percent a decade ago, while only 41 percent say they enjoy good or excellent health, down from 51 percent. Also, advances in technology such as e-mail and cell phones appear to be hampering workers’ ability to accomplish their daily tasks, with only half reporting that they do so consistently. In 1994, the figure was 82 percent.

I read some articles tonight about the effect of immigration on unemployment and wages. Most accounts say there is negligible effect…perhaps only that native high school dropouts suffer a bit. In general, prices drop and demand rises.

Why the big stink about immigration then if no one can identify it as a wholesale negative?

Without immigration the US would barely have a replacement birthrate. Economic “growth” is all predicated by a need for increasing population. Europe is having fits with its aging population and shrinking workforce. Immigration is a positive.

Immigration, if it is bad at all, is bad for the poor and uneducated. Since those who make laws are largely rich and white, why do they care? Prices in general go down. All the rich whites can afford a gardener or a housekeeper.

Well…that’s a good question….one that has nothing to do with economics. I think there is certain affront to the government that we cannot control our own border. Especially in the face of the “war on terror”.

Also, I think the tall, rich, educated, skilled, white politicians have some sort of instinctive hestitation towards opening the flood gates to short, poor, largely illiterate, unskilled immigrants. It is akin to “losing” the country. The fact that they don’t speak English is probably not helping either.

I have no strong feeling one way or another. I guess I fall into the skilled, white, educated camp (although not rich)….but I don’t care one way or another about “losing” the country.

Losing it to what? To immigrants? Isn’t that how we got here in the first place? We’re all immigrants.

Well…sort of. At the turn of the century everyone was an unskilled worker…..so an influx of more unskilled workers simply increased our labor pool…they were not different than the whiteys who were already here. No one had a high school education. We were all in the same boat so to speak.

Now all the “natives” have college educations and the immigrants not only don’t have high school educations, they don’t even speak English. That makes it a little different than the previous immigrants.

And that is what it comes down to if I had to guess. The “general public” is apprehensive. It is fear of the “unlike”. “Unlike” being a different level of education, different language, and different physical characteristics. Because economists can’t find any overtly negative effect of their influx. They’re just here. They aren’t making us poor or taking our jobs.

Personally, I don’t give a rat’s ass. I speak Spanish well enough.

Venga. Me da igual.

Gatorade makes a drink I am quite fond of called Propel Fitness Water. The label says it is a “water beverage”. What exactly does that mean? Aren’t all beverages water based? I haven’t caught anyone drinking any oil lately. The aren’t many people (living at least) who regularly drink straight alcohol (ethanol) either.

Propel has 25 calories, lots of vitamins, and comes in all sorts of yummy flavors that taste like the Kool-Aid you drank as a kid. I have come to use Propel as a “water replacement beverage”, meaning that I don’t really drink water anymore….only Propel. I now refer to water as “flavorless” Propel.

The artificial sweetener in Propel is Sucralose. What is Sucralose? Well….here is what I got from Wikipedia:

It is 500

What’s been going on lately?

That story I submitted to the “…from a Backback” series got accepted for publication last week. I posted the story on this website August 29, 2004……I thought I was slow. That’s almost two years. Not a high priority I guess.

I went to Orlando with work the other day. All we did was work and eat lavish meals. I didn’t see anything of the city, stayed in one of those business traveler hotels (Hilton Garden). That’s the first real glimpse I’ve ever gotten of the traveling consultant lifestyle.

I think I could do it….except for the food. All we did was eat and schmooze with the client. I still feel fat from dinner on Tuesday night.

Speaking of being fat, I am “trying” to lose a few pounds, or at least not to gain a few more, and I find it is hard to do. I cannot control very well how much I eat. If I push back from the table…I just get hungry earlier and have to snack between meals. I don’t accept losing weight if it means going around hungry all the time.

Exercise is something I am better with. I can generally motivate myself to go do something cardiovascular. Its just that work makes me so tired. I guess that is everyone’s excuse.

My life is very predictable right now. I do the same things often and have thus far not really gotten tired of them. I really do benefit everyday from all those years of travel though. I don’t have to play the game in my head of “I wish I had done….” or “I would be happier if only…”. I did all those things. The grass is not always greener somewhere else….the grass is just different.

I wouldn’t be comfortable with that though if I didn’t know firsthand.

About a month ago I made a post about this book I was going to buy about the science of happiness.

Unlike most things that I say I am going to do, I actually did this one and am about 100 pages or so into it.

He makes an interesting analogy about optical illusions and our ability to predict our own happiness.

We largely trust what we see, yet with optical illusions our eyes fool us. That isn’t so much the problem as the fact that even after we know that our eyes are fooling us…..we can’t stop ourselves from seeing it. We’ll be fooled every single time, forever.

Well….it turns out our brain plays its own version of optical illusions with our memories and imagination. And even if we know the rules (which the book outlines) we will still consistently misjudge how we felt about the past, and what we will feel about the future. And like optical illusions, we’ll keep making the mistake even if we know about it.

So….if I will always have limited success at predicting today what actions to take to make my future self happy…..perhaps I should read a book on brainwashing? I’ll hypontize myself into thinking I’m happy. I wonder if that works?

Another point he makes is that there is no such thing as “someone who says they’re happy but actually isn’t; they just don’t realize what happiness really is.” Although it isn’t quite so straightforward, in the new science of happiness, for the most part, if someone reports they are happy, we have to take their word for it…….what other recourse do we have?

If I can just convince myself that I am happy, then it won’t matter so much which poor choices I make with respect to my future happiness. I don’t buy so much the “stupid, but happy” hypothesis anyway. I think if you were to ask those who are described as “stupid, but happy” their response would be, “Really?? I’m stupid for being happy? I think you’ve got it mixed up. Does intelligence then make you sad? If so, what good is being smart?”

More to come on this….after I get around to reading the rest of the book (which I was warned in the preface will not teach me any secrets to being happy).

I’m writing this from work on a Sunday. Without going into the boring details of my job, I will explain that I gave two folks a difficult project with an uncertain outcome but high potential for upside if it works out. It has been hard to provide guidance for them, because I don’t know the answer either. If I did I would certainly tell them how to do it.

I left them alone on it for the most part, since it doesn’t seem right to press on something you’re not sure can work in the first place…..but for about two weeks now they have made pretty much no progress.

I had a meeting with them last friday to talk about what they were doing, what approach they were taking, how they were organizing, what they’d learned, etc…….and found out they were pretty much defeated. They hung their heads while they were talking, had a pouty look on their face, and kept bringing up all the reasons it would never work. And then we would talk for a while about approaches to take but it always got back to them shrugging their shoulders and saying how fruitless the attempt was.

I truly don’t understand that attitude. I think its an interesting project…..anyone can do something that’s already been done, and there is a proven course to take. Its much funner to look at something and go, “What the fuck am I going to do next? I haven’t the slightest idea.” It is so rewarding when you finally do something that other people didn’t think was possible.

I remember the last summer I worked at camp there was this guy that would come and tell the kids this story about how he came to invent this strange game called Zoogle because of a disability that prevented him from playing the games other kids did. The gist is that you threw this padded tube back and forth and could only touch a certain part of it, and there was a scoring system to go along with it. It was actually a really fun, simple game.

Since he invented the game, he was obviously very good at it. In fact part of his story about Zoogle was that he’d never been beaten…ever. Then he would invite someone from the audience to play him in front of everyone and, of course, soundly whip them. He told of how he’d beaten Arnold Schwarzenegger, President Reagan, Shaquille O’Neal, etc, etc.

That sounded like a challenge to me. He came every summer and no one had ever beaten him. I was pretty good, so I played him once at the beginning of the summer and he won easily. That didn’t mean he couldn’t be beaten though. I just wasn’t good enough yet.

So I started training….literally. I told everyone at camp I was going to beat that chump when he came back. I dissected that game. I thought of all the different ways to throw, experimented with new techniques, developed a methodology…..turned the game into a sport. I would handicap myself by only playing with one hand, or playing hopping on one leg. I was a zoogle-ninja.

He also came second session a few weeks after he’d first beaten me and I refused to play him again, because I wasn’t ready yet….still training. I did go watch him make his speech to the kids though……so I could see him play and study what he did.

To make a long story short, I did win at the end of the summer. I beat the handicapped Zoogleman at a game he invented for no other reason except the challenge of doing what no one else had done.

So what does that have to do with anything?

Here I am back at office on a Sunday doing someone else’s work simply because they say it can’t be done. I think I need therapy.