Happiness – Page 15 – Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise

A Tree Fell On My House, But I Have A Chainsaw

“I’m a lumberjack and I’m okay. I sleep all night and I work all day.” – Monty Python’s Flying Circus

What’s black and white and red all over? Two mimes fighting with chainsaws.

I saw a quote this week that made me smile a lot. I’ll share it with you:

“When God put a calling on your life He already factored in your stupidity.”

A few weeks ago, a tree fell down and hit our house during a storm. And by a tree, I mean a huge one. I had snapped off 15 feet (57 Joules) up the tree. It was nearly horizontal, and resting on my favorite roof.

I’ll admit that I was sitting in the hot tub during the storm that brought down the tree.

It was glorious. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard a tree fall. It’s wonderful. Approximately once every five minutes, I’d hear the tearing of wood and then, after a pause for the amount of time it took for the vertical tree to become horizontal, the crash. The next day, one more tree fell.

It fell into my house. The Mrs. sent me a picture.

I waited until Saturday when The Boy was down from Upper Lower Midwestia University to solve the problem, because the one thing a boy home from college wants to hear? “Hey, son, glad you’re back from college for a weekend of rest. I’m going to grab you and your brother and we’re going to work all day in one of your dad’s crazy adventures. Oh, and it involves you getting up early and chainsaws.”

Honestly, he should be used to it by now.

Looking back, I realize that in a normal world, I would have called my insurance company. They’d send out adjusters who would look at the tree. They’d measure it, weigh it, and sensuously cup its fallen boughs, which still happens to be legal in my state.

I’ve heard you can save a lot of money on car insurance by switching. Switching to reverse and leaving the scene.

They would look in the book of “Tree Falling On House Payments.” They’d then tell me that elm trees falling on houses in Upper Lower Midwestia were excluded. I would then correct them because I live in Lower Upper Midwestia and the tree was actually a son of a birch.

Then he says, “Oh, you’re that John Wilder. Of course! Insurance will cover it.”

Then, I would call a tree company to come and move the tree. Since everyone in town had a tree fall on their house, it would take a month for them to show up for an estimate, and another month for them to remove the tree. After the tree company charged me $2200 to move it, I’d toss the bill to the insurance company.

I’d pay the deductible (which is currently set at my left kidney for my homeowner’s policy, and my cornea for auto), and that’s it.

But would that be the Wilder Way? Of course not.

I can sleep in on the weekends. The Mrs., who is borderline insomniac, feels that this is my superpower. Generally, I can get to sleep in less than five minutes, often in less than one. The Mrs. can only sleep on Tuesdays after 9 P.M. if it’s not Daylight Savings Time. The Mrs. has walked into the bathroom to brush her teeth and returned to find me sound asleep. I can even do it when I’m driving, though my passengers don’t seem to care for it.

What’s green, fuzzy, and will kill you if it falls on you out of a tree? A pool table.

The reason I can sleep is only when I don’t have a Mission. When there’s a Mission? I wake up and I’m ready to go. I don’t even need an alarm clock. The tree on my house represented a Mission.

As it was, I had Pugsley and The Boy available, and daylight was burning. I knocked on each door as I went out to start work.

I started with the branch trimmer. Alone. The sleeping leviathans inside had yet to move.

Branch trimmers are like the scissors that Hannibal Lecter would use to, umm, prune a rose bush. This was my third set. The problem with the first two is that The Boy and then Pugsley pulled the handles too hard and bent the metal. Sometimes, living with them is like living with five-year-olds that don’t understand that they can twist metal with their bare hands.

So, a paid for the expensive trimmers this time.

Trees don’t walk. They lumber.

These trimmers were good enough to cut through about a 2” branch, which is pretty stout. I took the trimmer and started hacking. I was about 30 minutes into hacking when The Boy showed up. Pugsley showed up slightly later. It took us 10 years to convince him he had to shower, and now he has six of them a day. I wouldn’t be surprised to find that he takes a cheese plate into the shower.

When Pugsley showed up, I had him get the chainsaw, mix gas, chain oil and chainsaw sharpener. I showed him how to sharpen the chainsaw blade, which took all of 30 seconds, but then he knew how it worked. I also showed him how to adjust the chain. These may seem like small things, but they are rites of passage. There are many tools in a cabinet, and some are mostly harmless, like a screwdriver. But a chainsaw?

A fear of spiders is called arachnophobia. A fear of chainsaws? That’s called common sense.

For the next seven hours we were like ants, taking branch after branch off of the tree, first with the branch trimmer and then with the chainsaw.

I had a dentist who used to be a lumberjack. He pulled a tooth by mistake. I’ll never to Axedental again.

Finally, we were down to two major branches. By the time we’d gotten there, I realized that what I had done was, slowly, cut off all of the minor support points. It seemed like a good bet. But it was also a nagging feeling that I might be making the problem worse.

I was. While sitting down, I heard a sharp crack.

Like wood breaking. The exact sound I had heard while having a beer in the hot tub during the storm.

One of the two branches left holding up the whole tree was cracking. Looking at the tree, I saw that it was big. I estimated that what remained was about 5,000 pounds (one metric “Your Momma”) and a quick check of my estimate that I did while writing this backed that number up, unless the tree was on a low carb diet.

That 5,000 pounds was going to fall on my deck, and if I wasn’t careful? 5,000 pounds dropping 15 feet is a lot of energy – enough energy to smash a deck, a Wilder, and maybe an insurance adjustor to boot.

I had The Boy and Pugsley run into the garage looking for whatever lumber they could find that was the right length to prop up this rapidly deteriorating situation. After ten minutes, I had two 2×4’s and one mangy plank holding the tree up. It wasn’t moving, but it wasn’t stable, and it was 10.5 feet (one metric Barron Trump) up in the air.

The Mrs. took a picture of my makeshift supports. She sent it to her high school friend list. One friend who is in city planning responded, “Oh, no! This looks like all of the ladder safety videos that they make us watch.”

I thought about what I’d do, and sent The Boy and Pugsley off to buy a 10’ stepladder and some ratchet tie-offs. When they got back, I propped the 10’ stepladder under the branch, shimmed it with lumber, and then got the chainsaw-on-a-stick.

The chainsaw-on-a-stick is just that – a tiny electric chainsaw mounted on a stick. This one has an 8” blade, and is meant to cut things far away. That’s good, because that’s exactly what I intended to do. I would have liked to cut this particular tree from orbit, because it was lopsided – it looked like it wanted to twist, hard, clockwise.

I used to be a lumberjack in the Sahara Forest. Well, it used to be the Sahara Forest. I’m that good.

I tied off the branch to a convenient tree so when I cut it loose it couldn’t fall into the garden shed. I further tied off one of the remaining branches so maybe that it wouldn’t twist as it fell.

Pugsley pulled out his camera to record the action.

“Nope. Put it away.” The situation that I had put myself into was less than optimal. I realize that as men we are here not to live a life without risk, but to live a life. And the Sun was now going down. It was now or never. One way or another that tree was coming down before the Sun went down.

Getting injured because you refused to let someone else clear the tree? That seems like a stupid and futile gesture.

Well, if you’re looking for stupid and futile gestures, you’ve come to the right place. I just didn’t want my particular stupid and futile gesture to result in YouTube® videos of my death. I proceeded to take the chainsaw on a stick and started to cut into the branch.

As far as tense moments go, having the stored energy of a Ford Explorer® 15 feet up in the air, dependent upon your calculations and being right?

It’s tense.

When I was back in Alaska, I could regularly drop trees within a degree of where I wanted them to go. Was I a lumberjack? No. But I had to lay in dozens of metric Your Momma’s worth of wood a year just to heat the house. You get pretty comfortable with a chainsaw doing that.

When I cut wood in Alaska, I didn’t get overtime, even though I logged a lot of hours.

But that was 15 years (3 centimeters) ago. I cut into the tree. I first cut a relief cut in the top of the horizontal branch. I didn’t want stress to build up there and hang the whole mess up. Then I started to cut from the bottom up.

You have to cut a tree that’s acting like a beam from the bottom up. If you cut it from the top down? It will bind the saw, and you end up in a crazy place where you have a stuck saw and a Ford Explorer®’s amount of energy dependent upon you freeing it.

I cut into the tree. A lot. Then paused. The opening the chainsaw had made grew larger as the stress pulled the tree apart. I cut into the tree again. By now, the entire 5,000 pounds was hanging by a 3” by 2” slab of wood. Still no movement.

Finally, I cut deeper. I hear the “crack” as the tree split. Pugsley was watching from a safe distance. He said the tree dropped perfectly down. I wouldn’t know – I was headed the opposite direction. Not only was there the 5,000 pound tree, there was also the bit still on the roof. I could easily imagine that part whipping around as it was pulled by the main branch.

The final crack came.

The tree did come down. Perfectly. The bit left on the roof? Didn’t move an inch. Exactly as I wanted it to go. I sat down as The Boy and Pugsley removed the rest of the debris. Pugsley even got me a beer and said, “You’re done, Pop. Have a rest.”

I trained my kids that if I ever choke on a beer, they should give me the Heineken® maneuver.

The damage to the house was minimal, actually. A bit of gutter needs to be moved back into place. One shingle lost its gravel in a small circle. A solar light was broken. I need to replace one deck board, one chair, and one plastic bench. Oh, and we spent 27 hours of labor. I was sore for the next three days.

If a tree falls on your house and that’s all you lose? You’re as lucky as me. Which is pretty lucky.

Or, more likely? God has factored my stupidity into my life.

An Important Lesson Of Life? Understand Death.

“No. Not like this. I haven’t faced death. I’ve cheated death. I’ve tricked my way out of death and patted myself on the back for my ingenuity. I know nothing.” – Star Trek II, The Wrath of Khan

“Vikings don’t worry about death – they know they’ll be Bjørn again.”

When I go to bed on Saturday night, I sometimes wake up before I intend to get up. That’s my favorite luxury of the weekends. One technique that I use after I wake up to get back to sleep is to think about the points I’ll make on my Monday post.

This hypnogogic state (that no-man’s land between sleep and being awake) is a wonderful place for me. I focus on a topic, and let my mind take the topic where it will. Often, it’s back to sleep. That’s okay.

But other times? I end up making connections I might not have made otherwise. I love that. That’s one of the reasons I love my Monday posts. I have that ability to really let my mind explore on the weekend. I’d do that during the weekdays, but if I miss and end up sleeping? Snoring is frowned on at work.

If you need to be creative and don’t use that hypnogogic state, I really, really, suggest you do. It’s a really peaceful sort of place, but I’ve found it’s also one where my mind strips out the pretty little lies that we tell ourselves every day and pops me full of reality. Plus? It’s a great excuse to The Mrs. that I’m doing something important when I’m busy nearly napping.

I hear when Jeff Bezos sleeps, he wears pajamazons.

Monday’s posts are, in general, about philosophy. They’re the “Wise” part of Wilder Wealthy and Wise. Wednesday is about economics. And Friday is about health, though more recently it has focused on clear thinking – which might be the clearest way to real health. I’m not sure anyone wants to come to this blog for nutrition advice, since my nutrition information belongs on Tide Pods®.

All of the posts allow me to think deeply about a subject, research, and learn. On more than one occasion, I started out believing one thing, and after my research for the post was done, I realized my original belief was horribly wrong. Those are some of the best posts for me, because when I do them well, they change the reader and the writer.

But Monday’s are special. They’re my favorite posts, though sometimes not the most optimistic of posts, because, like those transvestite superheroes that call themselves the “Ex-Men®”, reality is not always pretty.

This was a joke when this album came out. Now we call it male fraud.

I had a big post planned for today. Really, I have a big post planned every Monday. In my mind, I want them to knock the socks off of people. Figuratively, of course, because I have no idea what sort of foot hygiene you practice and would not want to actually have to smell your feet. I’ll do a lot of things for a successful post, but I won’t do that.

So, why do I write?

I write because, perhaps, the biggest way I can make a difference in this world is by serving, you, dear reader. If something I can write can make you smile on a bad day, make you think differently about a subject so your life is better? If the cause of Western Civilization is carried forward?

I win.

That’s really why I’ve devoted such an amount of time to writing. As The Mrs. has told me several times: “John, if I didn’t think what you were doing was important, you and I would have words.”

I don’t know if “have words” is fairly ominous where you come from, but here in Stately Wilder Manor, “have words” generally does not lead to a pleasant evening. But, I am happy to note, I have The Mrs. full support in my writing, even though she says, “well, I’m sure we’re on a list now.”

I went to the library to get a book on Pavlov’s dog and Schrodinger’s cat. The librarian said that rang a bell, but she wasn’t sure if it was checked out or not.

This week, however, I wasn’t able to slip my writing tasks off to my conscious/sub-conscious.

Life intruded.

It turns out that today there was a death in the family. It wasn’t one of the regular cast of characters that I’ve written about. Pugsley, The Boy, The Mrs., Alia S. Wilder, my brother, John Wilder? They’re all fine. Ma and Pa Wilder? They passed away years ago.

Actually, I’m fairly sure I have never written about the person who passed away today. But their passing provided the opportunity to talk about life.

The simple truth is this: we are born, we grow, we live, and all we can do is try to make the world better by the lives we touch. As Kierkegaard said, “Life can only be lived forward, and understood in reverse.” Of course, he was speaking Danish, so Kierkegaard probably sounded like he was describing a pastry recipe that involved using a commuter train to mash the dough because Danish doesn’t sound at all like a real language.

What’s the difference between married people from Denmark and Batman’s® parents? It’s simple: one is wed Danes and the other? Dead Waynes.

Death is, of course, inevitable. I’ve written about it on more than one occasion. I don’t expect that this will be the last time I write about it. Our inability to understand that death is a part of life horribly stunts the modern world, which seems to exist to deny that death is real.

Death has many different impacts on families. It can bring them closer together or tear them apart. The choice is, of course, tied to how the family deals with it. The best choice is honesty and transparency.

Some observations:

How can you mess up a funeral? You can’t. So why do we worry so much?
And why do we spend so much on a funeral? I think it’s a unique time where people don’t think straight at all.
Making decisions after the death of a loved one is probably the third worst time you can make a decision. Or is it the fourth?
Never, ever leave something unsaid between you and a loved one. When the ship sails, all debts should be paid, in full. The last thing you say to someone might be the last thing you say to someone.
Death brings life into perspective – it makes people focus on what is really important. So why do we wait until someone dies to focus on what’s really important? Hint: we don’t have to.
Avoid land wars in Asia. Those never turn out well.
Most major religions and all of the atheists think we have one shot at life on Earth. Wasting time is then equivalent to wasting life. So don’t do that, either. Every minute you spend being bored and waiting for something is a minute of your life you wished away.
Life is too short for regrets. Fix your regrets, or live with them. Spending a second regretting is a second you’ll never get back.
Corollary: life is too short to spend it worrying about how long you’ll live. So don’t. Should we be prudent? But don’t let it stand in the way of you living your life. Is that an excuse to do harmful things to yourself? Of course not. But it’s not an excuse to be afraid of your shadow, either.

If I’m ever crushed by a falling piano, I want a low-key funeral.

During the ancient Roman triumphs, which were held to honor victorious commanders, a slave was chosen to accompany the commander. The slave would hold the wreath above the commander’s head. He would whisper in the commander’s ear: “Remember, you are mortal.”

We all are. The only difference is what we do in life. And what we write for our Monday posts.

Magic and Money: More Related Than You Think

“It was the most amazing magic trick I’ve ever seen.” – The Prestige

Mimes aren’t magicians, they just have obstacle illusions.

This is a post about finance. It’s an awesome one, so bear with me.

I’ve always been a bit of a ham. When I was in third grade, I got up and did impressions and sang a song. This was in front of the entire school on talent night, Kindergarten through Senior, and all their parents. My impressions were horrible. My singing was worse.

The next year, I got to play a drunken uncle in our fourth grade play. I’m not making that up. I had a flask and everything, and the teacher pinned the neck tie of my costume up over my shoulder, since drunks apparently can’t wear a tie properly. However, you can bet that I delivered my lines with the best drunken slur a fourth grader can muster.

It was another time and place, where we could make jokes with the idea of being funny. If they did a play like that today, I’m sure that the school district would be shut down, burned, and exorcised from Twitter™ and Facebook®. I mean, the parents in the play were a man and a woman played . . . by a boy and a girl. And they were married. And they didn’t have tattoos.

Sacrilege!

The floor collapsed during the fourth grade play. I guess I was going through a stage.

As I’ve mentioned before, I lived pretty far out on Wilder Mountain. The nearest kid to my house lived nine miles away. The nearest McDonalds™ at that time was a two hour car trip. So, a trip to a magic store was entirely out of the question. But then came college.

Where I was still a ham.

In college, I was living near Capitol City, and they did have a magic store. So, I bought three magic tricks. All three were fun, because they were professional grade, and if you had the mechanical dexterity to open a beer can, you could do very professional, close up magic.

One was a coin trick.

COVID shut down the mint? It makes no cents.

It’s still my favorite trick. I haven’t done it in years, but it’s fun to do. First, I’d show the person I’m doing the trick with (we’ll call them “Mark”) two coins – a United States $0.50 coin, and a Mexican 50 centavo coin. Then, I put the coins into their right hand. By the time the coins are in their hands, it’s not a half dollar and a 50 centavo piece – it’s now a half dollar and a United States $0.25.

I’d then ask Mark to put one coin in each hand, while his hands were behind his back, so I can’t see them. Once each hand has a coin in it, I ask them to hold their hands straight out in front of them. I’d then guess where the $0.50 piece was.

That wasn’t the trick.

Then, regardless of if my guess was correct, I’d bet them something (say, a Coke® or a beer – remember I was in college) that they couldn’t show me the 50 centavo piece.

They’d smile, and then open their hand, and then show me the quarter and look amazed that it wasn’t the 50 centavo piece.

Except the first few times, it didn’t work. At all. It’s not that I messed up the trick, one hand had $0.50 in it, and one hand had a quarter. But the first few times I did the trick, the Mark immediately recognized that it wasn’t the 50 centavo, and knew it was a quarter.

Well, that sucks.

You have no idea how long this meme took.

But then I thought back – at the magic store where I’d bought the trick, the salesman performing the trick had said, “notice how much smaller the 50 centavo piece is than the half dollar.” I tried that the next time I did the trick.

Perfect.

Mark, merely by my suggestion, had developed the mental image that the 50 centavo piece was small. Every time I’ve done the trick using that phrase, and I mean every single time, ever, it worked like a charm. Without saying “notice how much smaller . . .”? Over half the time the person could tell that the second coin was a quarter.

The next refinement was the reveal. Remember when I told the Mark to hold his hands out front, and I’d guess which hand had the fifty cent piece in it? Amazingly, 90% of people put the half dollar into the same hand. Which hand? I’m not giving up all of my secrets.

I would, on purpose, guess the wrong hand after telling Mark not to show me the coins, right or wrong.

They’d smile and tell me I was wrong. They felt awesome – they’d beaten the magician. Obviously, the trick was going wrong.

All part of the plan.

The next thing I said was, “I bet you a beer Coke™ that you can’t show me the 50 centavo piece,” and then they opened their hand to see an ordinary quarter? After seeing the quarter, I’d ask Mark to open the other hand where they’d see a normal fifty cent piece. They were always amazed when I did it right, but in order for the trick to work, I had to say the right things.

The trick paid for itself in, um, beverages and things. And the Mark didn’t mind – Mark was amused, and I got paid a small fee for that amusement.

But the things that sold the trick wasn’t the mechanics and metal, it was what I was saying, and how I was saying it, and, even being intentionally wrong was part of the final sale. You can buy this trick yourself, for about $12 – search “Scotch and Soda Trick” on Amazon.

You’re welcome.

But what does this have to do with money?

A lot, actually.

His version of Purple Rain was awful.

Number One – People who sell stuff know how to sell. Like my magic trick, salesmen do trial and error to learn what works. If you buy a car every five years from a dealer, and they have contact with 30 customers a week, who has the upper hand?

If you’re listening to a politician who’s spent his entire life just getting elected, what likelihood to you have of understanding their real character and values? They probably don’t remember them themselves. If you’re buying a car, a house, or even a burger at McDonalds, they know the game. There’s a reason that every well-trained McDonalds© employee asks, “Do you want fries with that?”

They know the game. McDonalds® knows that a potato costs them pennies, but a basket of fries can go for $3. Profits may be fleeting, but the pant size increase is forever.

One of the tricks that Bernie Madoff used with his customers was to dress very frugally. Despite the fact that he was stealing billions ($20 billion by the best estimate I found), he knew the game better than his Marks. He also was selective with clients – he wouldn’t accept just anyone. No, you had to apply and be approved. You had to know someone.

Number Two – Knowing the trick is everything. When I did the coin trick, only I knew what was coming. It was all scripted, and I knew exactly what the outcome was going to be. When I asked people to let me guess which hand the coin was in, they thought that was the trick. No, the trick was that there was no fifty centavo piece. But because I created the structure, I knew where the trick was.

That’s a tremendous advantage. I can use that knowledge to create a scenario where I can manipulate emotions to get the reactions and responses I want. Why? I control the conditions. I control the reveal.

What sorts of tricks are out in the world?

“No money down.”
“I never got your text.”
“Yes, I’ll hold your beer, there’s no way this could go wrong.”
“No interest for the first six months.”
“Housing prices always go up.”
“CNN – The Most Trusted Name in News.”

Number Three – Things are rarely as they seem. Mark saw only what I wanted him to see during the trick, and I carefully made sure by closing his hand around the coins after I put them there. Then I told him to not let me see when he put the coins in each hand. Why? Because I didn’t want him to see what was really going on.

One of the biggest illusions that most people don’t recognize is that our money is entirely made up. The $ and € and ¥ and £ only have meaning because we give them meaning. The United States dollar has no backing other than . . . the promise to trade it for a dollar. That’s it. And people keep playing the game even though the Federal Reserve™ tells them the dollar will be worth less every year. On purpose.

Oh, and the Federal Reserve©? It’s not Federal, and it doesn’t have a Reserve. Discuss.

Generally, people didn’t believe that the government had a super-secret plan to eavesdrop on all electronic communications from anyone. Then Edward Snowden showed . . . they have a plan to monitor all electronic communications, everywhere. When Snowden joined Twitter® he soon had more followers than the National Security Agency. That’s okay, the NSA follows everyone.

I knew there was a reason my computer has a sticker that says “Intel Inside.”

Number Four – It’s super easy to suggest things to people. This shocked me. One time Scott Adams mentioned that in a line at a copier, if you have to make a copy, all you have to do is have a reason to jump the line. He suggested, “Hey, can I cut in front of you? I have to make a copy.” Note that making a copy is exactly what everyone else was doing, but the request, coupled with a reason, seemed to work. No matter how stupid the reason.

Yes, there’s a reason you want ice cream.
What, you thought that was impartial?
“The Arctic will be ice free by 2013,” – Al Gore. Hmm. Trust me. Next time it really will be.
Asking them to do you a small favor. Oddly, this creates a pattern where people are much more likely to do a big favor for you later. Oh, while you’re at it, hit the subscribe button. Don’t cost nothin’.
Never trust a flatterer. I had a boss that, one month after he joined the company, wrote a performance review that would have made me think that I needed to apply for the job of Messiah. Except in my case it made me never trust him. I was right.
Peer Pressure. People like to do what other people consider acceptable, since being socially acceptable is important. If everyone is doing it, well, I should, too. I went against the grain, and now Wal-Mart® insists that I wear pants from now on.

Number Five – The person proposing the bet may not have your best interest at heart. In the example above, I ended up getting a few beverages. The person involved got an equal exchange. No one was ever mad – if they had been, I’d have told them to ignore the bet.

But.

I used the name “Mark” for a reason. It’s what conmen (ever notice that the Politically Correct Police don’t object to that one?) call the object of their scam. I’ve even been at carnivals where a guy running a game called out, “hey, Mark” to someone walking by to try to get them to break a balloon and win a poster of Gillian Anderson. Only five dollars a dart!

I wonder if the aliens believed in her?

There are probably a few other examples that I could bring up, but it’s late, and I have to go practice not singing. Bonus points if you can tell what two impersonations I did in third grade in the comments.

See, I told you this post would be awesome.

You Get To Choose Your Mood. Why Not Be Happy? No Assembly Required.

“Smile and smile… I don’t trust men who smile too much.” – Commander Kor, Star Trek (TOS)

When Pugsley was little, he was excited that about his birthday. “Daddy, I have a birthday coming up and I’ll be this many old!” Then he held up four fingers. The police still don’t know where they came from.

Smile.

Shhh. Don’t argue.

Smile.

Do it for, say, thirty seconds.

I’ll wait.

(Really, I mean this. Smile. Thirty seconds, look at a clock if you have to. Everybody do it.)

Feel better?

You do.

I’m not sure what kind of day you’re having. But smiling makes you feel happier. There’s a study I could link to, but I’m pretty sure all of you know how to use the Internet, so look for it if you want.

Doesn’t matter if you look it up or not. Smiling makes you feel better. Smiling is good for you. Smiling changes your mood. Change your mood? Your output is better. Not only more, but better.

Once upon a time, I had a job at a company that was failing. Not because of me, but because they had spectacularly failed on some business that they were doing. How spectacularly? They were losing millions of dollars. Some work that I was involved with was likewise losing money, but in this case only a few thousand dollars.

My Boss pulled me into his office. This is a real conversation, not one I made up.

Boss: “John, do you know what position the company is in?”

John Wilder: “Sure. Two of our divisions have lost enough money that we are in danger of becoming bankrupt.”

Boss: “Well, then, why are you so happy? The company is in trouble. People have noted that you’re too upbeat.”

When I get sad I cut myself. Another piece of cake.

I was being told that I was being too happy and positive in the workplace. How do you even respond to that? Rip and tear your clothes and cry? Sacrifice pigeons and stray raccoons to some ancient Sumerian god? Gather up a group of warriors and go raid a competitor and steal their business so you can hear the lamentation of their women?

Willkommen to das Hötel Kalifornia.

I sort of understand what my Boss was getting at. You don’t whistle, hum, crack a beer, and then sing Sammy Hagar songs at a funeral, even if there are headbangers in leather picking a three lock box. But I sort of didn’t understand it, either. How on Earth do you turn the business around, how do you make things better if you’re gloomy and you’re certain you’re going to die?

You don’t.

This week, a post at a great blog, Tempest in a Teardrop (LINK) mentioned St. Philip Neri. I hadn’t read about him before. I certainly hadn’t met him, since he died in Anno Domini 1595, which was about when your mom was finishing high school.

Neri’s quote that impressed me was: “A joyful heart is more easily made perfect than a downcast one.” It would be a conceit of the highest measure to think a single sentence I ever wrote would be quoted 400 years from now (though in my dreams I imagine there will be thousands of young students getting their degree in Wilder Wisdom Studies in the year 2356), but Neri absolutely nailed it with this line.

I wanted to be a standup comedian, but with Coronavirus? Now they’re all inside jokes.

You have a choice. Be mad. Be sullen. Be angry. Be filled with wrath. Give up. Be jealous of those who have it better.

That’s five of the seven deadly sins (The seven deadly sins and society. How do they fit together?). Eat seven bacon cheese burgers and think about your neighbor mowing the lawn in a bikini and you’re up to the full seven. I mean, assuming your neighbor would look good in a bikini.

You don’t have to feel that way. At all. Ever.

Smile when you feel down.

When I was in college I had the opposite experience. I had one particular professor, one of the most fun professors ever. He was Swiss, and had been a mercenary in the 1950’s, and had done everything. I was his student, and when I was in grad school, I was his Teaching Assistant. His advice, coming between puffs of cherry-smelling smoke from his pipe?

“Keep smiling, John.”

Smiles are contagious, so my state says I should wear a mask.

If you did what I said earlier, and smiled, you felt better. And you should do it as much as you can. If you have a choice to be happy, why wouldn’t you choose it?

There are other hacks as well.

Sigh. A deep sigh. You will feel your tension lower. Actual clinical studies that I think I read about show that this lowers blood pressure. I feel better when I sigh, and I also stop sweating blood, which I think means my blood pressure is lower.

Another trick:

Stand like a superhero, chest thrust forward, hands on your hips. There’s a reason the artists draw it that way – it makes you feel confident. Powerful. Competent. I can recall falling asleep at night in a pose just like Superman™ flying – one hand out, the other back, and one leg up.

If Superman® and Batman© had a baby, what would it be? Adopted.

I woke up feeling great! But, of course, my liver didn’t have the mileage on it that it does now. I still sleep like that most nights. However, if you stand like a superhero? You’ll feel like one.

If you ever listen to Scott Adam’s videos, “Coffee With Scott Adams” he starts them with a Simultaneous Sip. To participate, all you need is a beverage in a container, and you sip when he says go. It’s a dopamine hit to the brain, which he says will “make everything better.” And it works. You feel better when you participate. Heck, I feel so much better that I often won’t even start listening unless I can do the Simultaneous Sip.

These are just a few hacks that immediately change your mood. Yes, I understand sometimes these might not help. More than a dozen years ago, I had a back problem that made sitting horribly uncomfortable. When I walked, it was fine, but when I sat? Excruciating pain.

I tried the ancient Chinese needle treatment for back pain. The heroin worked best.

In my case, the solution to the pain was the body, again. I started working out (especially my torso) and the back pain has been gone for (fingers crossed) nearly 13 years. But if you want to feel better, and there’s no reason you shouldn’t?

Check your mood.
Check your posture.
Check your surroundings.
Check your attitude.
Check the things you are allowing into your mind.

You own your mind. It does what you say. You own your feelings. They are what you allow them to be.

Me? I try to practice relentless reality optimism.

I’m gonna die. That tells me I have to hurry in the things I do. I don’t have time to waste.
I’m gonna fail. That will tell me things I can do better next time.
I’m tired. That means I’ve been working as hard as I can.

I want every component of my body to be absolutely used up on the last day of my life. I’d like the organ people to look at me and say, “Nope, nothing for us. Unless we can transplant the smile.”

Smile.

Hold it.

Now you don’t have excuses. Go and do it, whatever it is as long as the stakes are high enough.

I had to cut my last duck out of my life. He was addicted to quack.

Clock is ticking. And failure is just a teacher to make you better.

Oh, and the company that was failing? Because of some changes I made in dealing with their major client, they managed to get over two hundred million dollars in business when they were near bankruptcy, generating millions in profits after I left them. They’re still around today.

I guess smiling pays off, after all.

Don’t Run Out The Clock On Life.

“I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.” – Blade Runner

Why haven’t aliens been here more frequently? They saw the reviews – one star.

One of the benefits of living in Modern Mayberry is that there are no shortage of places where you can contribute. After being assistant peewee coach for The Boy’s football (the one men play, not the game for socialist European women) I volunteered to be head coach for Pugsley’s team. The first season, I was less than spectacular. And saying I was less than spectacular is being generous.

Let me be clear – when you’re coaching third and fourth graders who can’t even calculate the orbital dynamics of the planet Mercury because they don’t know relativity and keep getting the wrong answer using Newtonian mechanics, it’s the coaching. The kids are, more or less, equally inept and equally talented. You put the big kids on the line and the fast kids as backs and receivers and wonder what to do with the small, slow kids.

As a first year coach? I was like a small, slow kid. I’m not sure we won a game my first year. That wasn’t the kids; that season was on me – it was all my fault. I’ll admit I have faults, and so will The Mrs. The Mrs. says I have two main faults – that I don’t listen and some other one.

In Europe they call it 30.48cm ball.

I remember the first game of my second pee-wee football season as clearly as if it were yesterday. The offense was on the field. We had just made a first down. There was a minute and twenty seconds (seventeen metric minutes) left on the clock. I did the math – thirty seconds a play, four downs . . . and they were out of time outs.

Wait a minute, I thought. We were up by five points. If we just ran three plays and didn’t fumble the ball and let them score a touchdown – we would win!

All we had to do was run out the clock. Our only enemy was time.

I told the quarterback to just kneel down when the center hiked the ball to him. For a second, he looked confused – we had played the whole game being aggressive on offense, and we’d racked up 28 points. Then it clicked in his head – he was a really smart 4^th grader. All he had to do was not fumble.

He had figured out what caught me almost by surprise: we just had to run out the clock. Spoiler alert: we won. Running out the clock in a football game is a valuable strategy.

I was going to tell another football joke, but it had an offensive line.

How does this translate off the field?

As I’ve mentioned in a previous post – I use a planner. Some of the things that are on my daily to-do list are straightforward. Plan to take over the world. Remember to feed the kraken. But I recently added one:

Are You Running Out The Clock?

You might think that’s a weird thing to think about every day when you go into work, and maybe it is. In the crazy, deflating and inflating economy of 2020, a job might be something that’s required for survival. But a job also might be something you’re going through the motions on and running the clock, and your life out every day watching the seconds tick away until 5pm.

Now, don’t get me wrong – if it’s important to get money to live, fulfillment isn’t the goal – feeding the family is first. In 2020 and 2021 jobs will be hard to find, so if you’re bored but have a family to feed – FEED YOUR FAMILY AND STAY UNTIL 5PM.

I quit my job at the helium plant – I will NOT be spoken to in that tone of voice.

But what happens when a job or your life becomes another exercise in running out the clock and you don’t have to worry about feeding the family?

That’s not a win.

Humans were made to be the most multi-purpose machine in the history of the planet. We’re essentially the Swiss Army® animal. Where other animals inhabit a specific niche or even several niches on the planet, humans alone have consciously gone from the bottom of the sea to the surface of the moon. We can run, swim, climb, think and even make new elements while we try to figure out how to harness the power of a star. We can then rip atoms apart just for fun, and watch C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. And all of this before breakfast.

You know that in freshman English William at least got a B on the Romeo and Juliet section.

Then we can write a sonnet, or, as Shakespeare observed in Hamlet:

What a piece of work is a man. How noble in reason, how infinite in faculty. In form and moving how express and admirable. In action how like an angel. In apprehension how like a god!

The beauty of the world.

The paragon of animals.

Humans are amazing. Shakespeare really got that. If I live my entire life, I’m not sure I can string together six sentences that are so amazing and so understand just how amazing a creature humans are.

Then Will followed up with this:

And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust?

Four hundred years ago, the Bard was ahead of me. It’s amazing to be human. We have great capabilities. But then? Hamlet goes and decides he wants to run out the clock.

But we’re not made for running out the clock – that’s why Hamlet is a tragedy. Hamlet was only thirty years old. He had grown weary of life, and he didn’t even have the excuse of having met my ex-wife.

We don’t get a deposit back for bringing our bodies back in great condition after we’re done with them. Let me be clear: we have a one use rental on these things. You need to use your body and your life like you stole it. My left hip hurts at least once a month. A lot.

My vacuum has Roomba®-tiod arthritis.

Good. I popped it out coaching those peewee football players. If I get arthritis there? It’s like a gray hair in my beard – I’ve earned it. I want the coroner to look at my body at the end and say: “I’m glad he’s not donating these organs. He used all of them up. How do you wear out a bellybutton? This guy did.”

I’ve seen a “running out the clock” mentality in my own family. When Pa Wilder started to get older, one thing I noticed is that his life seemed to revolve not around achieving, but around existing. He walked. He ate. He watched TV. He took his medications.

But he ceased doing anything of meaning. He ceased fighting. I’ll admit, people deserve a rest from time to time. But even in old age, even if disabled, and even if depressed – you can do something.

There is no time in your life where you can’t matter.

Running out the clock isn’t a goal – unless it’s a peewee football game.

How will you make a difference today?

If You Live In A Big Leftist City – Why Haven’t You Moved?

“I don’t know what you do in New York, but around here we don’t give a man a funeral unless we’re pretty sure he needs one.” – Green Acres

I think I ran over Schrödinger’s cat. Not sure if I feel guilty or not.

Growing up, Green Acres was one of my favorite television shows. I was far too young to have seen it in the first run, but the local television station showed reruns that were on after the school bus made it all the way to the top of Wilder Mountain. The bus rides were long, but I learned a lot about kindness – one time I saw someone give up their seat for a blind student. In retrospect, the bus driver probably showed poor judgement in letting that blind girl drive.

For those of you that haven’t seen it, Green Acres was about a New York attorney (Oliver Wendell Douglas) that decided he was through with city life. Mr. Douglas quit his big city life and moved to the rural town of Hooterville. The show never discusses exactly where Hooterville is, but the best theory is that Hooterville is in the Ozark Mountains in Missouri.

The show was funny in a way that television isn’t now. Oliver always tried to fit in, but never could quite adjust from his city ways. A lot of the humor was making fun of that disconnect between Oliver and the humorous cast of townspeople, though the relationship between Oliver and his wife was loving, strong, and funny. Here’s a scene when there were looking for clothes to donate:

Oliver Douglas: Why don’t we give away this one?
Lisa Douglas: No that’s the dress I graduated from high school in.
Oliver Douglas: How about this one?
Lisa Douglas: That’s the dress I wore the first day of college.
Oliver Douglas: [holding a black, low-cut dress] What about this one?
Lisa Douglas: That’s the one I got expelled in.

Why do I bring this up?

If I ever get a barn I’ll make sure I have an Internet router in there, so I can have stable wifi.

This weekend, The Mrs. and I were snoozing and were listening to the Watchdog on Wall Street, a radio show about investment. In the latest episode/podcast (Expedition New York – LINK), the host advocated what he called the Sam Kinison solution. Give good people U-Hauls® so they can leave the cities that are turning into scenes from Mad Max. “The reality of many urban areas is . . . it’s going to take a long, long time to come back.”

“Move.”

I was slipping in and out of sleep, but discussed the show later with The Mrs.

“He’s right you know. The era of law in those big cities is over. The District Attorneys in those large metropolitan areas have been bought and paid for by the far Left (LINK, LINK, LINK and I could go on forever with links). The DAs are no longer concerned with Justice,” I said. “These DAs are concerned with Social Justice. Try to defend yourself in a lot of these large urban monstrosities, and you’ll find out what the inside of a jail cell looks like pretty quickly. And that scares me because my brother got stabbed in jail. We took Monopoly® just a bit too seriously when I grew up.”

“Well, they can’t move here. We’re full.” That’s not exactly what The Mrs. said, but I can’t repeat it exactly since this is a family-friendly blog.

Although The Mrs. isn’t a social butterfly, she doesn’t exactly hate people. And it’s not new people moving to Modern Mayberry that was bothering her. It’s Leftist ideas.

I donated $50 to a Leftist group the other day. I hope they find a cure.

“They residents of those cities are the reason the cities are in the condition that they’re in. Then they’ll move here, and want to turn Modern Mayberry into what they left.”

The Mrs. is not wrong. Here’s an example.

My brother, John Wilder had this problem in his midsized town. (Yes, his first name really is John as well. Our parents were caught in a soap opera episode and got amnesia and forgot they had him and named me the same thing by mistake.) He was at the neighborhood homeowners’ association meeting when they were selecting a trash company. They recently had an influx of people from the United Soviet Republic of California who had gotten approval to leave the state from the Supreme Soviet.

“Well,” one transplant said, “we certainly must be environmentally friendly. We should pick the trash company that offers the mandatory recycling. They only cost $35 more a month.”

After about an hour, my brother talked the homeowners’ association into picking the cheaper trash company. Is recycling bad? Not at all. Junkyards have been recycling cars for decades. Aluminum recycling makes beer cans cheaper. But in my brother’s town, the only thing that was really recycled was aluminum – the rest of the trash went into the dump whether or not it was neatly sorted.

That’s what scared The Mrs.

I always get sad after crushing aluminum cans – it’s soda pressing.

Modern Mayberry is nice because it doesn’t have those things the big cities have, including all of their problems.

And the economy appears to be in a pretty bad state. The dollar bubble appears to be in the first phase of ending. The gold bubble may be inflating, and inflation will follow a deflation of the dollar, which is exactly as I predicted, but it’s about six months earlier than I had expected.

The median price (right now) for a house in San Francisco is $1,108 per square foot. In Modern Mayberry, I couldn’t find a single house that cost more than $100 per square foot. Sadly, you have to do without all of those San Francisco amenities like people pooping in the streets, riots and the San Francisco 49ers™. On the plus side, the Oakland Raiders® have moved, and if San Franciscans are lucky, what goes to Vegas stays in Vegas.

This is a true statement.

If I were in Seattle or Portland or New York or any of a dozen other large cities I would be moving if I had children. The best time to move is ten years ago. This gives you time to build the relationships and integrate into the community. In Modern Mayberry, I’m still one of the New Guys, even after a decade.

The second best time is now. The worst time to move is after the bottom drops out and escaping from New York looks like something that even Kurt Russell couldn’t do on his best day.

And, if you decide to move, here’s hoping that you find a place as nice as Hooterville. I hear they have good hotscakes there.

Remember that the worst time to move is one day too late.

Want To Get Something Big Done? Start Small.

“However, before satisfaction would be mine, first things first. Wiggle your big toe.” Toe wiggles. “Hard part’s over.” – Kill Bill, Vol. 1

Why do the French have small breakfasts? Because one egg is un oeuf.

So, this was the topic that was originally scheduled for Friday – you can tell it has a much more “Friday” feel. Back to the usual schedule on Wednesday.

Sometimes starting something is the hardest part. When you look at the time and effort that I’ve put forth on this blog over the last three years, it’s been several thousand hours. If I had to confront that level of sweat on day one it would have been daunting.

“Do I want to put that my life and energy into it?” But every great effort starts with something small.

I was reading Scott Adams’ book, Loserthink, the other day. The book goes through dozens of topics. I recommend it even though I haven’t figured out how to get Scott Adams to pay me to recommend it.

One of the (many) stories that Mr. Adams relates is that he has a formula that he used when faced with something large that he’d like to try. Think of the absolute smallest thing you could do to start. Then? Take that small action. Start. Do it.

There is an invisible presence, which reviews our actions, passes judgement, and decides who lives and dies. But enough about the NSA.

When Mr. Adams decided he was going to start writing comics and become a world famous cartoonist, the step he took was to go to an art store and buy some high quality paper and ink. How long did that take? A few minutes. But that first step was important. Becoming a world famous cartoonist is hard, and requires thousands of hours of effort. But buying some paper is easy. Now, making a toilet paper joke is hard: I tried making a toilet paper joke at the start of the Coronavirus panic. Nobody got it.

Adams talks about his preferred strategy to get out of bed when he doesn’t want to: do the smallest movement possible. “Wiggle your little finger.” Once that action has been taken, you can move. You’ve built up momentum, you can take the next step. You’ve started with just a single ounce of motivation rather than having to chug an entire pitcher.

One alarm that always wakes me up? Rumble strips.

I do something similar when the alarm rings and I just don’t want to get out of bed, The Mrs. doesn’t have this problem because I got her an alarm clock that swears at her. Every morning she’s in for a rude awakening. Me? I think of the first three things I’m going to do, in detail. They’re easy things. Sit up. Turn off the alarm. Stand up.

Then I do them.

But by then, I’ve got momentum going, and I’ve already passed the toughest test of the day (so far). I got out of bed. I know that it’s the lowest level of achievement, probably somewhat similar to that friend of mine who was bragging he had a “participant trophy” wife, but it’s a start.

Heck, I even follow this strategy with each time I write a post. I open up Word®. It’s just selecting one icon and pressing. It’s easy. But I’ve started. I then open up half a dozen or so tabs for making memes in a new window. Then I start typing. But having those small actions to prepare for the larger post (that can take hours to finish) gets me going. It’s now automatic and almost a ritual.

The Aztecs had a wonderful motto: “Believe in something, even if it means sacrificing everyone.”

This strategy even works for me on a far larger scale. Years ago, one particular Thursday night I was at home with The Mrs. I was planning on taking a vacation day on Friday. We were enjoying a nice glass of wine while Pugsley and The Boy were upstairs asleep. We’d kissed them goodnight, which is sweet. There is nothing more wholesome than a goodnight kiss. Unless you’re in prison.

I digress. We were having wine downstairs . . . then the phone rang.

My boss was on the other end – there was an emergency at work, and they needed help. I ended up working 12 hours a day for 45 days straight without a day off. During that time, the sheer volume of work that I had to do was huge.

Every day, I started by making a list. An exceptionally detailed list. Why?

My chiropractor has just one thing on his to-do list: get back to work.

There were hundreds of things to do. By breaking them down to the forty or fifty that I needed to get done that day, I could focus on those items. Without the list, I’d have been distracted by the sheer scale of stuff that needed to be done. With the list, it gave me concrete tasks that I could do to get progress.

If I was overwhelmed? I could just pick the next item. It might not be the most important item. But it kept me moving.

At the end of each day, I’d summarize the things we’d gotten done and the major things we had to do the next day. The next morning? Back to the list.

By breaking up big, complex tasks into small ones, it’s easy to get going. Once I’ve got momentum up, the list often becomes irrelevant – I’m accomplishing everything on it, and only looking back to make sure I hadn’t missed something.

Vikings aren’t afraid of death. As pagans, they know they’ll be Bjørn again.

It has been my experience that people are happiest when they are working on meaningful work at the edge of their ability. But that kind of work is scary to start – the edge of ability means that failure is a real possibility. Often, it’s hard to start because of that fear.

The solution?

Move your little finger. And get going.

Too Much News? Take A Step Back.

“I’m a reasonable guy, but, I’ve just experienced some very unreasonable things.” – Big Trouble in Little China

An Antifa member, a communist, and a guy living in his mom’s basement walk into a bar. He orders a drink.

“That’s it, I’m going to have to stop,” The Mrs. said.

John Wilder: “Stop what? I mean, please don’t stop gourmet* night.”

The Mrs.: “No. The news. I’m going to have to stop reading it. I’m just so mad I can’t see straight.”

I agreed with The Mrs. I usually do: she knows where most of the shooting irons are, and I sleep pretty heavy. The Mrs. had been following the news of our current national situation, which is usual. But in this case, The Mrs. had been getting pretty mad.

It was fairly obvious. The Mrs. often talked politics with me when I got home, but this week it was different. Her voice was louder, and she was visibly angry. This wasn’t like her at all, unless I had forgotten to install that hardwood flooring I’d promised to put in. Five years ago.

“If it bleeds, it leads” was first used in 1989 to describe the practice in journalism of focusing on the most horrific story possible. Even though the phrase was new in 1989, the practice wasn’t: there’s a reason that we got into a war with Spain, and it didn’t have a lot to do with the U.S.S. Maine.

Really, this was like picking on that one kid whose parents dressed him in a collared shirt and tie for school.

But back in 1989, news was different and less available: there was the evening news, newspapers, for the first five minutes on the top and bottom of the hour on the radio, and monthly magazines. Sure, if you had CNN®, you could get a constant stream of news.

In practice most people didn’t hook into the news. They spent time living their lives. You’d think that would make it easier for tyranny to take root. Not so. But more on that later.

Back in 1989 the news simply occupied a much smaller place in public consciousness. I think that 9/11 was what changed Americans (I can’t speak to other countries) for good, and addicted us to a continuous stream of atrocity and terror, as we all waited for the next event that would transform our lives.

I still miss Weekly World News. Wonder what ever happened to batboy?

Now news is created and brought into our lives constantly. We’re never more than a click away from news. And news is crafted to trigger our brains. Which parts? Not the parts that glow or fizz or sparkle or whatever it is a brain does when we’re happy. No, the news is crafted to stimulate an easier and more powerful set of emotions: rage and fear.

The news is extreme. And since we now have news that casts a net across the world, you can see:

Time-tested principles and values tossed in a heap weekly,
New divisions in society delivered daily,
And new outrages, fed straight to your smartphone hourly.

It seems like too much. And it is. Tyranny seems to love this situation. The important portions of news are buried in the static. When we watched half an hour of news, we had to focus on the important parts. Certainly it was easier to bury things from the American public back when news was less a part of our immediate lives, but now the news is a minute-by-minute, hour-by-hour source of distraction, how often are we so inundated we can’t sort the out the important threads from the millions of false leads?

We don’t have to live like this.

Wait until he reads what the mice are up to.

Scott Adams, Dilbert® cartoonist mentioned in one of his articles that he didn’t watch scary or sad movies. He avoided them because he didn’t want to watch things that made him unhappy. It wasn’t a casual choice for him – it was a rule.

Mr. Adams probably wouldn’t do so well in our house, since we consider Predator to be kid friendly. Heck, when Pugsley (then about 9) saw me field dressing a deer I was worried that he’d be squeamish. Nope. Pugsley was ready to put it on the grill.

I think Mr. Adams is probably a bit on the extreme side. I’m not criticizing, the special sauce on his burger is working out pretty well for him. You don’t have to remove yourself that far from the reality of the situation.

But like The Mrs., you can step back for a bit, too.

Sure, things are rough in this minute if you watch the news. You can only control so much, and can’t (at all) control the actions of Leftist big city governments in Seattle or Minneapolis or in dozens of other cities across the country.

Beer is probably a good start with your preps. Don’t forget to rotate the stock!

None of this is telling you not to prepare. You should. If we’re this far down and you don’t have a Plan B? Shame on you. Work on that. But the news won’t help you prepare for 2021 when the aliens show up. Shut out the noise, step back, and think. If you want to prepare by stocking up on food, do that now. If you want to prepare by stocking up on ammo, do that now. And if you plan to bug out at friend’s place when things go bad? You’d better toss him some money now so you’re showing up to your supplies that he’s keeping for you, and not expecting that he has planned for 34 of his closest friends to show up and eat his preps.

For most people reading this, in this moment you have every physical need met. The troubles you have already conquered are in the rearview mirror. You’ve done great. Congratulate yourself.

The troubles you may face aren’t certainties. There’s no need to fear them now. Prepare yourself? Certainly. But do it cheerfully. Tomorrow will be a great day. The Sun has yet to go out of business.

Turn off the news and your cell phone. Enjoy this day, and prepare for the rough days ahead. You’re up to the challenge.

*Gourmet Night was inspired by the ABC® television show Hannibal. Hannibal was a series about Hannibal Lecter, the character from Silence of the Lambs, but portrayed by Danish actor Mads Mikklesen, who does even better than Hopkins with the character. But the show itself has some wonderfully creepy scenes where Hannibal is cooking a fancy dinner and you have no idea if he’s cooking pigs or people. Oddly enough, this inspired The Mrs. to cook intricate dishes for dinner like beef Wellington or ribeye with crème sauce. Hence, gourmet night, which has been a success at our house.

But wherever does The Mrs. get such tender meat?

500th Post, Including Nic Cage

“Well, my normal fee is $500, but seeing that it’s for you, I’m gonna need it in advance.” – Futurama

You can always tell an identity thief’s Twitter page. Their pronouns are ‘you/yours.’

Dear Readers and Friends,

This is my 500^th post here at Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise, so I’m going to celebrate by writing a letter to you, which is great because I don’t have to steal from other bloggers research notes and prepare. Yay! Up front, I want to say that I appreciate you coming by more than you know, and I appreciate your comments, too.

I thought I’d start out by answering a question I’ve seen on the blog. I have seen more than one comment of the general flavor: Why do you do this? I’m not sure if it was:

Why do you do this? or,
Why do you do this? or,
Why do you do this?

The answer to all of those questions is the same: I really enjoy doing this. That’s at least the start of the answer. Do I have some other goals with this project someday? Sure. Maybe. But I love writing and all of those other projects depend on that fact.

I must love it though: the schedule is rough.

I heard there are no cats on Mars – Curiosity got to them first.

Often I don’t manage to finish writing these gems until it’s 4:30AM or so. On a couple of occasions I’ve jumped right from writing a post overnight into the shower to get ready for work. Why does it take so long? Well, there’s work, and then time with family, and then the time spent smoking cigars that I lit with flaming $100 bills in my hot tub filled with rare Mongolian* champagne.

Those are things I just won’t give up.

So in order to write, I have to replace the one thing that’s sort-of negotiable – sleep.

It didn’t used to take me until 4:30AM to do a post, I’d generally knock them out by 2AM at the latest. I blame The Mrs. for it taking so much longer. The Mrs. told me in 2018, in no uncertain terms, that I wasn’t working at my writing. It was okay, she said.

But.

The Mrs. then told me that the quality of my posts hadn’t gotten better in some time. Really thinking about this, I realized that The Mrs. was right. I’d been coasting in my writing like Nic Cage has been coasting in his acting since 1998.

Despite all my rage, I’m still just Princess Cage.

When I was younger, that sort of criticism might have stung me or I might have ignored it like Nic Cage does. But 2018 me realized that ego is a tool. I can dial it up, or dial it down. And dialing it down is the only way a person can have a receptive mindset so that they will listen, take advice, and improve. So I listened. And I studied. And then I did what I did in college when I had a test in Numerical and Voodoo Simulation Methods for Advanced Partial Derivatives: I worked really, really hard.

The problem with hard work is that it takes time. The odd thing I’ve found is, as I’ve gotten better (my perspective, yours may vary) I cannot abide by turning out work that I consider less than my version of my best effort. I just can’t. And the paradox of this is, as you get better, your best effort does, too. And that takes time.

If only I had low standards like Nic Cage.

Seriously, is he hiding both his receding hairline and his butt?

An example: commenters here are really sharp. One commenter (I’d mention your name, but don’t want to draw attention unless you want me to) mentioned an error I made, and followed up with, “I’m not giving you a hard time, I just got the idea from your writing that you’d want to know.” That was a really, really perceptive statement.

Old me who was driven more by ego? Would he want to know? No.

Me now? Yes.

I want to make these posts as perfect as I can make them. I want to make people laugh, out loud, and be a little embarrassed that they did. I want to present ideas that people haven’t had, and have them be intrigued at the new horizon I’ve opened up. Either one is a win. In my very best posts, I hope I do both, and have you laugh as your mind expands. It’s a good thing, because when you’re laughing as your skull gets bigger, it distracts a little from the pain.

This guy should be feeling zero pain.

What happens when I think I’ve written a great post? I hit “publish” and schedule it for 7:29AM Eastern, and I think I’ve done a good job, I’m as happy and excited as Johnny Depp when he finds out he’s purchased square whiskey bottles that don’t roll under the bed. I find it nearly impossible to sleep because I’m so happy.

When you’ve been up for 22 straight hours and are too excited to go to sleep?

That’s a pleasure. Or it’s Johnny Depp some Hollywood® celebrity on an ether binge.

That joy went from showing up monthly, to showing up weekly to now happening most (but not all) of the time. That’s killer when you have to get up 100 minutes after your head hits the pillow, being so excited you can barely sleep. But I still go to sleep with a smile on my face.

That’s not the whole story. I’ve never heard of a writer that writes only to write and shove boxes of paper in a trunk. A writer writes to be read, even if they’re writing a personal journal – they imagine their kids will read it someday. With me, as I mentioned above, it’s at least partially about making people laugh. Making people surprised at a new fact, idea, or concept works, too. But in order for people to experience that uplifting humor or mind-expanding concept, they’ve got to read it.

I try to write so the message will be timeless. But yet often the messages and the inside jokes are tied to our time and culture. That’s a contradiction.

Yes, a meme on a guy who was burned at the stake 420 years ago. Oh. Burn? 420? How blunt.

I bought Giordano Bruno’s book The Expulsion of the Triumphant Beast (published 1584 A.D.). Why? It was one of the breadcrumbs I was looking at for some reason I can’t remember. Then the book showed up. After about six pages, I realized he was making references to stuff you could have only seen in the 1584 version of The Tiger King®. Let’s be real: in the year 2050 nobody is going to remember Joe Exotic or Stupid Carol unless they follow the footnotes.

Even though Bruno was burnt at the stake for his dangerous thoughts, going through his (relatively half-baked) ideas was going to take twenty minutes a page to sift through the references. Likewise, in the year 2436, I’m pretty sure that no one will get any of my Escape From New York® references about everyone thinking that Snake Plissken™ was dead. The good news is that I don’t expect the Catholic Church in Italy to sentence me to death via Inquisition.

I guess no one expects the Italian Inquisition, which I guess is one of their main weapons?

In the year 2025, if man is still alive, if woman can survive, they may find: Joe Exotic (Zager and Evans and Wilder)

Regardless, I’ll own the topical jokes that I make. It should at least be interesting to the archaeologists in the year 3351, so there’s that. Bruno had friends that put up with him while he was writing his crazy books filled with made up heresy.

And I’ve got you guys.

I spent an hour putting together a list of people and commenters who helped along the way. I got to forty, and realized I wasn’t even halfway close to a good list. Then I had the realization that even when I got to a good list, I’d be leaving someone important off.

Dangit. And I thought I’d be getting to bed early tonight.

I had one guy who worked for me who told me, “John, you’re one of the first people I’ve worked for that says, ‘Thank you’ on a regular basis and I appreciate that.” He’d worked for over forty years when he told me that, and that meant something to me. Too often we walk through life without gratitude to those we are close to, those we work with. And those that care for us. I want to be clear – I’m 100% grateful to the people that have helped me grow and introduced me to larger audiences and commented here.

How long will I keep the writing up? My best guess is at least 750 more posts. That’s five years. And, if this experiment goes the way I think it will? They’ll have to pry the keyboard from my cold, dead hands because I’ll never stop because I’ll be court jester to the new Emperor of North America.

Michael J. Fox was a little shaky on me using this meme.

We will be looking at difficulties in the future – I think we all can feel that. But look around and realize that we can and should be thankful for the people around us, and the good fortune we find. And I am thankful for you, and thankful for the circumstances that brought us all together. If you’re reading this, that includes you.

From the bottom of my heart, thank you.

Sincerely,

John

*0.00075% of my readers are Mongolians (and that’s an actual number). I like to think it’s The Hu.

Questions: Important For Llamas And Finding The Truth

“Have you calculated the ultimate question of life, the universe and everything?” – Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

Sean Connery is a stickler for grooming. I was stuck in a burning building while he was using the extinguisher to keep a path open for me. Then he told me, “shave yourself!”

A few years ago I was meeting with a person that reported to me at work. I was asking a question with a yes or no answer. One thing that being in thousands of hours of corporate meetings has taught me is that if you ask an open ended question, people will talk. And talk. And talk. Even if they have nothing to say – those meeting room corporate doughnuts aren’t going to eat themselves.

So, a lot of my questions were phrased in the form of, “Do you know where the llama is?”

My company doesn’t use llamas except for unlicensed medical experimentation to find a cure for chronic nose picking, so in this case “llama” is really easier than referencing the “Illudium Q-36 Explosive Space Modulator” that we really make.

There are really only two answers:

“Yes, John Wilder, the llama is in the break room playing beer pong with Vladimir Putin.”
“No, John Wilder, I have no idea.”

Well, I guess we know what’s going to happen in July.

A pattern that I had noticed was that when the answer was “Yes, I know where the llama is,” people would just say, “Yes.”

Simple. We’re done. Move on to the next question.

But if people didn’t know where the llama was, what I mentally thought of as “The Story” started. The story had a million variants: “No, John Wilder, I don’t know where the llama is because it had sticky glands and we were out of llama soap and a friend came in from out of town and I just quit heroin and Vladimir Putin took off his shirt and making sweet talk to the llama last week.”

The Story is long. The Story isn’t really relevant.

People didn’t want to tell me “No.” If they had, and knowing where the llama was mattered, I could follow up with a question. Most of the time my question was, “Well, when are you going to find the llama?” Frankly, I’ve heard more excuses than Joe Biden has lost memories, so “Why don’t you know where the llama is?” was most of the time something I didn’t really care about. But they made the decision that I cared why they didn’t know where the llama was.

Never worry about food when you travel with llamas. Alpaca lunch.

I had one very bright employee, Bill Nothisrealname, that a recent college grad. He started to explain why he didn’t know where the llama was: he was winding up to tell The Story.

I stopped him.

“Bill, you were first in your class in high school, right?”

“Yes.”

“And then you went to college at Southern North Eastern Midwestia State, which is a pretty good school. Heck, I bet that you were in the top ten in GPA in your degree?”

“Yeah, I was in the top five of the class.”

I gestured at the offices up and down the hallway. “Bill, everyone here was at the top of their class in high school and graduated at the top of their class from college in a degree just as tough as yours. My boss, Boris. He’s as smart as a Vulcan that crossbred with a computer and has the personality to match. When he asks me a question, he wants me to answer that question. He’s no dummy.

“And Boris isn’t afraid to ask questions, either. He’s realized that even as a top executive in the company, he doesn’t and can’t know everything.”

Bill nodded.

I never really liked that Coppola movie, Alpaca Lips Now.

“Here’s what I think. When you were in third grade, you were smart. When the rest of the class didn’t know the answer, the teacher looked at you, right?”

“Yes.”

“And that didn’t change in high school. Or, for you, even in college. I think that you think you have to know the answer, because you were the smart kid. Bill, everyone, and I mean everyone here is that smart. You weren’t hired because you knew all of the answers – you were hired because you were smart, and had good character. Don’t be afraid to not know everything – asking questions is a sign of power. And . . . answer the question that was asked.

“Bill, do you know where the llama is?”

“No.”

But don’t-a worry – health is her new issue. She’s still all-in for Ollamacare.

I moved on to the next question. In this case, the llama wasn’t all that important, except as it related to teaching Bill that he didn’t need to know everything, and that asking questions isn’t a sign of weakness, it’s a sign of self-confidence. And if it sounded like the exchange was mean, it really wasn’t. Bill’s worldview was just a bit off. Besides, I knew that once Putin got his claws into a really pretty llama like this one, we wouldn’t see either of them until they’d ridden through the mountains together and hunted the Rocky Mountain Spotted Poodle – the only true sport for men.

The point is still valid. Whenever I’ve seen a good leader, that leader isn’t afraid to ask questions, and isn’t afraid to admit that they don’t know everything. Part of writing this blog is me answering my own questions. And I have to be right – you’re a tough but fair crowd, and you tell me when my participle is dangling.

Questions are important.

The first thing I like to question is myself. Scott Adams says that two people might watch the same event and give it entirely different meaning – he calls it watching two movies on one screen. An example is Trump: Leftists think that everything, and I mean everything he does is comprised of a pure evil that requires he eat a live puppy every day. There’s even a name for it: Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS). The symptoms include being triggered, literally shaking, wandering around in a circle muttering, “impeach . . . impeach . . . impeach.” Thankfully, many sufferers have found work as extras on The Walking Dead.

That’s one movie. There’s a second group that views Trump as a genius God Emperor who is sixteen steps ahead, playing 11-dimensional chess. This group thinks that the riots are perhaps his crowning achievement since he can use the riots to . . . ummm, I’m not sure what. I bet that plan shows up soon.

Both groups are wrong. My experience is you can talk to the God Emperor crowd, but the TDS sufferers just can’t discuss Trump. At all.

How much of my reality am I allowing to be filtered? How much am I deluding myself? These are the questions I repeatedly ask as I look for Truth.

Or you could just take their lunch money and buy yourself something nice.

The second question are my sources. People write all sorts of things, and on the Internet I can find a theory that all of the Challenger space shuttle crew survived the explosion and are still living today. Why? Because the Earth is flat. Really, that’s what they believe. There are also people who believe that the world is run by reptilian aliens who run the banks.

Of course those are absurd. The Internet is so questionable when it comes to facts that I’ve even seen Internet reports that I have hair. But how many shades of truth do we believe in each day without checking? I know that I’ve been shocked when I do research for Wilder, Wealthy and Wise that it’s not what I know that shocks me: it’s what I know that isn’t right. Who knew kittens couldn’t fly, even if you used a really big slingshot to give them a good takeoff?

The next question are my viewpoints. How many are wrong? In some cases I have taken years to figure out what I think about a subject, because I just hadn’t figured out the right way to look at it: I just don’t have a mental or moral model that fits it properly. I ended up being a ping-pong ball. There were good points on each side. How do the pros and cons line up?

When I was younger, I was more of a pure libertarian, even sometimes a Libertarian. I believed that if McDonalds™ wanted to sell me a hydrogen bomb and I had the cash, I should be able to order a McNuke®. As I get older, maybe not. And I now think that young children shouldn’t have guns: they’re much more effective using a crew-served weapon like a heavy machine gun or a mortar since they can overcome their inherent weakness by working together. If only a six year old could lift artillery shells….

My militia may be small, but they work for chocolate milk.

The final question is what can I learn from others? And I can only do that by asking questions – and having the humility to listen to the answers, no matter how stupid they are. I kid. I really have learned a lot by listening instead of talking.

So, anybody know where the llama is? Did another one fall in love with Putin?