Sunday, December 25, 2022

Loss

 Tonight's topic was going to be loss.  2020-2022 held for me quite a bit of loss.  I was going to write about it, but I came across this and I think it sums it up pretty well...  Do well to remember though that loss can also be a new beginning.


Thursday, December 15, 2022

36


Navigating life into your mid and eventually, ugh, late 30's is much different than your mid/late 20's.  Artificial time limits that we impose on ourselves for many of life's milestones seem increasingly close and their goals seem increasingly distant as the years tick forward.  It is important however to remember that these milestones are not actually set in stone.  They take work.  Sometimes a lot of work.  And they don't have an actual timeline.


In my 20's I believed by 36 I would be married to a good man.  Have a family.  A career.  A home.  And that things would be, in all, pretty decent.  All the hard work of my early 20's would pay off and all of these milestones would be reached.  But of course, we're all a little naive about these things.  We have emotional responses to them which sometimes cloud logic.


Three years back, I was in a relationship.  I had a good paying job.  And, as should come as a surprise to no one, I was miserable.  I worked too hard on career at the expense of my personal life.  I was in a relationship, well-intentioned as we both were, that wasn't the right fit.  My personal life and personal goals suffered.  My happiness suffered.  It might sound a little bit strange but COVID lockdown ended up being a blessing in disguise for me.  


I broke up with my ex boyfriend in December 2019, and COVID began appearing in January 2020.  Lockdown started April 14th and lasted into July.  For a time I felt that I had failed at the relationship.  Logically of course I know that all of the problems we had were not completely my fault, that in life they're often shared or else unrelated to either one person but related to circumstances out of either of your control.  Lockdown gave me an excuse to close everyone off for a time.  It gave me time to heal.  It gave me time to feel better about myself and to come to terms with the loss.  Every failed relationship, romantic or platonic, is at some level similar to a death in your life, as it is a death of your way of life to varying degrees.  You need to take time to mourn that death.  Then afterward, you need to figure out why it died, if you want to learn from it--and I did want that.


2021 saw the end of a career for me.  And at the same time, and maybe even to a greater level of closeness to my heart than many of my personal relationships, I had to mourn that loss.  6 1/2 years at the old job and 15 total in the food service industry, both longer than any romantic relationship I'd ever been in.  My ultimate goal was always to get out mind you.  And I finally had enough and did.  I am proud of that.  My career was destroying my personal relationships and happiness, particularly in the last year.  The quality of my peers had profoundly dropped.  Sacrifices were being made in the quality of those around me out of the lack of people available.  I watched those with decades of experience leave the business in general.   I was working more hours and harder to keep everything together.  Yet like cupping water to your chest in the shower, it eventually escapes.  I was the last rat off the sinking ship.  I could rant and rave about the reasons why I left, but that's last year, and those issues are processed and put away.


This year has been a different kind of challenge.  The biggest was health.  In April my physical health took a bad turn.  I was exhausted all of the time.  I had a fever for the better part of a six weeks.  It was an intestinal abscess for what it's worth.  I ended up having it removed.  It was an ordeal of patience as much as of me being a patient.  Sitting in bed and waiting made up most of my days for almost a week and a half after being admitted to the hospital.  It was mind numbing, almost torturous for someone with a very very active mind.  It was a point that I had to relinquish control of my autonomy to others.  Doctors and nurses and then family until I healed enough to take care of myself.  For more than a month, for the first time in more than a decade I had to depend on others for my wellbeing.  Of course, there's a difference between willing accepting the help of others and needing to accept the help of others.  I am a prideful person and an independent person.  This was profoundly difficult.


Yet, time moved forward and I healed permanently.  Moving into the summer I returned to work, at a new position that was as completely out of the day to day physical service of food as I could be, for which again I'm grateful.  As the years piled up and the mileage piled on, doing that type of job at the level of intensity that my ego and pride required of me, was becoming increasingly taxing.  I wasn't 20 anymore.  I do miss the intensity sometimes of pushing out a lunch service when the kitchen opener calls out.  But, I've come to a point where I'm more grateful not to add that wear and tear on my body anymore.  I'm in better shape for having started eating better (though not perfectly, I admit).  I feel better in my own head than I was when work imbalanced my life and added detrimental levels of stress to it.  


One of the best parts of the last year is that in my new role I got to interact with a lot of new people.  And many of them were very decent and I couldn't be more grateful for that.  I am very grateful for them in my life.  Yet that comes with challenges as well.  This year I've come to realize that I've spent the last few years focusing on myself, which was needed, but at the expense of my personal, platonic, relationships as well.  Between my previous imperfect romantic relationship, taking a big career move, and taking time for myself to figure everything out, on top of a major health issue, I stopped caring about my friendships.  Regrettably I've pretty much lost them all, or at the most relegated them to acquaintance status, where you say hi every six months, plan to get together and then never do.


That's where I stand going into 2023 and into my 36th year.  It's time for me to rebuild my life outside of work.  Something I haven't worked on, honestly since college.  I have a small family, and while many of them are decent, there is a physical distance issue even there that makes greater closeness difficult.  Yet, more so it's the personal time activities, hobbies, and friendships that I need to work on this year.  Now that I actually have time to balance my career and my personal life, I actually have to do that.  Of course, there's no easy path to that either.  Making new friends in your 30's, expanding your social circle, is difficult.  Many, if not most my age are focused inward on family now.  Their own families.  That I don't have.  So it becomes difficult, though not impossible.  


Ultimately I still want to find love, to find a husband, to have a family, a home, and so on.  That hasn't changed in the last 15 years.  But, perhaps the path to those things now should.  In my 36th year and in this new year I'm not going to look for love at first.  In the new year, in my next year,  I look to surround myself with decent people and balance my work life with personally inspiring activities.  The difference between your 20's, in college, and in your 30's is availability of good people.  In college there are thousands of people just like you, equally immersed in collegiate life.  It's easy to meet people.  In your 30's I have learned that the best way to meet people, platonic or romantic, is to do so through osmosis.  Surround yourself by activities you enjoy, hobbies, etc.  In doing so, you surround yourself with people with common interests--platonic relationships arise from common interests and experiences.  And from those platonic relationships maybe I can also find love--either directly or perhaps in meeting someone who knows someone, etc.


So in your new year, surround yourself with people who matter to you.  Or if you, like me, have lost their way on that endeavor over the years, immerse yourself in your interests and through that meet new people and grow your social circle again, filling it with people who are beneficial to you.  I always say that I hate people, that I can't stand most people.  I don't like guys that are loud, dumb, obnoxious, misogynistic or homophobic (obviously).  I don't like girls that are air-headed or  manipulative.  I like people who are icebergs.  The bit you see at first is only a small portion of the person they are underneath.  I like people with content, who are thoughtful, hardworking and kind.  And most of all, I hate drama.  So in my activities and hobbies in the new year I will incorporate those positive platonic relationships in my life and from there look to a romantic relationship again.  Maybe that'll be next year, maybe the year after, or whenever.  


I recognize that I need to build my life properly to attract good friends and also to attract a good guy.  There is no timeline that I should feel pressure to adhere to, though that can be hard sometimes.  36 and 2023 are going to be a good year.  And I hope the same for anyone who reads this.  While I'm terrible at taking my own advice, I am very good at giving it.  So I will do so.  If you find yourself in the same position I've been in these last few years, work on the foundation first.  Work on you.  Work on your interests.  From there work on your friends.  The circle of support you have around you.  And finally work toward love.  As much as some say that it takes a village to raise a child, it also takes a supportive circle around you to find and maintain love.  It is hard work.  And we'd all be best to work together to find it, use our experiences and lessons learned to help each other along the way.  So to anyone reading this and to me when I go back and look at it, good luck and I believe in you.

Monday, January 3, 2022

The Wall

 Suffice to say, I think it's obvious that it has been a hot moment since the last time any real inspiration struck me.  I've touched on why in at least one previous post from many years ago--that thinking of the world and of existence requires a higher level of thought than is often available to us during the daily grind.  If you must hunt and gather continuously to find food for subsistence, physical tangible food or else intellectual or emotional sustenance, you do not have the structure in place that allows you the time to delve into the higher levels of existence.  If memory serves me, and I'm not entirely certain it does, I had basically surmised that those who have to struggle for air rarely can oxygenate the intellect enough to stimulate new understandings of ideas.  It has been such a very long time for me between said events.  Inspiration has found a way to strike however, and it is this.

 

Humankind, and indeed all of nature as we know it, is in a constant struggle.  We've labelled this "survival of the fittest", though this is not entirely accurate.  It's rather more like survival of the lucky, or perhaps the opportune.  The idea of fittest and what we on the surface believe it to mean are different things.  It has nothing to do with the most intelligent or most athletic or most--in one way or another--equipped to pass on your genes.  Fittest is simply a catch all.  It is a label of the amalgamation of all survivals to happen.  Nothing more and nothing less.  For whatever the reason may have been that survival occurred, it did occur and thereby makes that entity the "fittest" in that situation, at that time.


I sense I'm splitting hairs however.  It will be more clear as I progress.  Life as we know it is in a constant state of competition.  From humans to yeast cells in your next sourdough.  Each wants the best possible outcome in any and all situations.  "Survival of the 'fittest'" as I mentioned.  Remember, too, that in life the best possible outcome rarely happens as the culmination of all possibilities weighs heavily against the possibility of one specific outcome occurring as opposed to any number of a possibly infinite other outcomes occurring.  That is to say, it's far easier to pull hay out of a haystack than the needle.  That said, statistically it does happen from time to time.


Unlike yeast cells, at least so far as we know, we humans have the ability to comprehend our own existence.  We can "see" the rules.  That is, we can see cause and surmise effect. We may be clouded in our judgement of effect (or result if you'd rather) by our emotional attachment to a different outcome, our past experiences, simple error, a lack of a full understanding of the circumstances, or frankly any number of other reasons.  Yet, we can perceive our existence.  Whether that perception is more or less flawed is up for debate on any given day, but it is certainly ever elusive in my opinion.


Nothing I've said so far is all that revolutionary.  Perhaps it is better understood as a result of your reading it.  Perhaps my ability with words and my ability to convey meaning with them has increased your understanding of the aforementioned concept--survival of the fittest.  Maybe it hasn't.  Maybe you have a better understanding of it than I do.  Or maybe you think you do.  At any rate, it doesn't matter.  You'll take from what I say that which you, though your lens--tinted by your experience--, suggests you should.  This leads me to wonder further about the concept of free will, but that is a discussion for another time.  How indeed can your will be free if it is dictated by your desire to survive and simultaneously your tinted perception of what choices would be best for survival?  But, I must digress.  There are other observations to be made tonight...


Social media is in effect a means of control.  In the past fifteen years or so we have seen the growth of what we can broadly describe as "Web 2.0", which was in essence the creation of the internet consciousness of humankind.  It is different though similar to the worlds described in any number of science fiction works of the past generation , though each inaccurate in the eventual design of the system, they are remarkably able to see the intent of it.  I am not being clear.  Ready Player One, Ender's Game, The Matrix...  These are examples of world building in which a human consciousness becomes prevalent online.  There are many more, but you get the point I hope.  Rather, you understand the beginning of my premise, now several paragraphs deep.  

We have become a world of social media consciousnesses.  We live a great deal of our lives online.  From Instagram to TikTok to this forum and that, our existence has broken beyond the barrier of the digital world.  A part of who we are is melted into the social media consciousness.  And, these platforms that we use daily encourage that behavior.  They encourage use.  Even something like TikTok that offers you suggestions to put it down and come back later, is in essence encouraging you to continue in the long term at the cost of the short term.


This point brings me to the crux of this essay.  Where are the creators of these platforms?  Does Jeff Bezos spend his day writing Amazon reviews?  Does Mark Zuckerberg spend his day arguing politics in the comments of a linked article on his Wall that has little to no genuine impact on himself?  Do the creators of Google spend their days clicking on ads on a Geocities page with 8-bit flashing animations?  That that latter statement mixes Google and Yahoo isn't relevant, I just find the thought amusing.  The point is, that they don't.  They've already survived.  They've gotten their best possible outcome of a situation in years past and have moved onto the next battle.  


But what do I mean "they've survived".  What struggle?  Survival of the fittest.  Like serfs to manor lords, like employees to employers, like followers to messiahs, they have won.  They have won because they were able to profit from your time, time which you have given them willingly in fact.  The more time you spend on social media, the more they can monetize that time.  The more they monetize your time, the more they profit.  And profit they do.  At the expense of everyone else


Remember, your time is finite.  That is what gives it value.  Scarcity creates value.  They only have so much time to themselves, but long ago, at the dawn of civilization or even before, we in our ability to understand our own existence have learned that we can manipulate others to give us a share of their time too.  If we didn't give our time to Facebook or Snapchat or whatever social media, it, like Sears or the telgraph or AIM, would cease to have any value whatsoever. Just as corporations take some of our time in exchange for less than it's worth (so that they profit off of it), so too do social media companies.  Walmart makes money because the conditions are tipped in their favor to do so.  The same is true for Fox News.  The same is true for Disney.  The same is true for anyone and everyone to a similar, albeit lesser degree.  


Life is a peacock strutting to a peahen.  We hock our wares to the interested buyer to make a profit, to survive.  A great many of us will only inevitably have our time to bargain with and nothing or little else.  And as mentioned, the cards are stacked against us in this deal.  We receive back from that exchange for our time, to varying degrees less of what we want than what that time is worth.  Sometimes we are able to make something that appeals to the masses more effectively than our time.  Sometimes our strut is grand enough to excite others to give us their time.  That hype is what social media creators feed on.  Indeed it is how they feed themselves.  Yet, they are confined to the social media of their own choosing and the can only draw from that well to feed themselves.  The Youtuber profits based on the proliferation of their content on Youtube.  Their presence in the mutual fund market would be, if at all, tangentially affected by this.  Why is this important?  They receive profit based on how much time they receive from others.  But they are not in charge either.  In reality, they receive a cut of the profit of that time.  Youtube's parent company, Alphabet, actually is the one that profits.  You simply give them your time and they give you back a lesser portion of remuneration and pocket the rest.  


None of this is groundbreaking.  It's been happening since humankind first began to comprehend existence.  The forms have changed over the years, but the same basic model continues to pervade.  The fittest is the person or persons at the end of the day whom the collective efforts of all the others trickle up to.  In the Internet Age you have your Jeff Bezos' and Mark Zuckerberg's just the same as Industrial Age had Andrew Carnegie's and John Rockefeller's.  These people are, by an large, simply the highest person on the mountain, the one who stands on everyone else.  They are, by definition, the fittest.  

 

Yet, this isn't some age old conspiracy of a collective group of wealthy individuals.  The players do change, yet as a whole, the fittest evolve.  One may depart as an industry or poor decisions or happenstance occurs and another may be admitted to that "club", to that criteria that defines the "fittest".  Many mistakenly assume that this means that there is an overarching group that seeks to control everything.  There isn't.  There is however an overarching desire to be the fittest.  They will band together to keep their collective positions, and have done so throughout history.  Look at the number of American presidents that are related in one way or another.  Or movie stars.  Or the crowned heads of Europe.  Or any number of other groups that represent the "fittest" currently or in years past.  The powerful will band together to suppress others from dislodging them from below.  At the same time, they will in the same breath seek to dislodge those around them.  Survival of the fittest requires one to come out on top.  This general observation explains the sum total of all of politics ever anywhere in the world.  


The takeaway here isn't that you need to upset the system or upend it, though given the chance we all would.  Survival of the fittest after all.  My point is simply to suggest that you are but a brick in someone else's wall.  Yet, if happenstance or luck should have it and your best possible outcome should present itself, take it.  And don't forget where you come from.  Yet it seems you will forget, if history has shown us anything, the powerful always choose to forget that they were once a brick in someone else's wall.  Or, perhaps, they choose even more firmly to squeeze those bricks down on their own wall, so as to maintain their position for fear of returning to their previous position.  But  I digress, this isn't relevant to my point.


Your time is valuable.  More so than you think.  Keep this in mind as the next age is dawning... the "metaverse".

Monday, September 27, 2021

Rantings of a Mad Man Part XXII

The lower you are, the lower your mental state of mind, the higher the likelihood you seek out instant gratification.  It's a self-feeding cycle.


You do nothing intrinsically different now than we did 10,000 years ago.  We wake up, go to work to provide for ourselves and our families, return home, eat, relax and socialize, and continue again the next day.  It is no different in action than walking up, going out hunting or foraging, coming home, eating, and relaxing and socializing before going to bed to do it again the next day.  The basic needs of mankind haven't changed, just the conditions it is undertaken within and the methods we use to do so.


Uniqueness is a product of past experience.


Companies reward executives with more money for more successfully paying workers less money.


The only difference between a social bath with friends and a hot tub party is the appearance of alcohol at the event and of bubbles in the water.


Cheese is essentially rotten and moldy milk.


The ejaculation led to your birth involved a race of 100 million contestants of which you were the winner.  And you only won the race because your parents both individually won their own races.  Therefore, all other factors aside, the odds of you existing as you do today are about 1.0x10^24.  For reference that's about 100,000 times bigger than the number of grains of sand on Earth.  It's also about the same number of stars estimated to exist in the universe.  And that only takes into account yours and your parents' coming to existence and does not account for the hundreds of generations previous, or anything pre-human that evolved into us, or the fact that the Earth existing at all is an extremely unlikely set of odds into and of itself.