How We Value Work

Do you ever have something breakdown in your house and you have no idea how to fix it?

Do you have a mini-heartache when your car makes strange noises?

Did you ever fix it on your own or have someone else do it for you? Did you feel good afterward?

There's a weird relationship we have with what is essential and what is scarce. Sometimes we get them mixed up, but they are not the same thing.

We might mock the idea of being a plumber as a job, but when something breaks down, we need them and thank them, as long as they can show up to do it. 

That's more than most celebrities can do. And yet we put them on a pedestal.

And at the same time, we kind of have reality shows about people doing their jobs. Dirty jobs even. And they are kind of stupid. 

I guess it can be argued that repairs are expensive, and we resent the people in charge of these repairs for said reason, but how that makes the athletes we look up somehow better baffles me.

The funny thing is, we all acknowledge that the so called role models are not good role models, and yet it still continues on.

We complain about how much athletes make while continuing to watch the game. Watching it cause nothing else is on. Complaining about anything really. All tabloid drama as the sign of not just a slow news day, but a slow news cycle in general. Quest for filler. And somehow, we avoid actual news that matters. You're probably reading this to distract yourself from something else.

And then we complain about how much stuff can kill you out there.

I mean, GMOs can kill you, but so can reality television. Life kills you, but we don't want to acknowledge it, so we find scapegoats. Heaven forbid you die for being human.

Lately, it seems like people (myself included) have treated the Internet as their own customer service center to the world, with the exception of course to the fact that we haven't really invested or bought anything to make our complaints justified.

We go on, complain about things, someone gives us a schtick, and nothing really changes. 

Entitlement is a funny phrase. It's funny cause the people who criticize about the so called "entitled people" tend to want things.

There have been a lot of times where you can try to be content with your life, and people will give you crap for it. And that has backfired on society.

You tell kids to ask for more, and they'll want stock options. 

When I was younger, the threat of being a janitor or flipping burgers was a fear instilled on us by teachers who wanted us to rack up some nice student debt and get a good "decent job".

And now that those jobs haven't come in, all these college grads feel offended that all they have as an option are janitor jobs.

Now, truth be told, janitorial work does not pay off student debt, but that's never really addressed by OWS. Now people are losing their minds cause they find that their life is an expensive lie they can't pay off. Hoping they can be a professor over a janitor.

Even though a janitor does more honest work cleaning stuff than most teachers could. Notice the word "most". All I'm saying is tens of thousands of dollars is a lot of money.

Again, to complain about what I said is to call the customer service of the world.


I can't blame people for wanting more. It's been said that all war is for land. And now this recession is over real estate.

No one wants to be a sucker. You could be totally content with your way of living till someone shows you another life that makes you wanna kill yourself.

Right now as you read this blog, you live a life of indoor plumbing that was not accessible to any of the Pharaohs or conquerors. And we are still depressed because they want us to be depressed.

I don't care what anyone says, happy people don't go to work and do amazing things. Look at the lives of legendary people. They've been bankrupt, depressed, if not suicidal.

I'm not saying go out of your way to be depressed. It's just a symptom of living life to the fullest sometimes. If you want to live to your full potential, you stand the risk of breaking yourself. And yet, if you don't do this you will feel broken later on.

It's like when you hear about celebrities dying in debt, and they try to make it this sad thing. I don't think it's sad. Who wants to die with extra cash in the bank? Now the leeches who sucked you dry have to work to pay your expenses. Lucky you.

If you are happy, you would not need things. You wouldn't have to go to work. You could be content being who you are. And society will hate you for it. Cause society is fake. It has to be fake. That's how it functions. A macrocosm on the duality of man, if you want to get hoidy toidy about it. Society needs contradictions in moderation to function.

The funny thing is, you can get to a weird place comprehending all this. Having your heart broken cause a girl does not find your salary admirable while she does nothing for society/hating all men cause you caught your boyfriend cheating. You feel sad, and yet you think about victims of genocide to cope with it. Or someone would tell you how bad they have had it in the hopes of making you feel guilty.

Isn't that what we do? Look at the unfortunate to feel better about ourselves?

And even though you know you should be happy, you are still hollow inside. Because you never addressed being emotionally vulnerable from the breakup, you just filled it with this bizarre form of compassionate schadenfreude.

There's an Internet meme somewhere that states that "saying you shouldn't be sad cause someone has it worse is like saying you shouldn't be happy cause someone has it better".

I used to feel bad when I gave up eating nasty food cause I thought about the starving kids who couldn't eat it. But now, I realize that giving starving kids nasty processed food could only make their condition worse.

You ever have a long term goal that you're determined to get to? You ever get close to it? You ever get emotionally numb when you treat this goal like some daily habit? You're two months into a year project, bored out of your mind?

This is what you wanted. You're used to it and feeling nothing.

It might be said that boredom could be enlightenment. There's no conflict in boredom. The bad guy is dead, the protagonist is developed, and life is like a game with all the cheat codes. No challenges. A dead fish for a cat.

There's a lot of refugees of violence who become adopted by fortunate parents. Their adoptive parents spoil them due to the memories of tragedy. And those kids grow up to be just another Xbox playing jerkoff.

Imagine if you had everything you wanted. Not just materials, but emotional needs. Relationships became healed. Wouldn't you eventually get bored? Isn't that why people start things to mess with people? Boredom.

What if Heaven and Hell are essentially the same place made different by how the person there sees it?

Just pontificating. Eternity is a long time. Plan for the future.

We live in this weird place that both hates rich people and poor people. We hate the homeless, we hate minimum wage workers, and we hate those at the top.

I wish people would make up their mind on where all the anger is.

I never understood treating a waiter like shit. I mean, if the service sucks, maybe, but I don't understand going out of your way to make someone's life miserable.

I mean, I understand eating the rich. I think rich kids go out of their way to piss people off. They wanted people to be jealous, and now they find society angry at their parents success as a result of it. I don't think anyone in the higher tax bracket who openly asks for envy should be surprised at the current state of affairs.

All the same arguments can be made about the Royal family. It's all the same, isn't it?

And people in the middle class spend money on stupid things anyway while voting for the same stupid people, so it's hard to feel sympathy for anyone. 

Maybe everyone sucks when it comes to money.

Maybe anything can become pointless when you think about it long enough.

Society can be weird sometimes. Things are popular because they are scarce.

But in due time, unpopular things become scarce. And then they become popular.

See what I mean?

Rich people will complain about things. Things I don't really comprehend. Like aesthetics of a golf course. They pretend to vomit when they see a McDonalds in the horizon. Saying it's globalization. It's a crisis. It's an eyesore. A form of visual pollution killing them inside. 

And poor people don't really care. Maybe that's why they're poor, maybe not.

I wonder what would happen if everyone took a step and realized how much time they're wasting.

Wasting on absolutely nothing.

So of course, I had to blog about it.

Obligations

A lot of the time, we have visions of greatness. We dream of it.

We talk about doing things, but doing things is hard. Which is weird, cause you think all the formulating would be the tough thing to do.

You don't stop working out when you become skinny. It's a hard thing to wrap your head around, but things that you want in life can be obtained by correlating your actions.

If you want a job, love job applications.

If you want to be skinny, love exercise and celery.

And sometimes, we get stuck in correlation. Johnny Bravo mode. You need to deal with rejection, but instead, you love rejection. Rejection is normal.

Which is fine, but when you find an opportunity, you find a way to mess it up. You get what you wish for. And it scares you. Cause you can lose it. You look at an attractive man/woman and you get scared thinking about what it takes to keep her.

When you think about your dreams, think about the side effects as well as benefits and how to deal with them.

If you want to be rich, look at the habits of rich people. They are often busy in their business. Are you ready for that? Is there one thing you need to do before the jump? One last lost weekend?

A lot of times, it's not finances or a "real" obstacle that stops us. Usually, it's something that we think would sound goofy if we told someone. So, figure out what it is, and find a way to overcome.

This blog was started to promote my writing. And in a way, it sort of worked. So much that I don't always have time to do it.

I would like to say that I could followup with the blog in the future, but I'm not sure.

So don't hold your breath, but I will return a couple months in the future.