Happiness – Page 20 – Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise

Read This Blog or I’ll Shoot This Car and You’ll Feel Guilty Forever

“You have learned to bury your guilt with anger. I will teach you to confront it, and to face the truth. You know how to fight six men. We can teach you how to engage six hundred. You know how to disappear. We can teach you to become truly invisible.” – Batman Begins (The good 2005 one, not the earlier crap.)

If you don’t read this blog, I’ll shoot this car. Then wouldn’t you feel guilty?

I sat staring at the ceiling in the darkened apartment, the lights from the parking lot casting shadows on the walls. I couldn’t sleep. I tossed and turned. Finally, I resorted to reading. I’d read every night until I literally fell asleep with a book in my hand. I remembered, in particular, reading a big, heavy hardcover at the time, one that was about 1053 pages long.

I was being eaten alive inside. I was wracked with guilt.

What was I scared of?

Well, I hadn’t finished my master’s degree yet, but I had moved halfway across the country and started a new job. No one was asking me about my degree, but I knew that dreaded moment was coming soon. “So, John Wilder, where’s your degree? We need to see a copy.”

This was impossible. My thesis wasn’t even written yet. And I had moved halfway across the United States and taken a new job.

My torture continued. Outside of the lack of sleep, the guilt from knowing that I hadn’t finished my degree sent a chill down my spine (or is it up my spine?) every time I thought about it. At work. Shopping. Waxing my moose statue. Finally, after a week or so of this torture, I went in to my boss, who was only five or so years older than me. We started off talking about the work I was doing. At the end I brought up the degree.

John Wilder: “Oh, and one other thing, I’m not quite done with my master’s yet, I still need to finish and defend my thesis.”

Boss: “Whatever. I’m not even sure the company cares. In fact, I’m pretty sure it doesn’t. We hired you, not a degree.”

And that was that.

In that moment all the fear left me, and I felt silly for worrying about it, and even sillier for keeping it bottled up inside of me, eating away at me like a Kardashian at an all-you-can-eat waffle and cream cheese covered bacon buffet. Sometimes that horrible truth you have bottle up inside of you . . . is no problem at all.

This has been the norm in my life: if I confronted the problem, or was honest about it upfront, the problem (most times) went away. And when the problem didn’t go away, fixing it because I was honest and upfront was easier than the times (in the past) that I’d waited to confront the issue.

Guilt is a cousin to Worry, and not the good kind of cousin that brings a twelve-pack to your backyard barbeque and then offers to watch your kids so you and the wife can go have a dinner out. No. Guilt is a bad cousin that shows up at 3am, kicks your dog, and eats that steak leftover you have in the fridge while talking with its mouth full and smelling vaguely like a wooden barroom floor near a Marine base. But Guilt and Worry are related.

Worry is paying for the future problems you might have, whereas Guilt is worrying about the repercussions from past actions. Let’s be real: I wasn’t worried so much about not having the degree (I did finish it a year later) but was really worried about having moved halfway across the country only to be fired and become economically destitute – a warning sign for future people to say, “don’t be like that idiot.” I had done the deed. Or in this case not done it. My question was what would happen once I’d been found out.

And most of the time your imagination can create future consequences far scarier than they ever would be in normal reality. Unfortunately, I’m an imaginative guy. I can go from getting a “C” in a college class to getting kicked out of school to living in a squalid drug den and smelling like Johnny Depp in about three steps.

The choices (if you don’t want to eat yourself up alive inside) are simple: confront the guilt, or, better yet?

Don’t do things that make you feel guilty.

Duh.

What is Wealth? Is it More Than Money?

“Aristotle was not Belgian, the principle of Buddhism is not “every man for himself”, and the London Underground is not a political movement. Those are all mistakes, Otto. I looked them up.” – A Fish Called Wanda

This may be the most important philosophical question of our lifetime, especially if you’re haulin’ oats.

The other day I was listening to the radio and the hosts (Walton and Johnson) were discussing wealth. Since actual radio around Casa Wilder consists of a single AM station broadcasting crop reports and lean cattle futures and an FM station that is “All Hall and Mostly Oates, All the Time!” Therefore? We listen to radio stations on the Internet. Walton and Johnson are out of Houston, but we also lived in Alaska, so we also often listen to a station we like out of Fairbanks. Obviously, when the radio in the bedroom says it’s -40°F and the kitchen radio says it’s 85°F, there’s likely to be wind and a rainstorm down the hallway.

Maybe I misheard that lyric?

Anyhow, Walton and Johnson were discussing wealth. They mentioned that a recent study showed that, in Houston, a survey said that to be considered “wealthy” you had to have $2.5 million dollars in net worth. To be considered “well off” you only needed to have $1.4 million dollars – which is quite a bargain – many people work a whole year and don’t make that much money!

After a bit of research, I found the source of the story: Charles Schwab®, the investment firm. You can read the study here (LINK). In San Francisco (according to Schwab©), it’s even more money than Houston to be considered wealthy: $4.1 million.

Looking at the best numbers I could find, the median household net worth is about $100,000. To be in the paltry $2.5 million Houston-wealthy club (versus the expensive San Francisco $4.1 million club), means that your household is in better financial shape than 96% of American households.

But that’s the problem with this survey – since, at most, 4% of the people taking the survey would be considered “wealthy,” most of the people taking it have about as much idea about how much money it requires to be wealthy as a monkey trying to understand Nietzsche. I mean, apes read philosophy, but they just don’t understand it, Otto. And I imagine people who aren’t wealthy don’t understand that, either. The answer is just a bit more complicated . . . .

I’ve done about 70 posts on wealth, but I need to step back and ask that question: what is wealth? To say it’s purely a number is to show that you don’t understand wealth. Money represents not a fixed number, but a possibility.

If you measure wealth in love . . .

What is wealth?

Wealth is time. In fact, if you go to the basic equation – your life is made entirely out of time – nothing else. Your life literally is the sum of the things that you do with your time. So wealth is doing what you want to do with your time, which means doing what you want to do with your life. It’s entirely probable that a Wall Street investment banker with $10,000,000 in the bank from a job he hates and shrill wife with more implanted silicon than actual original equipment is less wealthy than a hunting guide who lives in a log cabin in Alaska who has less than $5000 in the bank.

In my case, I’ve traded a LOT of time for money in the past. My theory was to work hard while I was young so that I could build my career so I could save enough money so that my family would be secure in the future. You would say that working all the time is not a very wealthy (or in some cases healthy) thing to do, except . . . I loved the job I was doing! In many cases it was stressful. Difficult. Uncertain. Long hours. And when I did an awesome job? Yeah, it was like winning the World Junior Baking Championship. Not that I can bake, or even that there is a World Junior Baking Championship, but I think you know exactly what I mean.

I watched the documentary Lynyrd Skynyrd: If I Leave Here Tomorrow this weekend, and those guys simply loved playing music. They’d do it all day long, even when they weren’t getting paid. Being a rock star was awesome, sure, but it wasn’t the point. They were wealthy as soon as they could get paid for playing small clubs. Arenas were just the gravy.

And, yes, I’ve said in the past (and still maintain) that to support yourself, support your family you might really have to suck it up, buttercup, and work jobs you don’t like because an Alaskan hunting guide has really crappy health insurance and his spouse has neurohemoblastaphobia which can only be cured by a mouse egg (before the baby mice hatch) extract that’s been strained through bigfoot hair and breathed on by an honest politician. Yes, it’s as expensive as it sounds. Then you have to work the job you have rather than a job where you play guitar all day.

Wealth is freedom. Could you quit your job tomorrow without having a new one and still meet all of your obligations? For most people, the answer is no, either because the obligations are too high or the amount of cash they have is too low – 60% of people in the country live paycheck to paycheck. However, sometimes it’s self-inflicted.

Some people trade their freedom for a car payment. I’ve seen people who purchase a $60,000 pickup, and then have to pay $1,200 a month in car payments. I don’t know about you, but my 4,000 square foot house has a payment of less than $1,000, so it’s not making me freer to be tied to a depreciating asset that I have to pay $14,400 a year for. Plus insurance. Plus whatever taxes the state would extract for a $60,000 vehicle.

I have a pickup. It cost $6,000. I paid with cash. It didn’t cost very much because the car dealership was having a hard time selling a stick shift. The truck runs fine. Engine is a bit small, but 95% of the time it’s just being driven by a teenager to school and back.

But if your idea of wealth is a $60,000 pickup, I’ll never be wealthy in your eyes.

But I can be free without a $60,000 pickup.

And, no, I’m not a radical get rid of stuff and never buy anything sort of person – I’ve probably got more books on some topics than any library in my state. And, I’ve bought more than my share of crap in my life, but very little of it has made me happy, and very little of it has made me a better person. Except for the PEZ®, of course. And I’ve been on some incredible vacations.

Wealth is time. Wealth is freedom. And your wealth is determined by things you “need.”

The less you need? The wealthier you are, and the more choices you have.

Friends, Flexibility, and Value Creation: Keys to a Corporate Career

“The thing is, Bob, it’s not that I’m lazy, it’s that I just don’t care.” – Office Space

I’m glad cats don’t run corporations. They like to play with their prey before they kill it.

The economy is changing. That’s a newsflash from every decade since Sunday in 12,241 BC, when Chieftain Brad Von Thundernose (he snored) invented bacon-wrapped shrimp. Unfortunately, Brad was allergic to shellfish, and puffed up like Elvis on carbohydrates. Brad aside, if you look back in the distant past to the year 2000 (which, for some of us, used to sound futuristic) you’d see that the largest five companies were:

Exxon-Mobil®
General Electric™
Ford©
General Motors®
Wal-Mart™

What were the largest five companies in 2018?

Apple™
Amazon©
Google®
Microsoft™
Facebook©

They’ve all changed. And these are the five biggest!

I’ve been fortunate to (so far) to be able do the same thing for most of my career, admittedly not with the same company. I’ve generally been okay doing it – in at least one place I’ve worked some things I set up literally saved the company a few years after I left. That’s nice – the thought that hundreds of folks still have a job because of something I did.

And at a different company, I saved a career. Pay attention and it might help yours, too.

Let me explain:

A friend of mine was offered a chance to move out of our department and move into recruiting. She took the opportunity. Then the economy took a downturn. And she didn’t get along with her boss. And was close to getting fired. I told her she was over thinking it – no way that they would fire her.

This particular person was smart, talented, and personable – not smelly, irritable, and brooding like your humble author. I checked around and found out how close she was to getting fired. The answer was very close to being fired – they’d started the 90 day clock before the final paycheck.

As a department head, I knew that she was better than many folks everyone that I had in my department. Her boss, however, “didn’t want to transfer a problem” and “this person isn’t a good fit with the company’s values.” That’s HR speak for “it’s personal.”

Thankfully, I managed to drag my boss into the idea that she’d be perfect for our department, and he was able to go up three levels of management to convince his great-grand boss that she’d be a great fit.

Today? She’s an executive VP, hauling in the big bucks (seriously big bucks), but she had to change career focus after leaving my group. Essentially now she’s a corporate ninja-nun who goes around the company smacking people’s knuckles with a metaphorical ruler

Do not make my friend angry.

Lessons:

Have friends that can help you.

In a big corporation if your intent is to move up the ladder, you need friends. Let’s face it, we all screw up. If someone higher up in the company can vouch for you when they’re looking for a designated victim, a highly-placed mentor (or sponsor, or friend) can tip the scales in your favor. That being said, if your role has put you in a spot where you were the designated bad guy (“no, you can’t spend that money for elephant rides, PEZ®, and pantyhose for the welders in the assembly line”) then sometimes you won’t be able to survive after your sponsor is gone.

Why do I put this one first? Despite how good you might be, having someone to cover your back is huge – it’s sometimes the difference between unemployment and the executive suite.

The reason they say, “it’s not what you know, it’s who you know”? It’s true.

When you look above you in the org chart and don’t see anyone who would go to bat for you? Your time at that job might be short, my friend.

Be able to change what you do.

Chances are you have skills, unless you’re at the DMV, and heck, they have skills, too, if you count seething rage and the ability to take literally the worst possible picture of a human being. Understand that during your career you might have to take those skills and transfer them from making people who are attempting to get a driver’s license miserable to, say, making people who need a new license plate miserable. If I could write one thing on a billboard, the idea that “What you’re doing today might have no value in the future” would be second on my list. Sadly, “Do you know where my car keys are?” would be number one.

But it’s true. Just as Exxon-Mobile® has been replaced by Apple™ in valuation (and in my gas tank – sadly my car only gets four miles per iPhone®), the idea that you’ll spend your career doing the same thing is becoming less common. How many people started their career in nuclear engineering and ended up running a carpet installation company staffed entirely by nude circus clowns? More than I can count!

Be able to create value.

At one place I worked, there was an employee that watered and dusted plants. That’s all she did. The company had a huge office, and it had plants on every floor. I had no idea that you had to dust plants, but, apparently if the plants live only by the dull fluorescent light of corporate America, you do. One day (when profits dropped from enormous to merely massive) the plant lady (and the plants) were gone. I think someone figured out that plants in the office building didn’t add a single dollar to the company profitability, so they let the plants (and the plant lady) become free-range.

One person in the company was notoriously difficult to work for and with, made business decisions like a drunken leper in a fish factory (I have no idea what that means, but it can’t be good), and smelled vaguely of gin and regret. I asked my boss, “Why don’t they fire him? He stands against literally every value that management says they’re in favor of.”

My boss: “But he makes SOOOOO much money for the company. Millions.”

That’s a huge defense. If you make piles of money for the company and can prove it? They’ll never fire you until the Grand Jury indicts.

In the end, my friend met all three of the criteria up above – had friends, had a flexible skill set, and could demonstrate how she made money, which is why she flies around on the corporate jet to eat bacon-wrapped shrimp. Thankfully, I was able to help her avoid being a free-range plant lady . . .

What is health? My definition. Bonus topics: Indiana Jones. Snakes. Super Glue.

â€œItâ€™s not the years, honey, itâ€™s the mileage . . .â€ â€“ Raiders of the Lost Ark

If only I could find a temple to raid, then I could pay for insurance . . .

Okay, this is listed as part I.Â I donâ€™t have a part II planned, really, but I sometimes think we look at health in a really messed up way so Iâ€™m sure at some point Iâ€™ll have another post, or Iâ€™ll forget about this one and do it again.Â Guess I picked the wrong week to stop sniffing Super-GlueÂ®.

First, what is health?Â I did some thinking about it (it was in the morning, and Iâ€™m not sure I had enough caffeine for this function) but I came up with my own definition.Â Enjoy!

Physically able to do stuff you want to do.
Mentally able to do stuff you want to do.
Not in constant or unreasonable pain.
The body is (generally) working the way itâ€™s supposed to.
Stuff that should stay in, stays in. Stuff that should stay out, stays out.
Not missing critical bits and pieces.
The bits that are left, generally work pretty well.
No bits are ready to fail right away (that you know of).
Absence of current system disruption (you donâ€™t have a cold or the flu).

I think this is a very different definition from the rest of the world.Â Iâ€™ll argue that this definition makes a lot of sense if the goal is happy people.Â If I want to go run, and I can do it, and am not suffering from some sort of stress thing that makes me think that if I go running that the kimono-clad ghost of Tom Petty will chase me around with a butcher knife, well, Iâ€™m healthy enough to run.

And I am healthy enough to run.Â Once per week.Â Maybe.Â My knees, after a lifetime of football, wrestling, and running from booby traps while pilfering South American treasure are, well, shot and will hurt like Bernie Sanders trying to explain how a socialist mayor is a multimillionaire.Â And I like running.Â So, I guess when it comes to running, Iâ€™m not exactly healthy.

My hair.Â Where did it go?Â Oh, my back, and my ears.Â So Iâ€™m missing some bits, but unless itâ€™s sunny outside, well, Iâ€™m okay â€“ these arenâ€™t critical bits.

So, if I had a sudden heart attack tomorrow and died, am I healthy today?Â Surprisingly, by my definition, I am totally healthy.Â Nothing in my definition of health implies indefinite or infinite life.Â Nor should it.

Tonight, The Boy dropped a glass cup on the floor of the kitchen.Â It shattered, since we live in a reality where glass doesnâ€™t bounce.

Twenty minutes later?Â The Mrs. walked into the kitchen and stepped completely on a shard (not a shart, which was my original typo) of glass.Â Immediately blood poured from her heel like money from Elon Muskâ€™s TeslaÂ® factory.Â Yeah, it was a lot of blood.Â I mean a lot.Â I immediately asked The Boy to wipe that up so the dogs didnâ€™t get into it.Â Â Even though the dogs are small enough that you could stomp them if they went crazy, I have a strict policy of NOT teaching the dogs to like the taste of human flesh.

So, The Mrs.â€™ inside bits became outside bits.Â Healthy?Â Sure.Â I think.Â The Mrs. claims she has a tetanus shot thatâ€™s recent enough to keep her alive, so Iâ€™ll go with that.Â But the line that I said to The Boy and Pugsley that is worth repeating is this:Â â€œYouâ€™re Momâ€™s going to die!Â I mean, not tonight, but sometime.â€

And thatâ€™s normal.Â Death is normal.

A lot of the current focus of medicine is on saving life.Â Duh.Â But a huge amount of the money is spent on the last year and last month of life.Â When life sucks.Â If the outrageous spending on the last month of life, when letâ€™s face it, you have much worse problems than a shard (shart) of glass in your heel, well, is that money well spent?

Not by my definition.Â Literally, not by my definition above.

Hey, Iâ€™m not trying to stop you from spending whatever money you want on whatever you want.Â If you want to spend $400,000 for a 50% probability of living another two months stuck in a hospital bed at 147 years old?Â Sure!Â Go for it.

But thatâ€™s not how it works.Â Virtually no one spends their own money on health care when theyâ€™re in the last year of their life â€“ this money is coming from MedicareÂ®.Â And Medicareâ„¢ money?Â It comes from you.Â And me.Â Iâ€™m not happy about public radio, let alone public funding of health care, but itâ€™s a real thing, so how do we make it suck less than it does now?Â (Not the radio, the health care.)

Iâ€™d much rather spend that money on making life better for people who are Kindaâ„¢ HealthyÂ®.Â People who are in otherwise pretty good shape.Â Iâ€™m also entirely against euthanasia.Â Itâ€™s murder.Â Make whatever argument you want â€“ but when you turn doctors and hospitals into consciously life-ending organizations?Â Yeah, youâ€™re not on the side of the angels.Â â€œOMG â€“ this baby has NO chance of making it into Harvardâ„¢!Â Better end it all now.â€

Part of the problem of healthcare today is that weâ€™ve disconnected virtuous actions with reward.Â Sure, they can charge you more money for insurance if youâ€™re a smoker, but the current system allows anyone to skip out on paying for insurance, and then only purchasing it after they get sick.Â Thatâ€™s not insurance â€“ itâ€™s a con job.

Thatâ€™s not insurance, thatâ€™s a cheat.Â And it irritates me.Â Iâ€™ve been paying for insurance for myself (either directly or as part of a job) since I was 22 or so â€“ hundreds of thousands of dollars into a system that weâ€™ve pulled very little out of.Â Heck, I havenâ€™t been to a doctor since 2012 (being healthy) and I just needed some antibiotics at that point.Â Allowing people to be non-virtuous (be a freeloader until sick) breaks the system.

My brother, Other John Wilder, told me a story (a LONNNNNG time ago) about a wife and mother who was without insurance.Â She got cancer.Â She didnâ€™t have insurance.Â The doctors wouldnâ€™t do anything to help her.Â She died.

A tragedy?Â Sure.Â And Iâ€™m sorry for her.

Plan better.Â Really.Â If the taxpayer (or, worse yet, insurance payers like me) bails out every sad story?Â Yeah, the insurance costs will explode.Â Like they have.

What else ails our system?

Litigation.Â I think our system would be much better if we removed judicial and jury decisions and replaced it with trial by combat to the death.Â With the attorneys involved being the combatants.Â It might not be a fair decision, but it would be awesome television.

Sir Habeas Corpus, Attorney at Armsâ„¢.Â Okay, Attorney at Armsâ„¢ might be a really cool idea for a short story or a book series.Â I hereby trademark thee!

Insurance is really a problem.Â It requires a ton of codes, and billing staff, and itâ€™s a risk (if youâ€™re a doctor or a patient) if youâ€™re going to get the money.Â I was reading on the Internet about the Surgery Center of OklahomaÂ®.Â No insurance.Â They donâ€™t take it.Â Cash only.Â And if you donâ€™t have cash, donâ€™t show up â€“ they wonâ€™t treat you.Â Their costs for surgery are often less than the copay for insurance or Medicareâ„¢.

Donâ€™t believe me?Â Go to their website and check it out (LINK).Â It would be nice where . . . you could just avoid insurance and government altogether . . . .

But insurance isnâ€™t cheap â€“ ObamacareÂ© has resulted in (or occurred at the same time as) huge cost increases in premiums for insurance that only covers injuries resulting from meteorite strikes on alternate Tuesdays and pregnancy services for men.

And hospitals mark stuff up.Â Here is a bill of a guy who got bit by a rattlesnake.Â Note the cost for â€œPharmacyâ€ â€“ this is almost all anti-venom.Â Costs $200 a vial in Mexico.Â Letâ€™s say this guy had to have 20 vials.Â Thatâ€™s $4,000.

Snakes.Â Did it have to be snakes?

Yeah.Â They marked the stuff up 20 times.Â If you or I did that?Â Theyâ€™d avoid a trial and just execute us.Â But for lifesaving drugs that you have no choice but to take, like anti-venom or insulin?Â The hospitals look to remove your wallet through your throat, like they did with Pugsleyâ€™s stitches.

Yeah, he was camping with the Organization Formerly Known as Boy Scouts.Â He had his knife out, and was whittling a piece of wood.Â No, his finger.Â The Mrs. took him to the emergency room.Â Three stiches.Â $4,000.

Yeah.Â If it would have been up to me?Â Iâ€™d have Super-GluedÂ® it shut and weâ€™d have solved the whole problem for $1.42.

Super-GlueÂ®.Â Can it save American health care?Â Only one way to find out . . . .

Purpose, Retirement, and Life. Spoiler: You need a purpose.

“We’re the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War’s a spiritual war.” – Fight Club

I love Demotivators. You should buy a calendar a year from them. Or more, if you have more than one year each year.

Men must have a purpose. If they don’t have one, they’ll either find one, or die.

During the vast majority of my career I’ve been a supervisor of between one (which is the minimum you can be a supervisor of, unless you have multiple personalities) and 200 people (they worked for the eight or so people working for me, so I was like a great-grand boss).

I’ve seen all sorts of weird things – an employee on day one had his company laptop stolen out of his hotel room in New Jersey and then got punched in the face at his apartment building the next day and showed up to work with two horrible black eyes (this story is true). I worried he would be an awful employee – bad luck often seems to follow some people around, but he turned out just to be unlucky that week – the rest of his career has been pretty good.

I’ve seen employees quit for no real good reason, I’ve seen them quit for very good reasons. I’ve (unfortunately) been in the position of forcing an employee out (i.e., letting them know that the hammer is coming down so they’d better find something soon) and I’ve had to fire people. Firing is the roughest, but it also helps the employee find a place that they can be that will help them – most of the times, they’re just not a fit for the job. One employee developed diabetes and ulcers while working for me. The job wasn’t high pressure, but the employee just wasn’t cut out for it. Or, maybe I’m an amazing jerk. Nah, it must be he wasn’t cut out for it.

Sometimes the happiest occasion is when an employee retires.

Not that I want them to retire, especially if they’re good at what they do and fun to be around. But after 45 or 50 years, it’s nice for them to be able to spend the next few months before they die doing whatever they want to. I kid! But how many people retire and then die within a few months? Far too many, and I think I know why.

I was fortunate enough to be a supervisor to two employees that retired on the same day, Kermit and Fozzie. Kermit and Fozzie had worked together for decades. They had vacationed together. They lunched together. I think they even shared shoes and toenail clippers. It was only fitting that they retire on the same day.

Fozzie was ready to retire. Really ready to retire. He had plans. He had a big RV, plans for fishing and grandkids. He had bought a house about 100 miles away and sold the one near to town. He’d calculated his retirement down to the penny – and figured out how to maximize every benefit he could think of. And he was done.

About six minutes after we cut the retirement cake, he was gone. The last time I heard from him was as he walked out the door at his retirement party, essentially telling us if we ran into any problems and needed his help, he’d be available approximately never. His last act was to place a huge poster on his office door specifically mocking in a humorous way about a dozen employees that he found fault with. (Thankfully I wasn’t on the poster.)

Fozzie was done.

In truth, he was probably done two or three years earlier, but he had waited for Kermit.

Kermit had a house that he had bought that was closer to 200 miles away. But Kermit didn’t have plans. He rarely saw his grandkids, and his hobby, his passion was really work.

Both Kermit and Fozzie had a great amount of technical knowledge – and I promised either of them that they could get an hourly consulting contract to assist teaching the 24 year old kids that were replacing them. Fozzie told me in rather distinct medical terminology exactly where I could put that contract. Again, nothing personal. Fozzie was done.

Kermit? Three months later Kermit was in the office at least 20 hours a week. I rarely tasked him with anything specific – I mainly had him help and teach the younger employees (which I think he loved). I’m not in that position anymore with that company, but Kermit is still coming in every week.

Why does Kermit keep coming in?

It’s his purpose. If he wasn’t at work, he wouldn’t have a purpose. That’s not an indictment of Kermit – he’s a heck of a guy. He simply understands (or maybe feels) that he has the ability to keep going and to keep adding value in the workplace. And he’s got nothing in his life outside of work that makes him that happy.

Kermit would do it for free if he wasn’t being paid. I actually think there are some months he didn’t bill the company – and I recall having to nag him about turning a bill in at all.

I’m certain that if Kermit wasn’t coming in? He’d die. It’s who he is.

Men must have a purpose. If they don’t have one, they’ll either find one, or die.

What’s your purpose?

Pizarro, The Economic Failure of Spain, and Why Bad News May Be Good News

“You don’t acquire the kind of wealth your uncle commanded by being like the rest of us.” – John Carter On Mars

I love the idea of people carrying me around everywhere I go. Now how do I become emperor again?

In 1532, Francisco Pizarro, accompanied by a force of less than 200 Spaniards, took on a portion of the main army of the Inca. Why? To defeat the entire Inca nation. The plan was at least partially desperation. To retreat would show weakness. As Cortez had burned his ships years earlier to give his men incentive to defeat the Aztec empire, Pizarro was all in.

Pizarro invited the Incan Emperor, Atahualpa, into a down called Cajamarca. Believing this to be safe since there were only 200 Spaniards, Atahualpa was accompanied “only” by 6,000 of his warriors and generals who were admittedly armed only with small battle axes. The Spaniards had waited, concealed and terrified in Cajamarca, for hours.

As Atahualpa was carried into the central square of the town, his honor guard parted to allow Atahualpa down from his litter. History records that he became angry when a single Friar approached him and asked him pledge fealty to the Spanish king, Charles, and become a Catholic. At the point where Atahualpa enraged, the Spanish sprang from their concealment, attacking the Incans with cannon, gunfire, and sword. The cavalry managed to abduct Atahualpa, and Pizarro himself blocked a sword strike at Atahualpa, catching at least part of the sword on his own hand.

Pizarro wanted Atahualpa as a hostage – a living Atahualpa could be used to give orders. A living Atahualpa could be used to prevent the 55,000 battle-hardened troops outside from rushing the Spaniards. A living Atahualpa could be ransomed.

Fake news, 1532 style: a picture of Pizarro meeting Atahualpa looking like everything is nice and rosy. Not pictured: The battle where Atahualpa lost his entire empire.

Also: Do you have a few minutes to listen to a story about Jesus?

And ransomed he was – for a room, 22’ by 8’ by 7’. Not just any room. But a room that big, filled with gold. And two the same size filled with silver. It’s certain that the gold wouldn’t have been solid, but would have been jewelry and other items. Let’s assume that it was 2/3 filled with air. That still means the gold would have been worth (in today’s dollars) at least $20 billion. The silver wouldn’t even be worth a billion.

Atahualpa was executed, anyway. The King of Spain was reportedly not pleased, but was pretty good with the over $4 billion that was his (minimum) cut of Atahualpa’s treasure. In November of 1533, Pizarro entered Cuzco, the capital of the Mayans as its conqueror. He would serve as governor of what is now Peru. Pizarro was killed in 1541 by the son of an assassinated rival.

Pizarro, with a fine, feathered hat. Makes me want to kill some tropical bird so I can have a cool feather. What, I don’t have to kill one for a feather? Spoilsport. Oh, and Pizarro had two kids with Atahualpa’s wife. She must have been attracted to that fine beard.

But the impact on Spain was enormous. The Conquistadors kept coming, and kept taking gold from the New World for over a century more. All of the treasure went back to Spain, and, initially, paid off the debts of the Spanish government. But it did other things, as well.

Seville, the Spanish city had over 16,000 shops making textiles out of silk in the year 1500, before the gold started to come in from the Americas. The population of Spain stood at (around) 10,000,000 at this time. 200 years after 1500, in 1700? The population of Spain had dropped to around 6,000,000.

What happened?

All of the gold. Such good fortune, right?

Where it would have been pretty rough for a foreign power to have taken over Spain (it was in pretty good shape, militarily) the gold from the New World did the job wonderfully. How?

All of the gold led to a change in the culture and value of Spain. Whereas before, Spain had been an industrious nation, after gold, things changed. Why do it, when you could have someone else do it? There were people in the Netherlands that would gladly build it for you and ship it to Spain. There were people in the Netherlands that would gladly come to Spain to do work that Spaniards wouldn’t do. Begging (among Spaniards) and living off of charity became to be seen as more virtuous than resorting to common work, at least that was the message the common man received from watching the nobility. Spain had traditionally been more than self-sufficient in providing agriculture. In 1578, one observer noted that the lack of production “was not the fault of the land, but was the fault of the people.”

Spain’s military and colonial establishment, however, continued to provide the currency that the country needed even as the country sank into indolence and despair.

And what brought about the despair?

Success.

Success took away the hard lessons in life. The Spanish military took the ambitious young men of Spain and allowed them to seek glory. The rest of Spain? Lived off of the glory. Eventually, the rot of success allowed the United States to completely remove the remaining Spanish colonies from Spain. When our new, steel warships fought against the Spanish? They often fought cannon that were 100 years old, and 70 years out of date.

Success allowed Spain to become an economic shambles. Success teaches no lessons.

In my life, everything that ever made me better was . . . awful. Losing a wrestling match. Being deeply in debt. Getting a divorce.

Losing a wrestling match (2-1, in overtime in 8^th grade) made me want to win. And I worked harder. Next time I wrestled that guy? I pinned him in 20 seconds.

Being in debt. That one mad me reexamine my entire life, or at least the spending associated with it. Each spending decision became a moral choice, since I was living in a constant state of (nearly) not having enough money to make it. There’s nothing immoral about being either rich or poor – it’s what you learn.

Getting a divorce, to me, allowed me to really understand how I’d contributed to the failure of the marriage, realize what I was really looking for in a partner, and allow me to both pick a more suitable wife as well as to become a more suitable husband.

If I had won the lottery or become a rock star at 20, what would I have learned? Well, besides learning what a car upholstered entirely in endangered species would drive like, probably not much. I’ve often said that if I’d been immensely wealthy when I was young, I probably wouldn’t have made it to 30. For whatever reason, I find that adversity and challenge are my friends. Success is nice, but only if it holds a challenge.

Holy cow – maybe the ultimate challenge is beating success?

Oh, Seneca figured that out 2000 years ago:

“Let us too overcome all things, with our reward consisting not in any wreath or garland, not in trumpet-calls for silence for the ceremonial proclamation of our name, but in moral worth, in strength of spirit, in a peace that is won forever once in any contest fortune has been utterly defeated.” – Seneca, Letters

So the next time you feel that you’ve just had a spot of bad luck? It might just be your best luck. Or, if you believe Seneca – no luck at all is required.

Most of the People at Your Company Know Nothing, John Snow. And You Can’t Fire Them.

“He was poisoning me? It was all there in the job title. The head of Human Resources. This time, it’s personnel.” – Dr. Who

Umm, I can’t top this.

I’ve posted before about how government is a jobs program (LINK), but increasingly government has made businesses hire more and more people that produce nothing in order simply to meet government regulations or to fend off lawsuits. It’s like welfare, but with the whole, “you mean I have to be there at eight . . . am?”

Think I’m kidding?

Let’s start with Human Resources. I love the title. HR. Every company has someone who does this, right? The title makes me think they go to a mine and take a pickaxe and look for bits of people that they can assemble into Frankenployee.

I’m wondering where I go to complain about the other employees and their “made from living tissue in a normal manner that doesn’t insult God” privilege?

Well, what’s the problem with HR? They’re there for their workers, right? (Notice the They’re, there, their trifecta!)

Let me tell you a story that I’ve seen unfold several times during my career.

Person A, unhappy about employee favoritism, to John Wilder: “I’m so angry, this isn’t right! I’m going to tell Human Resources!”

John Wilder: “Umm, dude, Human Resources reports up to the President. They are not on the employee side, they’re on the company side.”

Person A, after talking to HR: “They asked me if it was sexual harassment. I said “no.” Then they said they didn’t care – quit whining.”

If your boss treats you poorly, and fires you, and is wrong in every way possible from being rude to being born as ugly as a cross between a turkey and a cat, Human Resources is . . . on their side. As long as he doesn’t take a fire axe and try to kill you at your desk – they’ve got him covered. “Unconventional leadership! Attempts to motivate by leaving a dead rodent in their tea! Didn’t actually kill employee!”

The only way to get Human Resources on your side? Own the company.

Sure, HR helps with finding and hiring people, but that’s primarily so the hiring manager doesn’t screw up and create legal liability by asking the person being interviewed if they’re fat or pregnant, then telling them they must be fat, because they’re too old to be pregnant. HR tells them not to do that. But if they do it? HR will defend you (if you own the company).

HR also helps with setting up employee benefits. Yup. Employee benefits still exist in some places – they’ve not vanished, but they are as rare as a coelacanths. (pronounced see-lo-can-thhhhhhhhhhh)

Yeah, coelacanths are almost as old as your mother. And what would Mom say? Don’t be a coela-canth, be a coela-can!

Let’s pretend that businesses didn’t have to pay taxes. What then?

Well, your accounting department would shrivel – and not the individual employees shriveling so all seventy could fit into a filing cabinet (though that is amusing). You’d only need the accountants that sent the bills, paid the bills, and then do whatever reports you wanted and maybe a couple to make sure employees aren’t stealing too much from you. Sure, it’s important to know why your company makes money (don’t laugh – there are some companies, profitable ones – that have no idea how they make money) and the accountants can be sent out to find which parts of the company cost more than they make, but the current sea of accountants that are devoted to taxation and special treatment of the way the company spends money so it can conform to what the government wants? Yeah, they could go away.

Thankfully, Big Brother Government will never let this happen, though, due to public safety concerns. Nobody wants that many introverts walking around the streets staring at their own shoes. The poor dears would get run down right and left. And how would we pay for cleaning up all the accountant blood off of our cars?

Next victim? Investor Relations folks work with the company lawyers to help the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) pretend that they know what a business is when Congress calls them and invites them to come and talk. Congress then kicks them a few times to show them who is boss, and then sends them back to do exactly what they previously did before they got yelled at.

In reality Investor Relations fills out forms and does annual reports. The purpose of the annual report is so that the CEO can show off how much he cares and about the new charity hospital the company set up in Belgium. Why Belgium? Your CEO thought Belgium was in Africa.

Don’t let the Legal Department reproduce, or your company will have three lawyers for every person engaged in productive activity. It’s like that movie with the aliens with the seed pods. But in this case the seed pods just turn into more lawyers.

Every industry in the United States has “Industry Regulation Experts.” Things that a farmer can throw on a trash-heap in his north 40 are (sometimes) things that a chemical company would get fined for even thinking about purchasing since hazardous waste is the in the eye of the beholder.

(True Aside: There are two kinds of hazardous wastes under Federal law: listed and characteristic. Listed is just because an unelected regulator put it . . . on a list. Many of these items make no sense. But characteristic is funny. Originally EPA was gooing going to set characteristic hazardous wastes as those with a pH less than 3 (that means it’s an acid). OOOPS! Coca-Cola™ has a pH of 2.5. So they set the pH of a characteristic hazardous waste at . . . 2.

Let’s go to bases/caustics. These can still burn you. So, the EPA decided that we’d set a limit of 12. Again . . . OOOPS! Wet concrete has a pH of 12 to 13. So, they set the pH for a hazardous caustic waste as . . . 12.5.

Government is stupid, but not stupid enough to outlaw Coke® and concrete.)

Food production people in California have vastly different regulations than a similar company in Utah might have. And as government finally comes around? Tech companies will soon require hundreds of extra personnel just to sit in your office to tell you why you’re not allowed to do.

Thankfully, there are companies you can hire to do everything we’ve talked about. You can outsource accounting, payroll, HR, and even legal. Groups of consultants know your business better than you.

Rob Halford knows HR and Legal says you’re not supposed to mix Judas Priest® and Babymetal™. But Rob doesn’t care . . .

It’s my theory that our country could be as productive as a boxcar filled with kindergarteners that just had sugar cookies after trick-or-treating. We just need to get everybody rowing and we’d be on Mars in two years.

If not rowing? At least tell them about our new colony on Venus! We’re shipping out new colonists starting every Tuesday!

Found at (LINK). Story “Marching Morons” can be found at (LINK).

Time Goes By Too Fast? Blue Öyster Cult, Pascal, and Ben Affleck May Save Us Yet

“All Rome rejoices in your return, Caesar. There are many matters that require your attention.” – Gladiator

Memes – a tool of attention control? Or cats with eated cookies?

One curse of modern life is . . . always being in a rush. A hurry. Where is the time? How do you expect to do that? It’ll take hours to do that?

And it’s a constant refrain now – we end up at midnight wondering . . . where did the day go? The rush? It adds to stress, and stress clearly causes health problems over time.

Yeah, that time we don’t have enough of. Where did all of our time go, anyway?

I seem to remember that Blue Öyster Cult (in the song Burning for You) promised me . . . “Time everlasting, time to play B-sides . . . “

So, where is my time to play B-sides? (Historical note: In order to hear a stupid song you liked, it was required to buy either a full album, or to buy a “single.” The “single” cost less, and had the song you really wanted to hear. On the other side of the popular song was the “b-side” – generally a song that wasn’t very popular, and never would be very popular. Thus, if you had time to play b-sides, you were wealthy with time. Now you can just go to the Internet and have any song ever recorded played for you instantaneously.)

Television

The real issue now is that every moment of every day can be filled with media: YouTube®, Netflix©, Amazon Prime Video™, Hulu©, HBOGO®. Those are just the video services, which doesn’t include the television your television has recorded for you to watch later.

But if it were just videos, we’d be okay. Virtually every time I type this, either YouTube® is providing background music, or one of the movies that I watch as background noise (The Accountant® is one that I like a lot, and Batman vs. Superman™ is another – don’t judge me for my Affleck Affection Affliction – my doctors says it might be curable).

Now, however, we can watch an entire television season (via binge watching) in several days – creating an immersive event that can be disorienting.

When The Mrs. and I first started watching “Lost” on DVD, well, there were several 3AM nights because we couldn’t stop watching. “Just one more episode . . .”

Social Media

Then we add in interactive online experiences – FaceBorg®, Twitttttterrrr©, SnapGram™. These are experiences engineered to grab your attention. Twitter shows you a notification when it wants you to see the notification to maximize your engagement. There’s nothing random about these web services. And you’ve probably heard this before, but if they’re not charging you to do it, you’re the product. With these social media services, you are completely the product. FaceBird© expected to make $27 from the data it harvested . . . from each user. Who paid? Who knows? Let’s just say your late night searches have drawn . . . some attention)

Not pictured: Cambridge or Stanford.

Cambridge and Stanford (the universities, not the two dudes named Cambridge and Stanford that were Muppets®) did a study, and found that with 10 likes FaceBlog© knows you better than a work colleague. 150 likes? They know you better than your parents know you. 300 likes? They can beat the Persians at Thermopylae. Just kidding. They do, however, know you better than your spouse. And everyone knows the Persians are still on MySpace®.

Only this many likes and then FaceBlock® says . . . THIS IS SPARTA!

And if they know you better than your spouse? They can certainly figure out your moods, the things that will get and keep your attention. Why? Their income depends on your attention.

The News

The news is becoming ever less based in truth and more and more polarized. So, the news isn’t only fake, it’s biased. Examples? After Trump was nominated for President, a news reporter did a straight news story that Trump had asked a woman with a crying baby to leave a campaign rally. Did he do it? Yes. Was he kidding? Well, yes. Humor is a powerful way to connect with a crowd – watching video of the event later, it was pretty obvious that it was a joke.

Both sides do it. It was reported that a “doctor” had reviewed Hillary Clinton and found that she had some form of cerebral palsy. Clearly, that would be devastating for her bid for the presidency. Clearly, there’s no evidence of the palsy post-election.

So, the news becomes polarized like a 120 volt outlet, all charged up to make you care passionately about things you’ve never heard about before.

Availability

All of the above are available to you everywhere and anytime. I can watch a movie on a tablet in bed while I check my phone to see how many people liked my last Tweeet®. It used to be (in the long-before time) that this level of immersive and up to date media was available only in limited locations. Now? Anywhere. Work. Working out. Driving to work. Driving home. At dinner. And throw your work e-mail on top of that so you can read the thought your boss had at 2am when he woke up to let the dog out.

Result?

You feel rushed – you have eliminated downtime. Back during the Revolutionary War, learning about the results of a battle might take weeks. Now? When ISIS was attacking in Iran halfway around the world from here, there were nearly-live videos uploaded to YouTube®. And we can watch the Kardashians doing . . . well, whatever parasitical thing they’re doing today. (I’m not saying that they’re exactly like human tapeworms, but there are a lot of unsettling coincidences . . . .)
Your ideas never have time to develop? How could they? They’re always being trampled by the ideas and opinions of others, couched in the most emotional manner possible to elicit the largest surge of anger or fear they can muster.
You lose the ability to focus and concentrate – there’s always some media begging for your attention at the periphery of your consciousness. Check that email – it might be important! (Hint: it might be important once a month.)
Shopping – for anything, anytime. Your commercial desires can be met instantly. Need to order ammunition for an AK at 8AM? Sure! Need to order posters for a protest parade at a podium? Sure!
Boredom with the mundane. Mundane literally means “Earthly.” I can co-pilot a TIE® fighter with Darth Vader©. I can grab a YouTube© video showing Russian teens at the top of the tallest building in Moscow. Live view a rocket launch? What can awe and inspire a generation that has experienced so many events virtually? Oh, wait, you search for ever more esoteric adventures. And you’ll find them – but none of them will occur around your location.
Video games, where you can expend hours achieving great goals, saving civilizations, destroying enemy fleets, founding empires. Great, pre-programmed goals. Other people’s goals. Goals that aren’t yours, and, when accomplished, aren’t at all real.
Preoccupation with news that has no impact on you, and that you have no control over, yet about which you are made to feel deeply that you’re willing to fight the other side to the death. Seems legit.

Why do we do this to ourselves?

This is Blaise Pascal – who had a nose larger than any ship in the current Canadian Navy, but wasn’t quite as smart as Newton. This irritates the French. Note the Blue Öyster Cult symbol in the background . . . Pascal was a rocker!

Mindset that our activity is our accomplishment. Our accomplishment is our accomplishment.
The mathematician Blaise Pascal said (roughly, this is my translation of what I remember he said in French because I’m too lazy to go to my library to look it up – heck, I even marked this passage when I first read it and am too lazy to go and check, but I’ll get close enough because, well, I’m John Wilder) “Activity distracts us, which removes our attention from how wretched we are.”
We’re being manipulated (not in a tinfoil hat way, but in a shareholder value way). FaceBrick® makes money off of you. Off of your eyes. Off of your attention. Off of your habits. It’s not a conspiracy that businesses will do whatever they can to make more money from you, even if the long term consequences aren’t in your best interest. But it is in their best interest to put in front of you the stimulus that they figure will give them the proper response.

Coping – How do I deal with it?

I don’t listen to the radio during my daily commute. That leaves over an hour without any media – any static. It took about a week to get used to it, but now I use that time to think – to plan for the day or night ahead. To think about the next post. To think about . . . anything. But the thoughts are my own.
When we go out to eat as a family, phones in a pile on the table. We’re there and discuss what each other think.
At work, I’ll sometimes take e-mail breaks – where I won’t review them for hours at a time.
Sitting without distraction to focus on a single problem or task. I find that, for me, music helps with the focus.
Writing daily the list of things that I really have to do. This will probably be its own post in the future. But I use and actual pen and pencil, and put it on actual paper. It makes a difference.

The trends are clear – barring a global war, great depression, currency collapse, or regional war near here, our attention span will be fought over on a daily basis. If you want to accomplish anything real in your life, if you want to avoid the stress that comes with the constant emotional treadmill, you have to come up with a strategy.

Thankfully? I have my willpower. That, and Ben Affleck movies. I can mostly ignore them. Hey – is Ben Affleck . . . my B-side?

If so, that makes me wealthy, indeed!

Friendship and Health – and When Friendships are Made . . .

“How come you don’t hang out with your friends no more?” – Repo Man

Kermit knows that friends don’t tell friends to drive into the mouth of an active volcano.

I read a joke the other day: “Why don’t we read about Jesus’ other miracle very often? I mean, what guy has 12 close friends after the age of 30?”

It’s true. And it’s the post topic for healthy Friday. Why? Because we need friends to be healthy. And we need friends to help us hide the bodies. What bodies? Who said anything about bodies? My lawyer certainly says I don’t.

This post was originally going to be the second part of my post from Monday (LINK), but when I tried to put them together, it was sloppy, horrible, and I ended up having my hands stuck to my eyebrows with literary Super Glue®. The parts just didn’t fit. Or they didn’t fit when I tried to smash them together last Sunday night. The nouns, gerunds and library paste wouldn’t keep it together. At least not at 2AM. But it’s important to talk about. Why?

There’s a huge connection.

Something about the friendships you make when you are between the ages of 10 and 16 is . . . magic. And I think the thing that makes it magic is the years from 10 to 16, those six years . . . are (on average) about 50% of your life. And the specific 50% where you learn how to be mean. How to be hurt. How to feel shame. How to feel triumph. How to buy beer when underage at the 7-11© at the outskirts of town . . . .

The Mrs. and I (okay, mainly The Mrs.) used to watch a show where addicts would be confronted by their family in order to convince them to not be addicts. They went through the lives of the addicts – in almost every case, the addict had insufficient parental support (or some sort of tragedy) between the ages of 11 and 14. Very specific. Each story didn’t rhyme – it was nearly life plagiarism.

Something happens in that part of your life. That really, really long part of your life.

Hormones kick in. And every emotion is fresh. New. The crisp morning air? That first morning when you walk out to your car and, for the first time, see frost on the window? HOW COOL IS THAT? After a few thousand times, the frost becomes . . . another thing you have to deal with. Again.

You only get one first kiss. You only get one first walk hand in hand (or hands in tentacle if you’re a Lovecraftian monstrosity) with your girlfriend. The newness is huge. And the friendships are closer. Why? How many times will you climb the water tower in your town to paint it? Well, not at all now, because Homeland Security would probably take you to Gitmo® for putting your name on the water tower. Because . . . terrorism?

First dates. First breakups. First . . . everything.

Anyway – your life is so very full of firsts. The psychological impacts are massive – and the need for parental support is likewise massive. It’s nice to have the support of people that are genetically connected to you (LINK) and understand you. Probably. We Post-Modern-Vikings seem to be somewhat erratic. I digress.

This time of your life was difficult. It was new. It was a struggle. But it was yours. And your friends from this time had several attributes – they didn’t want anything from you. They just wanted you. They wanted to jump in your car and head to the party place and find the guys who couldn’t let go of high school and had a keg of beer. And why not? Life stretched out forever.

Until it didn’t.

I have had several rare opportunities – I’ve reached out to friends from the past who I finally found due to Internet searches (I’m not a bit Facebook® fan) and talked to them. And we restarted right where we left off.

The Mrs. talked about some psychological theory where people related to their friends . . . forever, in the same way they related to each other when they first formed their relationship. So, you’d always be tied into that same social hierarchy. You’d always be friends in the same way you were when you first formed that friendship.

Amazing. Psychological ties to your friends are rooted in multiple dimensions – they are rooted in your common origin story (like when Wolverine® met Cinderella™!) and your common goofiness. Also? Your love of songs that were popular when you were at your absolutely stupidest. Like 13.

Thankfully, nobody remembers where those bodies are . . . .

How much time do you have left? Not as much as you think you do . . .

“Ok, let me see if I’ve got this straight. In order to be grounded, I’ve got to be crazy. And I must be crazy to keep flying. But if I ask to be grounded, that means I’m not crazy anymore, and I have to keep flying.” – Catch 22

Now 205 pounds and doing 180 push-ups and sit-ups a day . . . .

When I was 10, summer lasted a year. I would spend the time hiking in the mountains, making models (plastic spaceships, not the Donald Trump kind), reading comic books (sometimes the same ones, again and again) and looking forward to the next day. Each day was a bit of wonder, and they lasted so very long. It seemed like the longest days were those when we were wishing that the calendar would go forward – for a vacation – for a trip – for a birthday. Our life went slowest when we were wishing it away.

When I was 30, summers began to blend together into a blur. Time for the mortgage payment . . . again? Didn’t I just pay that? I’ll change the filter in the air conditioner. Oh, that’s been a year? No, two years??? How did that happen?

When I was 5, the time between Thanksgiving and Christmas was roughly . . . forever. Now? A blink and then it’s done. And after 30? Might as well spin the wheel – days blur into weeks into months into years. A decade between visits with a close friend? Hmmm.

A clock ticks off a minute after a minute. It ticks off an hour in an hour. That linear time is 1+1=2. It’s how we think of the world, but it’s not at all how we experience it. No. Our time sense is far different.

When we are born, after living that first day – it’s all we have ever known. It’s an eternity. It’s literally all the time we’ve ever known. To look forward after that day would be to look across a gulf of time that, to us, is nearly an infinite amount of time away.

A minute isn’t a minute. When you’re ten years old, half of your life is five years. When you’re forty, five years the amount of time you’ve been thinking about changing your shower curtain. But half of your life is twenty years, and that’s something substantial to you. Kind of like the five years to the ten year old . . . .

All of us experience time a day at a time, but the day is different to each of us, has different significance, different meaning. Your time sense is changed by the amount of time you’ve spent on Earth. The most significant time is doubling . . . rather than a year, it’s all about how many times you’ve doubled your experience. Let’s take an example:

Most people don’t start building memories until they’re two and a half or so. Double it? Five. Again? 10. 20. 40. 80.

Viewed from that vantage point, we’ve only got about five doublings in our life. Rather than 80 years (which seems daunting) think about it that the time between five and 10 will roughly correspond to the perceived duration between ages 40 and 80.

And I think it’s not just time perception – it’s learning. It’s achievement. You probably learn as much between two and a half and five as you do between 10 and 20. Or 40 and 80.

Does time seem like it’s going faster? For you it is. This is the same model that radioactive decay follows – a half-life. The half-life of a radioactive atom is based upon the stability of its nucleus. Your half-life is based on how many days you have lived. And each day makes the next day shorter . . . .

Fortunately, there’s a solution. When reading Joseph Heller’s book, Catch: 22, one of the characters, Dunbar, shot skeet because he hated shooting skeet. Whenever possible he did things he hated or things that made him uncomfortable so that he could have a life that appeared to be longer. I mean, nothing seems longer than doing something you hate, so why not just fill your life with doing things you hate?

Oh, we don’t fill our lives with doing things we hate because it’s stupid. Whew. Forgot.

I’ll throw out there, that when viewed in these doublings, you have much less useful time on Earth than you think. If you have five doublings (and nobody has ever made it to six) than you’ve only got so much time to do what you want to do.

Have a book to write? If you haven’t started, will you ever?

Have an apology to make? If you wait another decade, will that make it easier?

Whatever you do, don’t wish your life away – you’ve only got so many days. Make the most of each one of them.