Happiness – Page 17 – Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise

Bad Bosses, Part 2: Action Heroes, Guns, and Explosions

“Your boss is a woman? Now this is a strange bank.” – It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia

In order to dress for success they tell you to dress for the job you want, not the job you have. So I found out where my boss shopped for clothes. I’d see what they wore, and then wear the exact same outfit the next day. My boss at the time, Marji, thought that was just a little weird since horizontal stripes weren’t at all flattering on me.

It’s both a blessing and a curse to get to the end of writing your post and finding . . . it’s too long. It’s a blessing because if I can break it into two posts, hey, I’ve already got my next post written, which might get me to bed by 2AM instead of the usual. The curse part is that the post has to have a natural break between part one and part two – thankfully this one did. The other curse part is that I actually look forward to writing a post – and the one I had planned for Friday will have to wait a week. But it’s gonna be funny. Part 1 is here: Bad Bosses, Part I, Including Garfield as Written by H.P. Lovecraft, and part 2 is below.

It’s been my experience that all good bosses look the same, since they are all clones of me, or at least the “me” in that first performance review (JW note: it was described in the last post, and it was a really good performance review). And I’ve had plenty of bosses in my career – in one two-year period I went through five bosses, and I am averaging a new boss every sixteen months over the years of my career.

Based on my experiences, the traits of good bosses that I’ve had are listed below. Good bosses are:

Concerned about doing their duty for their company. They display loyalty – they do their job.
Good at setting clear expectations on behavior and expected work outcome. You know what you’re supposed to be doing.
Never smelling of grilled onions.
Able to create an environment where honest questions are encouraged.
Good at providing the tools, time, and space the employee needs to get work done.
Available to do children’s magic shows for birthday parties.
Honest with employees, and give clear feedback meant to help them improve.
Quick to recognize that mayonnaise is not a French musical instrument.
Courageous – the truth is the truth, and they’ll share that up and down the line and damn the consequences.
Reluctant hold a knife to the secretary’s administrative assistant’s neck.
Genuinely concerned about the employee.
Treat people (generally) fairly.

It’s always a shame when you have a great boss and he breaks a leg and has to be put down.

There are times I’ve managed to screw up most of the rules I’ve listed above when I was a boss – that’s why I was able to list them off the top of my head – you remember your mistakes. But you learn from them, too: One of the biggest compliments I got was when I was leaving a job for a new company. The Chief Operating Officer came in to say goodbye and told me, “I hope you’re going to be supervising people at your new job.” Maybe he wanted the new company I was leaving to join to fail, but I took it that he appreciated my efforts to learn and be better as a boss and wanted to pass that legacy on to other companies through people like me. You’re right. He wanted me to mess up that other company.

I imagine this every time I walk into work and use the remote to lock the doors to my car without looking.

Notice I didn’t mention charisma as a requirement to be a good boss. You don’t need to be an Elon Musk to be a great boss – and I’ve heard he’s not a particularly good boss unless you’re his weed dealer. Notice that I didn’t mention intelligence – in some instances really high intelligence works against you as a supervisor since it can make it more difficult for you to communicate well. Would I rather have a smart boss or an honest one? Would I rather have a smart boss or a courageous one? Would I rather have a smart boss or one that didn’t constantly smell of grilled onions?

Most of the time, the cause of a really bad boss is due to their fear, namely fear of getting fired or fear of missing a promotion or fear of missing a rung on the corporate ladder. If that were to happen? He couldn’t afford to pay for the “hot stone massages” his wife was getting from Günter, her “masseuse.” However, sometimes you get bosses that are so strange they remind you of Cousin Eddie®:

One boss I had actually lived in his office, as in slept there every night five or six nights a week. He claimed to be a member of a biker gang, and told stories of holding a person upside down from a bridge as the gang gently convinced him to be out of state so he couldn’t testify at an upcoming trial. He told about buying a girlfriend a “little car” to convince her to have an abortion. And the time he broke a bottle to use as a weapon because “The Indian” was trying to knife him.

This might not be a completely faithful adaptation from the original story.

And as a boss, whenever I needed help, or a risky event was about to occur, you could count on him to be three states away. As bad bosses go, he wasn’t horrible, since after I convinced him that if I looked bad, he looked bad, he had my back when we talked to corporate. Working for him was a really weird nine months. Normally I throw in a joke or an exaggeration in my descriptions – but in describing this boss? Nope. That all happened.

To be clear, with the exceptions listed above, almost all of the rest of my bosses have been great people who were of good character and really interested in helping me develop as a person and as an employee. But where all good bosses are similar, bad bosses are often unique:

The Seagull – The Seagull is a boss that gets a new job every year or two. Why? Because he flies in, makes a mess, and stays until he’s kicked out. Miller was a Seagull. Keep good notes for the aftermath.
The Shadow – Whenever anything important happens, they’re gone. Whenever you have a question? They deflect. Literally, it’s like not having a boss at all, or at least a boss that will make a decision. You will have a boss if one of your choices goes wrong, however, because the Shadow will quickly (and correctly) point out that he never told you to do such a thing!
The Burnout – The Burnout peaked twenty years ago, and is mad and bitter. His back hurts. You make too much money. He wants to retire, but has to wait another year for Medicare™ to kick in. Until then? He wants to inflict as much pain as possible on the office because he wants everyone to hurt as much as his back does.
Captain Ahab – Captain Ahab is great because he has a vision. Companies love Captain Ahab leaders because they become obsessed with obtaining a vision. The upside? Your mission is clear, Ahab makes sure you have everything you need. And you will work 80 hours a week to accomplish it. These aren’t 80 hour weeks of playing Minesweeper®, no, every minute is fully used because (Spoiler Alert) that Moby Dick isn’t gonna spear itself. Ahab doesn’t care about your family, at least during work hours.

He then tried to hypnotize the people in the meeting using a pocket watch. The work was rough – 90 hour weeks for months on end, but we got free coffee and he’d buy us catered dinner if we had to work past 9pm. On a Saturday.

The Sphinx – You’re always guessing. The Shadow won’t give you any sort of answer, but The Sphinx won’t tell you what he wants, but you can be sure that The Sphinx will tell you if it’s wrong. Generally loudly and when other people are around.
The Politician – The Politician cares about only one thing – does it look good? If it looks good and is immoral or illegal? Who cares? The Politician is most commonly heard saying “perception is reality.” The Politician always dresses carefully – almost as good as his boss. The Politician seeks constant movement. They can avoid being blamed for messes they make, but will loudly point out the mess they inherited in their new job. Your value to a Politician begins and ends with you being useful to them. Otherwise? You don’t exist.

Your defense if you have a bad boss in almost every case if you want to keep your job is the same: do your best at work. Work hard, and don’t break the rules or the law. Be nice. And if it sucks too much? Get a new one.

While traditionally thought of as a good boss, Washington had a few buttons you didn’t want to press, although he did light up Ye Olde Twitter® to piss of Adams: “King George . . . Washington. Verily that soundeth goode.”

One other note: if every boss working at a company is a Bad Boss, one of two things is going on:

The Bad Boss is what they really want. Unless you can make it work, you have to leave. Sooner or later, the messes a Bad Boss makes will stick to you.
It may be you. I know that there have been times in my career when my attitude wasn’t optimal. It’s probably the boss. But always leave room and examine that the real problem isn’t you.

Okay, I’m now officially sick of Mack the Knife. But I still don’t feel bad. And if you’d like to share a bad boss below, feel free.

Moderation* is for Monks (*and Ruffles)

“Xerxes dispatches his monsters from half the world away. They’re clumsy beasts, and the piled Persian dead are slippery.” – 300

That may be a slippery slope. But it’s a tasty slippery slope.

When I was about 19, I was browsing around a new bookstore that had just opened in the college town where I went to school. The bookstore had an inventory of about sixteen books, and lasted just about that sixteen weeks before it went out of business. They did, however, have one book out of the sixteen that caught my eye. I picked it up – The Notebooks of Lazarus Long by Robert Heinlein. It was beautifully illustrated. I flipped randomly through it, and as I recall one of the first quotations I found was:

“Everything in excess! To enjoy the flavor of life, take big bites. Moderation is for monks.”

When I was in college, I used toothpaste for spackle because I didn’t know spackle existed – not a square foot of wall in my house wasn’t covered in paneling. Live and learn, though my dorm room smelled minty-fresh when I checked out.

I bought the book.

Several of the quotes from that book have been mentioned before in previous posts by your ‘umble ‘ost, especially:

“A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.”

The age of 19 is a powerful time to introduce ideas to a mind – new ones tend to burn in deeply, especially those that resonate with your belief system.

But, “Moderation is for monks”? What do I do with that? Is that a formula for hedonism, a nerdy version of YOLO or The Lie of Living Your Best Life (now including cookies)? Taken entirely out of context, it could be interpreted to mean just that. Party on!

I can’t even remotely support that interpretation, however. When taken into proper context, specifically with the second quote, it means nothing of the sort. You can’t be a human that’s capable of doing half of those things on the list if you’re not a person of substance, a person who has devoted their life to learning and service, or John Wick.

John Wick kills about 77 people in the first movie because he’s sad they killed his dog, which is more than I’ve killed all year. I guess that’s just how Keanu grieves.

Moderation may be for monks, but Heinlein wasn’t telling us to party. He was telling us that we only get one shot at life, so we have to live it to the fullest. He’s telling us that there’s danger in compromise. Here’s another quote that gets us closer, from Karate Kid:

Daniel-san, must talk. Walk on road, hmm? Walk left side, safe. Walk right side, safe. Walk middle, sooner or later, get squish just like grape. Here, karate, same thing. Either you karate do “yes”, or karate do “no”. You karate do “guess so”, just like grape. Understand?

Thankfully Mr. Miyagi wasn’t from Sweden – then he’d only know Ikea®-do.

There’s a danger to compromise. The path to freedom as practiced by the Founding Fathers® isn’t a path of tolerance to deviation. The path to freedom is rigorous. It requires honest and probing self-analysis. Once the self-analysis is done, the solution immediately presents itself. For a real solution, the truth is required – lies are comforting, but never lead to solutions.

Taking an inventory of where your reality is versus where your standards are is important. We all fall short of our standards from time to time, but if you do it long enough, falling short becomes your new standard. The only solution, and I mean only solution is to avoid moderation. If you’ve failed, the “moderate” behavior that got you there isn’t the “moderate” behavior that will get you out of the situation.

Just as the path to freedom doesn’t include tolerance for tyranny, the path to good health doesn’t include tolerance for Snickers® bars every fifteen minutes. On the flip side, going for a half-hour without downing the bag of Ruffles® on the table doesn’t solve your health problems – it’s only the very smallest of steps.

There are no shortcuts.

Okay, tubing down that waterfall might be a short cut. Not a positive one, mind you . . .

For me, avoiding moderation is key – your mileage may vary. But from what I’ve seen, most people who quit smoking, quit smoking. They don’t slow down – they stop. It’s a radical choice. I’ll share my problem a problem that this girl I knew (she’s from Canada, you wouldn’t know her) had. I started out with the keto diet (several years ago) and started getting great success. I was in a time and place where it was possible to follow the diet exactly. After a while, I started reading that people took a day off. So I took a day off.

A day became a day and the previous evening. Which became Friday evening to Saturday evening. Which became Friday until Monday morning. Yes, I’m admitting that I allowed the slippery slope in that girl from Canada allowed the slippery slope in.

Thankfully we’re all out of Ruffles® and chewing gum tonight.

For me, moderation didn’t work on that diet – moderation led to failure, and that’s what Heinlein was talking about. If you have a goal, don’t pursue it half-heartedly – pursue it with everything you have. Moderation really is for monks.

Success, Luck, and Sexy Bill Gates

“Seriously, I don’t get it. What, do you shoot luck lasers out your eyes? It’s just hard to picture. And certainly not very cinematic.” – Deadpool 2

Yup. I sure feel that way when I accidentally tell the ticket taker “I love you, too” after she says, “Enjoy the movie.”

One novel I recall reading back when I was in a kid in junior high was Ringworld by Larry Niven. Niven’s fiction has always been great because when he thinks about a subject, he thinks about that subject deeply, and spins off great ideas faster than a nudist nursemaid on nitrates.

In the case of Ringworld, the main idea was about taking all the matter in a solar system and putting a big ring around it. This would have about three million times the surface area of Earth, so if you were kinda bored and needed a weekend project to add a little bit of space to your place, building a ringworld might give you enough room so you didn’t need to rent one of those 8×10 storage units. That might save you $30 a month!

I’ll warn you, if your gym teacher makes you do a lap, it might take several hundred thousand years.

Another view of the Ringworld in motion.

Outside of that huge idea of building solar-system-scale structures, Niven had a dozen others in just that one book (and he did it in other books, too) that made it especially mind bending for a young teenager to read. One of the ideas was about luck.

In the future that Larry Niven had constructed, parents were limited to the number of children they could have, but you could have an extra child if you won a lottery. Teela Brown’s parents won that lottery, and so on – for five generations. In this case, Niven speculated that there might be a gene that made you lucky, and her character was brought into the novel with that genetically-based luck as her superpower, which helped move the plot along in an interesting way.

I hear religious cannibals only eat Catholics on Friday.

The idea (like a lot of Niven’s other ideas) stuck with me for a while. I know that there are people who think that the concept of “luck” is magical thinking. Me? I think that to discard luck as a concept in a Universe as vast as ours describes an unwarranted degree of certainty about how things really work. In fact, when talking with people, I often say, “I’m the luckiest person you know.” I really think that I am a pretty lucky fellow. Some would even call me a jolly. And good.

“He is lucky who realizes that luck is the point where preparation meets opportunity,” was an unattributed saying in a 1912 edition of The Youth’s Companion. That’s a great definition, and it is one that firmly puts you in control of your destiny – most “overnight sensations” work, very hard, for years before success hits. It’s a concept I sell to my kids frequently because the last thing I want is to allow them, for a single second, to feel like they’re victims of life. That gives them an excuse not to perform – and they’ll need to pay for my nursing home, and I want them to be able to afford one with pole dancers.

But we need to face an unpleasant truth: like Teela Brown, some people are just luckier than others.

Can you back that up, John Wilder? Yes, yes I can.

People are born with different abilities – attractiveness, speed, strength, intelligence, cunning. It’s only on rare occasions that a rogue like me is born with all four. Er, five.
Many crucial events in history have swung on luck – Lee’s invasion of Maryland was stopped at Antietam in 1862 because a corporal of the 27^th Indiana Volunteers found Lee’s invasion plans in an envelope wrapped around three cigars.
Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin because his bacterial slide was accidently infected with a fungus – a penicillin producing fungus.

Talent is normally distributed – it follows a bell curve – most people have average talent, while some have amazing talent. Most people (in the looks department) aren’t 10’s – they’re 5’s, which is, after all, average. But variable amounts of talent don’t account for the huge differences in success some people see. Bill Gates wasn’t the smartest man born in 1955. Bill Gates wasn’t the hardest working man born in 1955. Bill Gates wasn’t the man born in 1955 with the richest dad.

Virus free is good too, Bill.

But Bill Gates was smart, hardworking, and had a rich dad. And he developed a good system. But he was also the guy who was in the right place at the right time to help create the personal computer business. The luckiest moment of Bill Gates’ life? When IBM© was negotiating with Bill for DOS© for their PCs, and the CEO of IBM said, “Oh, is that Mary Gates’ boy’s company?” Turns out the CEO of IBM® was on the board of the United Way™ with Bill’s mom.

Lucky.

Luck plays a role in your life. If you’re born well, that’s a good start. If you pick the right major at the right time? That’s another step on the way. Get associated with the right things at work? A business that is just the right one at just the right time? Soon enough you’re the CEO.

Lucky Charms® are also part of a complete breakfast, but then again so is a spoon, which is also inedible.

I’m not saying that the CEO is unworthy, but I do think that those who rise to the top should understand that there’s a role for luck as well. Scientific American (LINK) even has an article where a mathematical simulation of talent plus luck equals the creation of the unequal distribution of outcomes we see in the world today where vast amounts of wealth are owned by a small number of people.

Is an unequal distribution an unfair outcome? No, mainly because people make the individual choices that lead them to their fates – very few people are forced to their position in life. If I had made several different choices in my life, could I have been the CEO of a major company? With luck, sure. But I’m sure that whoever got the job is doing fine, as am I, plus I don’t have to live in a big city and wear a tie more than once a year.

And what about lucky breaks that go way beyond probability?

Yup, I think those happen, too. But that’s a future post. If you’re lucky.

Kids, Parents, and Happiness (Plus Orphan Jokes)

“Yeah, but I don’t think anybody would adopt me at this advanced development stage that I’m in.” – The Red Green Show

That’s not true. But I do know that the favorite beer of orphans is Fosters®.

My brother was an only child*. I kid. But he was the only kid in the house when I showed up. And by showed up, I mean when I was adopted – I was, I think, four years old at the time. Of course, this was after the whole virgin birth thing and then being found as a three day old baby by the headwaters of the Odense River in Denmark by Pharaoh’s Mom. But I was just too much for Denmark to handle. And too much for Head Start to handle – they kicked me out (really).

I actually remember the day I first called my adoptive mother “Mom.” As I recall, it was in some utterly mundane sentence, such as “Okay, Mom,” just after the court finalized the adoption. I can even remember my tension while waiting to see how she would react. Would she be upset and cry? Would a whirling orchestral theme surround us as she took me in her arms and wept with joy to have a new son? Would she . . . tell me not to call her Mom?

None of those things happened. She just said, “Alright,” and continued as if I had called her Mom a hundred thousand times before and that me calling her Mom was the most normal thing in the world for four year old John Wilder to do.

Mom probably picked the right reaction since we were so poor that we couldn’t afford a live-in orchestra at our house. I often wondered, was Ma Wilder as tense about that moment as I was? I know she was tense a year later when she was explaining to the doctor over the phone that I ate all of her birth control pills. Man, that was the nastiest tasting candy ever. But the pills had a side effect – I’ve never been pregnant, which I hear is a thing guys can do now.

One day I was asked by a stranger if I was adopted. Me: “Yes, what gave me away?” Stranger: “Your parents.”

The advantage of being an outsider dropped into a fully functioning family is that I was able to see a set of customs that were new to me, like having regular meals. The ordinary day-to-day web of family life was there to see, but it was also there to be disturbed and observed by the alien dropped in the midst of the ranch-style Area 51.

Families have customs, even when they don’t know that they do. One of the first customs I noticed was when I went to bed, the last thing anyone in the house said to me was, “see you tomorrow.”

For some reason, four or five year-old me found that an odd thing to say. It wasn’t good night. It wasn’t good bye. “See you tomorrow.” I found it oddly comforting, a promise that I really would see them tomorrow. That may sound odd to you, but it’s a thing that I really thought about as I stared up at the ceiling from my bed. It was, I thought, the nicest thing anyone could have said.

The original line wasn’t “I’ll be back,” it was “See you tomorrow.” Everyone in the test audience just said, “awwww.”

“See you tomorrow.” Perhaps it was the impermanence that I’d experienced in my life up until then – being adopted represented at least the fourth major living arrangement change I’d experienced since I was born – but the simple stability implied in those words made me happy as I snuggled under the covers on a warm winter night.

Please don’t think that I ever felt alienated by my adopted family, but it was certainly recognized that I was an alien – a shock of blond hair and freckles in a family of brunettes. It was like I was the actor hired to punch up a sitcom and dropped into the season 12 opening episode with no backstory. Again, I was always treated as a regular cast member, and not a recurring guest star.

My family loved me ferociously, and showed it on a regular basis – not only did Pop Wilder give me his name, he also sat and watched every football practice, came to every varsity football game and nearly every varsity wrestling match, and sacrificed years of his life worrying about me.

Kids need families. Even odd kids like me.

And kids help families.

I’m still the odd one, but that’s okay – sometimes I discover new things – such as not liking the taste of raw fish heads.

A recent study out of Europe (LINK), where I thought even saying the words “family” or “child” was considered a hate crime found that married couples with kids were happier than married couples without kids. But there was a catch – the kids needed to have moved out of the house for the parents to be happier.

Why is that?

As a parent who has one kid in the house and some already gone, I can understand that. Raising a kid is tough:

It’s long hours when they’re sick.
It’s home surgery that brings to mind a Civil War surgeon performing an amputation.
It’s being covered in vomit that smells like formula while watching a parade on a 95°F day.
It’s getting a call that they backed the pickup into the lunch lady’s car. Parked car. Not moving parked car. In broad daylight.
It’s learning how to yell loudly enough so they can hear you explain why you’re choking them.

Seven year old kids don’t think it’s funny AT ALL when you tell them that you’re going to have to amputate their arm when they complain about a splinter.

But those are the dark sides. There are the positive sides:

Seeing your child go from C’s to A’s because they finally figured it out.
Seeing your kid finally “get it” and perform better than they ever thought they could at a sport.
Watching them solve a problem – by themselves.
Getting a text from them on a random day – just because they wanted to send you a text.
Seeing them become competent at being an adult.
Hearing them tell you that, “I’m doing it, and it’s none of your business,” when they make a decision.
Having them pick a very nice nursing home for you because you love them so very, very, very much. (I’m hoping they’re reading this when I’m 103 and drooling.)

The research indicated** childless people are happier than people with kids. Until the kids move out. Then the people with kids are happier. From the list above, I can see that. From my perspective, children are like incredibly cute parasites until about age 9. They cost a lot of money, they take up a huge amount of time, and they’re less intelligent than a basset hound who agreed to be on Dancing with the Stars.

Sure, some big headaches come as kids get older. And around middle school is when the final battle for their soul takes place. From experience, with my daughters it was one type of battle (“you’re ruining my life”). With boys it is quite another (“I was supposed to do what?”). None of the battles are easy, but they represent the last stage, the last opportunity for a major influence. After that, it’s nothing but minor course corrections until they move out.

I love Pugsley, who is the last chick in our nest. But I derive a lot of satisfaction from the Wilders who are out in the world – I love seeing them change and grow. I love seeing them accomplish things. And I love late night calls where they ask for earnest advice. I certainly may have given Alia S. Wilder a bit of a hard time in The Lie of Living Your Best Life (now including cookies) and Financial Advisers, Christianity, and Elon Musk’s Hair, but she has displayed a great independence, and has owned her mistakes without blaming others.

But in one way the study is wrong. Tonight, when Pugsley went to bed, he said, “See you tomorrow.” I won’t hear that after he moves out, and I’ll miss that beautiful sentiment. But it will also be their responsibility when they (or their kids) back into the parked lunch lady car.

*For all of you wondering why my brother’s name is also John Wilder? Is it a joke? No, he and I have, in real life, the same first name: John. Really. The adoption explains it. John was born before me, so he had the name first. I was old enough that they weren’t exactly gonna start calling me by a whole different name after my fourth living arrangement in four years. Heck, that might have messed me up enough so I would have gotten a doctorate in social sciences. Thankfully, they already called my brother John by his middle name (Velociraptor, or his nickname “Screech”) before I showed up.

This was in the library at my house – I found it one day, and my parents claimed to have no idea where it came from. Perhaps it was left on the shelf by the Lady of the Lake™ to prepare me for my writing career as John Wilder so I could save the United States? Or maybe they forgot when they got it, since the book was over 25 years old when I found it. One of the two. I’m betting on the Aquatic Tart®.

**Research in social sciences is a problem that we face in society as a whole. It appears that social science research is better than flipping a quarter, but not a lot better than flipping a coin. Where scientists tried to duplicate the findings of a social science study, they could only do it about 65% of the time. Sure, that’s slightly better than just guessing, and probably what you would expect with people who kept going to college so they could get a doctorate instead of following their true calling in the food service industry and then figured out how to use government grant money for gluten free locovore vegan tacos while they study how the patriarchy influenced and controlled t-shirt design in 1978. Don’t forget, these stories are also reported by journalism school graduates. Journalism school is for rich kids who aren’t smart enough to qualify to get into Yale Law® or even Maria’s Authentic Taqueria and Law School®.

All You Will Ever Need To Read About How To Be Happy* (*Most of the Time)

“Happy premise number three: even though I feel like I might ignite, I probably won’t.” – Bowfinger

This is a common phrase when something goes wrong around Stately Wilder Mansion™. After the cussing is over, I mean.

I’m travelling for business again this week. The upside to business travel is that it allows me to break my normal routine. I almost feel guilty. Almost. The work this week is light, and my travel has been fun, the food has been great, and the work I am doing has given me a lot of new ideas to think about, and I like that. My toenails also seem to grow faster when I’m on the road but might be imagination. Or, maybe it’s my feet shrinking?

The other advantage being on the road is that it breaks routines. In this case, I found myself eating at the bar at Applechilies®. Eating at the bar makes sense when you’re travelling alone: it seems a bit less pathetic, and you can talk to the bartender if it’s not too busy on a Tuesday night by Interstate 3.14 in Upper Midwestia. This night, the bartender was a young lady of about 22, I’m guessing. We talked a bit. As often happens to me when I meet a stranger, (I have no idea why) pretty soon she was pouring out her entire life story. Seriously.

For the record, as far as you know I only had one drink.

I’ll skip the really wild parts, since the point relevant to this post is that she had dropped out of college.

“That’s fine, and you shouldn’t go to college just to go to college. What is it that you want to do, though?” That question seemed to be really tough for her. And it is a big question, but as I’ve noted again and again, people fail most often because they don’t act on their dreams, not because they can’t achieve them.

After some considerable thought, she answered. “I guess . . . I guess I just want to be happy.”

“Happy? Is that all? Happy is the easiest thing,” I replied.

And it is. Being happy is so easy to achieve it is almost trivial. Note: being happy every minute of every day is impossible. Bad things happen. Professors put your computer program up on the screen to show what not to do. Your pants split at the crotch during a presentation. You walk into a glass door going to a party with people you just met and you get McDonald’s® Hot Mustard© sauce all over the door in a big yellow blob about chest high. Oh, did I say you? Those were all me. And the computer program did do what I intended it to do, though I was surprised it did bring down a mainframe. I guess infinite loops are powerful things.

Remember, no matter what they say, failure is an option.

Warning: this advice probably won’t work for people who are clinically depressed because their brain chemistry is all messed up. That’s wiring that this advice probably won’t fix – they need to see a doctor.

But I learned to be happy when I was relatively young. It’s wickedly effective. As an example, one company I was working for was experiencing huge financial difficulties. Everyone was working to make sure the business stayed open. I was, too, but I wasn’t letting it get me down. I had a new son (The Boy) and was pretty happy at home even though the bank account wasn’t all that full.

Yes, this was on my performance review. “Employee is too optimistic and believes that the business will ultimately succeed if we work hard and solve our problems.”

In my performance review I was docked for being too happy. Apparently being angry and pissed off increases profitability? Spoiler, the company survived. Bonus points? It’s at least partially due to some changes I made – while I was in a good mood. I don’t know if they still have the “don’t be happy at work” policy.

But being happy is simple. In order (more or less) here’s what works for me.

Be close to someone – like physically close. Touching them close. Or get a pet. It’s hard for me to have a bad day when I know that someone loves me. People are herd animals (those that aren’t bears) and physical touch works wonders at making people happy. No sex with the pets, no matter how much they’re asking for it.
Have a friend you can call when something good happens to you. For bonus points, have a friend you can call when something awful happens to you – that’s rough, because only a good friend is willing to share in the bad things that happen. If you don’t have friends? Make some. I know that some people say that Jesus’ biggest miracle was having a dozen close friends after the age of 30, but it is possible. And these need to be friends in real life. FaceBook® friends are nice, but it helps to have physically known the friend for the friendship to be solid.
Exercise. Do something: Walk on the treadmill. Go for a run. Lift weights. Run through a cave being chased by a giant stone bowling ball. I’m fairly fanatical about working out every lunch hour to the point I’m a jerk about not skipping it for (nearly) anything – it really improves the quality of my day. There are times I come back from working out and feel awesome and happy for no reason at all. The harder I worked out, the better I feel.
Eat right. Avoid carbs – they screw with your emotions, especially in quantity. Don’t eat too much. Yes, I’m still fasting on a weekly basis, and some of my happiest days are while I’m fasting. Besides vegans, who is sad when they’re eating a steak? Eat steak. If you’re a vegan, pretend it’s a bacon, since bacon comes from plants, right? Meat may be murder, but it’s tasty murder that makes you feel good. But I have learned if The Mrs. is eating ice cream straight from the carton to NOT ask how she’s doing.
If you are sad, don’t drink alcohol. It’s a depressant. I refuse to drink on those rare days I’m sad. It helps. You can’t find happiness at the bottom of a beer bottle, because who’s happy when they run out of beer?
Get enough sleep. I advise people to sleep as consistently as possible, especially if they have problems getting to sleep. If you can’t sleep consistent hours, at least get enough sleep even if it’s not the same sleep every night. Since I blog after work, and often after everyone at home has gone to bed, this is the rule where I’m the biggest hypocrite.
As much as possible, avoid crappy people. Sure, everybody has a bad day and needs to share. That’s okay. But if you’re constantly complaining about bad news to your friends? Expect that they won’t pick up when you call, so try to give more than you take.
As much as possible, feel good for other people that have done well. I worked with a guy who put up a bulletin board with stories about how much the CEO of our company made. He called it the “Wall of Shame” since he didn’t think the CEO was worth that much. Me? I want the CEO to make a lot of money, that way my check looks smaller the rent for the place he rents for his mistress.
As much as possible, avoid envy. See above. If something good happens to someone, feel genuine joy for them, even if it didn’t happen to you. Envy is a wasted emotion.
As much as possible, when bad thoughts slip into your brain – sad ones, mean ones, anything Hillary Clinton would think – get them out. Think of something positive, like the fact that you don’t have to drink alone because your cats are alcoholics, or that you can be the person to put the “fun” back in funeral.
Keep things in perspective. Most things you do aren’t memorable to other people, and most mistakes you make will be forgotten in a week, unless you were the guy running the test at Chernobyl, then people just won’t shut up about it.

But you could claim that you were late to work because of a flock of wild teacup poodles.

Scott Adams, of Dilbert® fame has a very similar list – I know because after I talked to the bartender and decided to write this post, he did a video on . . . being happy. He’s in the video below discussing it. Adams is much more of the “people are sacks of chemicals” and he uses that model to make sure that he’s maximizing the brain chemicals that show up when you’re happy. It works for him and he does it without ever attempting to control his thoughts. But if you are someone who drains him of happy because you’re a complete tool? He’ll cut you out of his life. Since he’s a multi-millionaire and more-or-less self-employed, he can do it.

Me? If Ted is a tool at work and I need the job? I have to deal with Ted. Though, honestly I’ve only ever worked with one guy named Ted, and he was super to work with and one of the nicest people I’ve ever met. Unlike Scott, I don’t go for the “sacks of chemicals” theory. They do make a difference, but mind matters, too, at least for me. The one time in my life I was profoundly unhappy, I learned to manage my mind first, while finding all the other little tips and tricks of “sacks of chemicals” management more or less independently of Mr. Adams.

I think this was from the pilot of that new series, Breaking Bras®. And you can’t make a mask like that without silicone . . . .

And that’s it. Those are the secrets. Nothing mystical, nothing difficult.

Again, I’m not happy every second of every day, but when I follow just over half the steps above, I’m happy 95% of the day. I have it good. There’s no reason to not enjoy being me.

For 80% of people reading this, happiness is easy. So, choose happiness if you want it, unless there’s a workplace policy at your office, too. In that case? Become a loner, drunk, vegan insomniac that spends your free time at Antifa® meetings. And have another doughnut.

Scholarships to Avoid, and . . . College Isn’t the Best Idea for Everyone

“Now if Eb needs a diploma, he should go to college so he can become a vegetarian.” – Green Acres

Please, calm down. Show me where Bernie tried to touch you.

The Mrs. and I were off to Midwestia State (Home of the Fighting Red-Crested Yaks©) on Saturday to move The Boy into the dorms. The reality is that he had left hours before us and was unpacked by the time we got there and had already managed to flirt with the girl working the dorm desk and lock himself out of his own room for the first time. I saw the look in the eyes of dorm desk girl – “cute, but still a dorky freshman who locks himself out of his room two hours after getting a key.”

I was actually shocked they still had keys – I was expecting that they’d be subjected to retinal checks to get back in their rooms. Until I heard that the floor had a shared bathroom. A co-ed shared bathroom. Imagine being in the midst of a growler when the girl of your dreams drops on by to leave the kids off at the pool? I’ve been married forever, and I like to pretend that’s not something The Mrs. does – at all.

I was surprised. I was unaware that the diet of Deadpool® was entirely comprised of burning tires.

The Mrs. and I were there, really, for The Mrs. and not The Boy at all.

When The Mrs. had talked about The Boy moving away, it had started off with a matter-of-fact statement about “. . . when we drop him off at college.”

I had responded with, “Why would we need to go up there to drop him off? He seems to be perfectly capable of carrying a few boxes to an elevator. It’s not like we’re dropping off Stephen Hawking.” This was, apparently, not the thing to say to a mother getting mentally ready to cope with her eldest son going off to college. It doesn’t help that The Mrs. is also staring down the added mathematical certainty that her youngest child, Pugsley, will likewise be moving out within a handful of years.

She responded with: “Of course we’re going.”

If you can put “icy” into a tone, this one was nearly at absolute zero. I saw the molecules in her exhaled breath stop vibrating as they fell to the carpet and form a nice Ice-9 frost (look it up). I could see that we’d be driving the hours required to get to Midwestia State (Home of the Whimsical Crotch Goblins®) the day the dorms opened.

When I met Stephen Hawking, he told me that there are an infinite number of universes out there, and maybe even one where I was funny. I responded, “Here’s a great joke: Stephen Hawking walked into a bar.” That one really made him mad. Now I have to live in this Universe, where Kardashians aren’t fast food workers.

I can understand how The Mrs. felt. It’s almost always a melancholy time when a child moves out, unless that child is Johnny Depp, in which case his parents were happy to be able to announce to their friends that their house was now aerobics-free as Johnny was now doing Pilates of the Caribbean. I’m sorry. I’ll admit that there were uneasy questions floating through my mind. I thought the questions were about him, but in reality after reflecting, I realized the questions were really about me:

I thought the questions were: “Is he ready? Does he have the tools to go out into the world? Will he make the right judgements?”

It sounds like those questions were about him, but they’re not. Those questions are really about me. A more truthful way to write them is: “Did I prepare him? Did I teach him enough so that he’ll be competent and safe? Is he a good man?”

The only thing I’m sad about is that he thinks steak tastes like chicken.

I think college is a good idea for The Boy, and I’ll get back to his specifics a bit later after Morpheus is done with him.

But I don’t think college is for everyone, and I think it’s really a horrible idea for some people. I learned this from my association with a youth group. I was discussing the future with one young, bright kid – he was a junior at the time, I think. I asked him what his plans were.

“I’m going to become an electrical lineman.” An electrical lineman is the guy who fixes the big wires on the electrical poles so you can charge your iPad© and watch Netflix® – it’s like a superhero who can chew Copenhagen®. It’s technical work – you have to be smart. It’s physical. And most line failures happen during big storms. So when your power goes out for an hour? It’s a lineman who’s out fixing it in the rain or snow or ice or thunderstorm or temporal rift.

I stopped. I was getting ready to give him my “you need to go to college” speech, but hesitated. This young man had thought about it. He loved being outside. He hated paperwork. He was very smart. The average hourly wage for an electrical lineman is $30 an hour for a journeyman. With overtime, he could be making $100,000+ a year in just a few years and live in an area near Modern Mayberry where most of the nicest houses are available for $200,000 or less.

It was a shockingly (intended) good choice.

Being an electrical lineman also offered some other benefits: it’s not a career that you can do online. You have to physically be there. This is nice, so you don’t have to compete with a two billion or so people in China and India like you might if you were being a computer programmer.

This job has another advantage – it requires just enough certification that it shuts down people who would randomly try it, mainly because no matter how crispy the body is electrical companies hate to pay to have them removed. But the young man in question wouldn’t have to compete with illegal aliens, either.

Being a lineman has a third advantage: it is a basic service that you can’t outsource. You can ship a factory nearly completely overseas – I’ve heard of just this happening – but the electrical infrastructure required to run the United States has to be in, well, the United States.

One final advantage: you can start your own company, buy your own truck, and work the hours you want as a contractor to bigger electrical companies. It’s a business where if you want to be a contractor or an entrepreneur, you can be without too much difficulty investment.

The nice thing about working with kids is they often teach you things, too. The standard advice you give a bright kid with good values is go to college. This is clearly the wrong advice for many kids.

A kid growing up today will face more challenges in employment than any generation in history. Competition will take place in ways that I never had to consider during my career. And this is after automation removed thousands of jobs from factories as machines replaced skilled workers. In this new revolution, expertise from “knowledge workers” will be replaced by algorithms and databases that allow, for instance, computers to diagnose skin cancer at a 95% correct rate, versus an 87% success rate by actual human dermatologists. I know it sounds bad for the human dermatologists, but I got a 0% correct rate since all I would do is look at the picture and say, “ewww, gross.” Let’s see a machine beat that.

Okay, maybe I shouldn’t be a doctor.

I’m not sure that there is, in the future, a truly safe job or career to go into, unless we experience Lord Bison’s Deep Fried Econopocalypse® (and if you’re not reading The Bison Prepper, you really should be (LINK)) and then the guy who makes costumes out of leather and football shoulder pads has probably got a good career ahead of him. Owning a scrapbooking store? Maybe not so much.

Okay, I was going for Mad Max Mel, but this works. I hear they worked out their differences and went to Hooters® afterwards. Man, Jesus can put down the wings and Coors Light©.

What are the attributes of a safe job? I mean, assuming Mel Gibson doesn’t show up at your house tomorrow?

Local – If you can’t do it over the Internet, that cuts out billions of people from getting that job.
Certifications Required – A job, like the lineman example, isn’t something that should be done by just anyone – it requires a minimum intellect as well as training and experience. Many medical jobs are similar. I hate the way that we have, in my opinion, over-certified our world. But you can use that to your advantage.
Other Bars to Entry – It used to be that you could give applicants for jobs an IQ test, weed out those that weren’t smart enough, and be fairly sure that you were getting someone who was at least smart enough (or not too smart) for the job. Now? You have to use something that works like an IQ test, like a college degree.
Hard to For A Machine to Do – Blogging. That’s hard for machines, right fellow humans? I have been told that 93.2% of you like to hear that.

But there are ways that even “safe” jobs might be at risk:

Carpenter: Carpentry, in many cases, requires no certification – any illegal aliens have taken many of these jobs in certain areas.
Teacher: Why do we need all of these teachers? We can get a YouTube® lecture up, and have a teaching assistant give the standardized test.
Store Associate: Check out the product features on the Internet – seriously stop. You’re not my supervisor. Leave me alone!
Checkout Clerk: Self-service checkouts are pretty common now. I refuse to use them, period, but I can see that I’m rapidly becoming a minority.
Johnny Depp’s Sinus Cavity Cleaner: Okay, this one is really a safe job.

Okay, I’ll admit, she’d be perfectly acceptable working picking strawberries or in some sort of insect control responsibility.

But there are other problems. I maintain that too many people go to college. In 1959, only about 45% of high school graduates went to college, and only 70% of students graduated from high school. That’s a little less than a third of the US population.

In 2016, 84% graduated from high school, and 70% of those went to college. That’s nearly 60%. If you break down the math, almost twice as many people are going to college as a percentage of people in the United States. There are only two possible conclusions: either people have gotten smarter, or college has gotten easier.

Me? I’m betting that college has gotten easier, since if you poke around a bit you can find that the average grade given to students at Harvard© is an A-. It might just be my opinion, but the only thing competitive about Harvard® might be how much a parent has to pay to get a student accepted.

See, if you build a new building on campus – not a bribe – call it Skank Hoe Hall. But having your skank daughters get in because you’ve bribed a coach? Yeah, that’s a bribe. Allegedly.

I’m pretty sure that the economy has no need of many of these college graduates in any role other than cashiers at Billy Bob’s Wiggle Striptease Hootenanny©. Many of the degrees granted are not really economically valuable – 5% of degrees, for instance, are in “fine or performing arts.” Last time I checked, we here in Modern Mayberry had our quota of mimes filled at our historical demand of zero mimes and there was a bounty on any mime caught within 5000 yards (3 meters) of the county courthouse. There just aren’t very many jobs available in “fine or performing arts” to justify 5% of college students getting a degree in that field. Thankfully, many of them have experience in their true field, food service. I hear that Florida will have a degree in Pre-Barista© next year, so there’s hope yet.

One thing I did note in the hour I spent sifting through the data is that many degrees are more helpful, and, potentially more stable. Health and medical sciences accounted for 10% of graduates, and those jobs are hard to replace with a machine. You have to have people helping people. Robots can diagnose, but at least for now, a doctor has to do the cutting, and a nurse the nursing, until Arnold Schwarzendoctor 2000™ arrives.

That’s a realllllllly long thumb.

I would speculate that we have twice as many people going to college as necessary, and we could replace the expense and time wasted at college for many people simply by allowing employers to give IQ tests. Yes, doctors and nurses need school. But we have approximately 1,000,000% more anthropology degrees than required to maintain our civilization, and an infinite amount of Women’s Gender Studies degree recipients than required.

I advised The Boy on how he could take what he enjoys doing, and turn it into something useful. Don’t compete with billions of people – find ways that you can provide higher value services to people in ways that have to be local and are hard to reproduce. I think he has a pretty good plan.

Given the accelerating pace of change we’ve seen in the last two decades, I imagine that anyone starting a career in 2020 may have to make multiple changes during their life. From what I’ve seen so far, I think The Boy is well prepared for school and the changes that he’ll see in life. I think he’ll do fine. It’s time to let that eagle fly.

Unless it’s Putin’s Eagle.

Only 3% of Your Decisions Matter, or, Don’t Just Do Something, Stand There!

“We’re very lucky in the band in that we have two visionaries, David and Nigel. They’re like poets, like Shelley and Byron. They’re two distinct types of visionaries, it’s like fire and ice, basically. I feel my role in the band is to be somewhere in the middle of that, kind of like lukewarm water.” – This is Spinal Tap

Oh, I don’t need alcohol to make bad decisions. But it doesn’t hurt. Just ask Tiger Woods.

Life is filled with events. Some of them are predictable, some not. But I generally break the events that will influence the course of my life into three categories because I’m sitting in a meeting and it kind of looks like I’m actually working when I take blog notes:

Certainties

Certainties are just as shown on the label – things that are certain to happen. These are one extreme of the spectrum, for instance unless a race of aliens is intent on destroying humanity so that Bono™ doesn’t escape the Earth and infect the galaxy and drops a Moon-size batch of anti-matter into the Sun causing a solar flare that extinguishes life, the Sun will come up tomorrow. Notice I didn’t say that the race of aliens was evil, in fact it seems entirely logical and rational and a good choice – Bono© as a trade for the rest of humanity. Other examples of certainty:

Death.
Taxes.
Someone saying “Death and Taxes” when they write about certainties (at least every year since Christopher Bullock first wrote the phrase in 1716 in Ye Olde Bloge Poste on the Worlde Wilde Web).
Gravity. Like Bono®, it also sucks.
Celebrities flying in private jets to protest global warming.

Impossibilities

Impossibilities are things that cannot happen in this Universe. Okay, it’s not a creative title, like calling your dog “dog” and your cat “cat” – and we both know people who have done just that.

The number of things that I thought were impossible were nearly zero when I was under age five or so. Starships were only 20 years in the future. I would own a tank. And I’d marry Miss Roberts, my first grade teacher. About the time I went to high school, the number of Impossible things started to climb. I think this happens when you start experiencing disappointments in life, like the Space Shuttle. I mean, why did humanity spend so much time trying to get to space with a ship that had the glide ratio of a brick?

I think my Impossibles peaked in my thirties. After a divorce and NOT winning a MacArthur© Grant for my incredible ability to sleep on the couch while the kids watched Saturday morning cartoons, my view of what was possible shrank. But as I grew older, I kept seeing the same pattern – if people tried things, they often achieved them. There are, however, things that are really Impossible. What are some Impossible things?

A Beatles® reunion. A living Beatles™ reunion.
The molecules of Leonardo Dicaprio spontaneously rearranging themselves to form something useful, like a ham sandwich or a beer.
A good, new Star Wars® movie will be made during my lifetime.

Is it me, or have John and George lost weight?

I think one of the really neat things about being human is the curiosity and creativity that allows us to think of things that could never, ever happen, like Johnny Depp learning to read. It’s a great day to be alive!

Things That Might Happen

Most things in life are neither Certain nor Impossible. They fall into that grey area of possibility that makes life interesting. I find it fascinating that so much of life consists of these contrasts – in between the chaos of fire Venus and the stasis of icy Mars lies, well, us. The other day I heard an astronomer state if you take average star weight and the weight of an atom, you end up at about 50 kilograms©, whatever that is. But the average human weighs . . . 62 kilograms®. It’s almost like this place was made for us.

Hmmm.

Anyway, while not everything interesting happens in the middle, most interesting things happen in the middle. But, in the interest of continuing to subcategorize, I see two types of events in that sweet middle region:

A. Events You Can’t Influence

Sometimes, whatever’s going to happen is beyond your control. Despite what you want or any action you might take, the outcome will be the same. You can’t change a thing. Call it fate. It’s not certain that the event will happen, mind you, it’s just that you can’t control it. Some examples are:

How much Oprah will weigh tomorrow morning.
Collapse of the global financial system.
Whether Ilhan Omar will join the Hair Club for Men.

Baldness – I hear it’s more common if your family interbreeds too often . . . oh. Sorry. H/T WRSA (LINK).

So, this is a record – my first back-to-back meme. Is that not MacArthur Grant® worthy?

B. Things you can influence or control

Here is where it gets interesting. In my option (and in my experience) most people can control more about their lives than they want to admit. Personally, it’s scary how many things that I’ve tried to do in my life that I’ve accomplished, which makes me wonder if I haven’t aimed too low. I’ve recently changed one of my goals to be horribly unrealistic (learn how to make a tasty pizza, or at least buy a tasty pizza) so I’ll keep you updated on the progress on that stretch goal.

But what sorts of things can you control?

Your weight.
If you shower.
If you smoke.
Your psychic power to make Taylor Swift love you using only your mind.
If you go broke.

Now, I didn’t say you have total control of your life, but some actions you take (not decisions you make, mind you, but actions that you take) can influence most things about your life, including how you die and when you die.

But even as beautifully written as the preceding was, it’s not the where the post is going to end up. The point I’m getting to is, how many events that occur in your life, choices that you make, should you really worry about.

I’m thinking about 3% or less.

From my vantage point, most things don’t matter. Examples?

Yellow or blue Post-It™ notes?
Romaine or iceberg lettuce?
Tom Brady’s 2015 clone or Tom Brady’s 2018 clone.

Most decisions that you make simply do not matter at all. My personal difficulty is that I sometimes don’t process a decision like that. I want to make the right decision so I’ll spend time researching and learning online about a purchase I’m going to make . . . of something I’ll use exactly once and then toss into a closet. Heck, as an example tonight I’ve spent about half an hour trying to decide between one type of laptop and another. Does it matter?

Probably not.

What I did with the flowchart was just start with a random decision or event. Does it matter? I pulled out Pareto’s rule, and off the bat, 80% of decisions in your life . . . don’t matter at all. Paper or plastic. .556 or .762. Drilling a hole in your head or spending time with five year old children.

That means that 20% of the events matter. Cool. How many can your actions influence? I’m betting 80% of that 20%. That’s a huge number and from my experience it seems about right. You’re rarely a complete victim. That’s 16% left.

Is it the effort worth it. I came up with . . . 80% of the time, no. The time and effort to manage every event, even just 16% of them, is a lot. You have to let some things go, since even if it matters, it’s not worth your time to influence everything around you.

The math is simple. 97% of decisions in life you should make with either no care or minor care. They just don’t matter. The good news is that means if you manage and select the decision you make, you can live, more or less, the life you want by only dealing with 3%.

Why? I find that things we think are important, that society tells us are important decisions or important actions are not. Here’s what I’ve found:

We bought Stately Wilder Manor© about a decade ago. The Mrs. was living in Houston, and the house that we’d fallen in love with had cheated on us and was purchased by two doctors. I was working outside of Houston, but we still needed a place to live, because we were going to move. I kept looking. I found a house. Given that (then) the market was hot, I put in an offer. The Mrs. had never even seen the house until the day we moved in.

How do you get the dead hooker smell out of carpet? Asking for a friend.

The last care I bought was a replacement for The Mrs.’ MUV (Mrs. Utility Vehicle). I was passing through a large city in Midwestia, stopped off at a car lot, and bought a car. They delivered it to Modern Mayberry the next day. Again, The Mrs. hadn’t driven or seen the new car.

Okay, it’s not that bad. But while The Boy was driving it some woodland critter ran straight into the side of it. The dent does not look hooker related.

Within relatively broad parameters, most decisions, even decisions that society says are “big” decisions, don’t matter. Which house we got didn’t matter all that much, we just needed a house. Admittedly we are horrible neighbors, so it’s best if there are no pesky homeowner associations.

And I wasn’t like that on the first house I bought. We must have seen dozens of houses over months until we found . . . the one. The first car I bought, I agonized over the decision. Until I found . . . the one.

Strangely, I didn’t spend nearly enough time selecting my first wife she who will not be named and that had a much larger impact than any house or car ever could to my life. There’s a joke in here about test driving and rentals, but I’m just gonna skip it.

It’s all the aftermarket add-ons that get you.

The point is not that I was young and stupid, although I really was young and stupid.

The point is: Don’t worry. Plan? Sure. Prepare? Absolutely. But like Pop Wilder always said, “Don’t pay interest on money you haven’t borrowed yet, son.”

97% of actions you take . . . don’t matter. Don’t sweat them. And don’t spend a second worrying about things you can’t change or influence.

But on those things you can? Strike hard, like the fist of an angry god. Never give up. You can move mountains that way. Feel motivated? Good!

Now go out and get it done! Oh, it’s Friday?

Kick back and get it done Monday.

Okay, I did once upon a time pretend my toy Thompson submachine gun was a phaser®. Once.

Defeating My Biggest Enemy: Me, Complete with Hairy Kardashians and Video Games.

“I noticed earlier the hyperdrive motivator has been damaged. It’s impossible to go to lightspeed!” – The Empire Strikes Back™

Nah, I got an A. Got a perfect score on the final, plus I got to watch C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate during winter break.

Ever think you could accomplish more? You can. Read on. It’s okay, I’m a trained professional.

When I was in college I took a course called Probability and Statistics, or as we referred to it at the time, Sadistics. During one lecture the instructor told the class a story about how a graduate student working on his Ph.D. was late to a class – so late that he’d missed the start of the lecture. The student saw two math problems on the blackboard. Thinking they were homework problems, he copied them down, and spent the weekend working on them. They were a little harder than usual, but he managed to finish them.

On Monday he returned to class, and showed the instructor his results. Turns out that the problems weren’t homework: these were two unproven theorems in statistics; unproven theorems that George Dantzig (the student) finished because he had no idea that they were too hard for him to do.

In Dantzig’s own words:

“A year later, when I began to worry about a thesis topic, [his teacher] just shrugged and told me to wrap the two problems up in a binder and he would accept them as my thesis.”

At least he didn’t have to shag the professor, baby.

That’s a pretty good story, especially because it’s true and a great example of how much you can achieve when you’re too stupid to know that what you’re doing is impossible. It’s also a very good story to tell the boss the next time you’re late for a meeting at work, because his reaction will likely allow you time for independent exploration of all the employment opportunities this great nation has to offer.

So how do people sabotage themselves so they don’t achieve all that they could? How do they turn themselves into their own worst enemy? Today I’ll present three reasons. There are more, but what do I look like, a budget Tony Robbins?

I was wondering why that seminar only cost $14.98.

I think the worst is negative inner dialogue.

Ever make a mistake? Ever beat yourself up about it? Yeah, me too. But what I noticed is that when I beat myself up, I used to say things to myself that were meaner than any person had ever said to me in real life. Notice I said “used to” – I simply don’t put up with it any more. When I sense that inner beat down coming, I just shut it down.

If your best friend who has your best interests at heart wouldn’t say it to you, why would you say it to yourself?

Recently I read about a research study that indicated that you had more impact when motivating yourself if you encouraged yourself in the third person. Saying to yourself, “You’ve got this, John,” is much more powerful than, “I can do this.” Why? I have my guesses – it’s probably that you don’t want to fail when you’ve got some other person involved, so you dig that much deeper.

If that’s the case, how much more damaging is beating yourself up verbally in the third person? “I’m stupid,” versus “you’re stupid.” Think about it – and I advise you not to put up with your nonsense. Shut it down.

Yes, this happened.

Negative inner dialogue doesn’t help me, especially since whatever mistake I made was generally not even noticed by others. I hate to break this to you, but outside of your family, you’re less important than you think. People don’t notice the things you do all that much, and if they do? They don’t remember.

That may seem like a downer, but it’s really the opposite. It’s freedom, and another reason not to beat yourself up.

Next on the list? Belief that your goal is impossible.

Well, it isn’t possible, until you actually do it. Nobody had solved Dantzig’s theorems until he solved them. Heck, the Kardashians are too dumb to know they shouldn’t have hundreds of millions of dollars despite an utter lack anything resembling talent or a redeeming feature. Oh, unless you count their copious amounts of body hair. And I wouldn’t advise that you count their body hair, since that would take far too long. Plus? You’d get Kardashian grease all over you.

This is right before the hair covers them entirely in a protective cocoon so they can become giant genderless moth people.

I’ll note that nearly every time I was given an assignment that seemed impossible at work, I managed to crack the problem. What was off was my definition of impossible. I eventually ended up working for a boss that pushed me even farther. Nine times out of ten, he gambled and won. The tenth time? They fired him. Don’t feel bad for him – his severance package was about $2 million.

Finally, there’s not giving it all you’ve got.

This one is insidious. Here’s my example: in my career (the one that pays the bills, not this one) I’ve accomplished most things that I’ve ever wanted to do and have a whole batch of odd stories that I’ll maybe get around to telling someday. Does this mean that I aimed too low, that I didn’t push hard enough? Nah, I don’t think so. I’ve seen what some of the people at the top had to do to get there, and I like sleeping well.

It’s tough at the top. Everything is a tradeoff.

But here I can push myself, and sleep well. So, I write. I give that all that I’ve got, especially once I understood that I’d never get better unless I really pushed myself. And I can see results. I had a post that related to one I’d written back in 2017 that I was thinking of linking to. I pulled up the old post. I read it.

What made me happiest about the old post is: I’m better now than I was in 2017 – a lot better. How much better will I be if I keep pushing it, keep focusing on it for 20 hours a week for another decade? I have no idea. But we’ll see.

But I had my own George Dantzig moment before I ever heard his story:

I was in high school and a friend came over to my place. He and I sat down to play some video games, since we didn’t have a car. He went first. Normally on my first guy I’d score 10,000 or so. But my friend scored 50,000. I was amazed – I had no idea it was possible. So, my first guy up? 50,000 points. This was my best score ever.

What had been missing was belief. Seeing my friend play with no higher a skill level than I had do five times better than my best ever score flipped a switch. I believed. I could perform better than I ever thought possible.

But right now, it’s time:

Time to believe in yourself. Time to believe that your goal is possible. Time to work harder.

Go on, you’ve got this.

Stonewall Jackson, Patton, Wrecked Cars and Dealing with Fear

“Yes, well, I imagine if it were fear, my eyes would be wider.” – Serenity

Sadly, I’m a Sagittarius and my name’s not Morris or this could have been comedy gold.

I had a Ford® Taurus©. Yes, that’s an admission of guilt. Even worse? It was a pale-lime green. I imagine someone in marketing called the color “seafoam”, but if the sea has foam that color, it’s probably in a congealed blob off the coast of China and consists of anti-freeze, extra kidneys, and despair. After 150,000 miles the Taurus© died on impact with a pickup whose driver decided stop signs were optional on Tuesdays. But the other driver made up for wrecking my car by not having insurance, so there was that benefit.

As I recall, there were three buttons on the dash of the Taurus® to program the display. Since I am a man, reading the manual was out of the question. The display had the option to show various things – it had a compass mode, a thermometer, and a countdown timer to show the number of days until Obama left office. I only knew it had a compass mode because when I bought it (used) it had the compass on. After I changed the battery, it reverted back to the “Only this many days until Obama is gone” mode.

I wanted it to show the thermometer.

Clearly it never gets hot in summer, so it must be global warming.

I had no idea how to change modes – since the manual was only two feet away in the glove compartment, it might as well have been in Mongolia, and not the easy to reach parts of Mongolia. I reached my hand out to start mashing the buttons with all of the skill of a baboon wearing a pink tutu attempting to clear a paper jam while making double-sided color copies at Kinkos®. I hesitated. What if I ended up turning the car’s language into French? Would I have to wear a beret and learn to smoke cigarettes while being nihilistic?

Then I started to panic. Being French was awful, but what would happen if I accidently turned the car’s units into metric? I don’t even know how to drink in metric. Is sixteen a lot of kilometers of beer to drink? How many metric days until Christmas? How many milliliters of cheeseburger do I order at Sonic®? Perish the thought of being French and metric. That’s how we got Canada, after all. Sure, the Canadians look like us, but that’s how they infiltrate.

Sure, they look polite. But just try to dissect one to see if it’s an alien from outer space and they get darn grumpy.

The thought then hit me – I’ve spent literally my entire life tearing stuff apart to see what was inside, and then trying to put it back together. That’s been my mode since, much to Pa Wilder’s dismay, I discovered screwdrivers. If I wasn’t tearing stuff apart, I was experimenting in other ways. Sometimes the result wasn’t that great, like the time in fifth grade when I took a letter opener and put it across both prongs of an electrical plug.

An electrical plug that was plugged into the wall.

Oops.

Immediately there was a big spark, smoke, the smell of ozone, splattering molten metal, and then complete darkness in my room. I knew where the breakers were, and went to flip mine back on. I’m pretty sure Ma Wilder smelled the ozone, but didn’t say anything since my bedroom wasn’t actively on fire.

I’ve done stupider things. Some of them even when I was sober.

So, there I was sitting in my car. Once I was brave enough to slam a letter opener between into an active electrical circuit, and now I was hesitant to push some buttons.

What? I came to my senses. It’s just a car.

I pushed buttons, didn’t turn French, and even better, just like the Apollo program, I avoided having to use the metric system entirely. And I got rid of the hesitation.

What led to the hesitation?

Fear. It’ll creep up on you, first in small ways, and then in large if you don’t fight it every time it shows up.

General Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson said, “Never take counsel of your fears.” And Jackson didn’t – he even got his nickname by being famously fearless at Bull Run when he rushed his troops to fill a gap in the line. “Look, men, there is Jackson standing like a stone wall!” Not a bad way to get a nickname.

Stonewall understood that fear was his most potent enemy. Well, fear and that musket ball his own troops accidently shot him with.

For the record, he didn’t ever have a microbrew or a nonfat anything.

So, why is fear so bad? What’s wrong with a little fear?

That’s simple: fear is at the root of every significant problem in the world. Period. I understand that’s a pretty bold statement. Can I back it up? Sure.

Let’s take envy. It’s at the root of lots of bad things, like Leftism which is almost entirely based on envy. What causes envy?

Insecurity. Think Elon Musk feels envy? Probably not, and I could name a dozens of people who don’t feel envy. They’re not envious because they’re not insecure. They don’t feel uncertainty, anxiety, or self-doubt. All of these emotions are based in fear and lead to envy.

That’s the same with every other negative emotion – anger, shame, et cetera. It’s just another face of fear. And evil things come from evil emotion (and Disney®), not from rational calculation.

Frank Herbert got it right, writing about a rite in his novel Dune:

“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”

If Dune® had sandcatworms, would the spice be in the hairballs?

Okay, Herbert is a bit flowery. But the concept is right. Fear robs you, decision by decision, of your entire life. And fear is used to manipulate you. Today I was reading Google® News™ and counted 38 major stories on the main page. Here’s my analysis:

3 of the stories were mildly amusing or interesting.
2 of them were potentially useful to me – they were stories I could use to make myself better, depending upon my situation.
8 were useful only to manipulate and titillate readers through fear.
25 were utterly useless.

I read the amusing stories. I read one of the useful stories – the other didn’t apply right at the moment. I’ll admit, I got caught and read one or two of the useless stories. I skipped the fear manipulation stories. Fear is a tool that can be used against you, but only if it makes you forget your values. There should be no news, no story that can make you waiver from your values.

What’s the cure for fear?

Action. Press the button. Ask the girl out. Lift the weight. Press the button in your car. Successful or not, you will have overcome your fear. You will be stronger. You will have less fear the next time – the only way to escape your fear, is to go through your fear. And fighting fears when they’re small (like resetting a car dashboard) is easier than waiting until they grow to the size where they eat away your life like vintage Elvis© on a peanut butter and bacon cheeseburger.

Is fear useless? No. Fear can be used. Fear should be used.

General George S. Patton, riffing off of Stonewall, said:

“The time to take counsel of your fears is before you make an important battle decision. That’s the time to listen to every fear you can imagine. When you have collected all the facts and fears and made your decision, turn off all your fears and go ahead.”

Fun fact: General Patton is tired of your whiney crap.

So, maybe Patton is saying I shouldn’t fear the metric French, but maybe I should stop the whole “turning a letter opener into a bedroom arc welder” because, in the words of Robert A. Heinlein:

“Stupidity cannot be cured. Stupidity is the only universal capital crime; the sentence is death. There is no appeal, and execution is carried out automatically and without pity.”

The Lie of Living Your Best Life (now including cookies)

“Smoking marijuana, eating Cheetos® and masturbating does not constitute plans in my book.” – Breaking Bad

In a constantly downward spiral, Kermit finally found the downside in living his best life.

A few weeks ago my daughter, Alia S. Wilder was in town. We were in the middle of preparing dinner of steak, steak, and more steak for the grill when I saw Alia diving face first into a plate of cookies.

When she came up for air I asked innocently, “I thought you were on the keto diet?”

I did notice a mood change when I was on the keto diet: I got tired of cheese and my only joy in life consisted of watching television shows about murder.

“No, she said, “I’m living my best life.” I could even hear the italics in her voice. It’s amazing how well font choice carries in my kitchen. I think it’s the tile.

John Wilder: “Umm, what exactly does ‘my best life’ mean?” I thought I could tell by context, but I wanted to give her a chance to explain.

Alia S. Wilder: “It’s living your life by being who you are naturally. It’s doing what you want.”

I slowly shook my head. That’s exactly what I thought it was. Cue volcano erupting:

One of the nice things about being a parent is that you can be honest with your children when they are being utterly foolish. This was one of those times.

My first words were: “You know this is going to go into the blog, right?”

Is this why they hold the neighborhood block party when we leave for vacation?

I then started a tirade. As this was the second time that I’d met her boyfriend, you’d think I’d hold back to give a good impression that I was a nice, genteel father who wears cardigan sweaters and puts on loafers and talks to hand puppets as if they were real. You’d be wrong, and I tried the hand puppet thing, but one of my personalities thought it was creepy. No, Mr. Rogers© wasn’t here that night. I let loose with a full broadside worthy of Nelson’s fleet at Trafalgar.

I was a horrible pirate captain. They told me, “The cannon be ready,” and I responded “are.”

“You realize that’s the single stupidest piece of advice you’ve ever been given, right?” I continued, not even having gotten warmed up yet. “It’s the advice a teenager thinks up in the shower and then considers it a deep thought because, well they’re a teenager in middle school, and middle school age children are the single stupidest subspecies ever set loose on planet Earth.” I paused for breath. You need decent lung capacity if you’re going to go into full rage enhanced by spittle.

I continued. “Why is it stupid? Because people are awful. You’re awful. I’m awful. We have to work each minute to NOT do what we’d like, because what we’d like to do, if left only to our own desires is . . . also awful. You, me, every single one of us.”

I could feel the full rolling boil starting.

“Living my best life is the strategy of a three year old that wants to eat an entire box of Oreos® at one sitting and then lie about it and blame the poodle. Living my best life combines all of the worst ideas of abandoning duty, honor, and responsibility in only four words: ‘living my best life.’ Oh, I decided not to work today. I’m living my best life. I decided that I would rather spend my money on avocado-flavored non-fat organic vaping juice rather than baby formula. I’m living my best life. I don’t care if I offended you, I have to speak my truth when living my best life. Oh, I’m sorry Western Civilization, we can’t go back to the Moon and advance the human race to the stars because I’m busy shopping. I’m living my best life.”

What came to my mind during this tirade conversation were the words of the dead French scientist, mathematician, religious philosopher and part-time Uber driver Blaise Pascal:

“Man’s greatness comes from knowing that he is wretched: a tree does not know it is wretched. Thus, it is wretched to know that one is wretched, but there is greatness in knowing that one is wretched.”

In this quote when Pascal wrote “wretched,” he meant, “of inferior quality; bad.”

Follow your nose, it always knows. Specifically all about pressure, mathematics, and designing a computer by the age of 19, in 17^th Century France.

Pascal didn’t think mankind was naturally awful, he knew that mankind was naturally awful: prideful, selfish, lustful, mean, and greedy. I’m not sure how Pascal got that idea, maybe he was picked on about nose size when he was in middle school. But he was correct. We’re inferior. But our greatness comes not from that obvious inferior quality, it comes from knowing that you’re awful; and then not being awful.

If we know that we’re awful, we can do something about it. If we think that being awful is okay, that we can live our best life, then it’s an excuse to be awful. In fact, it’s worse than that. Aleister Crowley wrote, “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law,” which has been appropriated by the Church of Satan® and correctly interpreted to mean . . . do whatever you want to do.

Apparently living your best life allows you to dress like Dr. Evil on a regular basis.

One particular website (not gonna given ‘em a link, they’re the first one listed when you Google® “living my best life”) has a list, which includes the following gems of personally corrosive advice on how to live your best life (note, my comments are in italics):

Do what you want – let your inner three year old make all your decisions.
Speak your truth – not the truth, your truth since hearing the actual, real truth from other people might make you sad.
Practice sacred self-love – and everyone should celebrate you for your sacred self-love, since you deserve to live your best life because you suffered so much because of your (INSERT VICTIM STATUS QUALIFICATION HERE).

Not all of the advice on the website was horrible, but most of it was shallower than the gene pool that produced Johnny Depp your typical congressman.

So, under this philosophy, if I’m fat, the problem isn’t that I’m fat and should have fewer cookies: the problem is the world is fataphobic.
If I think I’m a cat, the problem isn’t that I’m delusional: the problem is that the world is transspeciesphobic.
If I think that being an American has nothing to do with the values and norms of the last 300 years: the problem is your problem for being tied to the past.

When the cookies ran out, the monster came out.

So, in summary, living your best life is nothing more than permission to be the very worst person you can be. All that being said, Alia S. Wilder really does make some tasty cookies.